February 9, 2008
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Fans in a Monastery, Women in the City,Hot Water From Tap,Britney Spears,
- Needing a Hail Mary, Fans Find a Monastery
Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThe Benedictine nuns are converting their 10-bedroom spiritual retreat into a place to stay for Super Bowl fans
Needing a Hail Mary, Fans Find a Monastery
PHOENIX — There is no sauna, no heated pool, no chauffeur or sommelier. In fact, no alcohol is allowed on the premises, and guests share a bathroom with their next-door neighbor.
But for $250 a night in a city where Super Bowl rentals are topping out at $250,000 a week for a mansion in Scottsdale, the sisters at Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery figure they have an offer that cannot be beat.
In debt from the recent purchase of a nearby parcel, the Benedictine nuns are hoping to make a dent in their mortgage by converting their 10-bedroom spiritual retreat into a crash pad for Super Bowl fans this weekend.
“A Super Bowl doesn’t happen in a city very often,” said Sister Linda Campbell, the prioress of the monastery where rooms usually go for $105 a night. “Then we heard of all the folks that were renting out homes and we thought, wow, that would be something that would be beneficial to the monastery and help us to help others.”
With 125,000 fans expected to arrive from out of town this weekend, even midlevel hotels are charging more than $500 a night for rooms. A Hampton Inn, for example, is sold out for the weekend at prices up to $799 a night. Not far away, a Residence Inn by Marriott on Wednesday still had a two-bedroom suite available for $999 a night.
With its posters of Mother Teresa, vinyl tablecloths and second-hand furniture, the monastery’s offerings do not match up to some of the Super Bowl packages that nearby hotels and resorts are offering, with free cocktail hours, personal concierge service and sometimes even a meet-and-greet with N.F.L. players. Though there is no curfew at the monastery, some Super Bowl visitors may be dismayed to learn that along with the ban on alcohol (forget about keg stands or late-night drinking games), overnight guests cannot smoke.
Guests at the monastery will sleep in single beds in rooms named after Saints Hildegard, Helen, Monica and Ann. Most of the rooms sleep three people, and there is no telephone or television in the rooms.
Still, the retreat has its charms. The nine-year-old monastery is only three and a half miles from University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., and is nestled improbably in a working-class suburban neighborhood. Bottlebrush and palm trees shade the monastery, and a peacock roams the grounds. A yellow Labrador named Bonito greets guests at the front door.
Clint Mills Jr., 38, of Shrewsbury, Mass., said he knew he would travel to Arizona if the Patriots won, but he was dreading the cost of a hotel room for him and his 6-year-old son, Clint Mills III. This will be Mills’s fifth Super Bowl, and he was aware that even the most basic hotel rooms would be $500 a night. Then he saw a story on his local television station about the monastery.
“When I saw it on the news, I was like, Oh my god,” Mills said. “I don’t have to worry about who’s coming down the hallway at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning.”
Sister Linda, 59, works as a guidance counselor at St. Mary’s High School, a local Catholic school, and lives at the monastery with another nun and a live-in associate, a woman who has dedicated herself to a spiritual life but has not taken vows to join the order. Throughout the year, the sisters play host to church groups, nonprofit organizations and individuals who arrive seeking spiritual renewal and contemplation. The retreat is so popular that it has outgrown its space, and the order spent $550,000 on a nearby parcel last April so the monastery could be expanded.
The mood at the monastery may seem more prayerful than pumped up, but football fans will find a kindred spirit in Sister Linda, who has season tickets to the Arizona Cardinals and loves to lose herself in the shoves and grunts of a hard-fought game.
“It is violent, but not as violent as some others,” she said. “Now, I’m not into boxing or some of those. But football, yeah, I like football. For the most part, it’s a down time for me, and a time to just sit back and just enjoy it.”
Sister Linda said she admired Eli Manning and Tom Brady — “they’re both talented men,” she said of the two quarterbacks — but added that she was rooting for the Patriots. “They’ve had a perfect season, and it would be so sad to lose at this point,” she said.
Seven of the 10 rooms are already booked. None of the guests were bothered by the ban on alcohol or the monastery’s subdued setting, Sister Linda said.
“I think there’s a uniqueness about the people who are coming,” she said. Some of the guests, including a nun from New York, are Catholic; others are not. “It’s just like there was a reason for them to come to this area, for this purpose.”
The arrangement worked perfectly for George Huntoon, a Patriots fan from Dover, Mass., who does not drink alcohol and was shocked at some of the hotel prices he saw when planning his trip. “You know it’s going to be nice and clean,” said Huntoon, who is 50 and owns a building-supply store. “It’s a good thing just to get a little peace of mind before the game. I’m kind of looking forward to it.”
If those who arrive seek spiritual guidance, Sister Linda and her colleagues can provide it. But if they just want to enjoy the game, she said, that is O.K., too.
Still, several visitors have told her they would like to participate in Sunday Mass. If the guests pray for their own team to win, Sister Linda will understand; she admitted to praying once or twice for her beloved Cardinals.
“The way I do it is I pray for them to do the best they can,” she said, before offering a word of caution.
“Everyone has to understand,” she said, “that God listens to both sides.”
- Sex in the City
Dwight EschlimanA billboard over Wilshire Boulevard will feature an image from Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled Film Stills” series
Dwight EschlimanLouise Lawler’s 1979 installation at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica is recreated for the “Women in the City” exhibition.
StyleSex in the City
‘As an art dealer, I’ve always liked to be involved in big productions,” says the curator and gallerist Emi Fontana. “I’m not particularly good at selling small things that end up in the living room.” Fontana’s current big production, “Women in the City,” which goes up Feb. 9, is the debut of West of Rome, her newly founded nonprofit arts organization based in Los Angeles.
On view in more than 50 locations — ranging from video billboards along Sunset Strip to the Huntington Library’s botanical gardens — “Women in the City,” with support from the Broad Art Foundation and the François Pinault Foundation, presents breakthrough work by Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler and Cindy Sherman. During the 1980s these artists utilized popular forms, cannily borrowing the look of movies and advertising, to articulate sharp questions about power, the representation of women and contemporary society. Sherman’s poignant black-and-white photographs, “Untitled Film Stills” (1977-1980), featured the artist as an isolated character in some anonymous melodrama; Holzer’s “Truisms,” aggressively hyperdeclarative phrases gleaned from everyday life, surfaced on posters, stickers and patches; Kruger’s signature collages displayed a bold graphic style — red, white and Futura Bold Italic — and an unabashedly confrontational tone; and Lawler transfigured existing images to subvert conventional meanings.
In 1979, Lawler presented “A Movie Will Be Shown Without the Picture” at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica. As the full-length soundtrack of “The Misfits” played, the silver screen remained unremittingly blank. In Marilyn Monroe‘s last performance, her final line wavered in the auditorium. “How do you find your way back in the dark?” she asked, a tentative voice without an image.
“Of course, one of the inspirations for the show’s title was ,” says Fontana, a native of Milan and a former interviewer for cultural programs on the state broadcasting network in Italy. “I interviewed him and went to the set of ‘City of Women.’ ” In Fellini’s 1980 film, Marcello Mastroianni, the director’s alter ego, encounters feminism in a Freudian phantasmagoria about male anxiety and fantasy.
“When I watched it again recently,” Fontana recalled, “I noticed that all the women in the movie have cameras. They are the ones taking the pictures.” SUSAN MORGAN
- The Claim: Never Drink Hot Water From the Tap
Leif ParsonsReally?THE FACTS
The claim has the ring of a myth. But environmental scientists say it is real.
The reason is that hot water dissolves contaminants more quickly than cold water, and many pipes in homes contain lead that can leach into water. And lead can damage the brain and nervous system, especially in young children.
Lead is rarely found in source water, but can enter it through corroded plumbing. The Environmental Protection Agency says that older homes are more likely to have lead pipes and fixtures, but that even newer plumbing advertised as “lead-free” can still contain as much as 8 percent lead. A study published in The Journal of Environmental Health in 2002 found that tap water represented 14 to 20 percent of total lead exposure.
Scientists emphasize that the risk is small. But to minimize it, the E.P.A. says cold tap water should always be used for preparing baby formula, cooking and drinking. It also warns that boiling water does not remove lead but can actually increase its concentration. More information is at www.epa.gov/lead or (800) 424-5323 (LEAD).
THE BOTTOM LINE
Hot water from the tap should never be used for cooking or drinking.
Mom: Britney Spears resting at L.A. hospital
Britney Spears, left, and her mother Lynne Spears pose at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards in New York.
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Mom: Britney Spears resting at L.A. hospital
- Story Highlights
- Troubled pop star resting, mom says, after large police escort
- L.A. Times: Britney Spears placed on “mental health evaluation hold”
- Hold prompted by call police got from Spears’ psychiatrist, Times reports
- Incident is second time in weeks the singer has been taken to a hospital
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) — Pop star Britney Spears was resting at UCLA Medical Center on Thursday, her mother said, hours after police escorted her to the hospital from her Hollywood home.
A long convoy of police and a Los Angeles Fire Department ambulance transported the 26-year-old singer to the hospital after midnight, acting on what the Los Angeles Times reported was a “mental evaluation hold.”
It was the second hospitalization for Spears this month. The police operation was planned far in advance and, according to the L.A. Times, followed a phone call to police from Spears’ psychiatrist.
Asked if her daughter was resting, mother Lynne Spears said “Yes” to a throng of reporters as she departed the medical center.
Watch scene at Spears’ home »The pop star’s father Jamie Spears and her manager Sam Lufti also appeared at the hospital, neither choosing to speak to reporters.
The latest incident in the troubled performer’s saga began about 12:55 a.m. on Thursday when the North Hollywood Police Department sent about eight officers to Spears’ hilltop house in Studio City, California, according to a law enforcement official, who asked not to be identified because he’s not authorized to comment publicly.
See Spears timeline »The group at Spears’ house included plainclothes officers, motorcycle police, ambulance crews and some police “brass,” the official said.
It took the better part of the day to arrange the transport plan, the officer said.
On January 3, Spears was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she reportedly underwent a psychological evaluation.
Watch how mental evaluations work »Andrew Blankstein, a Los Angeles Times reporter who was at the scene of Thursday’s incident, told CNN that a police convoy, stretching the length of a football field, accompanied the ambulance as it drove down Coldwater Canyon Boulevard — in part to keep the paparazzi from getting too close.
Watch police motorcade at Spears’ home »Spears was whisked out a side entrance to her house.
“You couldn’t really see what was going on [when officers first swept into the residence] but on the police radio, there was some reference to ‘The package is on the way out,’ ‘We’re leaving now. Go, go, go,’” Blankstein said.
A few hours earlier, two officers were sent to investigate a report of a large group gathered outside the singer’s home, said David Grimes, watch commander for the west division of the Los Angeles Police Department.
The two officers found 20 to 25 people near the house around 11 p.m. Wednesday and they asked them to leave, he said.
ABC-TV host Barbara Walters reported on Monday’s “The View” that she had been contacted by Spears’ manager and “good friend,” Lufti, who told her the pop star has seen a psychiatrist and “is suffering from what he describes as mental issues which are treatable,” according to The Associated Press.
Watch experts discuss Spears’ behavioral issues »During Spears’ earlier hospitalization, in addition to the psychological evaluation, she was examined for possible influence of alcohol or drugs. Police had been called to her home that night to mediate a custody dispute.
A day later, a California court refused to grant Spears visitation rights with her two children — Sean Preston, 2, and Jayden James, 1 — at least until mid-February.Spears has been in a heated dispute with ex-husband Kevin Federline over custody of their sons. Federline, Spears’ former backup dancer, holds primary custody of the children.
Spears has been in trouble with the court earlier concerning her compliance with court orders in the custody case.
After filing for divorce in November 2006, Spears was frequently seen enjoying Hollywood nightlife. Her behavior became increasingly erratic; in February 2007, she shaved her head as paparazzi looked on, then spent a month in rehab.
CNN’s Saeed Ahmed and Ninette Sosa contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
All AboutBritney Spears • Kevin Federline
