Betty MacDonald, Betty MacDonald documentary and a veteran lawyer

Hello 'Pussy' it's Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and Pippi Longstocking:

Ty Cobb, a veteran Washington lawyer, is joining President Trump’s legal team to coordinate the response to the expanding investigation into possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia’s election interference, reflecting a growing sense among West Wing officials that the president’s private lawyer, Marc E. Kasowitz, cannot handle the job alone.

 
  
Should I remain in bed, leave my country or fight against the dragon?

( see also the story by Wolfgang Hampel, 
' Betty MacDonald: Nothing more to say ' )

 

Betty MacDonald fan club fans,

you can join Betty MacDonald fan club on Facebook.

Thank you so much in advance for your support and interest.

Some Betty MacDonald fan club seem to have problems to answer the question regarding the personality we are looking for during July.

An advice: Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel interviewed this very witty and charming person.

I guess it's easy to answer this question now.

Anita and Eartha Kitt II are working on their new Betty MacDonald fan club project: Betty MacDonald's life on Vashon Island.

Our two very popular and beloved ladies are going to visit Vashon Island and other places where Betty MacDonald lived.

Therefore this will be a very interesting documentary.

I adore very beautiful Vashon Island although I've never been there.

My favourite place for a future Betty MacDonald fan club event would be Seattle and Vashon Island.

Greetings,

Christina

you can join 

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Vita Magica Betty MacDonald event with Wolfgang Hampel, Thomas Bödigheimer and Friedrich von Hoheneichen

Vita Magica 

Betty MacDonald 

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Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) 

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) - The Egg and I 

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( Polski)   

Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( German )

Wolfgang Hampel - LinkFang ( German ) 

Wolfgang Hampel - Academic ( German )

Wolfgang Hampel -  cyclopaedia.net ( German ) 

Wolfgang Hampel - DBpedia  ( English / German )

Wolfgang Hampel - people check ( English ) 

Wolfgang Hampel - Memim ( English )

Vashon Island - Wikipedia ( German )

Wolfgang Hampel - Monica Sone - Wikipedia ( English )

Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( English )

Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( French ) 

Wolfgang Hampel - Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle - Wikipedia ( English)

Wolfgang Hampel in Florida State University 

Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel 

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Trump’s Legal Team Adds Lawyer Amid Expanding Russia Investigation

By GLENN THRUSH 

JULY 14, 2017

 

Ty Cobb will join President Trump’s legal team to coordinate the response to the Russia investigation. Credit Jerry Cleveland/The Denver Post, via Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Ty Cobb, a veteran Washington lawyer, is joining President Trump’s legal team to coordinate the response to the expanding investigation into possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia’s election interference, reflecting a growing sense among West Wing officials that the president’s private lawyer, Marc E. Kasowitz, cannot handle the job alone.

After a tumultuous week in the fast-moving inquiry, Jared Kushner’s top lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, also announced plans to remove herself from matters related to the Russia investigation that are engulfing her client, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and a West Wing adviser. She said she will continue to represent Mr. Kushner on other concerns.

The hiring of Mr. Cobb, a partner at the white-collar firm Hogan Lovells and a former federal prosecutor, was welcomed by White House officials who have complained that they have been repeatedly blindsided by revelations not disclosed to them by the president and his family. The hiring was first reported by Bloomberg News and confirmed by a person with direct knowledge of the move.

Mr. Kasowitz, Mr. Trump’s combative longtime personal lawyer, has aggravated his mercurial client by repeatedly demanding that the president curtail his Twitter habits, which Mr. Kasowitz — and most others in the White House — believe to be damaging to the president’s legal and political cause.

But Mr. Trump has flouted his own lawyer, bragging to people around him that no one can control his actions.

Mr. Trump also privately criticized Mr. Kasowitz’s flat performance at a June 8 news conference after the Capitol Hill testimony of James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director.

And angry, expletive-laced emails that Mr. Kasowitz sent to a critic were published this week by ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative news website.

But the main issue, a person close to Mr. Trump said, was proximity. Mr. Kasowitz commutes from his home in New York City and has been unable to give the president the seven-day-a-week commitment he requires as the investigation consumes a greater percentage of his time, aides said.

 

Marc E. Kasowitz after James B. Comey testified on Capitol Hill in June. Credit Justin T. Gellerson for The New York Times

Emails sent to Mr. Kasowitz and his spokesman were not immediately returned.

For weeks, Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, has been urging Mr. Trump to bolster his in-house team with a seasoned lawyer to help deal with an expected flood of document requests from the Justice Department’s special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

The idea was to have someone who could deal directly with Mr. Trump on the matter and coordinate with his personal lawyer, which would allow Mr. McGahn and the rest of the staff to tend to the day-to-day work of keeping the White House functioning, a White House official added.

In recent days, hiring such a player became more urgent, people close to the decision said, with the admission by the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., that he met during the heat of last year’s presidential campaign with a Russian lawyer who promised to provide damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

But many of Washington’s best criminal defense lawyers have appeared reluctant to work for a president known to ignore legal counsel and a family that has repeatedly failed to fully disclose contacts with people linked to Russia.

Mr. Trump and his team met Mr. Cobb this week and were impressed by his aggressiveness, according to a person who spoke with the president.

The president’s team also recently contacted another high-profile Washington lawyer, Emmet Flood, a partner at Williams & Connolly, who had previously rejected Mr. Trump’s entreaties.

Ms. Gorelick, a Democrat who began working with Mr. Kushner after advising Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson during his confirmation hearings, denied reports that she was quitting Mr. Kushner’s team. She will hand over representation on matters related to the Russia investigation to another powerful Democratic lawyer, Abbe D. Lowell.

“As we have stated, once Bob Mueller and three of our partners left the firm to form the Special Counsel’s Office, we advised Jared to get independent legal advice on whether to continue with us as counsel,” Ms. Gorelick wrote in a statement on Friday.

“As a result of this process, Jared decided that Abbe would represent him in the Russia-related inquiries. We are currently helping Abbe’s team. We will continue to work on the matters for which we were originally retained, with regard to ethics compliance, the SF-86 process and related issues.”

Mr. Kushner, who had previously failed to reveal a meeting with Russia’s ambassador to the United States on a disclosure form, was briefly present during the meeting with the president’s son in which the anti-Clinton research was discussed.

Julie Hirschfeld Davis contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on July 15, 2017, on Page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Expands Legal Team Amid Concerns. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

Finding Island Time: Vashon from Seattle

Take an illustrated day trip through Washington state’s largest city with artist Candace Rose Rardon.

by Candace Rose Rardon 

I will always remember the first time I heard about Vashon Island — one of several islands located just off the coast of Seattle — because of how vastly different Vashon sounded from where I was then in the world: India.
My good friend Erin, who grew up making regular pilgrimages to Vashon to see her grandmother and other family members who lived there, was visiting me in the bustling Indian capital of New Delhi. As we sat in a café, the outside world of crowded streets and chaotic traffic whirled as madly as a spinning top; inside the café, the island Erin described seemed like another world entirely.
She spoke of ferry rides and quiet harbours, digging for clams at low tide and filling bowls with fresh blackberries from the wild and rambling bushes that cover Vashon — it sounded like a place where the top stops spinning and you can hear yourself think.
I knew then — even from 11,265km (7,000 mi) away in India — that Vashon would be a place that I loved.

I knew that I would love Vashon even before I got here.

Taking the ferry to Vashon Island.

Picking blackberries right from the vine.

Since that fateful conversation in Delhi, I’ve had the chance to make several pilgrimages of my own to Vashon — with and without Erin; in the gray, rainy heart of winter and in the sun-soaked glory of summer. Sometimes just for a couple of nights, other times for as long as a month — but no matter the different circumstances and lengths of each visit, I’m reminded every time of the gifts that Vashon has to give.
The island’s first gift is that of its proximity to downtown Seattle, making it an ideal day trip for anyone passing through Washington state’s largest city.
One moment can find you wandering the lively stalls of Pike Place Market, while another moment, you can catch a local C-Line bus to the Fauntleroy ferry terminal in West Seattle, where a 15-minute ferry ride brings you across the Puget Sound to the northern tip of Vashon. From door to door (or shore to shore, you might say) the journey is but an hour.
There are more than a dozen islands in the Puget Sound — not including the well-known San Juan Islands located a few hours north of Seattle — and some of these islands have bridges connecting them to the mainland. But the only road to Vashon is the ferry’s path across the sound. Being technically comprised of two islands (Vashon and Maury Islands), the only bridge you’ll find on Vashon is a man-made isthmus connecting it to Maury Island.
This is something the island’s residents feel strongly about. When a bridge to the mainland was proposed in 1992, more than a fifth of Vashon’s population at the time (around 2,000 people) appeared in protest at a public hearing. A bridge, they felt, would surely bring development, and take away from their island’s natural beauty and rural calm.

The road to Tramp Harbor.

Be sure to get your coffee fix here.

Because that is Vashon’s second gift — its extraordinary nature, and the chance to explore such sylvan landscapes so close to a bigger city like Seattle.
Even still, Vashon has much to offer those who travel for culture and food. Its quaint downtown is lined with art galleries and restaurants — from the Hardware Store (home to the best burger in the Pacific Northwest, I might argue), to a Thai restaurant and cozy tea shop. And just down the road, another stretch of shops holds the Vashon Island Coffee Roasterie, an organic health food store and the Seattle Distilling Company.
But for me, the delicious meals and moments of art or culture I have on the island are always framed by the greater number of hours I spend outdoors. It’s there where I immerse myself in Vashon’s unique blend of expansive skies and acres of fir trees, harbours and beaches, and the frequent vistas that open up of nearby, snow-capped Mount Rainier.
If you’re able to rent a car, head south to Point Robinson to visit a 10-acre park, historic lighthouse and hiking trails; or head west to a small peninsula called Jensen Point, where it’s possible to rent kayaks or stand-up paddleboards, and glide along the placid surface of Quartermaster Harbor. There, besides a few sailboats or passing crew teams, your main companions will be eagles, herons and harbour seals, who seem to delight in popping their heads above the surface when you’re least expecting it.
Glimpsing the island from the seat of a kayak is always my favourite way to see Vashon, most especially when I get the timing right and start heading for shore just as the sinking sun sets the sky ablaze with colour.

Out on a kayak in Quatermaster Harbor.

Taking in the shoreline on a sunny day.

Those moments of being wholly surrounded by a glowing pink sky — a sky more vivid in colour than my humble paintbrush could ever hope to capture — will forever stay with me, because they speak to Vashon’s third gift: the very feeling of peace that first resonated with me on the other side of the world.

Pink skies and peaceful nights.

There are places we travel to in order to do things — visit museums, retrace the steps of history, linger in the shadow of famous landmarks. I’ve come to learn through my visits to Vashon, there are places that simply invite you to be. To slow down, set your watch to “island time” and join the quiet rhythms that govern its days. To let your mind relax and reflect as your world becomes just sea, sky and tree-lined shores.
If your journeys lead you through Seattle soon, I hope you’ll cross the Puget Sound and experience Vashon, even for a day. But let me warn you… it’s the kind of place that once you step foot on it, the island soon draws you back for more.

Sometimes it's good to look back.

Getting There

Start the National Parks of the Northwest US tour with a day trip to Vashon Island. We’re thrilled at the prospect of showing you this big blue planet of ours — check out our small group trips here.