A Note to Our Readers

Hey --
A slow Sunday following last week's early edition.

What happened?

Two people of the core six have worked on every week's edition and only two -- Ava and C.I. If we ever doubt their importance, note how we scrambled this weekend when one of them was sick?


Here's who participated on this edition:

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,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
and Wally of The Daily Jot


We thank all of them and we thank Dallas for his help as sounding board and for rounding up links.

C.I. was sick, caught it from Rebecca. We called a break after Ava and C.I. finished their commentary this morning. We had a number of features completed.

We lost two. Ava, Jess, Dona and Ty went to the Green Party debate today. I (Jim) stayed home with C.I. Who had an awful fever and was delusional. I'm not joking on that. Two features were lost and that was noted before we took our break. Throughout the period while everyone else was gone, C.I. would repeatedly ask, "How do you lose two features?"

That really was directed at me who typed up both. They were poems that Kat, Ava and C.I. had written in New Hampshire with Jess and I participating over the phone. They were good. I guess I tossed the hard copies after typing. I was using two screens on the same computer and typing then, didn't save them and got a message about low memory. Both screens closed and they were gone. That's my fault. Though C.I. never mentioned blame, just kept asking how you lose two features.

My favorite moment during that period that I so wanted to turn into a feature was when I was flipping channels and talking to C.I. (who was out of it but talking) and I mentioned there was a musical special on. C.I. slammed the PBS specials and I said something (I don't remember what) and C.I. started going off on "New High School" and C.I. will tell you now, "What?" It would have made a great short story. It's ficitional but C.I. had all the details, they were a copycat of the Mamas and the Papas and, as Michelle Phillips will tell you, they worshipped Nero (there was this whole lengthy thing about Roman government). C.I. was describing their outfits, critiquing their vocals, running down their (low) charting singles. I wrote down what I could (and at the time assumed this was a real group). When C.I.'s fever was gone and I asked about it, C.I. told me I was insane. I showed C.I. the notes I took and C.I. said, "I was delusional, I don't know anything about that. I don't believe there was ever a two man, two woman group called New High School." It would make a very wonderful short story. Maybe we'll revisit it this summer in our fiction edition.

When the fever was broke, C.I. had what is self-dubbed "my long wake up." That delayed us as well.

To be clear, C.I.'s laughing at my note right now but Dona says, "Don't blame C.I." I'm not blaming C.I. C.I. was sick and contributed and then some. And that wasn't our only problem this edition.

Let's talk about what we've got:

Truest statement of the week -- Juan Gonzalez, truth telling practitioner.

Truest statement of the week II -- Gloria Steinem, see above.

Editorial: And then there were three -- We didn't have the editorial before the break. The plan was to get everyone back on the phone before Ava, Jess, Dona and Ty left for the Green Party debate. That wasn't possible. This editorial was dead and lifeless until C.I. suddenly finished the "long wake up." At which point, it had so much that Dona said, "Keep writing but that's the break! These are two seperate features."

TV: The Surreal Life stages comeback! -- Ava and C.I. On a good week they amaze us. When Ava was sick as a dog last year (last fall?), they managed to turn out something amazing. They did so again this weekend. This is amazing and all the more so when you consider that they are bouncing jokes off one another (remember, their point was to be humorous from the start of taking over these commentaries, they raise issues, they take stands but their humor is the thing that has always drawn everyone to glom on their commentaries). C.I. had no voice and was contributing via a hoarse whisper. But they pulled it off and it's one of their finest. Right after they finished this, I read it to everyone. It is amazing.

Roundtable -- This is where C.I.'s voice went out. This roundtable lasted four and a half hours. This is a rush transcript and it has been edited. Ruth participated on this feature. C.I. told her ahead of time, "I don't want you to do a report" for The Common Ills "if this lasts more than an hour." Ruth was around Rebecca Friday as well and wasn't sure if she was coming down with someone. Ruth wouldn't promise not to do a report and C.I. said, "Fine, I'll change the password and give it to you Monday." That wasn't an idle threat. While everyone was at the debate this afternoon, I called Ruth and asked if I had the password wrong (passwords are changed every ten to twelve days). Ruth said, "No, that's the password." Then she remembered C.I.'s threat to change it. At some point, C.I. did. So you could have a morning entry at TCI if C.I. hadn't changed the password, I was happy to do it. We especially thank Ruth for all her participation. We ddin't mean for it to be more than two hours tops but there was a great deal to cover. As always when things are edited, people are allowed to pull their own comments. We generally don't add anything to it. We may drop out something because we've got a transition that was spoken that will work well in the transcript. Ty pulled one word and substituted it with another. Betty says something like "Ty is mad" or "Ty is pissed." And he was. His statements before Betty included a word he pulled. (Which, for the record, could be used on network television at any hour. It's not an 'objectionable' word.) I brought up the e-mails that I could. We kept in what we could from that. To Macy, I didn't get to your e-mail in the roundtable. She noted that Medium is on NBC Monday nights in the second hour of primetime and that "I love the guest star!!!"

Revolutionary broadcast -- Long before C.I. was sick, we had already spoken of how DN! last week needed to be noted in its own feature and we didn't need to make it truest because 'breaking it up' in that regard might not be noting how powerful it was. This is one of the pieces we wrote well after the break. As noted in the piece, Betty, C.I., Cedric and Ty were insistent that Don King 'participation' in the Victory Tour be underscored. After we read over it, we all agreed.

Independent media: Then & Now -- This was part of the editorial. When C.I. finally woke up, there were a ton of ideas and, among them, was this section. This, the editorial and the DN! piece did not make the print edition. Instead we ran Ava and C.I.'s reviews of Spanish language TV (which is not on strike as far as we know -- they write those reviews for the community newsletter El Spirito) and Mike's column that was in today's Polly's Brew.

Graceful exit -- This was started before the break and going nowhere. We're not sure how much we improved on it after the break. But we thought it needed to be noted and, as Jess is pointing out right now, we were calling out here the silence on Richardson's first status, so, in terms of archives and past coverage, it was required that we note his exit from the race.

Highlights -- Mike, Kat, Rebecca, Betty, Wally, Cedric and Elaine wrote this and picked selections unless otherwise noted. They wrote this after the long break, by the way. We thank them for it.

Next week, we plan to interview Isaiah. We were supposed to do that this weekend and had scheduled it for midnight his time. We called to cancel, during the only break of the roundtable -- and explained that we would probably be taking a lengthy break at three in the morning (it went on much longer than we thought -- the break) and explained that C.I. had no voice and was red with fever. Isaiah told us not to worry about it at all and also said to tell C.I. no comic for Sunday "in case you're still sick."

We know community members have been looking forward to the interview. As most of the newsletters have noted, it was supposed to be a feature in the Christmas edition Jess, Ava and C.I. steered and I begged them to please not do it then so we could all participate. We've got it written in marker, underscored twice, for next week.

So that's the edition and we're surprised at how strong it is. Ty and Jess are on laptops and talking about various things that are up. When we finished the roundtable we were pretty sure that would be our only strong feature and possibly Ava and C.I.'s TV commentary though that was iffy with one of them so sick. The poems weren't intended to be included but when I announced we were taking a lengthy break (at that point sweat was pouring off C.I. and we'd turn the AC down to 60 degrees), C.I. said, "The poems!" Kat fished around her purse and found them. It was perfect. The three of them and Jess and I had worked on them so they were "Third" pieces. They were two features, it was perfect. I didn't save the drafts and, either due to out of memory or another problem, Blogger/Blogspot didn't save automatically. That created a big hole in what we were calling "done." But I think we managed to overcome even that.

So that's this week. See you when we run next week's marathon!

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