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Providence Journal / Bob Thayer
A portion of the newsroom of The Providence Journal in 2004.

Providence Journal lays off 31. In today's Journal, Neil Downing makes public what we've known for two weeks:

PROVIDENCE -- The Providence Journal Co. is laying off 31 people -- about 4 percent of the company's total work force -- as part of a broader cost-cutting effort by its parent company, A.H. Belo Corp. of Dallas.

Overall, 25 part-time workers and 6 full-time Journal workers are to be laid off, effective today, said Howard G. Sutton, the Journal Co.'s chairman, publisher, president and chief executive officer.

They will receive severance ranging from 2 weeks pay to 35 weeks pay, depending on their years of service, Sutton said.

A.H. Belo announced plans in July to cut $50 million in expenses, partly by reducing the work force at its newspapers in Providence, Dallas, and Riverside, Calif.

The job cuts are the result of a broad restructuring that A.H. Belo said it was implementing as it faces an "unprecedentedly adverse business environment in the newspaper industry."

A.H. Belo said it planned to eliminate the equivalent of about 500 full-time jobs company wide, representing about 14 percent of its overall work force of about 3,570 employees.

At the time, A.H. Belo said it hoped to achieve the targeted job cuts through voluntary severance offers. If not enough workers agreed to the buyout, the company said it would have to resort to layoffs.

Overall, more than 400 A.H. Belo employees wound up taking the buyout, including 22 at the Providence Journal, 270 at the Dallas Morning News and 120 at the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif., but the total was less than sought.

As a result, A.H. Belo is laying off 50 employees at the Dallas Morning News, about 30 at The Press-Enterprise and 31 at the Providence Journal...

The story continues, including a mention that this is believed to be the first time in the newspaper's history that the company has laid off news employees. The Providence Journal was founded in 1829, and operated independently until its sale to Dallas-based Belo in 1996.

By contract with the Providence Newspaper Guild, all full-time employees have seniority over all part-time employees, many of whom are working mothers. This has resulted in a disproportionate number of women -- 7 men, 21 women -- being cut from the news staff. Three female managers are also laid off. There are more details in the Providence Newspaper Guild newsletters.

Some of these Rhode Islanders have worked at the Journal for decades. I've worked with most of them over the years as colleagues and friends, and losing them is more than personally wrenching: Some of Rhode Island's best journalists will be filing for unemployment tomorrow. Twelve other news staffers who took the buyout have already left. Their bare, empty desks have created yawning holes in the newsroom; their good work no longer informs the daily news report.

A restructuring of the news operation is to follow, according to publisher Howard Sutton.

Goodbye, Brandie, Kathy, Karen, Pat, Laura, Fran, Pam, Tom, Dan, Fran, Millie, Willie (Marty), Kate, Linda, Jean, Doreen, Sara, Sarah, Cynthia, Steve, Meaghan, Judith, David, Ellen, Kelli...

No matter what the stock market does today, it's Black Friday on Fountain Street.

Steely Dan, Black Friday

AP Photos

A lion rides a horse in a circus show in Xiamen in southeast China's Fujian province Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008. The circus shows were held during a golden week holiday to mark China's National Day, the 59th anniversary of the founding of communist China.

More fine political pumpkin patterns, these from AP: Campaign-o-lanterns.

Fine specimens, with printable patterns to download.

Earlier fine ppps: Free pumpkin-carving patterns: Obama, McCain, Palin, Biden.

Yet more: Better Homes & Gardens has way-strange stencils. The celebrity pumpkins aren't always readily identifiable, but they resemble inlaid wood collages, with a broad beauty of their own. (The Stencils.)

Photorealism is not required here, so here's their Hillary Clinton. Think of it as curvy cubism.

Spookmaster.com has a Hillary pattern that's a fairy-tale woodcut:

I couldn't find a Dennis Kucinich pattern. but I did find one for Ron Paul. Nominate what I missed, if it matters to you.

In last night's presidential debate, the CNN reaction meter at the bottom of the screen was more interesting than the debate itself, but that's not saying much.

These lines were pretty flat for long stretches for both candidates, longer for Republican John McCain. His closing speech did better than this literal screenshot, his attacks fared worse. Democrat Barack Obama hit this peak more often than McCain. Women seemed more positive than men about both candidates. Men flatlined when McCain talked about victory in Iraq, peaked when Obama talked about the $10 billion-a-month cost of the war being needed at home.

Imagine if we all had this interactive TV widget, a dial spanning 1-100 with which you could silently cheer or boo every nuance, mood, policy or worn talking point.

What sticks this morning is McCain dismissively calling Obama "That one" and us "my friends" 25 22 times. It's fusty old insincerity. Obama's "brain cramps" -- moments when he seemed to lose his train of thought -- were disconcerting. Early on, he said the computer was invented by government scientists to communicate -- that was the Internet -- but he didn't fix it.

Obama didn't sketch a New Deal -- McCain did, freaking out his conservative base right out of the box with his new plan to spend $300 billion more dollars to bail out bad mortgages.

They were both pretty flat, McCain looked pale, puffy and tired; when Obama put some energy behind his words, the audience meter seemed to rise, too. When he talked about his mother dying of cancer while fighting the insurance company for treatment, he struck a strong chord.

That's what these screenshots caught. I only took a few frames during a span of a minute -- this is a tiny timeslice.The double exposure of McCain is a moment in time I couldn't have caught if I tried.

We grew weary, and were glad when it ended.

Roundup: Back to Their Corners, The NYT Opinionator blog.

Vladimir Horowitz - Chopin Polonaise in A-flat major, Op. 53 in Musikverein, Vienna, Austria on May 31, 1987.

I spent an entire summer when I was 15 teaching myself to play this piece from sheet music I found in an inherited piano bench. I had never heard it played. Can music be more abstract?

But one day, it came on the radio, and I knew it instantly. It was a Eureka! moment. I finally knew what it was supposed to sound like.

Well, they don't put it quite that way on the Official Gmail Blog, but that's what they mean: Stop sending mail you later regret.

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?

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By default, Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as that is the time you're most likely to need it. Once enabled, you can adjust when it's active in the General settings.

You can even adjust the difficulty of the problems, in case intoxicants bring out the latent Einstein in you.

Teetotalers and those of us who can't do math on our best days can ignore the feature.

The Pixilerations Festival continues in Providence through Sunday, part of the FirstWorks Providence Festival:

TheBox by Lyn Goeringer

Lyn Goeringer, who performs Friday night, appears in the video above to be playing a wooden box. (She later informed me it is a metal box.) The presence of a related video at YouTube of her playing a theremin led me to ask, "I feel as though I'm asking, 'Is there a little man in the radio?' but... is there a theremin inside Lyn Goeringer's Box?"

Lyn replied,

The answer is actually no. The box is merely a box. In this video, it is amplified with microphones only. The Theremin video was supplied simply because it pertained to last week's concert and was the only other performance I have online.

This week's performance with the box will be amplified object with processed sound, meaning that I take the sound 'live' from the box as I play it (the term used most often is "real-time", to denote that I didn't record the sound source before hand and am doing everything live in performance). Unlike the Theremin the box is more like a percussion instrument in that it requires physical contact to make the sounds. The box is completely sealed, and, it is really true that I found it in a garbage pile behind a building. I have no idea what is inside it, as it is is sealed on all sides.

Tonight at 8 at Grant Recital Hall, at the corner of Hope Street and Young Orchard Ave., there'll be a free Acousmatic (sound whose source is hidden) Concert of surround-sound computer music and visual experiments. Some of the performers have sites where you can sample their work: Jen-Kuang Chang, Arvid Tomayko-Peters, Aaron Acosta.

Wednesday night there's video at the Cable Car, and Friday and Saturday nights at 10 p.m., downtown in the URI Shepard Building Auditorium, electronic and interactive concerts. Lyn Goeringer performs Friday night with, among others, Jacob Richman (the link requires the latest QuickTime player), Hugo Solis and Butch Rovan.

Saturday night's performers include Arvid Tomayko-Peters again, Jon Christopher Nelson (mp3), Steven Kemper, Brian Knoth and Alessandro Cipriani. Cipriani cracked me up with this bit of animation:

Thanks to Maya Allison for gathering some of these links for me.

I had to educate myself to write this post. Musique concrète, credited to Pierre Schaeffer, was a forerunner of acousmatic music. Interestingly, it conceived of classical music as arising as an abstraction -- notes on a score, for instance -- and only later made real with an instrument. Musique concrète starts from real sounds and arranges or plays them. Modern recording equipment "fixes" the performance into a file, and acousmatic music is "performed" by loudspeakers.

I hope this week's performances will go up on YouTube soon -- the QuickTime .mov files don't get the distribution they deserve.

Related: 50 greatest arts videos on YouTube from the Guardian (UK).

Baez and Dylan at Newport, 1963; James Brown and Pavarotti sing 'This Is A Man's World', 2002; The Beatles Rooftop Concert, 1969; The Who and Hendrix equipment smashing, 1968; Stravinksy conducts the Firebird Lullaby Suite 1965; Jackson Pollock drip paints, 1951; Marlene Dietrich's screen test, 1929; Marlon Brando screen tests for Rebel Without a Cause, 1947; old movies and readings and more...

I'll add one more that's not on this list: George Gershwin performing his Rhapsody in Blue, Part 1 and Part 2, audio only, from a piano roll he recorded.

This link comes via Euan Semple's The Obvious; Euan also links to the Periodic Table Of Videos -- "Tables charting the chemical elements have been around since the 19th century - but this modern version has a short video about each one."

 Tags  acousmatic digital music mp3s music new media video

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My husband picked up a pot roast for Sunday's Patriots game and, wanting to do something new, we made this Gordon's Pot Roast recipe from Epicurious.com.

It's extraordinary, with a rich, flavorful stock. I skipped the cornstarch and water part, not wanting the gravy thick. (Good thing, since the leftovers involve lots of veggies and broth and not much meat -- it will be a flavorful stew, to be eaten with a spoon. I'll use a larger roast next time.)

Other modifications were minor:

-- My beef stock seemed a little wimpy, so I added a heaping teaspoon of powdered beef bouillon just before adding the stock to the simmering wine and onions.

-- Joe wanted potatoes, so we added some.

-- We used fresh thyme and oregano from the herb pot on our deck, tripling the quantity given for dried.

-- We used dried porcini mushrooms, throwing them into the simmering stock early.

-- To keep the temperature at a low simmer on our gas stove, I slipped in a simmer ring and turned the flame as low as it would go and still stay lit. Listening to the pot, we heard only the occasional "Glug" and the roast was wonderfully tender after 3 hours.

-- When tasting the broth, it was a bit sweeter than I like, but additions of Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper fixed that.

Don't skip the Tawny Port wine -- its body is essential. And, although we probably won't drink it, I'll make this a few more times this season, so it won't go to waste.

Gordon's Pot Roast

1 medium onion
3 garlic cloves
3/4 pound carrots
1/2 pound parsnips
1/2 pound turnips
6 ounces mushrooms
a 3-inch piece fresh gingerroot
a 28- to 32-ounce can whole tomatoes
a 3-pound boneless beef chuck roast
2 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 cup Tawny Port
3/4 cup dry red wine
2 cups beef or chicken broth
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon packed brown sugar
3 bay leaves
1 teaspoon dried thyme, crumbled
1 teaspoon dried oregano, crumbled
3 tablespoons cornstarch
3 tablespoons water

Chop onion and mince garlic. Peel carrots and parsnips and diagonally cut into 3/4-inch-thick slices. Peel turnips and cut into 3/4-inch-thick wedges. Cut mushrooms into 1/2-inch-thick slices. Peel gingerroot and mince enough to measure 1/4 cup. Drain tomatoes and chop.

Pat chuck roast dry and season with salt and pepper. In a 5-quart heavy kettle heat oil over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking and brown roast on all sides. Transfer roast to a plate and pour off all but 1 tablespoon fat from kettle. Add onion to kettle and cook over moderate heat, stirring, until golden. Add garlic and cook, stirring, 1 minute. Add Port and red wine and simmer, scraping up any brown bits on bottom of kettle, 5 minutes. Stir in broth, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, gingerroot, tomatoes, bay leaves, thyme, and oregano and bring mixture to a boil. Add roast, carrots, parsnips, turnips, and mushrooms and simmer, covered, turning roast over halfway through cooking time, 3 hours total, or until tender. Pot roast may be made up to this point 3 days ahead. Cool roast, uncovered, before chilling, covered, and remove any solidified fat before reheating.

Transfer roast with tongs to a cutting board and let stand 10 minutes. If necessary skim fat from cooking liquid and bring cooking liquid and vegetables to a boil over moderate heat. In a small bowl stir together cornstarch and water until smooth and stir enough into sauce to thicken to desired consistency. Simmer sauce, stirring occasionally, 2 minutes.

Cut roast crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick slices and arrange on a deep platter. Spoon vegetables and sauce over meat. .

Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User. David Pogue's NYT tech column offers tips you may not know about, such as double-clicking a word to define it before copying. Readers add more in comments.

I would add Keyboard shortcuts in Windows XP and Keyboard shortcuts in Mac OS/X, from Microsoft and Apple, respectively. The operations you perform frequently are almost always faster using a few keystrokes.

(The one everybody should know: Ctrl-A selects all text; Ctrl-C copies it to the clipboard; Ctrl-V pastes it into the new email/textfile. For Mac users, substitute Command for Crtl.)

Continuing the theme: Keyboard shortcuts for Firefox, IE 5.5, 6 and 7, and Safari browsers.

Yesterday's news: I'm enjoying the Patriots' sloppy football. It's fun to watch something other than controlled perfection, holding one's breath for a winning streak that's now been shed. Especially when they win anyway. It was great to see Cassel's long ball to Moss.

After the Super Bowl loss, I'm emotionally less attached. Their fate is not mine.

Condolences to Ian Donnis, Providence Phoenix News Editor and blogger (Not for Nothing), whose father died last Wednesday.

Faking it: Gail Collins, NYT Editorial Board (Talking in Points) on the real vice-presidential debate Thursday:

This entire election season has been a long-running saga about the rise of women in American politics. On Thursday, it all went sour. The people boosting (Sarah) Palin's triumph were not celebrating because she demonstrated that she is qualified to be president if something ever happened to John McCain. They were cheering her success in covering up her lack of knowledge about the things she would have to deal with if she wound up running the country.

Later:
There are a lot of people in Washington who want to be president but don't want to have to run for President. Plenty that would love to govern and let a flattered Palin be their spokesmodel.

I hope the founding fathers aren't just leering.