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"I'm just a hand liner. I put lines on," says Kevin Manypenny. He's been working here for nearly 40 years.

He twirls a plate, dips a brush in brown glaze and paints three delicate lines on the plate's edge. Fiesta is about half of Homer Laughlin's business — the other half is dinnerware for hotels, and the sturdy plates and cups you find at chain restaurants. The plate he's working on is for a Boston restaurant.

Manypenny and seven of his eight siblings — and their parents — have worked at this factory. And there are dozens of families like theirs. Brothers founded the company: Homer and Shakespeare Laughlin — presumably a literary family — jumped on a new fashion for a whiter, more refined dinnerware.

"They were the young whippersnappers in the pottery world, and they were the ones who ended up successfully firing four kilns worth of whiteware before any of the other potteries could, and then they won a prize of $5,000 ... and that's what launched the Laughlin brothers into pottery production on a big scale," says Sarah Vodrey of the Museum of Ceramics across the river in East Liverpool, Ohio, where Homer Laughlin used to be based.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the factory changed hands. The new team built a plant on the West Virginia side of the river, and those long, low factory buildings are still in use today.

Then, in the 1930s, the company created Fiesta: inexpensive, colorful, cheerful dinnerware. It was a hit even in the Depression. In 1948, Homer Laughlin really stepped up the production of plates and bowls. The company designed and built its own machine inside the factory. Dave Conley, a longtime employee and unofficial company historian, calls it "the big, flat automatic."

Credit: The "big, flat automatic" machine allows Homer Laughlin to mass produce multiple types of items at once. (Ross Mantle for NPR)

"You've got three machines here, and each one has two heads on it, so theoretically we could be making six different items at a time," he says. Conley says that's 3,000 dozen pieces — or 36,000 pieces of pottery — every eight-hour shift. (People who make dishes talk in dozens.)

There have been improvements. Computers control the firing now. 3-D printers speed the design process. Ceramic engineers found a way to make glaze shiny without using lead — all in house.

"The people that owned our company have always put profits back into the plant to modernize, and we've always had state of the art equipment [like the big, flat automatic], and I call that state of the art even though that's as old as it is — it's almost 60 years old," Conley says.

Credit: Fiesta salt shakers are sent down the line to be glazed. (Ross Mantle for NPR)

Fiesta Revival

Inside the old buildings, with fog pouring off the Ohio River and drifting into the windows, the ware comes out of the fire, magically transformed — creamy orange, intense red, vivid turquoise. Bright pottery is stacked in bins and crates and piled all over the place.

"I remember the first time I actually went to the facility, and I'm looking around and I'm thinking, 'Boy, am I back in the 1940s or what?' I mean, even the office, it isn't all spruced up," says Bruce Smith, the head of the union representing the pottery workers. "It's the old look, and they're focused on making product and not being flashy." He says while nothing about Homer Laughlin is flashy, the workers do make decent money.

Calling All Fiesta Fans

Do you have a Fiesta collection or a favorite Fiesta dish? Take a picture, tag it #nprfiesta on Instagram, and we may feature it on NPR.org.

"They're good jobs and they're making a living, being able to buy a home and raise a family and retire with some dignity," Smith says.

Both management and labor consider that an achievement.

"I'm very proud to have kept this business here in the Ohio Valley. That's very important to us," says Elizabeth Wells McIlvain, the first woman to lead Homer Laughlin, and the fourth generation of her family at the plant. Her immediate family now owns most of the business. Her daughter, Maggie, is an intern in the marketing department.

Homer Laughlin stopped producing Fiesta for a time beginning in 1973. A harvest gold color and an avocado green didn't sell. But in 1986, Bloomingdale's came calling, looking for a retro china for its stores, and Homer Laughlin made a typical, practical decision: restart an old line and revive Fiesta for retail sale along with its existing hotel and restaurant business.

"We have two sides of the business, and that's helped us tremendously because it seems when ... the retail side of the business is flourishing, the hotel side is ... having difficulties, and vice versa," McIlvain says.

Pallets of Fiesta pieces are lined up in preparation for an upcoming retail outlet tent sale at Homer Laughlin in Newell, W.Va. Ross Mantle for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Ross Mantle for NPR

It helps that Fiesta has a big fan base. Collectors stand in line for hours to get into the factory tent sales. Fans meet, they swap, they critique the company's color choices. And they wait for the new Fiesta color unveiled each March. (The color for 2014 is poppy, a bold, saturated orange.)

"They always have suggestions. One year they all wanted fuchsia, and they all arrived to Homer Laughlin to go on their tours dressed in whatever fuchsia they had. That was their silent but very loud statement," McIlvain says.

But she offered no color clues for this coming March. "That's a very deep, dark secret," she says with a laugh.

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Updated at 7:53 p.m. ET

Nina Pham, the 26-year-old nurse who became infected with Ebola after treating a patient with the disease at a Dallas hospital, will be transferred to a high-level containment facility at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institutes of Health National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said in testimony before a House committee that Pham will be admitted to the NIH tonight.

There she will will be given "state of the art care" in a high-level containment facility, he says.

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, where Pham is being treated and also where she contracted the disease, said transferring Pham was the "right decision."

Testimony from Texas Health Resources Regarding Ebola Response by KERANews

"With many of the medical professionals who would normally staff the intensive care unit sidelined for continuous monitoring, it is in the best interest of the hospital employees, nurses, physicians and the community to give the hospital an opportunity to prepare for whatever comes next," the hospital said in a statement.

Officials have said Pham's condition is good. Another nurse, Amber Vinson, who also cared for index patient Thomas Eric Duncan has also contracted the disease. Duncan died from the disease last week.

Dr. Daniel Varga, a top official from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where Duncan was treated by both Pham and Vinson, acknowledged the facility's mishandling of the original diagnosis and subsequent handling of the situation.

"We made mistakes," Varga said in a video link with lawmakers.

Varga's testimony comes as President Obama, for a second day, canceled out-of-town trips to stay in Washington, D.C., and monitor the response to the outbreak. The president had planned to travel to Rhode Island and New York today.

By late afternoon, Obama announced he was meeting with his cabinet again and issued an order giving the Pentagon the power to call up reserve National guard troops if they were needed to help fight the outbreak in West Africa.

NPR's Scott Horsley said this did not indicate a mass mobilization, but was instead the authority to "call up people with very specific skills— e.g. engineering, communications and Chaplains."

Duncan first sought treatment at the hospital on Sept. 26 but was sent home with antibiotics despite a high fever and having told a nurse of his recent travel to Liberia, an Ebola hot spot. Two days later, he returned to the hospital, was placed in isolation and subsequently diagnosed with Ebola. That's when officials believe Pham and Vinson, 29, became infected.

In his testimony, Varga acknowledges that the hospital did not correctly diagnose the disease on Duncan's first visit. "We are deeply sorry," he says.

After treating Duncan but before she exhibited symptoms, Vinson traveled by commercial airliner to and from Cleveland. That has raised questions about why she was allowed to travel with the public and whether anyone in an official capacity cleared her to do so. Her reported temperature was below the threshold set by the agency, and she had no symptoms, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesman David Daigle, who talked to The Associated Press. The CDC has said that the likelihood of her passing the virus to a fellow passenger is considered very low.

By Thursday afternoon, however, CDC officials in Ohio began to make contact with passengers on Frontier flight 1142, which Vinson took from Dallas-to-Cleveland.

According to NPR member station WKSU, Dr. Chris Braeden, the head of the CDC team in Ohio, said the widening investigation had to do with the CDC's evolving definition of symptoms.

In an interview with CNN, Dr. Marguerite Erme, the medical director for Summit County Public Health, explained that through interviews, the CDC found out that Vinson may not have been feeling well days before she tested positive for Ebola.

Vinson, Erme said, is believed to have presented with "non-specific symptoms" earlier than first thought, so the people on her flight to Cleveland and those who may have been in a bridal shop while she was there are now considered "contacts."

In a statement issued early Thursday from Texas Health Presbyterian, the hospital responded to allegations by National Nurses United that protocols and equipment were not up to the task of treating Duncan. The hospital says it followed CDC guidelines at the time.

Texas Health Presbyterian also said it would offer a special room "to any of our impacted employees who would like to stay here to avoid even the remote possibility of any potential exposure to family, friends and the broader public," according to a statement late Wednesday, adding, "We are doing this for our employees' peace of mind and comfort. This is not a medical recommendation."

Dr. Thomas Frieden, the director of the CDC, is also expected to testify before the House subcommittee. In prepared remarks, he calls the current epidemic "the biggest and most complex Ebola challenge the world has ever faced."

Frieden confirmed that after Vinson cared for Duncan and while she was being monitored for symptoms, she called the CDC and asked for guidance on whether she should take a flight from Dallas and Cleveland.

"I have not seen the transcript of the conversation. My understanding is that she reported no symptoms to us," he said.

Obama has made ramping up efforts to respond to Ebola a priority and wants to make sure what happened in Dallas doesn't happen elsewhere across the country. He said efforts are being taken very seriously at the highest levels of the government.

"As soon as somebody is diagnosed with Ebola, we want a rapid response team, a SWAT team, essentially, from the CDC to be on the ground as quickly as possible — hopefully within 24 hours — so that they are taking the local hospital step by step through exactly what needs to be done and making sure that all the protocols are properly observed; that the use of protective equipment is done effectively; that disposal of that protective equipment is done properly," Obama said after Wednesday's Cabinet meeting.

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According to Navajo law, Navajo Nation presidents must speak the Navajo language to hold office. Chris Deschene is a strong contender for the position, but there's a problem: He's not fluent in the language.

The challenge to Deschene's candidacy has become a window into how the Navajo Nation views itself and its cultural future, as well as how Native people continue to define themselves in the face of cultural change.

In August, the Navajo Nation held primaries for candidates hoping to become the next Navajo president. The two men with the most votes were Dr. Joe Shirley Jr., a two-time former president; and Deschene, a military veteran and member of the Arizona State Legislature.

However, within weeks of clearing the nation's primaries with 19 percent of the vote, Deschene was challenged by another candidate who hoped to have him disqualified for lack of language competence.

Fifty years ago, almost 90 percent of Navajo first-graders spoke Navajo fluently. Now, just over 7,000 tribal citizens are monolingual Navajo speakers, and fewer than 30 percent of first-graders can claim some level of language fluency.

Today, the Navajo Nation, much like the rest of Indian Country, faces the prospect of language loss. While the Navajo language is still spoken widely across the Southwest, it's threatened, and Deschene has come to represent that fact for people on both sides of the language divide.

"It's a really personal issue to me," says Melvatha Chee, a Navajo language instructor at the University of New Mexico. "I would like to vote for [Deschene], but I feel like I'm voting against myself if I support him. If I support a nonspeaker, I feel like I'm voting against my own work."

Others feel that they can support their language and Deschene's candidacy.

"If Deschene is told that he can't be president because he's not Navajo enough because of language, that's like telling a lot of young Navajo people that they're not good enough either because they don't speak the language," says Meredith Moss, a doctoral candidate at Arizona State University who has focused her studies on Navajo language and sociolinguistics.

At the heart of the matter for Deschene, according to Moss, is the need to use English in the context of being a representative to other nations and groups, but also being an authentic, trustworthy voice at home who can represent the positions of the Nation's elders. It is a struggle between an older generation that is genuinely Navajo and a new generation of tribal members who may see themselves more closely represented by Deschene than by his opponent.

"I think many feel that the youth are being told they're not good enough," said Moss. "They're not Navajo enough, and supporting Deschene is kind of like moving toward the new guard and saying, 'We really are Navajo; we can have that authenticity while moving forward together.' "

For many, language is the embodiment of culture, and tribal languages contain history, cosmology, traditional values and identity. Supporters of the language requirement argue that without tribal languages, Native Americans are lost, and distant from the ancestors who came before them.

But for much of history, this loss of language was not a choice. For centuries, the policy of churches, educators and government officials has been to stamp out tribal languages, through education, abuse, and any other way possible. As the saying went: Kill the Indian, save the man.

By federal government standards, there's no question that Deschene is Navajo, regardless of language. He is a citizen by blood quantum standards. He was born, raised and lives within the borders of the Navajo Nation. He is a participant in cultural events, from social dances to ceremony.

Deschene is also a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a Marine Corps veteran. He has earned a law degree. Yet his lack of fluency in the Navajo language may disqualify him from becoming the next president of the largest Native nation within the United States. And people like Chee think that's fine.

"How do we approach teaching Navajo language to children so that we can actually produce speakers?" said Chee. "If I support a nonspeaker then I'm saying, 'You're invalid because Navajo language is not needed.' That there's no reason for it. It's not used."

Deschene himself has spoken out about efforts to disqualify him. "These decisions have sent a message to our young saying despite all your accolades, success and everything you've done to help our people, you're not welcome," he said. "It's separating, dividing and isolating ... and the people deserve better."

As of now, Deschene has been officially disqualified as a candidate by Navajo officials after a series of closed-door hearings. However, election officials have refused to remove his name from the ballot, and early voting is already in full swing in the Navajo Nation. A spokesperson for Deschene says it is unlikely the situation will be cleared up before Nov. 4 and that it's unclear what will happen should Deschene win the majority of votes for Navajo Nation president.

"The people get to decide what their standards are," said Deschene. "For me, as an individual, I know I'm a member of the Navajo Nation. I know I'm a member of our people."

In the Silicon Valley arms race to lure the top talent with the best benefits, Facebook and Apple are adding egg freezing for female employees. The two companies may be the first to pay for the procedure for women who choose it to delay child bearing.

The addition of egg freezing to the benefits plan comes as tech companies face mounting pressure to hire more women. And it's a perk that some women may find attractive.

Brigitte Adams started a community forum called Eggsurance, where women can share information about the procedure. Adams paid for the procedure herself. "I froze my eggs at 39," she says, "and there was nothing out there that was specific to egg freezing."

The American Society of Reproductive Medicine only lifted the experimental label from egg freezing two years ago. Adams, a marketing executive at a tech start up, says the addition of coverage for the procedure definitely would give extra weight to a job offer.

Freezing Eggs To Make Babies Later Moves Toward Mainstream

No Longer Experimental, Egg Freezing May Appeal To More Women

"I would equate it to reimbursement for an MBA program," she says, "or adoption assistance, or, you know — it's not the be-all and end-all, but it's definitely a nice perk."

And an expensive one — the benefit covers $20,000 worth of procedures, typically two rounds of egg retrieval. Then again, rich Silicon Valley companies are notorious for high-end benefits that can include gourmet food, dry cleaning, and massages.

Cali Williams Yost, who consults with companies about work/life balance, says covering the cost egg freezing as an elective procedure could help keep some good women employees. (The benefit also is available to employees' spouses.)

"By offering to pay for women to freeze their eggs, I think Silicon Valley is responding to what some of the young, talented women in their workforce want," she says.

But, Williams Yost says enabling female employees in particular to delay having children isn't all that's needed: At some point those workers will have children, and also will need the right benefits then.

"They are going to need the direct supports, the flexibility, the care-giving" she says, "leaves and benefits that actually help them combine work and life. Egg-freezing is a great small piece of a much bigger puzzle."

Facebook told NPR that its offering this benefit because employees were asking for it. In a statement, Apple also said it wanted to make certain its women employees could "do the best work of their lives." Both companies have paid parental leave policies and on-site healthcare. Facebook also subsidizes day care costs.

But Marcy Darnovsky, Executive Director at the Center for Genetics and Society, says that expanding benefits to cover egg freezing could put pressure on women to delay childbearing so that their employer can get more hours out of them. Darnovsky is an advocate for the responsible use of reproductive technologies.

"When you're in a situation of your employer offering you a choice," she says, "you really have to be careful that you're distinguishing between something that's an expanded option and something that's actually subtle or even explicit pressure to do what your employer wants you to do."

But, Darnovsky believes there is also a virtue in egg freezing because it does give women more choices and control over their lives.

Egg freezing is no guarantee of having a child, though. Studies indicate that women who have three rounds of egg retrieval at around $10,000 per round have a slightly more than 30 percent chance of giving birth if they are 25 or younger when the eggs are frozen. The closer women get to forty, the lower the likelihood of success. If women limit themselves to the two rounds of egg retrieval covered by the new benefits, that also will reduce the odds.

Eggsurance forum founder Briggitt Adams froze her eggs when she was 39. She says that she didn't do it for career reasons, but to give herself as many options as she could given the circumstances of her life, and that that's why many women she knows did the procedure.

"We're doing it maybe because our life didn't take the course we expected it to, she says, "and we're older and we want to have children and, hey, there's this new technology that may help us do that."

Adams is currently single and she says freezing her eggs has made it easier for her to look for the right partner without feeling as much pressure from her biological clock.

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