Va governor warns worst of Irene yet to come - saving the windows! Missy Seavey, employee for Kohr Bros. on Atlantic Avenue near 22nd Street, looks down an largely empty sidewalk at the Virginia Beach, VA, oceanfront area on Friday afternoon, Aug. 26, 2011. Hurricane Irene has the potential to cause billions of dollars in damage all along a densely populated arc that includes Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston and beyond. At least 65 million people could be affected. In Virginia Beach, souvenir shops and other businesses along the resort strip were protected by sandbags and plywood nailed over windows. The usually bustling oceanfront was virtually abandoned as waves lashed the beach. The city had several shelters open, including one at an elementary school that housed about 100 people — most of them homeless.
Within weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Smithsonian Institution began collecting a wide range of artifacts recovered from the three sites where the hijacked planes went down. “There are some everyday moments in the midst of destruction. There are things we all recognize. They help people understand it happened to all of us,” Yeh said. Some are ordinary objects — a window shade and seat belt from the wreckage of United Airlines Flight 93 in Shanksville. Some are ordinary but became extraordinary. Jan Demczur, a window washer at the World Trade Center, donated his squeegee handle to the museum. On Sept. 11, he was stuck in an elevator with five other men in one of the towers. He used the handle to force open the elevator door and then dig through the wall. All six were saved.
LONDON — Frederick A. Goodwin, the disgraced former chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, used to lose his temper because of biscuits and sent the bank’s staff into “panic mode” because of a broken model airplane, according to a new book. When a window cleaner fell off a ladder in Mr. Goodwin’s office and broke a small model airplane, some people at the bank worried more about the broken toy than about the window cleaner, according to the book written by two British Conservative politicians and scheduled for publication next month. A short excerpt from the book was published in Prospect magazine on Thursday. The two politicians, Matthew Hancock, a former chief of staff of the chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, and Nadhim Zahawi, disclose these details about Mr. Goodwin, who was widely blamed for the downfall of Royal Bank of Scotland, in “Masters of Nothing: The Crash and How It Will Happen Again,” a book about how human behavior made the financial crisis worse.
Window Cleaning Warehouse - The Tune! Did you know Window Cleaning Warehouse have started a record label? Here is the first offering - expect a whole album of window cleaning based tracks soon!
When the Bronx was burning 40 years ago, Angel Cruz was setting borough basketball courts on fire with dazzling slam dunks and dribble drives. He dominated the concrete playgrounds at the Patterson Houses in Mott Haven, wowed street ball crowds in Harlem, and then turned pro and played for Puerto Rico at the Olympic Games. But then the human grasshopper known as "Monchito" - perhaps the greatest Nuyorican player of all time - vanished. No friends or family have laid eyes on Cruz for more than a decade. "We don't know what happened to Angel," said Noemi Cruz-Lymon, the star point guard's sister. "No one knows." Cruz's heartbroken family will host a charity basketball game in his name tomorrow at the Patterson Houses, where he grew up. Angel Cruz Jr., 34, Monchito's eldest son, feels the same way. "With my father, you never knew what to expect," said the Bronx window cleaner. "He would pop up out of nowhere and act like nothing was wrong."Angel Cruz Jr. holds photo of his dad, Angel (Monchito) Cruz, who has been missing since 1998.
‘Little Elvis’ death – man arrested. A man has been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter after the death of a well-known Morpeth karaoke star. Michael Marshall, who was known locally as Little Elvis, died on Tuesday, two hours after an altercation at Sanderson Arcade in the town centre. A 55-year-old man was arrested and released with no further action and a 49-year-old man has been released on police bail after he was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter. Mr Marshall, 52, died following an incident outside the Corbridge Larder at about 3.30pm on Tuesday. Police say there was a “verbal altercation”, before he was assaulted. It is not thought that any weapon was used. Staff from Sanderson Arcade rushed to help and an off-duty nurse and lifeguard administered first aid before paramedics arrived. An assistant from the Corbridge Larder is also believed to have helped. Another resident said: “Everyone knew him, he used to be a window cleaner. He loved the karaoke and he always introduced himself as ‘Little Elvis’.
"
That's what's great about disc golf," he said. "Someone my age can compete. And someone 100 times my age can play." With that, the father and son stood to announce this year's regular-season rankings and the night's pairings. The guy to beat this year was Luis Nava (pictured). Though the 25-year-old only made one ace -- that's disc golf lingo for hole-in-one -- he still had the best score of the season. "I'm a birdie person," he said. Though some Tuesday Twos competitors have been playing for a decade or more, Nava only began throwing three years ago. "But when I first started, I played four to five hours after work every day," he said as he warmed up for the finals. "I just couldn't stop. I fell in love with this game." He still plays nearly obsessively. By day, he's a skyscraper window washer. Come 5 o'clock, he heads to Orchard or another Metro-area disc golf park. His two brothers and his sister often play, too. That constant playing will come to a temporary end soon. Nava and his wife, Carla, are expecting their first child -- a girl --in December, and he promised to take a six-month hiatus once the baby comes.
Dirty Jobs That Nobody Wants: With 14 million Americans out of work, long grim lines at job fairs, and employment agencies jammed with the hopeful, there are still jobs that go begging. Despite the desperate measures some are taking to find employment, a handful of positions remain stubbornly vacant. Last month the ratings firm Fitch reported that even with high unemployment, some businesses can’t fill their openings. Window washer: Almost all window washing jobs involve scary heights and exposure to the elements. Injury rates are high—about eight window washers in New York City are involved in accidents each year, and 75 died on the job there between 1983 and 2008. Finding people comfortable both on a scaffold and with a squeegee is tough. Leonard Malray of Contract Services Group, based in California’s Orange County, says that of six open window-cleaning jobs he’s had open since the beginning of the year, he’s filled only two.
Southfields dad committed suicide after housing benefit cut: A desperate man who lined up three kitchen knives before stabbing himself twice in the heart, blamed cuts in housing benefit. Unemployed Richard Sanderson took his own life after writing three suicide notes which were laid out neatly on a bed in a meticulously planned act. In one to his wife he wrote: “Don’t come into the bathroom, this time I will most certainly be deceased”. Mr Sanderson, who said he could not face the thought of his family being homeless, stabbed himself twice in the heart with a kitchen knife on May 29 at home in Augustus Road, Southfields, after years of being unable to find work finally took its toll, an inquest heard. The 44-year-old former helicopter pilot wrote three suicide notes – two for his wife, Petra, and one for the police – after carefully planning the suicide over several days. Mr Sanderson, who was also a window cleaner, met his wife while travelling in South Africa in 1995 before the pair eventually settled in Wimbledon in 2007 to find better work prospects in London.
Japan faces costly, unprecedented radiation cleanup: Pictured, a worker decontaminating radiated particles on a window of an elementary school in Fukushima, northern Japan. Nearly six months after the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years at the Fukushima nuclear plant, Japan faces the task of cleaning up a sprawling area of radioactivity that could cost tens of billions of dollars, and thousands may not be able to return home for years, if ever. Fuel core meltdowns at the facility in March, triggered by a huge earthquake and tsunami, released radioactive material into the air which mixed with rain and snow and covered dozens of towns as well as farmland and woods, mainly along the northeast coast of Honshu. Tokyo has been slow to provide a plan for rehabilitation, leading some residents near the plant, who have been exposed to high levels of radioactive caesium in homes and food, to start their own cleanup instead of waiting for the government to act.
Aldar's desert disc is simply unique: ABU DHABI // "Simple" is not the word that jumps to one's mind when driving into Abu Dhabi and seeing the gigantic disc standing on its side in the desert. But that is the word Randall Heinrich, the senior project manager at Aldar, uses to describe the property developer's new headquarters at Al Raha Beach. "People see the shape from the outside and you get people commenting that it's an inefficient building, but it's not," Mr Heinrich says. "It's great. It's a very simple building. It has two poles coming up the middle of the building and the structure built around it. "Yes, you've got larger floors in the centre but all the floors are very open, beautiful spaces. Everyone expected it to be a wonderful building but it's also practical." The slim, circular building on a concrete plinth is the result of slightly less than three years of work and has more than 3,000 panes of glass. Apart from the empty moat, the vision of Aldar's offices is complete. Twenty-three storeys tall with three underground parking levels, the building is one of a kind, says Tony Abi Gebrayel, the area manager of the designer, MZ Architects.
Addict's £1000 theft 'has wrecked family business' - The mother of a drug addict who posed as a window cleaner to con residents into paying for work not carried out has spoken of her fears his actions have ruined her husband's business. Steven Walton (pictured), whose father David owns a window cleaning business, targeted regular city customers to fund his heroin addiction.
His victims included an 82-year old woman, from whose bank card he stole £1000 after she entrusted it to him. Yesterday, at Edinburgh Sheriff Court, the 36-year-old was placed on a drug treatment and testing order for 18 months. Walton, who has been a heroin addict since he was at school, was recently released from custody in Saughton.
Today his mother Ann Walton, from Sighthill, said: "Steven used to work for my husband. People are going to read this and not want my husband's services. This being in the open will really affect our business and my husband's business." She said the family have stayed clear of him for some time. She said: "I've had really nothing to do with him much, because of what happened."
Yesterday, Sheriff Alistair Noble heard Walton had previously pleaded guilty to stealing £1000 between March 13 and March 21 this year; to obtaining £5, £10 and £20 by fraud on April 18; and stealing £15 from a house on the same day. Fiscal depute John Kirk told the court that Walton was estranged from his family but his father allowed him to sleep in his van from time to time and he had helped him with cleaning in the past.
On this occasion he went to the 82-year old woman's home and asked for money, but she had no money on her and gave him her bank card and the pin number, which he then used on a number of occasions. The prosecutor added that Walton had two minor previous convictions. Walton's defence solicitor, Angus McLennan, said the woman had become suspicious and contacted the police, while another customer raised the alarm when the real cleaner turned up looking for his money. The defence agent said Walton knew that cleaners often returned for payment at a later stage and had come across the 82-year-old victim while helping his father. He added: "It was an opportunistic theft. The temptation proved too much for him".
As for going round other houses, Mr McLennan said Walton had been "simply chancing his luck by knocking on doors of homes he knew his father had cleaned windows". Mr McLennan said Walton's father David was very disappointed by his son's actions, which had caused a great deal of embarrassment and impacted on his business. The solicitor said his father had refunded the money taken from people on his round, but that he had not known about the £1000 card theft.
Walton's mother added that her son had been clean of heroin for two months. She said: "He's been on drugs for nearly 20 years, since he was at school. There's not a lot of people outside the family that know about it. "Now that he has been proven to be clear of drugs for two months I'm starting to, not to warm towards him, but accept him and learn to trust him a little bit more. "He's been in the gutter and this has been his wake-up call."
Window cleaner turns author: A transition from washing windows to author is most unusual, but Jamie Robison of Margaret River is not your usual window cleaner, and has made the literary jump. In 1994, Mr Robison decided to write a book after a tragic car accident involving a young boarder living with him. Seventeen years and 15 drafts later, Robison has completed the book. Titled Charlie’s Dream, the book is about a teenager stuck between real and imaginary worlds after a serious car accident puts him in a coma. “It was amazing to finally finish writing the book,” he said.
Although this was Robison’s first foray into the world of novel writing, he has been involved in the media before. Prior to moving to Margaret River, Robison owned a production company in Sydney which made shorts for TV. Along with his other duties, Robison would help out with scripts. After deciding to move to Margaret River over a decade ago, he has been cleaning windows for local businesses. “I’ve been doing window cleaning for about 10 years – through my work I know most of the people in Margaret River.”
Since completing his book, Robison now has the writing bug and plans to continue with other projects. “It is the first part of a trilogy. I’m currently halfway through writing the second part. “I love writing – it keeps me sane. I also just finished a book of short stories and a screenplay,” he said.
Billy's still in the running - MAUCHLINE runner Billy White is gearing up for his ninth Great Scottish Run - and he's looking for your help to make it his biggest, most successful year yet. The pensioner, who just turned 65, should be putting his feet up and enjoying his retirement. But he's still working as a window cleaner and putting in the miles as he embarks on his latest half-marathon charity run. Just last Saturday he ran 20 miles along the River Ayr to his hometown in preparation for his latest attempt.
Texas Rangers learn new signs at Southwest Airlines - Mitch Moreland needed some help marshaling an airplane into a jetway. He had no issues cleaning the pilot's windows on it, though. The Texas Rangers first baseman did both jobs as part of an event where players traded places with Southwest Airlines employees on Tuesday afternoon at Dallas Love Field. "Cleaning the windows is something I'm a little more capable of," Moreland said. "The window washing was a good job for me. Guiding the plane in is a little different. It's nice to know all the different hand signals now."
BATMAN, Turkey - Suicide, murder debated in Turkish deaths. Some women choose to attempt suicide a result of being victimized by their families, Batman Women Rights Commission head Hatice Yilmaz said. "There was a girl who was forced to wear a headscarf and her family withdrew her from school," a woman who asked to remain anonymous told the Women's Foundation Center. "According to reports, she fell from a window while cleaning it, but the doorman saw that she fell backward from the window." Women are battling stress and harassment and the situation was the same for every woman in Batman regardless of age, she said.
A university education should be about mind over money: The value of going to university was questioned in a recent Guardian Money article. Student journalist of the year Simon Murphy replies. My mum is still the only person from her immediate family to go to university, and few of my cousins have stayed in education after their GCSEs; they are now builders, decorators, labourers, plumbers, window cleaners, etc – the kind of jobs where you don't have to worry about feigning interest in post-feminist literature to fill a few lines on your Ucas form.
Fishy Stories... seems everyone wins top awards at Fish..
Jerry and Juice Jenson, owners of Fish Window Cleaning in Colorado Springs, received the Top Sales Award at the 11th annual Fish Window Cleaning Convention held in July in St. Louis. The Jensons were presented with their award for adding more than 500 new customers during 2010. Their business provides window cleaning services for commercial and residential customers in the greater Colorado Springs area.
Tony and Wendy Espeseth, owners and operators of Fish Window Cleaning in Stillwater and Eau Claire and Appleton, Wis., received more awards at the company's annual convention this year than any of the other 200 FISH franchisees. Last year, the Espeseths were named "Franchisee of the Year," and this year, the couple received five awards for their business. They were the Top Producer Award for leading the country in sales; Small Market Star Performer Award for their Eau Claire location and the Multi-Office Star Performer Award for the 2010 performance of the three offices they run. In addition, the Espeseths earned membership in the 500 Club for opening more than 500 new accounts during the past year and they received the Navigator Award in recognition of their work with prospective new franchisees. Tony and Wendy Espeseth, operators of Fish Window Cleaning in Stillwater and Eau Clarie and Appleton, Wis., took home five awards at the company's recent annual convention, more than any of the 200 other Fish franchises.
Fish Window Cleaning of Manchester received the Top Sales Award at the recent Fish Window Cleaning Convention in St. Louis. The award was presented to the franchise for adding more than 500 new customers during 2010. In addition, Rick Petry, sales manager for the franchise, was recognized as the top sales person among all Fish Window Cleaning franchises and received the Top Sales Person Award for 2010.
