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MANCHESTER, Tenn. – In a warehouse next to his home, David Pennington, the mayor of Coffee County, stores enough pop-culture memorabilia to make a lesser collector gasp. There are entire walls of Gene Autry items, faded Coca-Cola signs hanging from the ceilings and rare baseball cards in a glass display case. Stashed throughout are reams of posters, tickets and magazine clippings for the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, which begins its ninth season on Thursday and is the pride of this bucolic small city in central Tennessee.
Especially dear to his heart is an unused ticket to Woodstock in 1969. Mr. Pennington, 60, keeps it to commemorate the trip he canceled to take care of his young family. But it also represents Bonnaroo´s dual ambitions: to be a cultural touchstone known around the world, yet – unlike Woodstock – to be efficiently run, with smoothly flowing Interstate traffic. The festival found fame at the start, but after a traffic-clogged first couple of years, many people here say the goal of efficiency has largely been achieved.

"They´ve got it down to a science," said Mr. Pennington, who also owns a restaurant offering a rather more congestive Bonnaroo Burger, topped with an egg and two slices of bacon. "They´ve got a traffic person that knows just what they´re doing. They get those people in, and everybody around here just operates as usual. You don´t even know they´re out there. You´ll see."

This year Bonnaroo will feature more than 100 acts through Sunday, among them the Dave Matthews Band, Stevie Wonder, Jay-Z, Norah Jones and Kings of Leon. Past Bonnaroos have attracted up to 90,000 fans; although it has not yet sold out this year, more than 75,000 people are expected, according to Ashley Capps, one of the promoters. Tickets for the full weekend are $250. From Friday to Sunday both YouTube and the NPR Music Web site will be streaming performances.

Such big numbers usually lead to traffic nightmares, which is just what happened in Bonnaroo´s first year, 2002. Festival organizers warned officials about a tide of tens of thousands of cars. But since a previous festival, Itchycoo Park, had been a flop, and Bonnaroo´s marketing and ticket sales had all been online, with no traditional advertising, no one in town took its claims seriously. "Bonnaroo gave us fair warning, and we just laughed at them," Mr. Pennington said.

Since then the festival has worked out an extensive traffic plan with the state and local police, involving a temporary exit and dedicated festival lanes on Interstate 24, as well as a helicopter to guide the parking staff on the ground. "We got it down," said Steve Graves, the sheriff of Coffee County, which includes Manchester and has a population of about 52,000.

A 2005 study by two professors at the Middle Tennessee State University found that Bonnaroo contributed about $18 million to the local economy, and Mr. Pennington estimates that since then it has grown to more than $20 million. Signs welcoming Bonnaroo fans hang in stores throughout Manchester, and tie-dyed Bonnaroo T-shirts can be spotted underneath waitresses´ aprons and Wal-Mart clerks´ uniforms.

Three years ago Bonnaroo´s promoters bought most of the land on the site, a former farm, and they plan to stage more events there during the 361 non-Bonnaroo days of the year. Mr. Pennington said he hopes they will serve as an anchor to attract more music-related businesses to the area.

"I see the music industry as something we can tap into here in Manchester," he said. "The recording artists, the recording studios, the songwriters. Not as big as Nashville, obviously, but that´s the new industry that we want here. And with Bonnaroo here, that makes a difference."

Mr. Capps, the promoter, said that Bonnaroo´s biggest challenge is maintaining a strong identity in the face of competition from other festivals around the country, like Lollapalooza in Chicago and Coachella in Southern California. They, as well as many other smaller but still significant events, are all bidding for the same acts and trying to attract out-of-town fans.

"It´s something that we´re conscious of every year," Mr. Capps said. "How do we maintain the thread and be true to the core of what the Bonnaroo experience is without repeating ourselves year after year after year?"

Bonnaroo´s core might have as much to do with its audience as the music. The festival grew out of the post-hippie jam-band scene, which has traditionally been an open-minded, loyal and not terribly fickle audience: an ideal constituency for an annual festival that relies on repeat customers. Over the years Bonnaroo has served as a kind of training ground for bands to return again and again, to ever bigger crowds. Kings of Leon, for example, has played there three times before.

By Tuesday evening the pilgrims had begun to arrive in Manchester, with drum circles forming in the Wal-Mart parking lot and teams of dreadlocked, flip-flop-wearing fans taking turns going in the store to stock up on beer, comfort food and rubber boots. (The weather forecast called for plenty of rain.)

Steve Willis, a 59-year-old mail carrier from Manchester, shopping at the Wal-Mart, praised the festival and local authorities for keeping the traffic flowing as well as can be done. The roads, although slow at the beginning and end of the festival, are navigable. "It´s kind of hard to get around some times," he said. "It´s a little bit of a hindrance, but it´s not a big deal."

His wife, Donna, 54, looked out over the Wal-Mart parking lot as the sun went down.

"I think it´s wonderful," she said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 11, 2010

Because of an editing error, the byline for an article on Thursday about the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival was omitted. The article was by Ben Sisario.

The wide opens spaces, accommodating inns and restaurants, and the echoes of Gram Parsons draw them to the desert each year. But during this visit, a lively 3-year-old is in the mix.

Reporting from Twentynine Palms – Typically, we go to the desert at least once a year. We love the expansive space, several of the inns and restaurants and, of course, the otherworldly foliage of Joshua Tree National Park. We also enjoy the musical legacy of Gram Parsons, the former Byrd who overdosed in Joshua Tree in 1973, at age 26, after virtually inventing the alt-country movement that would blossom two decades later. We feel these echoes and others – the twangy music, the lands natural contours, the local cuisine – when were there.
But this year, my wife, Sara – a former music journalist – and I had one complication: our eager but mischievous son. Ian is no more difficult than the typical 3-year-old boy, but he loves life so unambiguously that he can be hard to corral. Traveling with a toddler is a whole different ballgame: We figured some things would be better, some things worse, but we did know quite how it would all work out.

The river was not high, so there was not more than a two or three mile current. Hardly a word was
said during the next three-quarters of an hour. Now the raft was passing before the distant town. Two or three glimmering lights showed where it lay, peacefully sleeping, beyond the vague vast sweep of star-gemmed water, unconscious of the tremendous event that was happening.

The river was not high, so there was not more than a two or three mile current. Hardly a word was
said during the next three-quarters of an hour. Now the raft was passing before the distant town. Two or three glimmering lights showed where it lay, peacefully sleeping, beyond the vague vast sweep of star-gemmed water, unconscious of the tremendous event that was happening.

• The Black Avenger stood still with folded arms, "looking his last" upon
• the scene of his former joys and his later sufferings, and wishing
• "she" could see him now, abroad on the wild sea, facing peril and death with dauntless heart, going to his doom with a grim smile on his lips. It was but a small strain on his imagination to remove Jackson Island
• beyond eyeshot of the village, and so he “looked his last” with a
• broken and satisfied heart. The other pirates were looking their last
• too; and they all looked so long that they came near letting the

current drift them out of the range of the island. But they discovered the danger in time, and made shift to avert it. About two oclock in the morning the raft grounded on the bar two hundred yards above the head of the island, and they waded back and forth until they had landed their freight.

Mad Men star and internet favorite January Jones is about to become even favoritor because this morning at 10:30am she came crawling back home in the same dress she wore last night to the Oceana World Oceans Day Party. Does this mean she hooked up with some random guy or girl and had a night of deviant sex? Yes, yes it does. It´s undeniable proof. Throw an Ocean Day party and watch the panties start droppin, apparently. It sure as hell got January all worked up. I´m gonna go to her house dressed as Poseidon, see if I can get anal.

N extraordinary amount of jazz hits New York over the next two weeks: four festivals, about 150 sets, and much of it extracurricular to the usual riches at the clubs. It´s a time of marathons and breadth and goes in heavy for the new: not just youth, but also new aesthetic combinations, new attitudes toward repertory, new influences and paradigms, new clubs and theaters. Unlike some past jazz festival seasons, with more brand-polishing and sentimental favorites, this one – in the aggregate – can really show you where both the music and the culture of jazz in New York have gotten to. The news releases plonked into e-mailboxes throughout the spring. First to announce a schedule was the old-school jazz promoter George Wein. After the exit of JVC as his regular sponsor, he returns this year with the first annual CareFusion Jazz Festival, named after the medical technology company that is writing its checks. It´s a mixture: typical JVC-esque big-hall bookings (Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, Joao Gilberto); carefully chosen smaller shows with some of the best younger bandleaders, including Ambrose Akinmusire and Darcy James Argue; and a few gigs for early and swing-era jazz fans.Next, the 15th Vision Festival, an event planned and run community-style, with minimum sponsorship and maximum input from musicians, by Patricia Parker; it´s built around the lineage of free improvisation and jazz´s nonmainstream. This year´s festival is half again as big as last year´s. It contains an evening devoted to the Chicago pianist Muhal Richard Abrams and his circle and gigs by the local scene´s veterans, including the saxophonists Charles Gayle and David S. Ware, as well as the improvising singer Fay Victor, the scholarly and freewheeling Chicago-based quintet People, Places & Things and the rock band Akron/Family. The shows spread through the Lower East Side: clubs, cultural centers, even the playground of the Campos Plaza housing development on East 13th Street. Then came news of the first Undead Jazzfest, two nights of hear-a-thons in clubs on a stretch of Bleecker and Sullivan Streets, this Saturday and Sunday. It occupies, roughly, the middle path between Vision Festival and CareFusion: heavy on neither free improvisation nor the mainstream-jazz continuum.

Its the sound of the adventurous present, including the drummer and composer John Hollenbeck, the saxophonist Steve Coleman, and Fight the Big Bull, a roustabout little big band from Richmond, Va. It´s produced by Brice Rosenbloom and Adam Schatz, who are doing much to expand, diversify and generally excite the New York jazz audience through their annual Winter Jazzfest.

You might not think of Le Poisson Rouge as the ideal place for an organ recital: for one thing, it lacks an organ. But an organist can bring a portable one, and that is what Cameron Carpenter did on Tuesday evening, though not without some backstage drama.Mr. Carpenters original plan was to use his own practice organ and celebrate the release of his new compact disc and DVD, "Cameron Live!" (Telarc), by performing works of Bach, Shostakovich, Liszt, Chopin and Moszkowski. But a few days before the performance he decided that his instrument was not flexible enough for recital use.

His solution was odd. He rented a Hammond B3: an organ favored by jazz musicians (and some 1960s rock bands) but not ideal, in timbre and range, for classical works. So out went the classics, for the most part. Instead Mr. Carpenter brought along a drummer, Marion Felder, a recent Juilliard graduate who performs with the Count Basie Orchestra, and played a freewheeling, virtuosic jazz set.

That the concert now had little to do with the recording it was meant to promote seemed not to matter to anyone, least of all Mr. Carpenter, who spent the hour before the performance milling through the crowd, stopping at every table in the club to introduce himself ("Hi, I am Cameron," he said, holding out a hand) and chat. This was his party, and he was determined to enjoy every minute it. You almost had the feeling that he would have brought you a beer on request. At curtain time he threw a jacket studded with small mirrors over his black T-shirt and took to the keys.

It was clear in Mr. Carpenters opening selection, a rhythmically supple account of Coltranes "Moments Notice," that he had a feeling for this music. That should not be surprising: organists, unlike most classical instrumentalists, are schooled in improvisation, and Mr. Carpenter has an extroverted performing style well suited to the business of finding the possibilities in a chord progression or a melody.

Most of his set was devoted to Gershwin songs, starting with "Love Is Here to Stay," in which he augmented the Hammond sound with the varied timbres of a Yamaha synthesizer, and "I Got Rhythm," which he played as a widely ranging set of variations (including one for pedals only). "Do It Again," "The Man I Love," "Fascinatin´ Rhythm" and "Nice Work if You Can Get It," and Henry Mancini´s "Whistling Away the Dark," were also dissected and reassembled with unpredictable metrical and coloristic twists.

Mr. Carpenter´s single straightforward classical performance, late in the set, helped to explain his decision to play jazz. His reading of Bach chorale prelude "Nun Komm, der Heiden Heiland" had the right impulses, but the organs tone did not suit the piece. In any case, Mr. Carpenter had a more interesting approach to the classics up his sleeve. In a pair of Bach "Well-Tempered Clavier" preludes and fugues, and in Chopins C sharp minor Etude , he moved back and forth between straightforward readings and, with Mr. Felders support, vital, spirited, inventively reharmonized elaborations.

Was this a crossover concert? Maybe. But Mr. Carpenters jazz performances do not require special pleading. Move over, Renee Fleming.

BOSTON – The fashionable "Beat L.A." chants had all but faded from TD Garden, the oxygen bled from the building by Ray Allen´s misfires, Kobe Bryant´s impossible jumpers and Derek Fisher´s intensity. An anxious air hung over the Boston Celtics on Thursday as they teetered on the edge of a heavy series deficit.

Then Glen Davis rumbled and shimmied, Nate Robinson bounced and bellowed and belief was restored. The crowd thundered anew – "Beat L.A.!" – and the Celtics bullied their way to a 96-89 victory over the Lakers, tying the N.B.A. finals at 2-2.

It was an unusual victory, built on the backs of the Celtics reserves, most prominently Davis, the hefty center, and Robinson, the diminutive guard. They suffocated the Lakers with boundless energy, combining for 15 points in the fourth quarter and propelling the Celtics to a permanent lead.

"I do not think that what we did today was really in the scouting report," Davis said. "A lot of things that we did was just will and determination and seizing the moment."

And a lot of things were just plain unusual, such as Davis doing a little shimmy after a big free throw, or celebrating a play so enthusiastically that drool spilled from his mouth. The image was captured by the network cameras, to the great amusement of his teammates.

"When you´re in the moment, you´re in the moment," the playful Davis said. "If I slobber, snot, spit, please excuse me. Kids, don´t do that. Have manners and things like that. Sorry about that. Did I catch you with some?"

Davis was free to roam the paint in part because Andrew Bynum, the Lakers´ long-limbed center, was forced out by a nagging knee injury. He played just 12 minutes, raising doubts about his availability.

Bynum´s absence "bothered us in the second half," Coach Phil Jackson said, but the Lakers are hopeful that he can return on Sunday for Game 5, after a two-day break. The series will return to Los Angeles for Game 6 and a possible Game 7.

The Celtics´ Rasheed Wallace left the game late in the fourth quarter after aggravating a back injury. He also picked up his sixth technical foul of the postseason, one shy of the limit. Another technical foul would trigger an automatic suspension. The Celtics´ Kendrick Perkins is in the same predicament.

On a difficult night for the Celtics´ starters, Coach Doc Rivers turned to Davis, Robinson, Wallace and Tony Allen, who joined Ray Allen to open the fourth quarter. They promptly turned a 2-point deficit into a 9-point lead.

Paul Pierce, who had been quiet for much of the night, secured the victory with 7 points in the final 2 minutes 17 seconds and finished with 19.

The Lakers, looking exhausted and frazzled, could not keep pace. Bryant, finding scant help, kept launching difficult jumpers, going 10 for 22 from the field, finishing with 33 points. He had to do most of his work on the perimeter, going 6 for 11 from the 3-point arc. He also had 7 turnovers.

"He was tired," Jackson said. "Physically, I thought he had to work too hard in the course of the game, and he couldn´t finish it out the way he wanted to finish it out."

The Lakers pulled within 6 points four times down the stretch, mostly on Bryant´s efforts, but Pierce responded each time. They finally got within 5 points on a meaningless Bryant 3-pointer with 11 seconds left.

Derek Fisher, the Lakers´ savior in Game 3, spent much of Thursday night on the bench with foul trouble.

The Celtics thoroughly dominated the boards, 41-34, and pulled down 16 offensive rebounds, leading to 20 second-chance points. Davis powered through repeatedly for putbacks and layups.

Emotions flared in the fourth quarter. After Lamar Odom knocked Robinson to the floor with a hard foul, Robinson leaped up and went nose to chest with Odom, drawing a technical. Wallace, who had drawn a technical foul a minute earlier, started berating the officials, and Rivers quickly called a timeout to calm everyone´s nerves.

"Somehow, we´re going to have to keep our composure," Rivers said.

Robinson played the first 9:09 of the fourth quarter, in place of the ineffective Rajon Rondo (10 points), and made several big plays, including a runner in the lane that gave the Celtics an 83-74 lead. Davis hit a pair of free throws to make it an 11-point lead.

Ray Allen, who missed all 13 of his shots in Game 3 bounced back slightly with 12 points. After going four days and nearly 61 minutes of basketball between field goals, Allen finally found the net, converting a fast-break layup a minute after tipoff. That ended an 0-for-16 streak that began in the fourth quarter of Game 2. When he landed, Allen clenched both fists in quiet celebration.

Allen missed his next five shots, starting with an errant a 3-pointer that had 18,624 people exclaiming "awwww" in unison. That left him 1 for his last 21. He did not make another field goal until late in the third quarter, hitting a 20-footer that drew the loudest ovation of the night and tied the score at 56-56.

Davis and Allen provided all the points in a 17-8 run that bridged the third and fourth quarters and wiped out the Lakers´ lead for good.

Then the celebrations began, with Davis whooping and the 5-foot 9-inch Robinson at one point leaping onto his broad back.

"You were on my back?" Davis said to Robinson, as they sat side by side on the interview podium.

"You didn´t even notice," Robinson said. "We are like Shrek and Donkey. You can´t separate us."

Everyone laughed and Davis concluded, "You should not have let us two get up here."

On this night, there was no containing either one.

HOLLYWOOD, CA-The actress from the big hit movie and the musician from the popular band who have been photographed many times together out on the town are getting married, entertainment industry sources reported Monday.

I love him, the actress, who has been seen sporting a huge diamond engagement ring recently, told reporters while walking down the red carpet. He is definitely the one. The wedding, which will take place this summer, is expected to be attended by many equally famous celebrities, and will be photographed by many paparazzi, via helicopter if necessary. Insiders expect the guest list to be a veritable who is who of the rich and famous, including the Hollywood director, the reclusive former star who rarely makes public appearances, and the very handsome actor who used to be on television but is now in movies. According to sources, the wedding between the actress and the musician will be the most important social event of the season.

Its going to take place on a tropical island owned by the couples super-rich friend, said the blonde entertainment reporter. And her dress will be created by the fashion designer who did all those Oscar gowns.

SATURDAY morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond the village and above it, was green with vegetation and it lay just far enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost plank; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed fence, and sat down on a tree-box discouraged. Jim came skipping out at the gate with a tin pail, and singing Buffalo Gals. Bringing water from the town pump had always been hateful work in Tom eyes, before, but now it did not strike him so. He remembered that there was company at the pump. White, mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarrelling, fighting, skylarking.

The raft drew beyond the middle of the river; the boys pointed her head right, and then lay on their oars.

The river was not high, so there was not more than a two or three mile current. Hardly a word was
said during the next three-quarters of an hour. Now the raft was passing before the distant town. Two or three glimmering lights showed where it lay, peacefully sleeping, beyond the vague vast sweep of star-gemmed water, unconscious of the tremendous event that was happening.

• The Black Avenger stood still with folded arms, "looking his last" upon
• the scene of his former joys and his later sufferings, and wishing
• "she" could see him now, abroad on the wild sea, facing peril and death with dauntless heart, going to his doom with a grim smile on his lips. It was but a small strain on his imagination to remove Jackson Island
• beyond eyeshot of the village, and so he “looked his last” with a
• broken and satisfied heart. The other pirates were looking their last
• too; and they all looked so long that they came near letting the

current drift them out of the range of the island. But they discovered the danger in time, and made shift to avert it. About two oclock in the morning the raft grounded on the bar two hundred yards above the head of the island, and they waded back and forth until they had landed their freight.

Part of the little raft belongings consisted of an old sail, and this they spread over a nook in the bushes for a tent to shelter their provisions; but they themselves would sleep in the open air in good weather, as became outlaws.

1. They built a fire against the side of a great log twenty or thirty
2. steps within the sombre depths of the forest, and then cooked some
3. bacon in the frying-pan for supper, and used up half of the corn "pone"
4. stock they had brought. It seemed glorious sport to be feasting in that
5. wild, free way in the virgin forest of an unexplored and uninhabited
6. island, far from the haunts of men, and they said they never would
7. return to civilization. The climbing fire lit up their faces and threw
8. its ruddy glare upon the pillared tree-trunks of their forest temple,
9. and upon the varnished foliage and festooning vines.

When the last crisp slice of bacon was gone, and the last allowance of corn pone devoured, the boys stretched themselves out on the grass, filled with contentment. They could have found a cooler place, but they would not deny themselves such a romantic feature as the roasting camp-fire.