By Sheila
Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
Fair and balanced, too!
July 15, 2005, 6:26 p.m.-- Last
week's weblog
Garden blogs: Two more for the Garden
Blogs list, one in the desert, one in Canada.
Sabine's
Garden, in British Columbia, is a treat -- large photos and an authentic
voice. Her hollyhocks have rust --
a nasty and all-too common disease among these old-fashioned cottage-garden
favorites -- but she's made some hollyhock dolls anyway.
As I was chopping down the hollyhocks I noticed that the honeysuckle next
to it has developed yellow leaves and black spots again. Now I remember why
I usually give up on gardening around this time of year!
...Early this spring I was searching for information about powdery mildew.
It attacks my veronica and bee balm every year. I discovered an unusual organic
treatment - diluted
milk. Some gardeners claim that this solution is effective for preventing
black spot on roses, too. I think it's worth a try on my honeysuckle.
In Texas, a pastor's wife blogs The
Desert Garden. This sounds tough:
We lost our earliest tomatoes and that is what spurred me on toward building
my first raised bed. Here is what we did...
First we bought some lumber 6ft. by 12 inches in size. We picked up four
of them. Then we build a frame. See below...
...We are going to start with a Mexican garden. We will plant tomatoes,
peppers, zucchini and yellow squash and some herbs such as cilantro and hot
peppers for seasoning....
...It is so very hot this time of year with temperatures in the 100s now
for more than 25 days. We must keep water going but have to make sure we
are following drought regulations as we do so. Much of my watering is with
buckets of water or a watering can. The grass is the only things that gets
a sprinkler every other day or so. Desert gardening is a challenge but one
I am up to. I will beat this climate and have a wonderful garden if it KILLS
me!
I couldn't live there, never mind dig there. Hats off to you, lady.
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Weekend game: Remember the yeti games? We're up to
number nine in the series. Spit
at the penguins, only the penguins.
Mindless fun.
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Healthy recipes: At The
World's Healthiest Foods, a non-profit, "Over
100 Quick and Easy Recipes."
Link
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Updated 11:01 Friday to include former space reporter Lou Josephs' latest
shuttle news. For just the top of it, scroll down below or go to the
permalink. More later, of course.
July 14, 2005, 7:41 p.m.-- Last
week's weblog
10 years after: Remembering
Netscape: The Birth of the Web. "For the tenth anniversary of its
IPO, FORTUNE recruited dozens of players to tell, in their own words, the
story of the startup brought us into the Internet era."
It's the business story, which is probably less interesting than a Wired story
would be (there, we'd get the gonzo parts). Still, a long oral history with
gems every few paragraphs.
Compare this,
(Jim) Barksdale: In December we went skiing in Aspen. My children
were all there, and I had my laptop with my dial-up connection at the house,
and I brought up the Mosaic browser. And I said, "Let me show you this
thing." They were pretty intrigued by it. They were computer literate.
I said, "Ask me a question." So my daughter Susan asked about some
law case that she was studying, and I pulled it right up. My daughter Betsy
asked if I could find a third-grade lesson plan, and I told her there were
only four billion of them, even back then. My son David, who was a big fan
of the Grateful Dead, wanted to know when they were going to be in New Orleans.
And I pulled that up. They were all dumbfounded. It was that easy to find
things. ...
to this,
As all this is going on, Microsoft is scratching its head. Sam Jadallah
has just signed on as an aide to Steve Ballmer, the software giant's head
of sales (and future CEO).
Sam Jadallah: There was definitely a buzz at Microsoft about the
Internet—we were trying to understand why everybody was getting all
hyped up. Certainly for us up in the Northwest, we didn't know what to make
of it. It seemed pretty cool, pretty exciting, but really what were you going
to do with it? How was it going to change your day-to-day work?
Prefer a shorter version? ibiblio and wikipedia can
take you there.
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Surf
and Turf 2: Another wonderful Photoshopping contest from Worth
1000. This one: Create
a Land/Sea creature hybrid.
Leading: A cross between an elephant and an octopus.
Link
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Updated 11:01 Friday: Shuttle flies Monday Sunday,
Tuesday or September,
Lou's sources say: Unless,
of course....
Lou Josephs (Medianetwork),
former radio guy, award-winning space journalist (AP, Greater Orlando Press
Club), and more, is space-blogging:
...Tuesday is the day that if the shuttle doesn't launch they'll take
a day off to give the crews at the Cape a rest, as they are working thru
the weekend.
The smart money is betting on a return to the barn (VAB) to fix this issue,
that means a launch in September. Because NASA like France is closed in August,
it has to do with the mechanics of space flight. You can only get to the
space station during August with a night launch and they don't want to
do that. A
lot of reporters have booked flights out for Saturday or Sunday (oops I told)
Your windows if does go: Sunday 2:14 pm EDT closes at 2:18 PM for Monday
the window is 1:51 pm and Tuesdays window is 1:26 pm EDT, better weather
with an
earlier window....
He's
got links you
won't find elsewhere. Scroll down at the link..
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On
the road again: A nice Times story (For
Surfers, a Roving Hot Spot That Shares) about a product called Junxion
Box that "uses a cellular modem card from a wireless phone carrier
to create a Wi-Fi hot spot that lets dozens of people connect to the Internet."
Among its fans is Willie
Nelson. Among its critics are the wireless providers:
"The premise is one person buys an air card and one person uses the
service, not an entire neighborhood," said Jeffrey Nelson, executive
director for corporate communications at Verizon Wireless. "Giving things
away for free doesn't work anymore. It never did."
Unlimited service on cellular modem cards for PC's costs about $80 a month.
But
a happy medium may be reached:
"That's just something they have got to live with because that's the
technology now," said David Anderson, Willie Nelson's tour manager of
31 years. "Most people wouldn't or couldn't afford to have that many
cards. They weren't going to get 22 customers, but now they got 6."
There are two Junxion Boxes in each of the two tour buses and each has three
wireless modem cards so they can switch to the cellular provider network
with the best local coverage. It allows Mr. Nelson, whom Mr. Anderson describes
as a computer geek, to check his e-mail and surf the Web while on the road.
"The Junxion Box is good for going down the highway," Mr. Anderson
said from Hillsboro, Tex., where Mr. Nelson was performing earlier this month. "It
was frustrating in the older days. It's finally the way it should be."
Link
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Inalienable right to profit? In a similar vein, Wired
reports (Credit
Chief Slams Free Reports),
Equifax's chief executive says he opposes federal legislation that lets
consumers obtain a free copy of their credit report to help them monitor
financial accounts for fraudulent activity.
CEO Thomas Chapman called the legislation unconstitutional and un-American
because it cuts into profits that Equifax and two rival credit reporting
agencies -- Experian and TransUnion -- earn from selling credit reports and
monitoring services. Equifax maintains credit data on 220 million Americans.
The company earned $1.27 billion in revenue last year....
"Our company felt, and still does ... that it's unconstitutional to
cause a public company who has a fiduciary responsibility to return profit
to shareholders to give away the product," Chapman said to reporters
following a speech at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco
on Monday. "Most of my shareholder group did not think that giving away
our product was the American way."...
Is it more "American" to make someone pay Equifax to find out why
Equifax's product has lenders slamming doors in their face?
I originally missed this two-week-old story, but ran into it last night on Rebecca
Blood's blog.
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Plot
devices: 40
Things That Only Happen In Movies, at Nostalgia
Central. Such as,
17. If you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts, your
opponents will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around you
in a threatening manner until you have defeated their predecessor.17. If you
are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts, your opponents will
wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around you in a threatening
manner until you have defeated their predecessor.
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Security update: Firefox update squashes
security bugs. No attacks target these bugs, but the Mozilla Foundation offers
a bug
bounty -- $500 and a T-shirt -- for those who find critical flaws. (One
man found five, and collected.)
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Links:
Global
Fund for Women Weblog
Building
in Iceland? Better Clear It With the Elves First
Eating-disorder
expert caught sniffing whipped cream cans. Sometimes life gets way too
weird.
July 13, 2005, 7:05 p.m.-- Last
week's weblog
Oldies but goodies? At Earvolution, Twenty
Most Underrated Rock Albums
These lists are always a good browse. I didn't know Jimmy Cliff's The Harder
They Come or The Traveling Wilburys were underrated -- they got
played a lot around my house -- but that's what makes these compilations
emotionally interactive.
You might discover some music that you simply missed, as I did with this one:
Dread Zeppelin: Un - Led - Ed (1990)
As
the name would imply, Dread Zeppelin was a band that played nothing but reggae
versions of Led Zeppelin songs. Interesting concept, eh? Oh yes, their lead
singer was an Elvis impersonator named Tortelvis. Long before studio technicians
were mashing up songs, Dread Zeppelin was mashing up genres in an acid fueled
blender with tongue firmly in musical cheek. However, the joke carries through
the entire album – and carries well. In the past decade there have
been reggae homages to Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead, but none show the
same reverence for their subject as Dread Zeppelin. From the introductory
Black Dog, which includes a nice segue into Hound Dog, through a version
of Your Time Is Gonna Come that stands comparison to the original to the
closing drum beat of Moby Dick, the album stands on its own as a "reggae" classic
and not as a one-off joke. Given the bizarre concept, Un-Led-Ed is an easy
album to overlook and underrate.
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Planarity
Flash Game: Imagine a wire toy. You've been instructed to flatten
it, or, as the game instructs, "Arrange the vertices such that no
edges overlap."
It's easier if you try to hold a 3-D image of the wire toy, and drag the vertices
intuitively. (Let your hand do it without too much brain meddling.)
It's starts off easy enough. That's a screenshot of Level 1 at right.
Day 3: Transcript
of today's White House press conference at which press secretary Scott
McClellan offered more like this: "And let me just say again that anything
relating to an ongoing investigation, I'm not going to get into discussing.
I've said that the past couple of days."
I'm having better luck streaming these at whitehouse.gov than
at C-Span.
The
Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night, using clips of past statements
by Rove, McClellan and Bush, brilliantly brought up to speed anyone who just
got here. The montage of McClellan saying "ongoing investigation" seemed
endless. Watch
it here.
Over at (Brown PhD) Josh
Marshall's Talking
Points Memo Cafe, Larry Johnson, a former CIA agent who was in Valerie
Plame's "class" at the CIA, writes about her history (The
Big Lie About Valerie Plame), including,
...Valerie Plame was a classmate of mine from the day she started with the
CIA. I entered on duty at the CIA in September 1985. All of my classmates
were undercover--in other words, we told our family and friends that we were
working for other overt U.S. Government agencies. We had official cover.
That means we had a black passport--i.e., a diplomatic passport. If we were
caught overseas engaged in espionage activity the black passport was a get
out of jail free card.
A few of my classmates, and Valerie was one of these, became a non-official
cover officer. That meant she agreed to operate overseas without the protection
of a diplomatic passport. If caught in that status she would have been executed.
The lies by people like Victoria Toensing, Representative Peter King, and
P. J. O'Rourke insist that Valerie was nothing, just a desk jockey. Yet,
until Robert Novak betrayed her she was still undercover and the company
that was her front was still a secret to the world. When Novak outed Valerie
he also compromised her company and every individual overseas who had been
in contact with that company and with her....
Finally, does anyone recall why George H.W. Bush, the current President's
father, fired Karl Rove from his campaign in 1992? The L.A. Times rcounts
(Uproar
Has Roots in Rove's Vast Reach),
...(Rove and George W. Bush) came together during young adulthood, when
an ambitious former Texas congressman, George H.W. Bush, held the job of
chairman of the Republican National Committee. It fell to the elder Bush
to investigate allegations that Rove had used dirty tricks in a campaign
for president of the College Republicans. The RNC chairman eventually cleared
Rove, and was so impressed by the young operative that he hired him as an
assistant.
Although Rove was an advisor ostensibly working behind the scenes, his name
continued to be associated with public controversy. During George H.W. Bush's
second presidential campaign, Rove was fired from the campaign team because
of suspicions that he had leaked information to columnist Robert Novak — the
same columnist who first reported Plame's CIA role in 2003, citing anonymous
administration sources.
At the time, Bush's campaign was in trouble, and there was concern that
the president might not even win his home state of Texas. The Novak column
described a Dallas meeting in which the campaign's state manager, Robert
Mosbacher, was stripped of his authority because the Texas effort was viewed
as a bust.
Mosbacher complained, expressing his suspicion that Rove was the leaker.
Rove denied the charge, but was fired nevertheless....
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Daily set up: The Daily Show moved to a larger studio
with a new set. Dana Stevens at Slate doesn't like it (Talk
Show Feng Shui).
When
Stewart and indie journalist Matt
Taibbi chatted last night, giant letters spelling "The Daily Show" paraded
between their two stationary heads. I found it distracting and irritating.
Of course we watch motion. I had to deliberately ignore the scrolling letters
to concentrate on the humans. Like bad Flash, it detracts from substance.
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Luskin update: My colleague Dave Reid just emailed with the news that Robert
Luskin, Karl Rove's lawyer (see item below), was a Journal reporter in the
'70s.
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Simple,
elegant poaching: How
to poach an egg. Egg lover Rob Manuel.tests recommended methods of poaching
an egg. I've never tried the winning method, but the result even looks like
a winner. It involves plastic wrap, called "clingfilm" here because
the egg lover is British, as is the site, b3ta.com.
(No, that's not a typo, it's a cutesy "e.")
Props to the nice headline font, on the right there.
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July 12, 2005, 7:54 p.m.-- Last
week's weblog
Local
note: Rove's lawyer. Robert Luskin, who's become prominent as Karl Rove's
lawyer in the Plame leak news of recent days, also worked on Stephen A. Saccoccia's
appeal of his conviction for laundering
millions
of
dollars in drug money
for Colombian cocaine lords.
In a Providence Journal story published August 12, 1999 headlined "Prosecutors
look to pry convict's fees from lawyers," reporter Karen Lee Ziner wrote,
PROVIDENCE -- Former Cranston precious-metals dealer Stephen A. Saccoccia,
convicted in 1993 of money-laundering for Colombian drug dealers, paid five
of his lawyers handsomely: nearly $2 million all told.
But those fees were paid in a most clandestine manner: in gold bars delivered
anonymously to the lawyers' offices. In boxes of cash left in the trunks
of airport rental cars. In cash-stuffed envelopes delivered by couriers who
refused to identify themselves. In Swiss wire transfers.
Now the government wants that money.
A federal prosecutor argued yesterday that those fees were actually some
of Saccoccia's tainted spoils from his money-laundering enterprise, and therefore
represent "forfeitable criminal assets."
Through "the secretiveness in which they were delivered," there
was "at least probable cause to believe they were part of the [criminal]
enterprise" for which Saccoccia is now serving a 660-year federal prison
term, Asst. U.S. Attorney Michael P. Iannotti said in U.S. District Court.
Iannotti also argued that "the wire transfers, the gold bars" and
the large sums of cash "are the modus operandi" of money-laundering.
"There was a protective order in effect" since the Saccoccias'
indictment in 1991, Iannotti said, "and these attorneys were all well
aware that virtually all of Saccoccia's assets were subject to forfeiture."
...In May 1998, Robert Luskin, of Washington, D.C., reached a settlement
agreement to turn over $245,000 of the $750,000 in fees he said he'd received
from Saccoccia.
Other bits from our archives:
-- Luskin had testified he received $504,000 in gold bars.
--The Saccoccias were ordered to forfeit the amount they were accused of
laundering for Colombian drug lords - $136,344,231 - after separate hearings
before U.S. District Judge Ernest C. Torres.
-- Luskin was a speechwriter for Geraldine Ferraro's 1984 vice presidential
campaign.
Update: My colleague Dave Reid just emailed with the news that Robert
Luskin, Karl Rove's lawyer (see item below), was a Journal reporter in the
'70s.
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Paid obit with pizzazz: Dorothy Gibson Cully Of Raleigh,
N.C., left an heir with a wicked sense of humor. Her obit includes colorful
descriptions of other relatives, and ends, "Contributions to the Wake
County (NC) Hospice Services are welcomed. Opinions about the details of this
obit are not, since Mom would have liked it this way."
I'm not going to spoil it for you -- read
the whole thing.
via Romenesko,
where it appeared because,
An ad manager says: "Upon reading that obituary, we should not have
published some of its content." Ombud Ted Vaden's response: "That
would be a shame. It was a hoot."
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Think tank alert: Britt
Blaser offers something
worth chewing on. Here's a bit to get started with:
...we Americans admire the terrorism problem too much as a mass entertainment
to wean ourselves off that particular drug.
"C'mon, Blaser," you might exclaim, "Admire the problem?!
Now you've gone too far! Words like that are treasonous and do real harm
to our troops!"
But "Admire the problem" is not my phrase. It's offered by Lieutenant
General Wallace Gregson (3 stars), Commander of Marine forces in the Pacific,
in a speech delivered at the Naval War College....
via Doc Searls.
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The jukebox in your head: There's a fascinating story
in the Times today (Neuron
Network Goes Awry, and Brain Becomes an IPod) about musical hallucinations.
It begins,
Seven years ago Reginald King was lying in a hospital bed recovering from
bypass surgery when he first heard the music.
It began with a pop tune, and others followed. Mr. King heard everything
from cabaret songs to Christmas carols. "I asked the nurses if they
could hear the music, and they said no," said Mr. King, a retired sales
manager in Cardiff, Wales.
"I got so frustrated," he said. "They didn't know what I
was talking about and said it must be something wrong with my head. And it's
been like that ever since."
Each day, the music returns. "They're all songs I've heard during my
lifetime," said Mr. King, 83. "One would come on, and then it would
run into another one, and that's how it goes on in my head. It's driving
me bonkers, to be quite honest."...
Hell could be an endless loop of Freebird.
Link
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Protecting the horse and buggy, again: Pulling
the Plug on Local Internet: Guess who wants to stop you from getting universal,
citywide wireless cheaper than you get it now? Steven Levy in Newsweek
(short and d worth a read):
...The likes of Verizon, SBC and Comcast are lobbying hard and donating
big. They argue that taxpayer-funded competition makes the marketplace unfair
(ironic, since those firms owe their dominance to government-granted monopolies).
Then they claim that cities are too unsophisticated to pull off such projects
(so why are they worried?). They fund think tanks that churn out white papers
with titles like "Municipal Networks: The Wrong Solution." And
they are racking up successes—14 states so far have passed laws that
constrain localities in muni Wi-Fi efforts. In Pennsylvania, only a grass-roots
protest from Philadelphians forced the legislature to exempt the city from
its bill—but elsewhere in the state, cities and towns can't proceed
on plans unless they offer the deal first to the phone companies, which can
stall for years before deciding....
If you think affordable, universal low-cost computer access might be a good
thing, Levy urges you to urge your Senators to support the Community
Broadband Act, which stops states from banning muni Wi-Fi.
Sens. John McCain and Frank Lautenberg introduced the bill in response to
the Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act (H.R. 2726) introduced in May by Pete
Sessions, (R-Texas). That
bill would "prohibit municipal governments from offering telecommunications,
information, or cable services except to remedy market failures by private
enterprise to provide such services."
The Dallas Morning News last month reported (Sessions'
Web bill panders to corporate friends, group says),
Mr. Sessions spent 16 years as an executive for SBC and its predecessor,
Southwestern Bell, and the $75,000 he's gotten from the company makes it
his third-biggest donor, campaign records show.
His wife, Juanita, works for SBC Internet Services. Mr. Sessions' annual
financial disclosure forms show that his wife's SBC stock options exceeded
$1 million five years ago, when the stock was trading at $48 – roughly
twice its current price.
This is a no-brainer. Free and low-cost Internet access is a very good idea.
Banning it is not.
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Classic movie fans: Directors
reveal their top 10 films
Google Maps Mania: An unofficial
Google Maps blog tracking the websites, ideas and tools being influenced
by Google
Maps.
Before you run off to the join the circus, learn the language: Carny
Lingo
Email of the day: In its entirety,
Subject: dear sheila: you're very good and a cut above most ProJo
staffers (exclude Kerr and Billy Reynolds)
Thanks, and I've forwarded the compliment to Bob Kerr and Bill Reynolds.
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3:49 p.m
McClellan
vs. Press Corps on Rove, Tuesday Edition. At E&P.
Full text
More later.
July 11, 2005, 7:52 p.m.
White
House press corps wakes up: Editor & Publisher has
the story (Press
Batters McClellan on Rove/Plame Link) and a rush transcript of today's
press briefing (AP photo above) with White House press secretary Scott
McClellan about the role of deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove,
at right, (AP again) in leaking the identity of a CIA agent.
At numerous press briefings last week, not a single reporter asked White
House Press Secretary about emerging allegations that top presidential aide
Karl Rove was a source, or the source, for Time magazine's Matthew Cooper
in the Valerie Plame case. On Sunday, Newsweek revealed a Cooper e-mail from
July 2003 that showed that Rove indeed had talked to him about Plame and
her CIA employment, although he apparently did not mention that she worked
under cover.
This development apparently freed the journalists to hit McClellan hard
at this afternoon's briefing. Here is a partial rush transcript.
And here's a chunk of that transcript.
...Q: Do you stand by your statement from the fall of 2003, when you were
asked specifically about Karl and Elliot Abrams and Scooter Libby, and you
said, "I've gone to each of those gentlemen, and they have told me they
are not involved in this"?
MCCLELLAN: And if you will recall, I said that, as part of helping the investigators
move forward on the investigation, we're not going to get into commenting
on it. That was something I stated back near that time as well.
Q: Scott, this is ridiculous. The notion that you're going to stand before
us, after having commented with that level of detail, and tell people watching
this that somehow you've decided not to talk. You've got a public record
out there. Do you stand by your remarks from that podium or not?
MCCLELLAN: I'm well aware, like you, of what was previously said. And I
will be glad to talk about it at the appropriate time. The appropriate time
is when the investigation...
Q: (inaudible) when it's appropriate and when it's inappropriate?
MCCLELLAN: If you'll let me finish.
Q: No, you're not finishing. You're not saying anything.
You stood at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And now
we find out that he spoke about Joseph Wilson's wife. So don't you owe
the American public a fuller explanation. Was he involved or was he not?
Because contrary to what you told the American people, he did indeed talk
about his wife, didn't he?
MCCLELLAN: There will be a time to talk about this, but now is not the time
to talk about it....
Q: So you're now saying that after you cleared Rove and the others from
that podium, then the prosecutors asked you not to speak anymore and since
then you haven't.
MCCLELLAN: Again, you're continuing to ask questions relating to an ongoing
criminal investigation and I'm just not going to respond to them.
Q: When did they ask you to stop commenting on it, Scott? Can you pin down
a date?
MCCLELLAN: Back in that time period.
Q: Well, then the president commented on it nine months later. So was he
not following the White House plan?
MCCLELLAN: I appreciate your questions. You can keep asking them, but you
have my response.
Q: Well, we are going to keep asking them. When did the president learn
that Karl Rove had had a conversation with a news reporter about the involvement
of Joseph Wilson's wife in the decision to send him to Africa?
MCCLELLAN: I've responded to the questions.
Q: When did the president learn that Karl Rove had been...
MCCLELLAN: I've responded to your questions....
You have to imagine the McClellan is thinking, "Please, let this just
be over."
(Full
transcript is now at this Washington Post link and on the White
House press briefings site. Here's a C-Span link
to video of this morning's press briefing in RealPlayer format.)
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In a nutshell: From a Reuters story today (Blogs
seen as powerful new tool in U.S. court fight), this paragraph neatly
lines up how blogs will fit in the media storm around the nomination of a
new Supreme Court justice:
Steve Clemons, who publishes a political blog (http:/www.thewashingtonnote.com),
says that once Bush names someone "you are going to see the blogs go
crazy" digging up information and in many cases "outrunning" mainstream
media.
Not all blogs are created equal. Many will become "ideological echo
chambers" that people read to reaffirm their beliefs, Clemons said.
Others will fuel passions on both the right and the left sides of the political
spectrum. A few will rise above the pack and become sources of information
and not just an advocacy forum.
Choose your lane.
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Bigtime: Changes
at The Daily Show: From TV
Squad ("Blogging television"):
The
Daily Show (with
Jon Stewart) has moved from its studio at 54th Street and 10th
Avenue to a bigger studio on 52nd Street near 11th Avenue ...The studio
is the old Food Network studio, and when the show comes back on July 11 (tonight!),
Stewart's couch will be gone and the studio changed a bit. Stewart will
have big TV screens behind him and now the guest will have their own giant
desk to sit at too.
We saw him when, in that tiny studio with seats for an audience of 100. Wonder
if he'll have a bigger audience tonight, like Leno and Letterman?
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Vacation over: One of it highlights was a concert by Bolivian band Los
Kjarkas (the J is silent), pictured above, at the Columbus Theatre, a
birthday gift from my husband. The name of the band, which has performed
a wide variety of Andean music since 1965, was translated for us as "jumping
in rhythm," i.e., at the same time, which this spirited sextet sometimes
does.
This is one of a series of performances sponsored here and in Boston by www.LatinConcerts.com.
After we left a message on their voicemail that we wanted tickets, as a birthday
gift, they were delivered to our house -- second-row seats in honor of the
occasion..
The
heartthrob of Los Kjarkas is Japanese-born charango player
Makoto Shishido, who joined the group in 2002. He's a cross between Iron Chef,
Elvis and onetime Saturday Night Live guitarist G.E. Smith. At the end
of the evening, women were climbing on stage to kiss him until the bouncers
got stern.
The
Google translation of Shishido's
Spanish bio page is unintentionally hilarious. He lists among his favorite
foods Pique Macho, a Bolivian dish of beef and sausage with onions and potatoes.
(Here's a
recipe). Google translates Pique Macho as "Male Resentment." As
his favorite artist, he names Elmer Hermosa, vocalist and one of the three
Hermosas who founded Los Kjarkas; Google calls him "Beautiful Elmer."
The entire performance was in Spanish, most of the audience were Hispanic,
I didn't understand a word of it, but we had a great time.
More: Music from
the Andes. Lots of music collected here as a labor of love.
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Other memorable vacation moments included
-- sitting on the screen porch watching and listening to rain on its canvas
roof, while watching the sun hit the tomato plants or reading a mystery novel
at 3 a.m. (It rained a lot last week.)
-- miniature golf with the youngest of our clan, 8-year-old Dylan.
-- Tom Yam soup (lemony clear soup with chicken) at Galaxie in North Providence.
-- the moon rising over Stepping
Stone Ranch near the end of this weekend's Jah
Love reggae festival (which my daughter helped to produce). When she
was 6, I handled publicity for the original Cajun-Bluegrass festival, held
at the same spot. I still think Stepping Stone is the best outdoor concert
venue in the state. It has shade.
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Birthday story: After I blogged about thinking as
a child that the fireworks were celebrating my July 3 birthday, reader Bill
Marsland wrote,
Mine is the 4th of July and like you, I always thought all the hoopla was
for me.
My fondest memories are of birthdays in the late 50's and early 60's, pre-pollution
days. My aunt had a house at Gaspee Point, Warwick at the end of the point.
The beach was across the street, down a flight of stairs (this was just post-
hurricane Carol). We would all get together on the "night before" (or
as you would call it, your birthday). Barnfires were built along the shore
about every couple of hundred yards and lit before dusk so that they would
be roaring by nine. Way back then, there were still amusement parks (Rocky
Point and Crescent Park) and they both had giant firework displays. From
my aunt's beach, you could look across the bay at Crescent Park and then
look to the right for Rocky Point's. Sparklers and salutes were everywhere.
And punks, not the kind that would mug you in an alley, the slow burning
things on a stick (not really sure what they were made of).
Wow, thanks for reminding me to look back at my memories.
Thanks for telling them, Bill. I miss Rocky Point, too. An outing there was
always a part of summer.
I had forgotten about the "punks" until my brother reminded me of
the "snake things" that burned and wiggled. They were used to light
fireworks without having to get too close to them.
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Headline links:
World Report
On The Culture Of Peace: Likely to get lost without some amplification,
the surprising news that peace is
gaining in
the world.
This Is Broken: "A
project to make businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how
to fix it by Mark
Hurst"
Podcasting
Is Still Not Quite Ready For the Masses: Walter Mossberg in the WSJ.
Why
Do You Work So Hard? / Is it maybe time to quit your safe job and follow
your path and infuriate the establishment? Mark Morford at SFGate.
Live8 video
downloads: Individual songs.
July 7, 2005, 1:50 p.m
Reports from the Web on the London bombings: Projo.com's Sheila Lennon is
on vacation this week, but she's never far from a computer. After the terror
blasts struck London today, she compiled these
links of reports, photos and Web traffic, and sent them in for us to share...
BBC:
London explosions
Guardian UK (has newsblog, eyewitness
accounts)
Phonecam photos: London Bomb Blasts / Pool at flickr
Wikipedia: London transport
explosion
Wikinews: Explosions,
'serious incidents' occurring across London collaborative report with hotlines,
reports, etc. Image:
Trapped underground.jpg
The lead photo so far sourced
to Alfie's moblog at http://moblog.co.uk/
which has these tags running for photo uploads from the scenes:
7th Jul 2005 10:24 | tags:
london , terrorist attack , london attack , london underground , london terrorist attack,
moblog, moblog UK, camera phone, camphone, keith tagg, london bomb, london blast, london explosion |
London metablogs: Londonist,
and the London Metblog.
Technorati.com (blog search engine) top searches
this hour:
1. “London”
2. “London Explosion”
3. “London Explosions”
4. “London Bomb”
5. “London Blast”
6. “Judith Miller”
7. “London Blasts”
8. “London Bombs”
9. London Underground
10. “Live 8”
