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By Sheila Lennon
'Bottom-up'
journalism from the pros
September 18, 2002
- Last
week's weblog Letter from Larry: Onetime New
Bedford Standard Times reporter Larry Novick and his wife Victoria left Providence
in May, retiring to Victoria's native Cape Verde. Victoria
died Sept. 1. We have been publishing the expat's dispatches. Sudden
death in Cape Verde It's been two weeks since we lost Victoria
and, ever so slowly, I've begun to accept the void in my life. I've been so fortunate
that people here, the majority of whom I've known only briefly, have been so supportive. I've
just returned from a long talk with Cesaria. (Cesaria
Evora, an internationally acclaimed Cape Verdean singer, is Victoria's cousin.)
She has been the strongest part of my life during these past sad days. Her spiritual
and emotional support are beyond description. Every word she speaks comes from
deep in her heart and every word makes absolute sense. It is no wonder that she
is loved by so many all over the world. Today, she sat and talked of the strength
and beauty in the love Victoria and I had for each other. "But," she
said, "we all only have one life to live and you must continue yours with
force and courage." The funeral and mourning period have been a multicultural
melange. Victoria's coffin was brought to the house within four hours of her death
-- there is no embalming in this tropical country -- and placed on a stand in
the living room which is devoid of all decoration. Her body has been bathed, dressed
and covered in a simple shroud. There are two candles in glass sconces at the
head of the coffin. All the windows and doors are opened to allow the elements
of pain and suffering to escape. I sit with the coffin along with mourners and
continual cups of black coffee. At 4:30 p.m. the next day, the musicians
who will accompany Victoria to the grave are outside tuning their instruments.
At 5 p.m, the hearse arrives and the two-mile final walk to the cemetery begins,
accompanied by a cross section of Cape Verdean society: the deputy to the National
Assembly, the director of the local census bureau, bakers and shopkeepers, stevedores
and prostitutes. I am supported by a good friend, a wafer-thin Renaissance man
who plays a soul-stirring guitar and can construct a computer from discarded parts
from anywhere in the European Union. There are no priests, no black ties and,
in many cases, no shoes, just a slow dirge and a steady drumroll. It started to
rain during the procession, a good sign in a country where drought is so prevalent.  | | Final
serenade: Senhor Tomar plays
a predawn tribute to Victoria Novick at Larginha Beach, Sao Vicente, Cape Verde. |
About
200 yards from the cemetery, the hearse stops; the coffin is removed and hand-carried
to the grave. It is an honor to be a pallbearer and, every ten yards or so, the
carriers switch. I am not allowed past the cemetery gates. Tradition says that
if I approach the open grave, the soul of the deceased would pull me in and I
would die within a year. There is no service, no eulogy, just a quick interment
and an emolument to the grave diggers. The seven-day mourning period is relentless,
with a steady stream of keeners and wailers (no "3-5, 7-9 and ciao"
here, folks). Because obituaries don't exist, word of mouth is the source of news
and the farther away you get from the center of town, the longer it takes to get
the word. I lose it a couple of times but I guess that's to be expected.
I manage to sleep a few hours each night but a chronic fatigue and malaise starts
after a few days. It feels like sensory deprivation but some how I keep on (force
and courage). On the seventh day, the mourning period officially ends. At
the exact hour of death (7:35 p.m.), there is a simple toast to the departed and
the food and drink are laid out. Feijaoada ,a bean-based stew, (recipe
attached ), canja (a hearty chicken soup) and grogue, a raw
sugar-cane based liquor, are the staples, and their consumption goes on well past
midnight. The week ends as it began, with music. As the house empties in
the pre-dawn hours, a few of us go to the beach for a final serenade to one who
was so loved by so many. The morna (lament) Hora de Bai (Time of Departure)
by the most famous of Cape Verdean poets, Eugenio
Tavares, is sung. The instruments are packed away; I am talked out of
a sunrise swim and life goes on with force and courage. Love to all, Larry {Tell
all to continue e-mails, they are a great source of strength.)
Larry
Novick's email address is quill2@earthlink.net;
earlier Letters from Larry: August
22, August
5, June
25, May
23, Sept.
3
Link
to this item |
Comment  | | Crop
circle #6 seems to represent a magnetic field. |
Intelligent
crop circles? It began as an email from a reader attempting to find an
author cited in a wire story. The story was about crop circles, and he wrote,
My name is Tom Sutter, I am now retired. But during my working
career I was involved with both mechanical and electrical design techniques. My
whole life has been dedicated to resolving complex issues in both fields....
Your recent article, Leslie
Kean: Origin of crop circles baffles scientists (09/16/2002) Caught my attention.
Though I am not involved with research delving into how crop circles are created.
I may very well have ascertained why they are created and what they represent.
In fact, I am pretty doggone sure that I have.
And he gave
a link to a
photo presentation site where he has placed 51 slides. Intrigued, I clicked
to it, and found photos of circles such as the one at right that seem to depict
water molecules, microwaves and more; others contain text only. I wrote to Mr.
Sutter, asking him to explain briefly for SHENEWS readers "why they are created
and what they represent." Here's what he wrote: The
"what" of crop circles lies in the fact that our society has progressed
to the point where we ought to recognize these graphics. They represent the highest
limits of our advancing technology. A more advanced society will know what our
society will innovate next & these renderings depict those devices both in
schematical format &/or in the operand thereof. Our most advanced research
laboratories ought to be able to duplicate what is depicted in those formations.
By very careful study of every detail rendered in the crop formations I have studied,
I have ascertained that there are 8 distinct devices rendered. That site explains
5 of them in terms that are easily understandable. And I have employed the crop
formations themselves in place of schematical drawings. Please have a person versed
in physics view them & comment on them for you. 
Lucy Pringle | | Crop
circle #51, which Sutter calls an "alien" face. |
As
for the "why," contingent to the fact that crop circles exist. Simply
use logic. Whenever we ourselves come into contact with any newly discovered species
we endeavor to examine it. & So it is with other intelligent societies. Now
rationalize a scenario whereby two intelligent societies discover each other.
One far more technologically advanced then the other and also very different in
appearance then the other. How would they meet? The two cultural histories are
radically different. The foods & preferences of each are radically different.
And the values of each are very different. The ONLY things in common that can
be used as a conveyance to initiate relations is the table of elements. The periodic
table. And the fact that all intelligent societies will draft very similar schematical
renderings of devices. I.E. - A schematic drawing of an internal combustion engine
will be recognized as such by all regardless of the culture or the language or
the country employed at its inception. Such all encompassing graphics are what
crop circles depict. We have an advanced society knocking at our door right now.
THAT’S what crop circles are all about. - A medium used as a means of establishing
friendly/formal contact between two very different societies.
The
images are stunning, the hypothesis intriguing, a visit to Sutter's site will
stretch the imagination; our physicist-readers will have to evaluate the quality
of the science. More of his thoughts about how such a multi-species drama might
play out are also laid out on Sutter's site.
Link
to this item
| Comment
Blog
school: Last night, OJR's JD
Lasica, the Seattle Times' Dan
Gillmor, blogbook authors Rebecca
Blood and Meg Hourihan
and Scott Rosenberg
of Salon participated in a 90-minute panel before Paul Grabowicz's and John Battelle's
students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. (You may recall that
Berkeley has launched a course on weblogs.) JD blogs it, and offers links to others'
perspectives.
Link
to this item |
Comment
Tempting:
The Roomba intelligent floor vacuum -- a household
robot. $199. This is a good sign -- can intelligent bathroom-cleaner robots be
far behind? via
John Robb's Radio Weblog
A review of the Roomba: PC Magazine watches a demo, tries it out. Pros: Works pretty well, easy to use, it's the prototype and it's cool. Cons: Doesn't understand "clean," so won't go over spots twice, tiny dirt cup, five times slower than you.
Link
to this item |
Comment
I'm
taking a few days off. If I blog, it will be on my personal
site, which has been dormant for a month. Otherwise, next edition will be
late Monday. September 17, 2002 Providence
Journal told to restore benefits to reporters, editors
In a 45-page
decision that follows last spring's NLRB-prosecuted trial, an administrative law
judge has ordered the Belo-owned Providence Journal to restore many benefits that
have been eliminated in the past two years. Staffers have worked without a contract
for nearly three years. (Associated Press) --
Jim
Romenesko's Media News Here's
the ruling (pdf) (48 pages, 3.8 megs)
Link
to this item | Comment Peace
One Day update: There's
a preview here -- an audio clip -- of the Peace One Day song by reggae
legend Jimmy Cliff and former Eurythmic Dave Stewart (featuring the Nadz). The
full song may be downloaded Sept. 19 (Thursday). The organizers write, "We
have approached radio stations all over the world and we expect the song to ride
a wave of radio play as each time zone hits 12 noon on 21st September 2002."
Link
to this item | Comment We're
way beyond switchboards: Doc
Searls gets to the meat of an essay, The
Recording Industry is Tryng to Kill the Goose that Lays te Golden Egg by Dan
Bricklin, who conceived the first electronic spreadsheet, VisiCalc,
while a student at MIT in 1978: The entertainment industry is
trying to turn Peer-to-Peer into a bad name. This is wrong. Fax machines are Peer-to-Peer.
Telephones are Peer-to-Peer. Email is Peer-to-Peer. Cell phones are Peer-to-Peer.
As we see here, maybe the Peer-to-Peer systems they should be complaining about
are sold by AT&T Wireless, Verizon, and Voicestream.
Link
to this item | Comment Young
and dating in NYC: Take one email from a cute new guy, comment on it (cynically)
and and casually forward it to a friend... oops, that was the reply icon, not
the forward button. This
email has been more places than a chain letter. Read from the bottom! And
we thought
the guy who complained about modern dating by "The Rules" might
have been exaggerating.
Link
to this item | Comment Pyramid
bust: Too hokey. AP
reports, CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Researchers are planning more
exploration after their high-tech probe into an ancient pyramid Tuesday solved
one puzzle and introduced another. Before a live, international television
audience Tuesday, the Pyramid Rover -- a robot the size of a toy train -- took
two hours to crawl through a narrow shaft in the Great Pyramid outside Cairo,
drill through a door at the end and push through a camera to reveal: another door.
Link
to this item | Comment
I'm a loser: The Online
News Association named its finalists for its annual awards yesterday, and
Providence's NBC TV affiliate, Channel 10, is in the running, for its Plunder
Dome coverage. (Congratulations, neighbors!) JD
Lasica explains the competition further and points to some of his favorites.
He set off a discussion here when he wrote, "Nary a blog to be seen -- though
Dan Gillmor's eJournal
and James Taranto's OpinionJournal.com
were nominated for best online commentary." Is Dan Gillmor a blogger? Or
a columnist? Dave
Winer writes, "With almost 2.5 million page reads in the last year, Scripting
News would not qualify for the small-flow categories in the Online Journalism
Awards. Their cutoff is 200,000 visits per month. We did more than that. "
I don't think he means he actually applied -- formal application is required,
and fees average $100 per entry -- just pointing out that his site gets more hits
than many formal online news sites. But projo.com did
enter this blog in the contest, so I'm now publicly and officially chopped liver.
Oh, well...
Link
to this item | Comment
September 16, 2002
| |
Convergence art:
Textured Gear by Rob Lorenson of Middleboro, Mass., installed on the Providence
Riverwalk, is one of the works in the
Convergence 2002 Arts Festival 's outdoor sculpture exhibit.
|
Bush
planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President: The Glasgow
(Scotland) Sunday Herald
reports, A SECRET blueprint for US global domination reveals
that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq
to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001. The
blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana'
was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary),
Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis
Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences:
Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000
by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The
plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region
whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: 'The United States has for
decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While
the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need
for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of
the regime of Saddam Hussein.'
China is also slated for "regime
change." Yikes. The September, 2000, "blueprint" is not secret
now, if it ever was. Here
it is. The originating think tank, Project
for a New American Century, lists Gary
J. Schmitt as Executive Director. The bylines on the report are Donald Kagan
and Gary Schmitt, Project Co-Chairmen and Thomas Donnelly, Principal Author.
Link
to this item | Comment Saddam
Hussein music videos: Iraqi television broadcasts nightly one of its "Sadddam
Hussein music videos." PBS posts two of them.
Link
to this item | Comment Truly
mobile, free Wi-Fi access as a public service: A car offering free Wi-Fi access
can park near public events -- permitting live blogging -- or next to a Starbucks,
providing a free alternative to commercial access. ZDnet
reports (WiFi "hot spot" in the fast lane?), Public
hot-spot operators have a weapon in their protest against the growth of commercial
Wi-Fi networks: Michael Oh's "war car." The 1997 Saturn has enough
Wi-Fi equipment installed on its bumper and rooftop to create a 150-foot wireless
network, said Oh, who helps run a free wireless network covering two Boston city
blocks and is one of hundreds of so-called public hot-spot operators who believe
Wi-Fi networks and the Internet access they offer should remain free. The
war car's first sortie was nine days ago to a Starbucks cafe, where Wi-Fi access
is sold by the minute. Oh parked the car outside the cafe and fired up the
network. Because the vehicle was close enough to the shop, laptop users inside
the Starbucks -- which charges up to $2.50 for 15 minutes of access -- could use
his free network. "A couple of people logged on," he said.
Here's
how to do it yourself: Oh has released a way to assemble the war car from
commercially available Wi-Fi equipment.
Link
to this item | Comment Musicians
take on RIAA record labels: Slashdot
sums it up nicely: "USA
Today has an article [Rights issue rocks the music world] about the growing
friction between recording artists and the 5 major labels which make up the RIAA.
Many issues are covered, including copyright reform, fraudulent accounting on
the part of record labels, and how selling a quarter million albums can leave
you owing your label $14,000." Ironically, music file-sharing advocates
played a major role in bring to light the policies which have left musicians without
health insurance, owing money after a blockbuster tour, and dying penniless; file-sharing
itself brought RIAA to prominence. Here's to top of the USA Today story: Record
companies see it as mutiny. Musicians call it an overdue rebellion. Either way,
the artists' rights movement has set the stage for combat that could revolutionize
the music industry. What started as a classic David-and-Goliath skirmish
over contractual terms could be tilting toward a level battlefield as opposition
on a wide range of issues swells against an industry mired in a sales slump. "The
record business is in rough enough shape that something might actually change,"
says Craig Marks, editor of Blender magazine. "If things weren't so uncertain,
so bleak and in such disarray, the industry would be immovable, even with a gun
to its head. If there was ever a set of circumstances that could lead to artists
making inroads, it's now." Clinging to the status quo are the world's
five major record conglomerates: Universal, Sony, Time Warner, EMI/Virgin and
Bertelsmann, represented by a powerful trade group, the Recording
Industry Association of America (RIAA). They face challenges from increasingly
vocal performers supporting the Recording
Artists' Coalition (RAC), whose diverse roster of 150 members includes Bruce
Springsteen, Sting, R.E.M., Bonnie Raitt, Madonna, Eric Clapton, Dave Matthews,
Billy Joel, Elton John, Linkin Park, Aimee Mann, No Doubt, Puddle of Mudd, Staind
and Static-X.
Related: Boycott-RIAA.com
Link
to this item | Comment Cornell
publication provides lab-tested ways to remove 250 different stains from clothes
and textiles: A new publication by textile experts
at Cornell University -- also
available online in Adobe Acrobat format -- provides laboratory-tested details
on removing almost 250 different stains, from adhesive tape and antiperspirant
to wax crayon and wine with products that can be found in most grocery stores
or pharmacies. via Robot
Wisdom
There's an Adobe
page that will convert .pdfs to html for you. Just paste in the url of the
.pdf.
Link
to this item | Comment Scripps
Howard Creates J-School, Aims To Bolster Newsroom Diversity: Editor
& Publisher reports, New York -- Proponents of newsroom
diversity last week hailed as a giant step forward the Scripps Howard Foundation's
creation of a new media school at historically black Hampton University in Hampton,
Va. The Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications, set to be
dedicated Sept. 25, is believed to be the first industry-created j-school at a
historically black college and the biggest dollar commitment going to a single
racial-diversity program.
Link
to this item | Comment Updates: Robot
to explore pyramid: National Geographic Channel Presents Pyramids Live:
Secret Chambers Revealed, is the name of the show tonight 8 p.m. on Fox.
A
mooovement grows in Barrington reports on the rally to save the
blue cow in Barrington.
(Yes, ever bovine pun is covered here.)
Subterranean
Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features
& interactive producer of projo.com | 
