Pardon Libby! Or at least read his book, "The Apprentice"

I was fortunate enough to swing by the Aventura library branch in 2005, before the series of hurricanes laid it down and out-for-the-count, and secure a copy (in very good condition) of this well-received book by Maureen Dowd's Catholic University classmate, Lewis Libby, for about 75 cents or so. I read it a few times before Scooter was ever indicted.
(See David Frum's insightful comments on this case at http://frum.nationalreview.com/
as well as Plan of Attack - Google Books Result by Bob Woodward - 2004
Unlike his bosses, Libby had graduated magna cum laude. He had written a little noticed novel in 1996, The Apprentice, an adventure tale with some erotic ...books.google.com/books?isbn=0743262875... )

Lest you forget, the underlying crime for which Chicago prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was supposed to be investigating -and which has cost Lewis Libby a reported $5 million dollars in legal fees- was the crime of publicly leaking supposed-covert CIA NOC employee/desk jockey Valerie Plame's name, was committed by Richard Armitage, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's top assistant.
But then Fitzgerald already knew that before Libby was ever indicted. Armitage, of course, has yet to be indicted and Powell has yet to say publicly -under oath- when he first knew that his aide was the person that was responsible for this whole controversy, or even more to the point of Powell's integrity and character, what he specifically advised Armitage when first given the true facts.

That nobody of any prominence, say the King of Conventional Wisdom, David Broder, has asked about this sort of thing publicly in their columns only shows the true strength of commitment Colin Powell secured from the national media he tamed years ago thru his selective and assiduous use of the unattributed quote to level people below the knees.

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http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9404E2DB1339F930A35752C1A960958260
November 3, 1996
Books in Brief: Fiction
By ERIK BURNS
THE APPRENTICE By Lewis Libby. Graywolf, $22.95.

At the turn of the century in the snowy highlands of Japan, a strange adventure unfolds: Setsuo, a young man who is an apprentice at a remote inn, falls in love with an overnight guest, the delicately beautiful Yukiko, one of a roaming troupe of actors. They come together in the middle of a blizzard, a ferocious storm that ensnares a strange group of travelers.
With delicate prose and stirring descriptive passages, Lewis Libby elevates the youth's narrative to the level of myth, setting his confused adolescent reactions to love at first sight against the mysterious goings-on of the other travelers. At the center of these is a bearded man who dashes off into the storm, followed by a hunter who is later discovered dead, his throat cut.
Unbeknown to Setsuo, his frantic pursuit of these strange guests entangles him in shadowy political intrigue. Questions abound: Who is the bearded man? What is in the small box Setsuo finds? Why are killers creeping around the snowy village, searching everywhere?
Mr. Libby's storytelling skill neatly mixes these conspiratorial murmurs with the boy's emotional turmoil: his heartache and confusion become part of a larger emotional landscape. Erik Burns
______________________________________________
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/22/AR2005102201439_pf.html
Correction to This Article
In some Oct. 23 editions, an article about I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby incorrectly reported that he has two sons. He has a son and a daughter. Also, the law firm of Dechert, Price and Rhoads, where Libby once worked, was misidentified.

In the Spotlight And on the Spot Scooter Libby, Backstage No More
By Mark Leibovich, Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 23, 2005; A01

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is known for his sarcastic, world-weary and at times dark sense of humor. He once quipped to an aide that he planned to stay as Vice President Cheney's top adviser until "I get indicted or something."
That was during President Bush's first term, brighter days for the administration and, more to the point, before a special prosecutor was investigating Libby's possible role in disclosing the identity of a covert CIA officer, Valerie Plame.
The joke -- recounted by the aide, who no longer works in the administration -- sounded absurd at the time, given Libby's renown for canniness and prudence. He adheres to a favorite Cheney maxim that the vice president credits to the late Sam Rayburn, a longtime House speaker: "You never get in trouble for something you don't say."
Yet Libby could find himself in big trouble for saying too much. And this jibes with a lesser-known side of Libby, the audacious novelist and daredevil skier who has long been gripped with concern about exotic terrorist scenarios; who fervently argues his own viewpoints, particularly on matters of foreign policy; and who can become, friends and associates say, overly passionate in the face of opposing ones.
Libby, 55, has displayed this aspect of himself in a series of heady stations throughout his career -- at the State Department, the Pentagon and, for the past five years, in the Bush administration. Reporters have seen this side of Libby, too, in his full animated conviction. But almost always on deep background, out of public view.
Now Libby's cover of anonymity is blown -- and for possibly blowing the cover of a CIA operative. People close to Libby point out the incongruity of the whole thing.
"He's always been excruciatingly careful, which is ironic in his situation," says World Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz, a former deputy secretary of defense and a longtime mentor of Libby's.
The "situation," of course, refers to the Plame case. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is said to be focused on whether Libby and presidential adviser Karl Rove had a part in divulging Plame's identity in an attempt to discredit her husband, retired diplomat Joseph Wilson.
Wilson, who undertook a mission to Africa in 2002, was widely critical of the Bush administration's claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Niger. Fitzgerald is investigating whether officials in the administration sought to undermine Wilson by outing his wife.
Libby has testified in at least two grand jury appearances about his conversations with reporters on the Plame matter -- including two from The Washington Post. He also spoke at least three times with the New York Times's Judith Miller, who spent 85 days in jail before accepting permission from Libby to tell the grand jury about their conversations. The Times published a nearly 6,000-word account last Sunday about Miller's dealings with Libby. The story revealed that the misspelled moniker "Valerie Flame" appeared in the same notebook Miller used during an interview with Libby. (In a separate first-person article, Miller wrote she told the grand jury that she believed the name came from another source, whom she could not recall.)
The grand jury's term expires next Friday, and Fitzgerald is expected to reveal his intentions in a matter of days.
Friends describe Libby as engaging and unfailingly chivalrous; it is his habit to stand when a female dining partner excuses herself. He is diligent about returning reporters' calls, albeit on deep background and, in most cases, "telling you absolutely nothing," says William Kristol, a conservative columnist and longtime acquaintance of Libby's who served as chief of staff to Vice President Quayle. Kristol says Libby "is someone who would seem to spend a lot of effort at not getting caught up in something like this."
Libby, who declined to be interviewed for this story, is taut and compact, with small eyes and a short mop of graying brown hair. As has been the case through much of his career, he works long hours and complains that he doesn't see enough of his wife and two children. He's been hobbled after breaking a bone in his foot while running up stairs. He has looked gaunt and tired of late, according to those who have seen him, and he told at least two friends and associates that he was thinking of leaving the administration after the 2004 election to spend more time writing and skiing.
But those plans would seem to be on hold, at least until the Plame case is settled.
Among vice-presidential aides throughout history, Libby is distinctive for the power and authority he wields, a product largely of Cheney's outsize role in the Bush administration. Libby holds three titles: chief of staff and national security adviser to Cheney, and assistant to Bush. Like few other advisers, he attends the highest level of White House meetings. He attends the weekly gathering of Bush's top economic advisers and -- according to Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack," about the Bush administration's run-up to the Iraq war -- was one of two non-principals who attended National Security Council meetings with the president after Sept. 11, 2001 (the other was Condoleezza Rice's then-deputy, Stephen Hadley).
In these meetings, Libby rarely speaks. He fixes his eyes on whomever is talking and often presses his fingers over his lips. "He sits there in the background with this little half-smile," says former senator Alan Simpson, the Wyoming Republican and one of Cheney's closest friends. Cheney vacations in Wyoming, and Libby usually goes along. "He's a dissector," Simpson says of Libby. "He is the ultimate, clinical professional."
Then there is the Libby whom Cheney adviser Mary Matalin calls "the other Scooter" and "the man who you pray you get seated next to at a dinner party."
It took him 20 years to complete "The Apprentice," a soaring, erotically charged novel set in rural Japan during a blizzard in 1903. "I went out to Colorado, drank tequila and wrote," Libby told CNN's Larry King in 2002 in a rare television interview, the bulk of which he spent discussing the 1996 novel, which had just been issued in paperback.
Wolfowitz, Libby's political science professor at Yale in the 1970s, recalls Libby telling him that "The Apprentice" was originally set in Vermont, but he eventually decided it would work better in Japan. He threw 300 pages away and started again.
The author's "storytelling skill neatly mixes conspiratorial murmurs with a boy's emotional turmoil," the New York Times Book Review said of the novel.
A more recent piece of Libby's writing also drew attention, if not acclaim.
"You went to jail in the summer," Libby wrote in a letter to Miller, waxing pastoral after he freed her to speak to the grand jury about their conversations. "It is fall now. . . . Out west, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work -- and life."
The spy-novel dexterity of Libby's mind and the odd flamboyance of his prose raised questions that he might have been trying to say something more.
"How do I interpret that?" Fitzgerald asked Miller during her grand jury testimony, according to her account in the Times.
Friends say Libby cultivates an enigmatic bearing, one epitomized at the end of Miller's first-person account. She tells of her last face-to-face encounter with Libby, in August 2003 in Jackson Hole, Wyo., after she had attended a conference in Aspen, Colo. "At a rodeo one afternoon, a man in jeans, a cowboy hat and sunglasses approached me," Miller wrote. "He asked me how the Aspen conference had gone. I had no idea who he was.
" 'Judy,' he said. 'It's Scooter Libby.' "
Several aspects of Libby are subject to varied interpretations, or at the very least, casual mystery. Libby is loath to disclose -- even to close friends -- what the "I" stands for in his name. Matalin credits USA Today with "breaking" the story that Libby's first name is "Irv" (though other publications had reported "Irving" and public databases list him as "Irve").
Cheney's office would not confirm or deny what the "I" stands for.
Likewise, there are differing accounts of where "Scooter" comes from. He told the New York Times in 2002 that his father, an investment banker now deceased, coined it upon seeing him crawl across his crib. The same year, in an interview with King, Libby spoke of a childhood comparison to New York Yankees Hall of Fame shortstop Phil "Scooter" Rizzuto ("I had the range but not the arm," Libby said).
Libby was born in New Haven, Conn., raised in Florida and -- like Bush -- attended prep school at Phillips Andover and college at Yale. He lives in McLean with his children and wife, Harriet Grant, a former lawyer on the Democratic staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Until he broke his foot, Libby played in a weekly touch football game in Chevy Chase.
After graduating from Columbia Law School, Libby was practicing law in Philadelphia in 1981 when Wolfowitz, then an assistant secretary of state, recruited him as a speech writer. At the time, Libby was reading William Stevenson's "A Man Called Intrepid," which described the British and American spy operation before and during World War II. "The characters' lives seemed considerably more exciting and meaningful than Libby's work in Philadelphia," wrote James Mann in the 2004 book "Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet."
Libby also worked for Wolfowitz during Wolfowitz's stint as policy undersecretary of defense during the first Bush administration. He had long been interested in unconventional warfare, particularly in the Middle East, and his portfolio included the biological and chemical capabilities of Saddam Hussein. Cheney, then secretary of defense, shared Libby's interest in weapons of mass destruction and was, according to a Pentagon official of that era, impressed by his diligence and analytical skill.
It was during the Gulf War that Miller also took notice of Libby. In a book that she co-wrote, "Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War," Libby is described as "a trim, boyish lawyer" who was frustrated that intelligence reports about Iraq's biological weapons program contained words like "probably" and "possibly."
"Libby," the book said, "told colleagues that intelligence analysts had an unfortunate habit: If they did not see a report on something, they assumed it did not exist."
The Gulf War era integrated several themes that have pervaded Libby's career: his interest in Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, his frustration with the U.S. intelligence apparatus and his willingness to make leaps and support preemptive action. He shared the disappointment of his Pentagon bosses -- Wolfowitz and Cheney -- that the U.S. effort in the Gulf War had not toppled Hussein.
During the Clinton years, Libby practiced law at the Washington office of Dechert, Price and Rhoads, where he represented Marc Rich, the fugitive billionaire whom Clinton pardoned hours before he left office. Libby was called to testify before a congressional committee investigating Clinton's pardons during the first months of the Bush administration.
The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks confirmed Libby's long-held view that Islamic terrorism was the foremost threat of the post-Cold War era. He had studied the topic for years and had spoken often of its horrific perils to the United States. "I was hounded by Scooter about what we were doing about things like anthrax," Wolfowitz says, referring to 2002. "He was very concerned about what he saw as a general lack of preparedness."
Libby greatly admires the work of Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and military historian who posits that warfare is an inevitable part of civilization, evil is a basic condition of humanity, and tyrants must be confronted by the harshest possible means. (In late 2002, a few months before the Iraq invasion, Cheney -- also a Hanson devotee -- invited the historian to the vice president's mansion for a small dinner gathering that included Libby.)
Hanson's stark perspective comports with Libby's view on Iraq. He was among the administration's fiercest proponents of the invasion, and his office prepared a 48-page document of intelligence on Iraq WMDs for Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations in February 2003. (Powell couldn't confirm a lot of the data and wound up not using much of it.)
In his office in the Old Executive Office Building -- once occupied by Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt during their respective stints as assistant secretaries of the Navy -- Libby keeps a photograph of Winston Churchill. Like Wolfowitz, Cheney and many of the Bush administration's Iraq hawks, Libby reveres Churchill for his willingness to confront evil boldly and his unwillingness to compromise. In a December 2001 interview with James Mann, Libby read from "The Gathering Storm," Churchill's memoir of the years preceding World War II. "I felt as though I were walking with destiny," Churchill wrote of the moment he became the British prime minister, "and that all my past life had been a preparation for the hour and for this trial."
That passage, Libby told Mann, could also have applied to his boss, Cheney, on Sept. 11.
In this context of urgency, Libby can be impatient. And, associates say, he could become infuriated over discordant views over Iraq, both from within and outside the administration. On Friday the Los Angeles Times -- quoting former aides -- reported that Libby became so enraged about Wilson's public statements that he monitored all of the former ambassador's television appearances and urged the administration to wage an aggressive campaign against him. (Cheney's office declined to comment on the report.)
Friends and associates say Libby remains unbowed about the U.S. action in Iraq, and despite the setbacks of recent months has shown no hint of doubt. In times of travail, Libby recalls the excitement of his job and the grandeur of his mission.
"Cheney and Scooter play chess on several different levels," Matalin says. "That's how their minds work. It's not about what's right in front of him. They look at things in the sweep of history.
"The Wilson thing was almost mosquitoesque."

Researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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South Florida's epidemic apathy shows itself once again

I was pleased to see last weekend that some recent comments I shared with an influential media person, and bcc'd to Gabriel Lopez-Bernal, one of the enthusiastic brains behind one of the best-produced and informative blogs around, Transit Miami, www.transitmiami.com, happened to dovetail with some earlier comments of Gabriel's, which addresses an aspect of life in South Florida that's SO very confounding to those of us who want this area to be so much better than the present reality: rampant apathy.

Gabriel's very insightful posting of May 23rd What's in a Name? A whole lot more than you'd think... is well worth reading! Do yourself a favor and read it!

Below the Chicago Tribune story about the fight that Marshall Fields' loyalists have been putting up, I've also entered an excerpted copy of an email I wrote to a local print reporter last year about the second SFECC meeting I was attending, having previously gone to one in Hollywood. (See www.sfeccstudy.com so you can be up to speed on the debate.)

The second SFECC meeting, last October in Aventura, was in an area whose destination mall, The Aventura Mall, boasted both a Burdine's and a Macy's for most of its history.

(I worked at the Burdine's at the 163rd Street Shopping Center when I was attending North Miami Beach Senior High in the late '70's, back when it was one of the most popular and successful locations in the chain, and a popular hangout for NMB students on weekends, before or after attending a movie at the nearby Wometco theatres.
My friend, Lisa Cove, a fellow NMB Charger and perpetual well-dressed fashion plate, always seemed to work the same days that I did!)

That the entire area there, including the nearby Highland Oaks and northern Sunny Isles area would be greatly improved by a rapid transit train option nearby, goes without saying.

The people involved with the whole SFECC effort have largely manage to do a good job, based upon my attendance at two meetings.

I must admit, though, that I was greatly disappointed that prior to the meeting I attended in Aventura, they had no informational signs along one of the highest visibility places in all of South Florida to publicize their event to their target audience:
northern Biscayne Boulevard from 213th Street down to the North Miami Beach border, and near West Dixie Highway at all of the railroad crossings.
_______________________________________________________
Subject: My email re Marshall Fields loyalists fighting name change, vs. SoFla.'s typical apathy re Burdine's
Saturday May 26th, 2007

Dear X:

Per my email to you of the 19th, I later sent a copy to Transit Miami, which as I stated then, remains one of the best blogs around in the South Florida community.

Even more aware than even the South Florida East Coast Corridor Transit Analysis hearing folks, http://www.sfeccstudy.com/

I was originally going to send you just the link, but decided to copy the entire page as best I could below so you could have it and not have to bother.

Obviously, it looks different on the actual webpage, because Gabriel does a GREAT job of integrating editorial with illustrations.

I wish this sort of thing existed when I was growing up down here, much less when I'd come home from IU during the summer, and wanted to be able to get around sensibly and quickly, and not forever be in traffic jams on S. Dixie Highway, when I was living down near The Falls.

You know, to get into Coral Gables and see a foreign film and have some dinner with NMB friends the going to the U-M, dressed in my Hoosier attire?

Or be able to ride a transit system with a Metrorail that actually (and originally) connected MIA to the downtown area and the business/legal districts, as is common sense in most other communities, but NOT the natural order of things down here.

Now that you live down here, I'm guessing you really have a better sense of the inherent backwardness of this area than you ever did than while you were living on The Left Coast.

If you don't think the idea of using HOV lanes on 1-95 as pay lanes will be a debacle, with none of the supervision you'd get in Northern Virginia, where many of my friends in McLean and Fairfax County used them to get into DC, you aren't paying attention.

Anywhere else, this would be an idea I'd support, but here, well, a disaster in the making.
_______________________________
http://www.transitmiami.com/2007/05/whats-in-name-whole-lot-more-than-youd.html

Subject: ChiTrib: Macy's State Street flagship store 'doing badly'
Saturday May 19th, 2007
10:15 p.m.

Dear X:

Noticed that you hadn't yet run this interesting story, which I think is worthy of mention, since it touches on one of your favorite subjects: the rapid changes in American culture as a result of technology and consumerism.

The State Street Marshall Field's was one of my favorite places in all of Chicago when I lived in Evanston from 1985-87, and still recall when I got some crazy deals on Alexander Julian dress shirts back when they were becoming incredibly popular.

What I wouldn't do to have digital photos of that whole retail experience from that era, especially around Christmas holidays!

It was magical, all the more so because I knew that even as I froze, I'd soon be coming back to Miami for a few weeks!
http://stevenswain.blogspot.com/2006/08/shoppers-tend-to-drop-off-as-names.html

The State Street store is also where I first met the late R.W. "Johnny" Apple in 1986 on his book tour, when he'd just written the first edition of Apple's America: The Discriminating Traveler's Guide to 40 Great Cities in the United States and Canada.

His comments were really insightful back in the day, the sort of thing that I personally loved because he wrote from both his heart & his brain, which help explains why I got there very early, and planted myself near his chair for the whole book-signing/chatathon, ears wide-open, ready to hear some wisdom. Very Simon Schama-like.

But with the advent of the Internet and the way that popular city's CVBs
-http://www.gmcvb.com/trade/samples.asp for example- have really amazing info & links on their own home pages to help travelers assimilate on vacations or trips, they now make Mr. Apple's book appear a bit of a, well, dinosaur. (Like travel agents.)

Who would you be more willing to believe, Apple's interesting but dated restaurant observations in his book, or the much more recent restaurant reviews in that particular city's City Paper or New Times -or those paper's websites?

Exactly. That very same technology makes this sort of grassroots effort possible:
http://fieldsfanschicago.org/blog/index.html

As for Mr. Apple's comments on Chicago and Marshall Field's in the most recent paperback version, see
http://www.amazon.com/gp/sitbv3/reader/102-7794081-5294513?asin=0865476853&pageID=S075&checkSum=xrU4n5ebSyooqwPmQ/GeNZg8WcGP2tqgoo7ZQv9yNzU=
It's ironic, given how excited I was about meeting Mr. Apple the first time, that years later, once I moved to Washington, I'd sometimes see him in person quite a few times in one week when he was at the Times' DC bureau.

Though I never it took it for granted, it's funny how used to things I could become.

I could cross the street from the Times to get a Coke and hot dog from a favorite vendor late in the afternoon, and not even think it was odd that while I was standing there waiting for my order, I'd run into the late Jack Valenti on his way over to the nearby 17th St and Eye CVS, and see him dash across the street with a smile and make a beeline for 1627 when he saw Mr. Apple coming down the front steps, getting ready to jump into his Town Car.
Now those guys could tell real stories!

Per even more bade retail news in Chicago, When it rains, it pours: Virgin store to close
"Chicago Virgin Megastore, which opened less than a decade ago at one of the highest-profile intersections on Michigan Avenue, is closing."

Meanwhile, closer to home for both of us, re the old Burdine's downtown:
http://www.transitmiami.com/2006/12/macys-one-day-sale-22-e-flagler-st.html

(FYI: In my opinion, TransitMiami may be THE best-produced blog in South Florida.
As someone who grew-up down here in the 70's, in North Miami Beach, I find their attention to historical detail, especially about downtown Miami -the Biscayne Blvd., Flagler St. and Brickell corridor- SO much more impressive than The Miami Herald's.

Chris Bury's excellent Nightline story last week about South Florida's tax/real estate situation, 'Inside Florida's 'Tax Revolt' http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=3177798&page=1
was everything the Daily Business Review's myriad stories on real estate almost always are, but which the Herald's hardly ever are: persuasive!

BTW, some pretty on target comments on that Bury segment are at http://blogs.tampabay.com/buzz/2007/05/rubio_deplores_.html )

Will give you a head's-up later this week when I have finished writing about those matters I broached earlier today, i.e. Donald Trump and his Trump Hollywood project.

Adios!
_____________________________________
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0705180861may19,1,3208670.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

Macy's: State St. store 'doing badly
'Official says greater effort needed to get traffic into flagship
By Sandra Jones Tribune staff reporter
May 19, 2007

CINCINNATI -- The parent company of Macy's acknowledged Friday that its State Street department store, flagship of the former Marshall Field's chain, is "doing badly."
Since replacing the green Field's awnings across the upper Midwest with the Macy's name and red star in September, Federated Department Stores Inc. has been on a mission to win over Chicago-area shoppers, many of whom were attached to the hometown Field's brand and unfamiliar with Macy's.
Federated executives have suggested at times that they were struggling with the transition, but the company does not break out revenue figures for individual stores or chains under its very large corporate umbrella. This week the company said it was disappointed with sales at the roughly dozen regional department store chains the company converted to Macy's eight months ago.
At a press conference after its annual meeting here Friday, Federated's chief financial officer, Karen Hoguet, said former Field's stores are performing no worse or better than the roughly 400 regional department stores Federated acquired from St. Louis-based May Department Stores Co. in 2005 and converted to Macy's.
But there is an exception: the Chicago store on State Street.

The landmark store, long a tourist destination, is "doing badly," Hoguet said, without providing specific performance data..
Macy's hasn't been doing enough to drive traffic to the store, she said, something the retailer is working to change.
This weekend Macy's is advertising 50 percent discounts on clearance merchandise at the State Street store only and total savings of 60 percent to 90 percent on thousands of spring fashions.
The promotion is part of a broader move, announced this week, to step up advertising
and sale events at former May stores to boost sales.
Chairman and Chief Executive Terry Lundgren was quick to interject that operating a Midwest flagship in Chicago remains core to Macy's strategy.
"We're very committed to that store," said Lundgren, noting that rival Carson Pirie
Scott a few blocks south closed its flagship store earlier this year. New owner Bon-Ton Stores decided the giant emporium was too costly to operate.
On Wednesday Lundgren characterized the former May stores' sales performance as "disappointing," as Federated missed its first-quarter sales target and earned less than Wall Street had expected.
Analysts estimate the sales drop at former May stores averaged 7 percent to10 percent.
Sales at all Federated stores open at least a year, a key measure of a retailer's health, rose 0.6 percent, well below the increase of 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent Federated had predicted in February for the first quarter. The former May stores account for about half of Macy's approximately 800 stores.
Lundgren explained the sales miss by saying that he threw too many changes at the former May stores too quickly, namely lots of new in-house merchandise and fewer promotions.
The arrival later this year of the Martha Stewart Collection for the home, made exclusively for Macy's, should bring more shoppers to the stores, Lundgren said.
Home goods account for about 15 percent of Federated's sales.
The business has been "challenging" lately, he said, as people delay buying new homes.
At the meeting, shareholders approved changing Federated's corporate name to Macy's Inc. effective June 1. The change is intended to boost awareness of the Macy's name. Macy's accounts for 90 percent of Federated's business. Bloomingdale's makes up the rest.
Federated's board also declared a 2 percent increase in the quarterly dividend,
to 13 cents per share.
Lundgren reiterated after the meeting that Federated is close to a decision to move Frango mint production to Chicago. Lundgren pledged to Mayor Richard Daley after Federated acquired Marshall Field's and changed its name to Macy's that he would try to return some of the famous chocolate-mint production to Chicago.

----------smjones@tribune.com
__________________________________________________________
Wednesday October 11th, 2006
1 pm

Dear X:

Hey! Thanks for the follow-up.
Glad to hear that you finally received my email about tonight's SFECC meeting at the Aventura Comm. Rec. Center on NE 188th Street.

Sorry it devolved into a bit of a South Florida baseball tangent, but since I tend to write like I talk, which is fine most of the time, but when I have a lot on my mind, and little time to send it in an email, as was the case then, my fingers can't keep up with all the thoughts in my cabeza.

Yesterday, I put on my detective hat -minus the Columbo jacket- and checked out in detail the area I had mentioned in my 9/28 email about what I perceive to be THE best possible FEC train station location in Aventura/northern NMB, which would not only serve the greatest number
of frustrated people, but also have the added result of possibly leading to some smart growth in the area, instead of, well, the norm.

The area I had referenced in that email, the area of W. Dixie Hwy. as it becomes diagonal, a few blocks north of NE 183rd Street, is actually NE 193rd St., with the MIRON Building Products bldg. immediately across the street to the west at 19400 W. Dixie Hwy.

(As a kid growing-up in NMB in the '70's on NE 14th Avenue, just south of the 163rd St. Mall, I recall that funky building very well.

First, on Saturday mornings, driving past it with my Mom on our way to a big home decor place in Hollywood just off Dixie, and later, while at NMBSH, on weekends, jogging from 163rd to Greynolds Park, then Ojus and then past the MIRON bldg. on my way up to Hollywood Dog Track, before turning around.

And thinking that NEXT time, I wouldn't run as far!

That version of the MIRON building was largely jalousy windows on the Dixie Hwy. side, and I always wondered how they'd get thru a serious hurricane -embarrassing considering the kind of store it was- but knock on wood, we never got one when I lived here from '68-79, before leaving for college at Indiana.)

To me, that particular location has lots of advantages over other prospective northern NMB and Aventura locales, principally, the advantage of allowing "Kiss & Ride" drop-off points on both the Biscayne Blvd. and W. Dixie Hwy. sides, instead of just on one side, which is the norm for most K&R drop-offs in the DC Metro system, which tended to be near residential neighborhoods, or located in places where the initial land costs in the '70's were too tough a nut to crack to have much parking.

As I mentioned in my previous email, I used the Metro almost daily for 15 years, and am all too aware of both its strengths and weaknesses, but the Arlington stations, in particular, were genius in their use of land and space and a real model for how these sorts of things can and should be done.
There's no need to reinvent the wheel!

You have a commercial property, perhaps with high rise condos or apts above or adjacent to the entrances, with COOL retail on the bottom near the station entrance.
http://www.cooltownstudios.com/

This would help serve populations from an area of roughly Skylake, Ojus, Highland Oaks and Aventura, plus the Golden Beach and northern Sunny Isles folks coming over the Lehman Causeway.

Plus, if there's no Hallandale Beach station, that would be the go-to station instead of Hollywood.
You think the people in the condos in Aventura and over on the beach wouldn't love to be able to get dropped off, either thru their spouse or a bus shuttle, grab some coffee and bagels and sit awhile before grabbing a train and reading the paper into work instead of making that drive over to 1-95 to slog their way thru traffic?

Additionally, if you use the common sense the location provides, you extend the station north to 195th Street, where you build a pedestrian bridge across Biscayne Blvd. over to Aventura Mall, thereby cutting down the parking congestion insanity there, esp. around holidays, and giving the Mall entree to tens of thousands of additional customers, esp. seniors, who don't own cars, but who don't want to press their luck with the weather waiting for buses, which may or may not be on time, and probably jam-packed in any case.

I see that area of Dixie Hwy. as one that could become the kind of smart, urban -dare I say hip?- spot that Arlington had in abundance near its Metro stops, particularly near the Ballston Metro station, which was my station in northern Arlington, and whose proximity to my home made it possible for me to live in such a nice neighborhood -and walk.

See http://www.commuterpage.com/ART/villages/ballston2.htm and
http://www.commuterpage.com/ART/villages/index.htm

The station at Arlington Courthouse would also be ideal one to replicate, in that it connected upscale shopping and movie theatres and the county govt. offices, with the Fresh Foods store and an APPLE store two blocks away, plus dozens of chic bistros and live music bars of different types that drew people from ALL over the Washington area.
Nice fun places, not the South Beach over-the-top zoo scene we're all familiar with.

While playing detective yesterday I discovered that the east side of Dixie Hwy. at that location is currently an outfit that's called JR United Industries, which according to a Google search is:
19401 W Dixie Hwy, Miami, FL 33180 Phone : (305) 933-7100
Product & Services: Linens Manufacturers, Linens Wholesale,Quilts, Blankets & Bedding

According to the guy I spoke to at MIRON, it's been there for about 7 years.

It's really MUCH more run down than you'd think it'd be for a going concern, with LOTS of trash and debris along the road -shocker, there's no sidewalk- and the inside of their security fence is not much better, as the northern edge of the property had large Dumpsters that looked like Shaq had shot free throws there, i.e. more garbage around it, than probably actually in it.

There's a relatively new kosher bakery just north of it, which is located in an area that I think years ago was a plant nursery of some sort.

I have a vague memory of visiting down here around Christmas in the mid-90's, and going there with my step-mother there to buy some garland or holiday stuff, but I could be mistaken.

In any case, that particular area is horribly underutilized and would handsomely profit the community in lots of ways if a station that drew thousands of heretofore frustrated commuters -and made them happy on their way to work instead of harried- was located there.
It's a real no-brainer.

I'll probably be at the meeting a half-hour early, since,
a.) I've never been to the Aventura Rec Center before, and
b.) owing to the 15 years I spent in DC, I've learned to show up early for public policy meetings that are open to the general public, so I can gauge the political temperature of the room when I show up and can see who's feeling chatty and enthusiastic about the subject, and who's keeping their cards close to the vest so they can pop the collective balloon and ruin the mood at the very end.

Considering the very obvious common sense nature of the project, the one thing that surprised me at the Hollywood SFECC meeting a few weeks ago was the large number of naysayers angling for microphone time, who, for reasons that were totally inexplicable to me, seemed to think that Tri-Rail was the answer to everything.

Myself, I don't know anyone who uses TriRail for the very reason that it doesn't really go anywhere, and I suspect that will be the case for the vast majority of people at tonight's meeting as well, who, hopefully will remember to set their VCR or TiVo for Lost.