A Photo I took earlier today in the Men’s Restroom at Jumbalaya in Danvers, Massachusetts near my office is the Lead Editor’s Pick today on Text America.
And how cool is that!
Featured Photo on TextAmerica
Archives for March 2004
Friedman: Awaking to a Dream
I am so hungry for a positive surprise. I am so hungry to hear a politician, a statesman, a business leader surprise me in a good way. It has been so long. It’s been over 10 years since Yitzhak Rabin thrust out his hand to Yasir Arafat on the White House lawn. Yes, yes, I know, Arafat turned out to be a fraud. But for a brief, shining moment, an old warrior, Mr. Rabin, stepped out of himself, his past, and all his scar tissue, and imagined something different. It’s been a long time.
Read the rest at the New York Times
Protests in Boston
This last week, President George W. Bush spoke at a fundraiser at Boston’s Park Plaza Hotel, where he delivered this speech.
As I was staying downtown that afternoon, a counterpart and I walked the four blocks from our hotel to the “designated protest area” to check out the protests.
Other images available in my picture gallery.
My observations… About 500 people overall, 4000 were predicted by anti-bush groups here. I’d say 100 were pro-bush, 400 were anti-bush, but that’s a non-scientific estimate.
Protesters comments ranged from “bush is a liar” to “free the haitians” to “free the palestinians’, and so on. Pro-Bush folks mostly had “college republicans for bush” and “Bush / Cheney” placards.
The rudest nastiest protesters were the union workers – they were in the face of the college republicans, cursing, and screaming.
The funniest protesters were the “Billionaires for Bush” – you can see their website here.
Police were there in force, but not quite the overt presence I was expecting. We did see one counter-sniper team on the roof of a nearby building, you can see that in a couple of the photos.
All in all quite an entertaining experience.
Pissed off Marines
Firefight in Fallujah. I was wondering how this was going to go. The Army pretty much stayed clear of the town, letting the IP deal with local discontent. The Marines went on patrol through the town center, and one died in an ambush. But when a Marine gets killed in an ambush, no one should be surprised when 300 other Marines show up to ask how it happened. And they’re pissed.
From Lex
Indiana Basketball
As Waldron prepares to play for the Class A championship today, people in the community of 800 are expressing their support by wearing T-shirts and painting their faces or, in the case of Penny Hensley, her barn.
From the Indianapolis Star
Honeymoon in an Atomic Shelter
Isn’t this how you want to spend your honeymoon?
The pair whose civil defense stunt was featured in numerous newspapers and magazines including LIFE and PRAVDA recall that they had already been seeing each other casually for ten years when, on a date, they heard a radio promotion for an unusual contest. The station, in conjunction with Bomb Shelters, Inc. (a firm whose business card featured a mushroom cloud and the slogan “It will save your life.”), were seeking a couple willing to marry and then immediately spend two weeks in a fallout shelter. A “real” all-expenses-paid Mexican honeymoon was promised to the winners.
Reflecting back on the moment that changed their lives, Mel Mininson says with a hearty laugh, “I just looked over at Maria and we both knew it was now or never!” The Mininsons are quick to point out, however, that contest or no contest they would have eventually taken the matrimonial plunge. The convergence of geopolitics, commerce and luck merely served to expedite their vows.
From Conelrad.
The Trouble with the Freedom Trail
There’s a great story to be told along Boston’s Freedom Trail – the story of how our revolution came to be. A column in today’s Boston Globe Ideas section calls for an update to the freedom trail:
In one way, the Freedom Trail has been a victim of its greatest successes: the loving restoration of Boston’s three most important public buildings of the Revolutionary era, the Old State House, Faneuil Hall, and the Old South Meeting House. But we are so used to thinking of government as representative and as taking place indoors that we have lost sight of what the revolutionary generation called “the people out of doors.” After all, some of the most famous events of the Revolution in Boston took place not within these buildings but in the streets or squares — and involved thousands of ordinary people who were not normally part of the political system.
The processions protesting the Stamp Act in 1765 began with effigies hanging from the Liberty Tree, the great elm at the corner of Essex and Washington streets, and the space beneath the tree (known as “Liberty Hall”) remained a center of political activity for the next decade. The Boston Massacre of 1770 occurred in the square below the balcony of the State House. The Tea Party of 1773 took place at Griffin’s Wharf, where several thousand stood in hushed silence as 100 or so men staged their famous act of civil disobedience.
The story is there to be told.. but only if you already know it.