Smith Clove Museum Village, a staple of schoolboy field trips for five generations, captures some of the history that still lives on here.

This magnificent pergola was a five-month labor of love, destined for a Greenwich, Conn., estate.

Photo: Classic Design

On the recently paved Reynolds Road that borders the field just below Varcadipane's home, for instance, sits a tiny rustic cabin where a great- grandfather of Roscoe Smith, the late founder of Orange & Rockland Utlities, is said to have hung a British Redcoat during the War for Independence. On the farm, the stump of John Smith's Banyan Oak, a 186-year-old tree the settler planted around 1800, bears testimony to the origins of the classic design elements of doors, desks, tables, chairs and flooring in the nearby farmhouse that has now housed my family for 97 years.

Dreamliner-induced nightmares

Biggest challenge: Monitoring the financial progress of the 787 Dreamliner, whose delivery has been delayed twice due to production snafus.

A little more than a year into his new job, Mr. Bell was appointed interim CEO following the resignation of Harry Stonecipher in what was the second major ethics scandal to hit Boeing in as many years.

Rather than shaking his confidence in his employer, Mr. Bell says he saw his four-month appointment "as a vote of confidence in the whole Boeing team and a recognition of the key strategic role today's CFOs play in helping run the business."

Now back at his original post, Mr. Bell is again focused on overseeing the finances of the world's biggest aerospace company and reporting to investors.

He's also focused on taking care of his current boss, Boeing Chairman and CEO James McNerney Jr.

Colour your house

The colours you see when you walk into your neighbourhood paint store are selected months – if not years – in advance, says Sharon Grech, who is Benjamin Moore's colour and design manager for central Canada. And their selection is not a random event, but is backed by entire organizations devoted to determining what colours will fit in with current trends.

"Pretty much everything that has colour is represented, from paints to shoes and cars," Grech says.

Trump has made us look like a nation of parochial bumblers

This episode sends a message to every wideboy property developer that the Scots are so weak and befuddled, that you can run rings round them. That you can walk into the office of any top civil servant and browbeat them into getting what you want.

As I say, I intend no slur against the integrity of Jim McKinnon, an innocent bystander here. But the Scottish political classes as a whole have shown themselves to be out of their depth when dealing with difficult people like Trump. It was not unreasonable to expect him at least to negotiate over the Site of Special Scientific Interest that he intended to defile with his golf links. Maybe in the end, the development is worth the damage to the environment. Almost certainly a compromise could have been reached over the sand dunes in question.

A dance crew from Boston chases a shot at stardom on MTV

They grew up in some of Boston's roughest neighborhoods and found salvation in hip-hop dance. Now members of the troupe Status Quo are trying to survive their toughest professional challenge yet: capturing first place in MTV's "Randy Jackson Presents America's Best Dance Crew" competition, a reality show pitting nine of the country's best, most energetic young dance crews in a can-you-top-this showdown offering a top prize of $100,000 and a shot at showbiz stardom.

Episodes of "Dance Crew" are taped Tuesdays in Los Angeles for broadcast Thursdays at 10 p.m. on MTV. Status Quo has already made it through two rounds and will compete again tonight. They could be dancing on thin ice this time, though, as the field shrinks and the show's three judges - rapper Lil Mama, singer-producer JC Chasez, and hip-hop choreographer Shane Sparks - grow stingier with their praise and start channeling their inner Simon Cowell.

Al-Qaeda leaders admit: 'We are in crisis. There is panic and fear'

The Americans and the apostates launched their campaigns against us and we found ourselves in a circle not being able to move, organise or conduct our operations."

He said of the loss of Anbar province: "This created weakness and psychological defeat. This also created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight. The morale of the fighters went down . . . There was a total collapse in the security structure of the organisation." The emir complained that the supply of foreign fighters had dwindled and that they found it increasingly hard to operate inside Iraq because they could not blend in. Foreign suicide bombers determined to kill "not less than 20 or 30 infidels" grew disillusioned because they were kept hanging about and only given small operations. Some gave up and went home.