Another Sunday.
First up, we thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:
The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava,
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),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.
And what did we come up with?
Six days later (Jim) I can tell you:
- Truest statement of the week
- Bernie Sanders. We try to avoid politicians for this but gave it up for Bernie.
- Truest statement of the week II
- UNHCR's Navi Pillay, a first.
We got a ton of e-mail on this one including noting that this editorial made the Green Party pull the sexist nonsense from their website.
Ava and C.I. They worked over four hours on this. That's not counting the time it took to stream all the shows at Amazon or stream all the episodes of Hemlock Grove at Netflix (I believe Hemlock has 13 episodes). They were not thrilled, when they completed this, to find out that nothing else was completed while they were working on this. They were not thrilled by all the hours that went into the edition. They were not thrilled, and made sure I and others knew, that after 18 hours straight of working on this edition, in the last two hours, it shouldn't be pulled together. But that's where the bulk of what we have came from.
- Photo of the week
- Such as this, our only Iraq piece. But at least we did alert to Hawija.
- The reviews are in!
Such as this which I believe was Wally and Cedric's idea.
Such as this which was an idea we've tossed around forever.
Ty found this.
Another idea pitched forever. Rebecca selected the album for us to start with. Film classics and great albums are two features we plan to be regular features -- maybe every six weeks, maybe sooner.
- Words of War
- Will the Labor Dept protect service members?
- CIA's criminal paramilitary actions (Workers World...
- Murray has questions on the backlog
- the above four are Workers World and press releases.
- Highlights
Mike and the gang wrote this.
So what happened?
As the note continued not to go up, some saw us having recorded our White Album (Beatles) and expected a quick packing for this coming week (tomorrow -- I'm writing this on Saturday after it posted Sunday). Some saw it as the Mamas and the Papas splitting up.
Ava and C.I. were very angry and made it clear that they were angry. They felt, for example, that after an hour of trying a roundtable (on Cindy Sheehan), we should have ditched the idea instead of trying to do it for another hour. They felt that a lot of wasted time was spent. And I understand where they are coming from and it's not even a new argument.
But when we run 18 hours straight and people are exhausted, we're going to hear about it from Ava and C.I. Will there be an edition tomorrow? Yeah, they've already pitched two article ideas by text this week (they pitched them Thursday).
Rumors (hopes?) of our disbanding were overblown.
But it is true that at some point this website does go dark. The plan was never to go on forever when we started in 2005. By that summer, our plan, announced here, was that we'd go dark in November 2008 after the elections. Ava and C.I. accidentally extended that. In a TV article, they noted that they had problems with the new show Fringe but that friends with the show asked them to give it a few more episodes. They wrote in the article that they agreed and they'd be looking at it in the new year. They didn't realize they had just extended us. None of us did. Readers were the ones who pointed that out. After which, we were fine with it. (I was always fine with keep this going.) Then Stan was wanting to start a website but didn't want to do so if everyone else was shutting down. SO we extended again. Right now, we run through June and, after July 4th, decided if we extend again or not. We probably will extend.
The Cindy Sheehan roundtable. It was an attempt to get some attention to her Tour De Peace. Of course, C.I. did that repeatedly last week promoting Cindy's Thursday event . . . only for Cindy to cancel it to go protest the opening of the Bush library in Texas and reschedule it for Friday. Good luck to the Tour De Peace but we probably won't try to promote it now.
When you have an announced event and people try to get the word out for you and you cancel the event, doesn't really make people want to promote any more events. Because on their end, they're getting e-mails about, "Hey, that event didn't take place? Did you lie? Was it a joke? Did you have the information wrong?" Nope. The event was cancelled so that the Bush library could be protested. The announced event was dropped. As any concert promoter will tell you, cancelling a date the week of an event is never a smart move.
Peace.
-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.