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How Many Houses?
WASHINGTON -- Days after he cracked that being rich in the U.S. meant earning at least $5 million a year, Republican presidential candidate John McCain acknowledged that he wasn't sure how many houses he and his wealthy wife actually own.
"I think -- I'll have my staff get to you," McCain responded to a question posed by Politico, according to a story Thursday on the publication's Web site. "It's condominiums where -- I'll have them get to you."
Later, the McCain campaign told Politico that McCain and his wife, Cindy, have at least four in three states, Arizona, California and Virginia. Newsweek recently estimated the two owned at least seven properties.
-- Douglass K. Daniel, "How Many Houses Do the McCains Own? Republican Candidate for President Not Sure Himself," Minneapolis Star-Tribune, August 21, 2008.
The Sky Is Continuously Blue All Across
The sky is continuously blue all across.
There's no breeze: In other words,
We're not being chilled in any way at all.
We're sitting under a ledge of a sort of roof.
We each have our separate chair.
-- Iz Gold, 8/10/2008
The Bottle Castle of Duncan, British Columbia
George Plumb . . . bought a site measuring just over an acre in 1962; a
year later, he set to work with 5 000 bottles. A former carpenter, he built
his little five-roomed house out of every conceivable type of bottle,
collected from local industries and donated by neighbors and visitors. Over
the years, he used a total of 200 000 bottles. The structures around the
main building included a Leaning Tower of Pisa, a Taj Mahal, a well, and a
giant bottle of Coke, all constructed of bottles and cement. Plumb
surrounded his buildings with animals, some of them sculpted inn the
gardens, paths between low walls led past flower beds to a small waterfall,
water-lily and fish ponds, a totem pole, and a small studio. After his
death the complex was run as a low-grade tourist attraction, but it has
since fallen into disrepair.
-- Angelika Taschen, ed., Fantasy Worlds (Cologne: Taschen,
2007), p. 138.
Fire in the Brody Building
A fire broke out in a building in downtown Minneapolis Wednesday, destroying a popular downtown bar and the historic building it was in.
Firefighters were called to a commercial building near 12th and Washington Avenue South around 10:45 a.m. The building is behind Maxwell's Bar.
The fire started on the first floor and quickly spread through the building to the roof of the building.
Firefighters had to fight the fire from the outside because the roof started to collapse.
Authorities evacuated a business adjacent to the building on fire. About an hour after the fire started, the fire spread to the roof of the building that houses Maxwell's Bar.
A ladder was brought in for firefighters to try to help fight the fire from the roof of Maxwell's Bar, but the bar was destroyed.
Metro Transit buses were brought in to help keep civilians and firefighters warm. No injuries have been reported.
With the wind chill, it was 15 below when firefighters arrived at a fast moving fire at Maxwell's in Downtown Minneapolis Wednesday morning. "Are you comfortable?" Deputy Chief Alex Jackson asked reporters. "It's absolutely miserable, because first of all it's flat out cold," he added. "When it gets this cold, I guess what it does, it makes your gear not work right," Captain Staffan Swanson said.
Firefighters believe the fast-moving fire started in the third floor of the 3 story building just north of the Metrodome. There are a dozen apartments above Maxwell's bar and restaurant. When crews first arrived, they entered the building but were soon forced out after part of the roof collapsed.
"We're concerned about the collapse because it's got that billboard on top," Jackson said. The massive billboard never fell, but the rest of the building was basically gutted.