| TV show assistant smashes 2500-year-old bronze mirror
A Chinese television show audience watched dumbstruck as a presenter's assistant accidentally smashed a 2,500-year-old bronze mirror. The mirror, dating back to the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.), was being held up for display on a China Central Television programme, when it fell from its wooden casket. The programme, shot on Jan. 14, was to select "ten most valuable treasures" from China's private collections. The accident left the audience and crew silent and stunned until experts rushed on to the stage to pick up the pieces. The mirror's owner, renowned antique collector Chen Fengjiu, said the CD-sized mirror was the only one of its kind and other collectors had offered 1 million U.S. dollars to buy it. The program's producer has promised to invite leading antique experts to repair the brittle mirror, but there have been no published offers of compensation.
History in the pits
A lowly trash heap in McKeesport transformed Tim Tokosh into an obsessed urban archaeologist driven to collect rare, antique bottles brimming with 150 years of the region's history. Rain had carved ravines into the piles of dirt and trash, exposing hand-blown glass bottles of strange shapes, hues and brands that inspired Tokosh in 1987 to begin a quest for rare bottles that tell the histories of medicines, liquors, poisons and even famous products such as those made by H.J. Heinz Co. To grow his cache of bottles beyond those of armchair collectors, Tokosh, 40, turned to one of the only places to discover old bottles: long-buried outhouse pits -- or privy holes, as collectors call them. Tokosh, a contractor from Elizabeth Township, has pulled more than 100,000 antique bottles from the depths of 19th century outhouses -- often in the backyards of Pittsburgh homeowners who live in the city's oldest neighborhoods.
Toy show ahead for weekend
The 17th annual Tiger City Farm Toy Truck & Collectibles Show will be held Saturday and Sunday at Northbridge Mall. Hours are from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. People can come and buy, trade or browse.More than 80 dealers with some 250 tables will have everything from Tonka parts, sports cards and coins, collectibles, cast-iron toys, Hot Wheels, tractor parts, dolls, pedal toys, new and used toys, antiques, trains, literature, toy horses, wagon hitches and saddles, and tractor manuals.Admission is free.Also on tap for Friday is the Minnesota State Spring Barrow Show at the Freeborn County Fairgrounds. Judging junior pens takes place from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. There will be junior and adult market hog contest registration from 8 to 9 a.m. The judging contest runs from 9:30 to 11 a.m.
Escondido performance draws attention to violence against women
ESCONDIDO ---- More than 100 people attended a performance of "The Vagina Monologues" Saturday at the Patio Playhouse in Escondido.The show, part of the third annual V-Day Escondido, was one of the productions of the show held worldwide on or around Valentine's Day to create awareness of violence toward women and to raise funds for local organizations working to end it. Proceeds of this year's Escondido event will go to Escondido's Center for Community Solutions, which assists women who experience sexual assault or domestic violence. .
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