'TBH Politoons'
Thanks, again, Tim!
Baron Dave Romm
How To Write A Letter To The Editor
By Baron Dave Romm
Intro: I wrote this for the Gore/Dayton 2000 Campaign in Minnesota and slighlty rewrote and submitted it to the Democrats recently. Both times it was ignored; one of the reasons I'm not a Democrat. I offer it here edited a little but with orginal the original examples, since you're going to make 'em all local anyway. (Note: Gore won Minnosota, incumbent Sen. Grams lost to Dayton and McCollum won her House seat.)
Say what you mean and mean what you say. Make if from the heart and your passion will come through.
Some resources:
How to Write Letters to the
Editor from the San Diego Libertarian Party.
Tips on writing
effective letters to the editor from the Tools for Activists
section of the environmental group.
Next week: What to say and how to say it. Vocabulary from Newt and talking points from all over.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia with a radio show, a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. He reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E here, and you can hear the last two Shockwave broadcasts in Real Audio here (scroll down to Shockwave). Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air, and I'm collecting extra-weird stuff for a possible CD compilation.
He's Been Busy!
The Worried Shrimp
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Overcast morning, sunny afternoon.
The kid was back to normal (or what passes for normal around here).
Had Fred over for dinner. His birthday was a couple of weeks back, so we even had an 'occasion' to celebrate. Gave him a 'bobble-head Ozzie' - bet it's his first doll!
'Sweeps' end Wednesday night - after that, reruns will rule.
Tonight, Monday, CBS opens the night with the Season Finale 'King Of Queens', followed by the Season Finale
'Yes, Dear', then the Season Finale 'Raymond', followed by the Season Finale 'CSI: Miami'.
NOTE: 'Raymond' runs 45 minutes, so 'CSI: Miami' starts 15 minutes earlier than usual and runs 1 hour: 15 minutes.
Scheduled on a FRESH Dave are Mark Wahlberg, "Monster Garage" host Jesse James, and the Sounds.
Scheduled on a FRESH Craiggers are Alyson Hannigan and Aaron Neville.
NBC starts the night with a FRESH 'Fear Factor' compilation show, followed by the heavily promoted FRESH made-for-TV movie 'Martha Inc.: The Story of Martha Stewart'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Jay are Michael Douglas and Jason Mraz.
On a RERUN Conan is Tom Selleck, Big Show, and Sue Johanson.
On a RERUN Carson Daly are Erika Christensen and Ludacris.
ABC fills the night with 'ABC's 50th Anniversary Celebration'.
Scheduled on a FRESH Jimmy Kimmel are two-time Indy 500 champ Helio Castronueves, with this week's guest co-host Ed McMahon.
The WB offers the Season Finale '7th Heaven', followed by the Season Finale 'Everwood'.
Faux has a FRESH 'American Idol', followed by the Season Finale of 'Mr. Personality'.
UPN offers the Season Finale of 'The Parkers', followed by the Season Finale of 'One On One', then Season Finale of 'Girlfriends'.
Anyone have any opinions?
Or reviews?
(See below for addresses)
Tougaloo College President Beverly Hogan, left, and the school's board chairman LeRoy Walker, Jr., watch former President Clinton as is he hugged by a student after she received her degree at the historically black college in Jackson, Miss., Sunday, May 18, 2003. Clinton, who was also awarded an honorary degree, delivered the school's commencement address.
Photo by Rogelio Solis
Targeted For Views
Danny Glover
"Lethal Weapon" actor Danny Glover is the latest celebrity facing an icy brand of national pride that puts the pinch on public figures who question American foreign policy.
A threatened boycott seeks to force telecommunications company MCI to dump Glover as its pitchman because of views he expressed about Cuba and against the Iraq war.
Similar frostiness extended to the Dixie Chicks, and actors Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon when they came out against war in Iraq. Glover said this chill comes from right-wing factions that he denounced as self-appointed thought police.
"It's basically this rabid nationalism that has its own kind of potential of being maniacal, in some sense. As we march down and wave the flags, we must be sure of what we're waving them for," Glover said in an interview.
"The whole idea is to crush any kind of dissent," he said. "Something is happening now that is very dark and very sinister in this country, and for us to not admit it is happening is, in some ways, for us to be blind."
There is so much concern about this in Hollywood that in March — before the fighting even began — the Screen Actors Guild issued a statement warning studio executives not to deny work to entertainers who speak against war in Iraq.
"Even a hint of the blacklist must never again be tolerated in this nation," the union said.
For more, Danny Glover
The Information One-Stop
Moose & Squirrel
Passionate About Tennis
Condi Rice
Top British tennis player Tim Henman has accepted an invitation to play US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice when he visits Washington for a tournament in July, a London newspaper reported.
Rice, said to be passionate about tennis, will hit a few balls with Henman when he visits Washington for the Legg Mason Classic, a tournament on the men's professional tour, according to The Sunday Times.
Henman's agent, quoted in the weekly, said the player had "agreed to play" Rice.
The security adviser was a frequent doubles partner of Britain's former ambassador to the United States, Christopher Meyer, during games played out on the embassy tennis court prior to his return to London in March.
Condi Rice
Lisa Marie Presley sings onstage at the Wango Tango music festival Saturday, May 17, 2003, at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.
Photo by Damian Dovarganes
'One In Eight' - Over 100 Leave
Rick Santorum
About one in every eight graduates walked out of Sunday's commencement at Saint Joseph's University before the keynote address by Sen. Rick Santorum, who recently infuriated gay groups and others with derogatory remarks about homosexual behavior.
Santorum, the Senate's third-ranking Republican, didn't mention the walkout or the controversy directly.
Students were offered an opportunity to leave before Santorum was introduced to receive an honorary degree and make his speech, and about 100 graduates walked out amid competing boos and applause.
Some students had urged the Jesuit university to rescind Santorum's invitation after he likened gay behavior to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery in an April 7 interview with The Associated Press. He later said he intended the remarks as a legal analysis and didn't intend to comment on individual lifestyles.
Rick Santorum
'Handful' Leaves
Phil Donahue
Liberal talk show pioneer Phil Donahue drew both catcalls and cheers with a politically tinged commencement address at North Carolina State University.
A handful of the nearly 4,000 new N.C. State graduates walked out of the ceremony Saturday at the RBC Center when Donahue began listing "what liberals believe."
Donahue, 67, whose most recent talk show on MSNBC was canceled in February after six months, said constitutional rights and privileges have been eroded.
"What liberals believe, he said, "is that no one in authority should tell you to 'shush;' that executing retarded teenagers is wrong, and that unions give workers a deserved place at the bargaining table."
Donahue was invited to speak in part because he and a North Carolina State professor both attended the University of Notre Dame. He got loud applause by noting North Carolina State beat Notre Dame in this year's Gator Bowl.
"I came looking for liberals," he said, "and here at N.C. State I found friends."
Phil Donahue
In The Kitchen With BartCop & Friends
Fans Gather For Festivities
Bing Crosby
Fans of Bing Crosby from around the world were drawn to a weekend Bing Bash celebrating the late star's centennial, but his biggest group of overseas fans appears to have come from Britain.
"Right from his earliest recordings with the Rhythm Boys (late 1920s) he received enthusiastic reviews here," Malcolm Macfarlane, the editor of BING, the magazine of the International Crosby Circle, said last week from his home in Wilmslow, Cheshire. "His frequent visits to our shores cemented this popularity."
Of 320 preregistered attendees for the weekend celebration on the campus of his alma mater, Gonzaga University, at least a dozen hailed from the United Kingdom.
Bing's grandson, Steven Crosby of Seattle, has another theory.
"He had a very quick sense of humor, a dry sense of humor," he said. "The British are that way, too."
Bing Crosby
International Crosby Circle
Gonzaga University
An Indian farmer inspects his sunflower crop at a field on the outskirts of the northern Indian city of Chandigarh, May 17, 2003. Indian farmers have been encouraged by the Indian government to grow alternative crops such as sunflowers, which are used for their oil, since the country sometimes experiences overproduction of wheat and rice.
Photo by Ajay Verma
Given Navy's Highest Honor
Nancy Reagan
Former first lady Nancy Reagan was presented with the Navy's highest civilian honor Saturday during an Armed Forces Day ceremony attended by sailors who will crew a new aircraft carrier named for her husband.
Acting Navy Secretary Hansford T. Johnson presented Mrs. Reagan with the Distinguished Public Service Award. A citation recognized her "poise and bearing" in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Fifteen sailors and three Marines witnessed the presentation in a garden at the Bel-Air Hotel, less than a mile from the Reagan home.
The 1,092-foot USS Ronald Reagan completed builder's sea trials earlier this month and will be commissioned July 12 in Norfolk, Va., during ceremonies expected to be attended by Vice President Dick Cheney and Mrs. Reagan, who christened the ship in March 2001.
Nancy Reagan
First Concert Since SARS
Singapore
Australian rock group INXS was gearing up for a gig in Singapore on Sunday, set to become the first international musical act to perform here since an outbreak of SARS.
More than 25 performers, including Santana, Mariah Carey, Moby, Dionne Warwick and David Gray, canceled Singapore legs of their tours after the disease was first detected here in March.
While WHO did not issue a travel warning for Singapore, the city-state's tourism industry has been hard hit with arrivals down by 60 percent year on year since the outbreak.
INXS will also be playing at next month's World Peace Music Awards in Bali. Among the other entertainers at that concert are Japanese underground rock group Love Psychedelico — with the Police's Stewart Copeland on drums — reggae artist Maxi Priest, Taiwan's Jay Chou and Egyptian folk singer Hakim.
Singapore
INXS
World Peace Music Awards
World Health Organization
Singapore SARS Web site
Formerly 'The Vidiot'
Unveils Massive New Work
Antony Gormley
A ghostly crowd of steel statues forms the center-piece of a new exhibition featuring the work of Antony Gormley, one of Britain's best-known contemporary sculptors.
The 240 life-size sculptures, formed from plaster casts of an army of volunteer models, occupy an entire floor of Gateshead's one-year-old Baltic gallery, where the exhibition opened to the public Saturday.
Each sculpture in Domain Field is built from scores of short stainless-steel struts welded into the shape of one of the 240 volunteers, most from Gateshead and neighboring Newcastle, whose bodies were encased in plaster to create molds.
Looking at the hall full of figures from a viewing gallery, it looks as if a magnet has drawn thousands of giant iron-filings into human form. Closer up, the statues turn into shining metal thornbushes precariously balanced on bird-like feet.
Antony Gormley
Sir Edmund Hillary and Tashi Tenzing, the son of Hillary's climbing companion Tenzing Norgay, Sherpa
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Pleads No Contest
Adam Rich
Adam Rich, who played the youngest son on the television series "Eight Is Enough," was placed on three years probation after pleading no contest to misdemeanor charges of driving under the influence and being under the influence of a controlled substance.
A Superior Court judge on Friday also ordered Rich to take part in a 60-day treatment program and pay about $1,200 in fines, said his lawyer, Stephen Sitkoff.
Rich, 34, already is involved in the program, he said.
Rich, who has been in rehabilitation programs in the past, allegedly had cocaine and drugs in his system when he was arrested Dec. 18. His car was pulled over after California Highway Patrol officers said he drove onto a closed section of Interstate 10 and nearly struck a patrol car.
Adam Rich
Les Miz Closing After 16 Years
'Les Miserables'
Cameron Mackintosh will bid "adieu" Sunday to his Broadway production of "Les Miserables," but the British producer says the imminent departure of a musical fondly known as "The Glums" has not got him down.
In the 16 years since "Les Miz" opened in March 1987 at the Broadway Theater, transferring in 1990 to its current home at the Imperial, the New York production has grossed more than $400 million. (That figure includes its two-month pre-Broadway tryout at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.)
It paid back its $4.5 million production costs in 33 weeks between Washington and New York, where the top ticket price has more than doubled — from $47.50 in 1987 to $100 today.
Mackintosh has presided over four of the most successful international musicals of all time, starting with composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Cats" and on to "Les Miz," "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Miss Saigon." But with only "Phantom" still enjoying an open-ended Broadway run, the producer said the decision to close "Les Miz" was a matter of timing.
For more, 'Les Miserables'
A Vietnamese man releases pigeons at a contest at Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi on Sunday, May 18, 2003. The pigeon formation-flying contest brought as many as 400 groups flying as many as 4,000 birds from provinces around Hanoi in celebration of former Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh's birthday who died in 1969.
Photo by Richard Vogel
'Ark of Darkness'
"The Ark of Darkness", a Political/Science-Fiction work, in tidy, weekly installments (and updated every Friday).
'The Osbournes'
Freshly updated - 'The Osbournes' ~ Page 4
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 3
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 2
'The Osbournes' ~ Page 1
