photographed in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City on June 20, 2009

For the past five years, Ernie DiGiacomo has been able to count on parents to guarantee the $1,500 to $2,500 rents he charges for the 15 apartments he owns in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. When he called renters who had missed payments, he often heard, “My parents will send you a check.”

But in the past six months, the parents are pulling back financial help, he said, and as a result, he has watched more renters move out.

“Most of them are moving back with parents,” Mr. DiGiacomo said.

Luis Illades, an owner of the Urban Rustic Market and Cafe on North 12th Street, said he had seen a steady number of applicants, in their late 20s, who had never held paid jobs: They were interns at a modeling agency, for example, or worked at a college radio station. In some cases, applicants have stormed out of the market after hearing the job requirements.

“They say, ‘You want me to work eight hours?’ ” Mr. Illades said. “There is a bubble bursting.”

Excerpted from ‘Parental Lifelines, Frayed to Breaking,’ by Christine Haughney. Published June 9, 2009, in The New York Times.

photographed near the California Coast, Pacific Ocean on June 12, 2009

DETROIT — It was said that the Detroit Red Wings could not lose Game 7 of a Stanley Cup final on home ice. They did.

That Marc-Andre Fleury could not be counted on to win big games. He has.

That these Penguins were not ready to be champions. They are.

They defeated the Red Wings, 2-1, in Game 7 at Joe Louis Arena last night to earn the third Stanley Cup in franchise history.

The driving forces behind the victory were forward Max Talbot, who scored both goals, and Fleury, who turned aside 23 of 24 shots and made a lunging game-, season- and Cup-saving stop on Nicklas Lidstrom with about a second to play.

Excerpted from ‘Penguins beat Red Wings, 2-1, in Stanley Cup thriller,’ by Dave Molinari. Published June 13, 2009, in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

photographed in Key West, Florida on July 25, 2008

NEW YORK — Piracy is an important issue and Carnival Corp. is working with the U.S. military and British Ministry of Defence to protect its passengers and crew from any attacks, the cruise ship operator told its shareholders Wednesday.

Concerns about piracy have increased since Somali pirates took an American freighter captain hostage off Africa’s eastern coast earlier this month.

“We take it extremely seriously,” Carnival’s Chief Operating Officer Howard Frank said in response to a question at Carnival’s annual meeting of shareholders. “We’d never put any passenger in jeopardy or crewmember.” …

In 2005, a cruise ship sailing under Carnival’s luxury Seabourn brand — which operates cruises to destinations in Africa and the Middle East — was attacked by armed pirates off the Somali coast.

The captain evaded the attack and none of the ship’s 151 passengers was hurt, although one member of the 161-person crew was injured.

Excerpted from ‘Carnival cruise line takes piracy ‘extremely seriously,” by Kristen A. Lee. Appeared on April 15, 2009, in the USA Today.

photographed in Chicago, Illinois on May 10, 2009

Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, resigned Friday in the wake of the furor over an Air Force jet’s photo shoot over New York City April 27, the White House announced.

In addition, President Obama asked his deputy chief of staff, Jim Messina, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates or his designee “to jointly review the organizational structure of the White House Military Office and the reporting relationship of its components to the White House and the Air Force, to make recommendations to him to ensure that such an incident never occurs again,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said.

An internal review of the incident found that Caldera didn’t pay much attention to the evolving details of the flyover and failed to make sure that the public was informed of it in advance.

Many New Yorkers were frightened by the flyover and believed it might be another terrorist attack like the ones on 9/11. Some evacuated buildings as the 747 jumbo jet, which is designated as Air Force One when the president is aboard, and an Air Force fighter escort flew low over the Manhattan area in an effort to get publicity pictures with the Statue of Liberty and other landmarks as backgrounds. The White House released one such photo, of the plane flying over the Statue of Liberty. The cost of the 747′s flight has been estimated at $329,000.

Four-fifths of the story ‘Caldera Resigns Over Air Force One Photo Op Mishap,’ by Kenneth T. Walsh. Published May 8, 2009, in U.S. News and World Report.

photographed in Cozumel, Mexico on July 26, 2008

HONG KONG — What to call the new strain of flu raising alarms around the world has taken on political, economic and diplomatic overtones.

Pork producers question whether the term “swine flu” is appropriate, given that the new virus has not yet been isolated in samples taken from pigs in Mexico or elsewhere. While the new virus seems to be most heavily composed of genetic sequences from swine influenza virus material, it also has human and avian influenza genetic sequences as well, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Government officials in Thailand, one of the world’s largest meat exporters, have started referring to the disease as “Mexican flu.” An Israeli deputy health minister — an ultra-Orthodox Jew — said his country would do the same, to keep Jews from having to say the word “swine.” However, his call seemed to have been largely ignored.

Janet Napolitano, the secretary for homeland security, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack went out of their way at a press conference in Washington on Tuesday to refer to the virus by its scientific name, as the “H1N1 virus.”

Excerpted from ‘The Naming of Swine Flu, a Curious Matter,’ by Keith Bradsher. The New York Times, April 28, 2009.

photographed in Chicago, Illinois on April 26, 2009

But that is quite often not the way it goes. A bowler who appeals to the umpire is not required to ‘I appeal’, the foreman of a jury, in announcing the verdict, is required to say either ‘I announce …’, nor yet ‘We acquit’ or ‘We convict’, and an umpire in giving a batsman out is not required to say anything at all (he makes a conventional gesture). The principal reason for this seems to be that in these genuinely ‘conventional’ cases what the speaker is doing in speaking (or in the case of the umpire, gesturing) is already made wholly clear and manifest, in the circumstances, by the conventional procedure itself. We already know that at this stage of the formal proceedings in court, the foreman of the jury is announcing their verdict; so there is simply no need for him to say overtly that he is doing so, or in any way to indicate that he is doing so in what he says. We he needs to say is only what the verdict is; the rest is already clear, in the nature of the case.

Excerpted from chapter VIII, “Words and Deeds,” from J.L. Austin, The Arguments of the Philosophers by Geoffrey James Warnock, philosopher of language. Published by Taylor & Francis, 1989.

photographed in Chicago, Illinois on April 26, 2009

The lottery was conducted–as were the square dances, the teen club, the Halloween program–by Mr. Summers. who had time and energy to devote to civic activities. He was a round-faced, jovial man and he ran the coal business, and people were sorry for him, because he had no children and his wife was a scold. When he arrived in the square, carrying the black wooden box, there was a murmur of conversation among the villagers, and he waved and called. “Little late today, folks.” The postmaster, Mr. Graves, followed him, carrying a three- legged stool, and the stool was put in the center of the square and Mr. Summers set the black box down on it. The villagers kept their distance, leaving a space between themselves and the stool. and when Mr. Summers said, “Some of you fellows want to give me a hand?” there was a hesitation before two men. Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter. came forward to hold the box steady on the stool while Mr. Summers stirred up the papers inside it.

The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was born. Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box. There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here. Every year, after the lottery, Mr. Summers began talking again about a new box, but every year the subject was allowed to fade off without anything’s being done. The black box grew shabbier each year: by now it was no longer completely black but splintered badly along one side to show the original wood color, and in some places faded or stained.

Excerpted from ‘The Lottery’ by Shirley Jackson.

photographed in Evanston, Illinois on April 7, 2009

Research libraries are eagerly embracing the digital world. They are acquiring access to great quantities of electronic materials produced outside their walls and are making digital versions of their own holdings. These projects, as they become more common, are bringing both the broad issues and the nuances of the digitizing process into sharper relief.

Projects based on careful review, analysis, and planning can yield electronic resources that are functional and faithful to the original sources, and that support new kinds of scholarship. A detailed plan of work, regular assessment of progress, closely documented adjustments and corrections, and the retention of other project-related data can strengthen the knowledge base for future efforts. Each success, as well as each failure, will bring us closer to fulfilling the promises of the electronic environment.

The process of deciding what to digitize anticipates all the major stages of project implementation. Digital resources depend on the nature and importance of the original source materials, but also on the nature and quality of the digitizing process itself—on how well relevant information is captured from the original, and then on how the digital data are organized, indexed, delivered to users, and maintained over time. Disciplined efforts to address the themes and questions outlined in this essay will help ensure that new digitizing projects fulfill the expectations of libraries, students, and scholars.

Excerpted from Selecting Research Collections for Digitization, by Dan Hazen, Jeffrey Horrell and Jan Merrill-Oldham of the Council on Library and Information Resources. Published August 1998.

photographed in St. Charles, Illinois on August 1, 2004

DETROIT — The new chief executive of General Motors, Frederick A. Henderson, said Tuesday that bankruptcy was “more probable” than ever for the automaker but that he still hoped to successfully restructure the company out of court. “We will get the job done,” Mr. Henderson, who is known as Fritz, said in his first news conference since succeeding Rick Wagoner, who resigned at the request of the Obama administration over the weekend. “We will either do it out of court or we will do it in court,” Mr. Henderson said, “but we will get the job done in terms of recreating and reinventing General Motors as a competitive enterprise, one that wins in the marketplace.”

The administration on Monday rejected the turnaround plans submitted by G.M. and Chrysler, which have borrowed $17.4 billion since December to help them avoid bankruptcy. G.M. now has 60 more days to develop a new plan, and Chrysler was given 30 days to form an alliance with the Italian automaker Fiat.

If either automaker fails to meet the new deadlines, it could be forced into filing for bankruptcy protection, an outcome each has said that they hope to avoid. Mr. Henderson said he thought G.M. could accomplish what it needed to, including concessionary deals with the United Automobile Workers and bondholders who hold about $28 billion of its debt, within the government’s timeframe.

Excerpted from ‘Bankruptcy Is Now ‘More Probable,’ New G.M. Chief Says,’ published March 31, 2009, 2:50 p.m. EST, The New York Times.

photographed in Clear Lake, Iowa on September 25, 2008

The facts are these: Just after 1 a.m. February 3, 1959, a three-passenger Beechcraft Bonanza went down about five miles northwest of Mason City Municipal Airport, near Clear Lake, Iowa. The plane crash took the lives of the pilot, Roger Peterson, and three musicians: Charles Hardin Holley, better known as Buddy Holly, 22; Ritchie Valens (originally Valenzuela), 17; and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, 28.

It has become famous, in Don McLean’s “American Pie” formulation, as “the day the music died.”

“It was like a curtain coming down,” said Terry Stewart, president of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, which is co-hosting a series of events in Clear Lake for the anniversary, including classes putting the event in historical context.

As they have for decades, visitors have been making the pilgrimage to the resort town about 110 miles north of Des Moines. On Monday night, the 50th anniversary of the trio’s deaths, the city’s Surf Ballroom and Museum will host a huge concert in conjunction with the Rock Hall.

As reported by CNN in today’s story ‘The Day the Music Died? Hardly’.