carrera hot sunglasses

So The Secret World’s mission system treads well off the beaten MMO path. It’s pretty cool, actually, though portions of it may irritate quest-grinders who just want to blow through zones on their way to the game’s equivalent of a max-level toon.

For the rest of us, there’s a nifty interface, some challenging puzzles, and plenty of well-written quest text and dialogue to keep us entertained for weeks at a time.

Why should you do missions? Well, apart from the fact that they give out the game’s largest ability point and skill point rewards, they’re the primary thing that sets The Secret World apart from its MMO contemporaries. Funcom has poured a lot of effort into the game’s backstory, and it shows in details ranging from quest text descriptions (which, contrary to quests in your typical MMO, are actually vital to understanding and completing some of the more challenging missions) to voiced dialogue to little details like pop-up phone book pages or manhole cover closeups.

There’s a classic adventure game feel to The Secret World, which is no accident given the involvement of Ragnar Tornquist (creator of Dreamfall and The Longest Journey). Don’t get me wrong; there are the usual MMO kill and fetch quests too, but these are fewer than you might expect, and they’re dressed up quite nicely with plenty of atmosphere and a sense of purpose beyond getting to max level.

The Secret World has seven different mission types: story, action, item, investigation, sabotage, group/dungeon, and PvP. Each of these types is represented by an iPhone-style icon both on the UI’s quest tracker (floating under your minimap at screen right) and hovering next to the NPC’s head in the game world proper. That probably sounds a bit complicated when you read it, but the actual experience is pretty slick.

It did take me a minute to figure out that I had to re-click each icon to collapse the appropriate menu tree, but once I had that down, the NPC interface really grew on me.

Each mission is sub-divided into tiers, which consist of a series of objectives like talk to this guy, follow these clues to this location, or kill these guys. Tiers must be completed in order, and once all tiers are complete, you’ll get an on-screen pop-up directing you to phone in your success to a faction representative. This is fantastic because it eliminates the tedious travel-back-to-the-NPC-who-gave-you-the-quest bollux that is so common in themepark MMOs.

Questing in The Secret World requires a completely different mindset when compared to your average MMO. You shouldn’t try to finish every quest in a particular “hub” (chances are you won’t be able to acquire them all anyway). Rather, concentrate on the story quest for a given area. The Kingsmouth story quest has a whopping 18 tiers, for example, and if you follow it through to completion, it will give you a comprehensive tour of the zone and lead you across other quest NPCs who will hand out supplementary mission types.

That’s not to say you should ignore everything but the story quests. There are a ton of other objectives buried inside the aforementioned mission types. And while I’m thinking about them, let’s go over those real quick. Rather than a big wall o’ text, here’s a bullet list for simplicity’s sake.

Some of these missions have prerequisites (denoted by a padlock symbol). Some are repeatable, usually to the tune of a 24-hour cooldown (though this is rumored to be temporary, post-launch cooldowns may be longer). Many have spiffy cinematic cutscenes that play upon acceptance (don’t skip these, at least initially, because some of them contain vital information). Funcom apparently took some criticisms on Age of Conan to heart, as these quest cinematics are evident throughout the game, whereas in AoC they stopped at level 20 aside from the destiny line.

I should also mention the quest system’s limitations. Funcom has made a conscious design decision to limit a player’s ability to gobble up quests and mow through them like some sort of steroid-powered MMO Pac-Man. What do I mean, specifically? Well, you can have only a single story, action, sabotage, investigation, or dungeon mission active at a given time. Item missions may be accepted in groups of three at a time. I’m not sure about PvP missions because I haven’t done any yet (more on that in a later article).

It’s also worth noting that you can’t drop a mission. Let’s say that I’m frustrated with The Kingsmouth Code investigation mission. I can either try one of the other mission types in my journal or accept another investigation mission, which will then pause The Kingsmouth Code. Whenever I feel like resuming The Kingsmouth Code, I’ll need to go back to the original NPC to unpause it. If I’ve already completed several tiers, it will unpause with those tiers marked complete.

Now that we’ve got the technical nuts and bolts out of the way, allow me to give you a few impressions on questing in the game’s Kingsmouth zone. Don’t worry; I’m not going to spoil anything, as figuring out some of these mysteries is a large part of what makes The Secret World a unique title.

Other than a long soaking rain shower in the middle of the late-afternoon matches, Thursday was a great first day for the NCAA tennis tournament.

Unfortunately for the No. 6-seeded Georgia Bulldogs, they were caught in the middle of storm. When the weather came through, the Bulldog had secured the doubles point against No. 11 Texas, had won all six first sets in singles and were ahead in the second set of four others.

After the 58-minute delay, the match resumed, as did Georgia’s dominance. The Bulldogs rolled to a 4-0 win in what amounted to just over 2 1/2 hours of actual playing time.

“Very, very encouraging,” Georgia coach Jeff Wallace said. “From start to finish, this might have been our best match of the year.”

It certainly was better than the previous one. The Bulldogs (24-4) needed Maho Kowase to come back from an 0-6 first set to defeat Clemson 4-3 on Friday. Kowase clinched this one, too, but 7-5, 6-1 this time.

“It’s definitely good to win one like this,” said Georgia senior Chelsey Gullickson, the 2010 singles national champion. “Sometimes you need those hard matches to give you the confidence you need to get through.”

The Bulldogs will face the winner of Duke-Virginia at 4 p.m. Saturday.

Georgia Tech’s women would gladly have taken a delay in the middle of their Round of 16 match with California. The ninth-seeded Bears were on the Yellow Jackets fast and hard and never let up.

“California today was just little bit better than us,” Tech coach Bryan Shelton said. “They’re very strong, especially up at the top of their lineup. After we lost the doubles point, it was too much of a mountain for us to climb in the singles.”

The Yellow Jackets, who won a 2007 national championship here at UGA’s Dan Magill Tennis Complex, finish the season at 16-12.

“I thought we finished the season strong,” Shelton said. “Our team started really believing in themselves and the work they put in throughout the season. I think it showed at our regional.”

The Jackets lose four seniors off this year’s squad, but expect to be back in national hunt quickly. Four players are coming in for next season as part of a highly ranked recruiting class, including ninth-ranked junior Catherine Harrison of Memphis.

“I think the future is bright,” Shelton said. “We’ve got four great freshmen coming in next year, we’ve got some returnees and some girls that really battled for us. I’m excited about the youth that we have coming in and the talent that we have. I’m also proud of what this team accomplished this year.”

One day, as he pondered how to make a proposition that could not be refused, the French sculptor Bernar Venet was toying with a piece of silver wire.

“Art becomes you,” Mr. Venet finally told Diane Segard, fashioning the wire around her finger in a makeshift engagement ring.

It worked.

“This gesture was so touching in its spontaneity,” the then Ms. Segard — now married to Mr. Venet for more than 25 years — said in an interview.

It also had another, unintended consequence: “It enabled me to discover the little known universe of jewelry designed by artists, unique and precious works of art,” she said.

That discovery ignited a passion for understanding, tracing and collecting jewelry pieces designed by artists that has made Mrs. Venet into one of the world’s most important collectors of such jewelry.

“They are precious not only for their rarity, but also the symbolic content that is at the origin of their creation,” she said.

From collecting for her own account, Mrs. Venet has branched out into a more public role, as a curator of museum exhibitions.

Last autumn she put on an exhibition titled, “From Picasso to Koons: the Artist as Jeweler,” at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.

On Wednesday a new version of the show will open at the Benaki Museum in Athens.

“I add new pieces to each show, Greek artists in Athens, or Spanish sculptors for the next show in Valencia,” Mrs. Venet said.

Many of the 180 pieces in the show belong to Mrs. Venet, whose private collection counts more than 150 pieces, painstakingly hunted down over the years in auctions, or acquired from specialized dealers and other collectors.

The exhibition includes unique pieces or very limited editions rarely visible in museums of galleries. There are, for example, two pieces designed by the sculptor Louise Bourgeois — a gold spider brooch and a silver choker resembling a bondage instrument. Also included are a pendant by the Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, featuring a scaled-down version of his painting “Crying Girl,” and a necklace made by the Chilean-born Roberto Matta for his wife, Germana.

Many of the pieces were gifts by the artist to a relative, a friend or in Mrs. Venet’s case, the collector herself.

“Being married to an artist, I have been closely connected to the world of art, which has helped me build a collection over the years,” she said.

“Arman and César, our close friends, were the first ones I collected,” she said, referring to the French sculptors.

In 2007, the Franco-Algerian artist, Kader Attia, designed for her a two-finger, white-gold ring shaped like handcuffs.

The following year, Mrs. Venet persuaded Frank Stella to make a necklace in what she described as a “rough metal covered with titanium paint,” and the French artist Jacques Villeglé presented her with a ring bearing symbols from the artist’s political repertory.

Benvenuto Cellini, the Italian Renaissance artist and goldsmith, made gem-set baubles for his Florentine patrons: But the history of modern artist-designed jewelry goes back barely a century. “The history really begins with the sculptors Calder and Bertoia, who first had the idea to make with their own hands a new kind of jewelry, using unusual materials,” said Marguerite de Cerval, a historian of jewelry based in Paris.

Alexander Calder, the American sculptor best known for his mobiles, or suspended, articulated abstract sculptures, made more than 1,800 handmade pieces of jewelry, often using common materials like brass or steel wire, rope, leather, or ceramics.

“For Calder, making jewelry was not a marginal activity: He created a veritable oeuvre,” Ms. de Cerval said.

Guilt money? Maybe, but LPGA Tour commissioner Mike Whan appreciates Augusta National’s support for girls golf.

The green jackets who run Augusta National Golf Club want more girls and women on the golf course — just not on their sacred fairways.

In a wide-ranging interview with Forbes published on Wednesday, LPGA Tour commissioner Mike Whan dropped a bit of a bombshell when he said that Augusta National — yes, that Augusta National — was a huge supporter of the LPGA-USG Girls Golf program.

“It’s worth noting that Augusta National is an incredible supporter of some of our initiatives. They write us a six-figure check every year for Girls Golf, which helps gets girls into the sport,” Whan said. “I don’t think it’s a guilt check. Maybe it is.”

Another surprising tidbit from Whan — who slammed Golf Magazine for sexism when the publication declined to name LPGA superstar Yani Tseng as its 2011 Golfer of the Year — was his admission that he really did not care if the home of the Masters allowed women to join its exclusive little bastion of male supremacy. Instead, Whan, who is not a member of Augusta, said he would prefer that the club host a women’s tournament.

“At the end of the day I would have a difficult time explaining to my kids why dad was a member of all men’s club,” he said. “And I really doubt by the time my kids are my age this will even be a topic. They’ll have female members by then. It’s a private club they can do what they want.”

Whan conceded he was not above lobbying for the women in his organization to get their shot at conquering Amen Corner.

“What’s frustrating is that the best players now on our tour can’t play there,” he said. “I ask every year.”

Flats Rebellion

For beatniks, style was an obvious manifestation of countercultural ideals, a way of rejecting the structured, starchy fashions of their parents. Men grew beards, wore untucked shirts and workingman’s denim, as well as European- influenced accessories like off-center berets and dark glasses. Women with loose-hanging hair wore pants and dark, neutral colors to prove they were absolutely not blossoming flowers. On their feet were flat, comfortable shoes that snubbed their mothers’ balancing acts.

If “the girl with low/ and sensible heels/ is likely to pay/ for her bed and meals” — as the Saturday Evening Post warned — so be it.

“To get into the United States, I swam across the river in south Texas, in the middle of the night in my underwear, carrying a plastic bag filled with dry clothes.” This was the beginning of  Olga Cantarero’s harrowing journey from Nicaragua to the United States — fearing for her life at the hands of her smugglers. Olga’s story is filled with tragedies and triumphs.

When Olga was 19, her work as a volunteer for the Red Cross was seen as subversive and, with her life at risk, she was forced to flee her native Nicaragua. She endured a dangerous journey through Mexico across the border to Texas – she  walked throughout the night with no food or water, passing the bodies of women and children who had died on their journeys to freedom. She now works with immigrant and asylum-seeking girls in Texas, girls ages 13-17 who faced persecution in their home countries or suffered similar traumas during their own difficult journeys to the United States.

8,000 miles away, Rim Tekie Solomon, the daughter or Eritrean parents, was 15 years old when she fled Sudan and crossed the Sinai Desert on foot with her mother and five younger siblings. When she first arrived in Israel, she lived in a detention center, taught herself Hebrew and translated for other detainees. She is now 20 years old and works as a translator with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the African Refugee Development Center. Rim also volunteers with the Hagar & Miriam project, helping young asylum-seeking women who are pregnant or new mothers through an initiative called “African and Israeli Women in Friendship and Motherhood.”

I met Olga and Rim at the Women’s Refugee Commission 2012 Voices of Courage Awards Luncheon where they were being honored for their work to improve the lives and protect the rights of displaced women and girls. Olga and Rim found the strength and courage to became leaders in their communities, leveraging their unique experiences to bring healing to refugees and asylum seekers around the world. They are survivors helping others survive. They are leaders.

The theme of this year’s awards luncheon was protecting and empowering displaced adolescent girls. The Women’s Refugee Commission fights for the rights of refugee women and children around the world. The nonprofit organization identifies problems, researches solutions and advocates for real change that will improve the lives of women, children and young people displaced by conflict and natural disasters.

“I was born in a refugee camp in Sudan. When I was still a baby, my parents left the camp and we moved to Khartoum. We had a good life there: I attended school, and had lots of friends. Then one day, when I was 16, my father said that we were in danger and that we had to leave the country immediately.

That same afternoon, my mother, my five younger brothers and sisters and I fled to Egypt. We had to leave all of our belongings behind.

After we arrived in Cairo, we walked across the Sinai Desert to Israel. The journey took about 3 weeks and was very dangerous. During the day, we were passed from one smuggler to another. Smugglers do terrible things. Most of the refugees had no food or water. I have heard hundreds of stories of torture and rape. The world needs to know what smugglers are doing. I heard gunshots as we crossed the border.

Since we moved to Tel Aviv four years ago, my mom was able to get a job cleaning houses, and I graduated from high school. Now I work translating for asylum seekers.

But the most rewarding thing I do is my volunteer work with the Israeli organization, Hagar and Miriam, part of Topaz and Brit-Olam. I help young Sudanese and Eritrean girls who are pregnant or new mothers, who have just arrived in Israel. They often come alone, with only the clothes on their backs and the baby in their arms. They are overwhelmed by a culture and a language that are so foreign to them. And they have nobody to turn to for help. On top of that, they don’t know much about pregnancy, or childbirth or how to be a mother. We teach them how to stay safe and prepare for life in Israel, which is totally different than their home country.

When my mom was a girl in Sudan, she was married at the age of 13. I don’t want this to happen in my generation. Teenage girls in Israel have more choices and more freedom. Girls who have just arrived from Africa need to learn how to protect themselves. At that age, they don’t know what’s right and wrong. They need to be true to their traditions, yet live in a different society.

When I left Sudan, I had nobody to help me or give me advice. Everything I learned, I learned by myself. Now, I am able to help other girls recover from their painful journeys and restart their lives in Tel Aviv. They have gone through so much – sometimes it’s hard for me to talk about it – but they’re also amazingly strong and determined.

Giorgio Armani has unveiled his collection for the Italian Olympic squad.

The Italian fashion designer revealed his EA7 Emporio Armani range for the country’s sporting hopefuls ahead of this summer’s London Olympic Games during a presentation at the Armani Theater in Milan’s Via Borgonuovo.

Giorgio – who is known to be a sports fanatic, favouring football and tennis – found it “intriguing” to step out of his fashion comfort zone and create a sporting collection, and he plans to travel to the UK capital to support Italy’s stars.

He is quoted by WWD as saying: “Stepping outside my fashion comfort zone and leaving my ego to identify myself in a sportsman’s mentality is something that intrigues me a lot.”

The Olympic kit consists of white and midnight blue pieces as well as a tracksuit with an asymmetric closure, T-shirts, running shoes, shorts, suitcases, a nylon jacket and the country’s national flag-inspired polo shirt which features red and green colours.

The first verse of the Italian national anthem, ‘Il Canto degli Italiani’, appears on a blue band under the collar of the Olympic polo shirts, while the remaining lyrics are written in gold inside the jackets and sweatshirts.

Stella McCartney has designed Great Britain’s Olympic team kit, which has been inspired by the nation’s Union Jack flag.

She said: “I was also aware of the fact that it’s something that might be overused in the build-up to the Olympics, in taxis, on cushions and mugs, so I wanted to do something different with it – but that was still respectful of its beauty.

“Actually, the colours of the Union Jack are similar to a lot of other flags and the athletes really wanted to feel identifiable as Team GB, so I just used different colours to say the same thing.”

The Kronos Quartet never ceases to blow my mind because the work they perform is so widely disparate. Every CD of theirs has pieces I detest, and pieces that remain my go-to music. Tonight’s concert was no different. The only commonality shared by these pieces was they were composed by women – hence the name, women’s voices. Among them were pieces I had to immediately go out and buy, pieces I dug for their performance value (but would never make the transition off the stage), and others that I’ll happily never hear again. No other group delivers such as disparate program – which makes their concerts always worth checking out. On the off chance it is not entirely obviously, their performances are some of the best new music around

The evening began with Nicole Lizee’s “Death to Kosmisch.” Lizee writes that this work reflects her “fascination with the notion of musical hauntology and the residential perception of music.” Her explanation goes on, but I think you get my drift: this music has the feel of being a purely intellectual construct. The mish-mosh of collected sounds (which include various hand held games, LP scratches, etc) was aggravating to hear. The performance felt more like a conversation that one anxiously tries to escape. The next piece – “Flow” by

Flow, by Laurie Anderson, was the polar opposite of Death to Kosmisch. Even on CD, this piece is an exquisite little gem that so effectively holds you in its grasp that you don’t realize where it’s taken you until the music comes to an end. As a performance piece, Flow comes into its own and positively shimmers, much like the edges of a Rothko painting. The long rests between the short musical gestures give the listener breathing space, which is a rarity in any concert hall. It has the feel of the first measures of Ives’ Unanswered Questions. Unlike every other attempt to achieve a similar affect, this piece leaves you hankering for more.

Mosaic was an assemblage of music from the late musique concrète composer Delia Derbyshire. I confess, I was unfamiliar with Derbyshire, in part because my understanding of musique concrète never really made it past the infamous Beatles Number Nine. Here the usual lifts from radio and turntable static, combined with other sounds, were pieced to a traditional, rhythmically pulsating melody driven carried the work forward. While I can’t speak to the quality of the underlying pieces, they were so effectively strung together that the piece didn’t suffer from excessive fragmentation suggested by the title Mosaic.

The center of gravity of the evening was Van-Ahn’ Vo’s All Clear. This lengthy, serious piece went to the heart of the Vietnamese experience of the war. Designed as a performance piece, this piece integrated visual, olfactory, and audial elements. Every physical motion was carefully calculated, be it the descending of the gongs, the pace of the musicians from instrument to instrument, the removal of a shawl, or the speed at which the incense burned. While the many disparate parts of this were interesting to watch, the entire pieced could have been better paced. The parts leading up to the crescendo stomping of bamboo into the ground was intensely moving. While the parts after this moment were interesting, they could have been integrated.

After intermission, the Kronos Quartet was joined by Inuit throat-singer Tanya Tagaq for a piece written by Derek Clarke titled Tundra Songs. This fundamentally hopeful piece speaks to the Arctic seasons. Tagaq produces a startling series of rhythmic sounds, upon which are overlaid bird calls, caribou hooves, and the call of nature. This piece brought the audience out of the crisis created by All Clear, with it’s cutting gestures from the US national anthem and bugle call of Taps. Here the only limitation was the elements. It was the perfect place to end the evening.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the subtle lighting effects that moved the entire evening forward. Enormous changes occurred so slowly that I could barely detect them. However, the lighting created one new world after another, matching the musical pyrotechnics perfectly.

Though I previously thought dirt, grass and sweat were terribly unattractive and frankly unnecessary, the darling Ryan Coker may have just changed my mind. This 21-year-old alum of Florida State University makes hiking, biking and even sweating appear so damn fashionable. Coker’s unmatchable ability to pair a classic flannel with a fitted pair of shorts makes even a city boy want to embrace the great outdoors.

Honey, due to his carefree yet stylish wardrobe accompanied by a smile that would woo any passing biker, I’m considering putting the keys away and picking up a Huffy.
If a bike trail was a runway, Coker’s perfectly grunge yet clean-cut style would effortlessly make him the main attraction. He’s simply rugged, sometimes a little muddy, but always a bonafide fashionisto who makes the hellish summer heat seem like balmy heaven. But that’s not it. Coker isn’t simply good to look at—he has brains that would have had that crazy-haired Einstein blushing. Coker recently graduated from FSU with a biology degree, and plans to earn a doctorate in ecology. That’s right darling—I’ve found a fabulously outdoorsy rockstar scientist who has mastered the complex science of fashion. With the unrivaled ability to make even dirt look sexy, I simply had to put the spotlight on the humbly fantastic Ryan Coker.

FSView & Florida Flambeau: How did your choice of major influence your style?

Ryan Coker: Well, I think I’m one of those rare people that has always known the path they wanted to take through life. Besides a brief stint as an aspiring astronaut, I’ve always held a love for nature, animals and knowledge. It was a biology degree for me, without a doubt. So the question of how my major has influenced my style really comes down to the fact of what I’m not. I’m not a business professional and would feel out of place going about my life tied into a suit. I try to stay casual [and] fun, and let my clothes tell people that I’m ready to roll up my flannel sleeves and get to work—whether that be trekking through mud flats at the FSU Marine Laboratory, or counting plants in the National Forest.

FFF: Why do you enjoy the outdoors?

RC: It’s a spiritual experience, and one that is unique to me every time I venture outside. Being outdoors forces me to appreciate the raw beauty of the world. There’s nothing like waking up on a rock bluff over the Apalachicola River, acknowledging the timeless power with which the river has carved out its place in the world. A lot of people spend their lives searching for some kind of divine beauty, and I think I find it every time I’m on a hike and see a flower I’ve never encountered, or make peace with a snake idly crossing my path.

FFF: Describe a day in the life of Ryan Coker.

RC: Ah, here I wonder if you mean a great day in the life, or just an average one. I suppose they both start the same: begrudgingly giving my alarm clock a death stare from across the room. Since I don’t drive, I’m quick to hop into some clothes that are going to keep me cool and comfortable on my bike ride. The last thing I want is to get somewhere and look like I ran there. A bicyclist should still be classy. I stick with shorts and a fun t-shirt, and stuff everything else in my bag. Now depending on whether it’s a great day or an average day, the contents of my bag really tell my story. Ideal: a frisbee, a swimsuit and a couple of cold ones. Average: papers to read over for work, a good novel and a rain jacket in case things get bad. Always: a camera and a notebook, in case the unexpected happens and I want to remember how my average day turned into a great one.

FFF: How do you manage to look so great, despite your messy daily life?

RC: I learned a long time ago that you have to adapt. I used to have this great pair of jeans, the kind that made me look good in all the right places, if you know what I mean. The thing is, they didn’t look nearly as good when they were drenched in sweat all the way down the ass—an image I give you only so that you may share in my horror the first time I attempted to play it off. So I’ve adapted, and I think my style has benefitted immensely. While I still love jeans, nothing looks better on me than the Dockers Alpha Khakis. They’re rugged, look great in every outdoors-themed color invented (slate, pebble, and brook for example) and are so much lighter. Combined with a light flannel or cardigan, it’s a style that fits my lifestyle.

Two mothers getting a sneak peek at the new Child Development Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base on Friday couldn’t stop praising the state-of-the-art facility.

Staff Sgt. Francesca Fleming and Cheryl Sawyers have children who use the facility and attended the afternoon ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Child Development Center.

“I don’t even have words,” said Sawyers, whose two youngest children, Lori, 5, and Lainey, 3, attend CDC. “This is amazing. … This blows my mind.”

“It’s reassuring that they take pride in the facility that’s going to care for my child,” said Fleming, mother of 3-year-old Leiyala.

The mothers cited both big and small features amid their excitement about the new building, such as having the facility under one roof. Sawyers noted that she no longer will have to lead children into one building to sign them in and then outdoors again to reach their classrooms.

Fleming pointed out assorted safety features, including placement of the playground in the center of the facility.

“I’m happy for the people who are going to be taking of my children, because I know that they’re going to be 10 times happier in this facility than they are over there,” Sawyers said.

“I like that the caregivers are being taken care of so they can care for our kids,” Fleming added.

Friday’s ceremony came 10 days before the facility’s scheduled opening Monday, May 21, and nearly two years after officials gathered for the groundbreaking ceremony in August 2010.

The $9.7 million, 23,390-square-foot facility, which nearly doubles the current Child Development Center, includes infant, pretoddler, toddler and preschool rooms as well as kitchen, administrative, lobby and outdoor play areas.

The center is critical for those responsible for launching satellites, tracking space debris and performing other duties at Vandenberg.

“Taking care of our airmen and their families affords our nation the best our team can provide, which is indicated by expertly trained and focused airmen,” said Col. Brent McArthur, 30th Space Wing vice commander. “One of that things that helps our airmen focus is knowing that we as an Air Force take care of their families.”

Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, called it “a great day for the Vandenberg Air Force Base family — and I stress the word ‘family.’”

“I can’t remember many, if any really, ribbon cuttings that I’ve been looking forward to more than this one,” Capps said. “It’s partly because the new Child Development Center is such an important project, so needed, so long overdue.”

The current Child Development Center, which was designed in 1983 and built in 1990, basically was outdated by the time the doors opened due to quickly changing standards, officials noted.

It also has had a waiting list — about 40 children in 2010, a number that has only grown since then.

The previous CDC accommodates 135 children between the ages of 6 weeks to 5 years old. The new facility will house 172 children.

The old center actually is housed among five buildings, some of which ultimately will be torn down.

Giving a tour Friday afternoon, CDC workers were nearly speechless as they showed off the amenities such as an indoor freezer in the kitchen, instead of something outside the building and padlocked.

“This is heaven,” said Rose Lime, the CDC’s assistant director. “The old kitchen has maybe a third of this space here.”

The infant room includes heated floors under the cribs and a quiet room where mothers can breastfeed their babies. A cupboard provides space to stash car seats that double as baby carriers.

Toddler rooms have sinks at heights for toddlers and adults.

There’s a separate isolation room where ill children can stay until parents are notified.

“Right now, the isolation room and the director’s office are the same,” said CDC Director Verna Brown. “I have that ironclad immune system because I’ve been around so long so they figure, ‘Put them in there with the director.’”

GREEN MOVEMENT: The cool evening temperatures this month probably slowed the springing of the birch and aspen leaves.

So “greenup” day was either Wednesday or Thursday, depending upon your ability to detect green on the northeastern part of Chena Ridge, as seen from the West Ridge of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Other hillsides may vary by a few days one way or the other.

This unofficial weather record began in the early 1970s, thanks to the late Jim Anderson, a biologist and librarian at UAF.

“Greenup” usually takes place right before your eyes in a single day. It is a function of temperature and light. The light is about the same every year. The temperatures are not.

He began keeping records of this seasonal rebirth in 1974, basing his analysis on how Chena Ridge looks from near his office on the West Ridge.

More of the Chena Ridge trees have fallen, but there are still enough birch and aspen to make it a good indicator of the greening of this part of America.

“What we’re looking at is the first faint flush of green that appears in the forest over there, which I recognized early on could usually be seen in one day. Only in one or two years has the day been slightly questionable,” he told me in a 2001 interview.

Anderson memorized all of the dates on which greenup occurred during the decades he was keeping track. I learned this when he casually mentioned in 2001 that greenup happened in 1983 on May 11.

I asked him how he knew that. “It’s just a very small data set,” he said.

The green flush appears on Chena Ridge about May 10, but it has happened anywhere from April 29 to nearly the end of May.

After Anderson’s death from ALS in 2007, writer Ned Rozell said he was not just a lively character who collected 7,000 neckties, 25 typewriters, hundreds of teddy bears, 700 sport coats and 12,000 books. He was also a scientist who made a great contribution to our community.

As part of his spring observations, Anderson collected pollen data on the roof of the Arctic Health building, which led to a pollen calendar for Fairbanks and Anchorage.

“His calendar shows that birch trees in both cities release the most pollen—up to 4,500 grains per square meter of air — from May 10 through the 20th,” Rozell wrote.

Anderson determined that birch pollen counts peak three days after the leaves pop from their buds, Rozell said, information that helped allergy sufferers and doctors become more informed about the sneezing season.