A Note to Our Readers

Hey --
Another Sunday where we run late beyond belief. But we've got an edition. It's done. It's posted. We're finally about to be able to go to sleep (after 30 plus hours up in a row). The core six are used to this nonsense. We thank those who help out each week for their patience.

Who helped out? This edition is the work of:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and Jim:
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude;
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man;
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz,
and Wally of The Daily Jot

It's also the work of Dallas who hunts down links for us and is a sounding board (and more when we're lucky). We thank him. We thank Rebecca for photo shopping our original artwork.

Did someone say "new content"? Better believe it.

Highlights -- Mike, Cedric, Elaine, Rebecca, Wally and Betty selected the highlights and wrote the feature.

Green Party contest ($100 prizes) -- could you use $100? The Green Party is having a contest. Are you artistic? You should enter the contest. You should also check out Kimberly Wilder's call for accountability at The New York Times.

The Nation Stats -- Who knew, other than Ava and C.I., that this would be such a popular feature? This may quickly surpass My Fascist House as the most popular new feature we've added in the last few months. (For those wondering, My Fascist House goes up next week. Look for it then.) (We don't know what we'll do, but we're feeling kind of Condi-ish.) The Nation hits a new low, even for The Nation. In fact, to do worse with gender representation than they did this issue, they would have to print an entire issue where all bylines belong to males. You read that right. The issue we're providing the stats for features one, and only one, female byline. Is that acceptable? We don't think so and, judging by the e-mails, neither do you.


About the DNC's "2007 New Directions Survey" -- Short feature hollered Dona when the time ran extremely long! Short feature! Did we have any ideas for short features? (We want to revist the topic of Baby Cheney Poe but that won't be short.) Jess grabbed the junk mail that C.I. hadn't opened yet and started digging through. He found it, we said, "Great." Then we read it and are glad we did before it hit the trash can unopened. Guess what slogan they're promoting (a Republican groups slogan)?


Molly Ivins (1944-2007) -- Molly is gone. We're tired so we'll leave it at that and note that we'll miss her. Whether we knew her or just her writing, we will miss her. It is a great loss.

Amnesty International statement on Ehren Watada -- While The Nation can't offer any editorial support to Ehren Watada, look who steps up! There's a reason people are saying that they need to give their monies to organizations fighting for change -- as opposed to 'independent' media that reads like a highly limited voters' guide.

Music: Diana Ross, what a long sad trip -- What threw us off? We don't blae the late start (we started two hours late). Jess, Ava and C.I. went right from DC to the south on a spur of the moment thing when a college professor called C.I. to say his students didn't understand the Watada case. "Fine, we'll be there Monday." From there it was one spur of the moment thing after another. I'm going long here (I am Jim) because this was our longest feature so it should have the longest explanation. So they end up in the Dallas-Fort Worth area (community members, don't panic, we'll still be doing the planned trip next month). They worked Texas like crazy. One day turned into five. On Friday, there was a huge mix up at the hotel and lost luggage resulting in all three having nothing but i.d. and needing to be on a campus right away. How do you take a cab with no money and not have the cab driver call the cops? Charm the cabbie. (Ava and Jess are writing this up for the gina & krista round-robin. It is a hilarious story.) At some point, they have luggage -- at the airport -- and are en route but someone at the airport, trying to be kind, has sent it to where they are speaking and it just one mix up after another. At one point, when they have their stuff, Jess has his wallet, for five minutes. Then it's gone. Seriously, this is like a really bad screwball comedy. I'm just giving you some highlights, you have to read Ava and Jess' story of it. When they finally thought they were done and needed to get to the airport, there was a professor who'd heard about the talks they'd been taking part in and was desperate for them to speak to her class. They rescheduled the flight and did one more. It was the craziest week, it was a sad week because of Molly, and did we mention that they were in Texas? Did we mention that Texas had an ice storm? Did we mention that Jess, Ava and C.I. saw not only ice but snow? In Texas! So Saturday, their first day back in two and a half weeks, they had a great deal to do, a great deal to catch up on. We ended up starting late. This was the first feature we worked on. What you have here is 1/4 of the total we wrote.
Dona and I edited like crazy. We worked 5 hours on the writing of this and no one even noticed. We were all so into this piece. When it was noted (by Elaine), Dona went into a panic on how we were going to have time to write anything else. We managed. We're tired. It's over. Note, if and when we do Dolly Parton, Dona says we're only covering singles, we are not doing albums. After Diana Ross, Dona says no more albums!


The Cowards Silence on Ehren Watada -- That should actually be The Cowards' Silence when it appears. But let that be the least of our problems. Who's stepping for Ehren? You know the sad answer there already, don't you? Nice photo of Ehren. All the other illustrations are our own. Sheila e-mailed that photo to us and noted it was public domain. She said she knows it's importance that we all grasp how serious this is but she didn't think she'd seen a photo of Ehren smiling before. Sheila: "To be able to smile with all he's facing really moved me." Us too, Sheila. Thank you for passing it on.

TV: The Nights of Bankruptcy -- Ava and C.I. And, you know this, they hate their review. They note it was not completed. They were working on other things trying to get the pieces ready while Dona and I (Jim) were editing the Diana Ross piece. They had just started on this when we were done and hollered, "Everybody, editorial!" They didn't even realize it wasn't finished. C.I. was doing the morning entry at The Common Ills and waiting for the pieces to go up here (so that they could be linked to) when Ava asks, "Did we finish that?" NO! They finished it in five minutes. They say it's crap, we say it's great.

Editorial: Tossing "BE HONEST" right back at ya -- the editorial. Maybe it's time for independent media to get honest. (Maybe it's time for us to finish, Dona says, noting that she just finished her fourth pack of cigarettes since we started this edition.) Okay, the editorial speaks for itself.

A Note to Our Readers -- "In progress" went up because C.I. needed the links to post the morning entry at The Common Ills. That's what you're reading right now, this feature. We don't usually link to it but we swiped the links from The Common Ills.

Truest statement of the week -- 35 e-mails came in on Saturday saying that something that went up Friday evening (or night) contained the truest statement of the week. We agree. But don't just agree, do something about it.

That's it, we're off to bed. Again, thank you to everyone who helped. It was a very long, very rough edition. But the good news is, it's over. The bad news is that it starts back up next Saturday night. See you next week.

-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.