We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Our tragic failure to act effectively, quickly, and appropriately in the aftermath of Katrina’s devastation of the South is both a symbolic and physical horror. I want troops protecting lives on the ground now yesterday. I want food, medicine, water delivered now yesterday.  I want the military to [...]

Daddy's/440 Castro, our neighborhood bar, decided last night to hold an emergency fund raiser for victims of the Katrina this Sunday afternoon. The proceeds will go to the Red Cross. I'll post the time and details when I learn them. Or, join Daddy's newsletter list and get the info first hand. You can also give money directly to the American Red Cross.  Be patient with their site: it's swamped this morning.

Fox News justed report a levy break in New Orleans as a voiceover while showing their reporter "Steve" acting as a human wind target in an semi-open field.  Sheets of water, blowing trees, and missiles of debris are visible.  Something small beaned Steve and while Steve tried to compose himself to babble further, the anchorman avoided dead air with a comparison with the dangers of Afghanistan.  Huh?  The sound of the storm would have been more intelligent. What verbal media drivel.  What pictures of real life.  What fool-hearted reporting! Steve declared he was leaving the blowing field when three feet [...]

Do you have an automatic preference for light-skinned people vs. dark-skinned people?  For gay images vs. heterosexual images? Vice versa? Researchers at Harvard University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Washington have developed a series of free on-line tests that purport to measure our automatic preferences on a variety of topics. Each test takes from 10-15 minutes.  One of the other members on my church's Search Committee for a new minister sent the link to me with the idea that the committee members could discover prejudices of which we were unaware.  The site has the look and feel of a serious [...]

Buried in the news this week is the story that playwright August Wilson is dying of liver cancer.  We just saw his Ma Rainey's Black Bottom at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  Wilson's final work in his 10-play cycle about blacks in the 20th Century is just now running in Los Angeles.  Wilson is only 60 years old.

The Daedalus Project is a AIDS benefit produced each year by the company of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The Daedalus highlight is an evening talent show held in the outdoor Elizabethan Theater, but there are many events during the day including a sale of OSF art/props/signed scripts, free outdoor entertainment, and play reading.  There's also a 10k run the Sunday before the Monday activities. This year's Daedalus Project included beefcake (twinkcake?) pictures of some of the young men in the cast. Of course we didn't have any prurient interest in the photographs.  But, we bought the full set of pictures [...]

Read all about it. It's getting very difficult to write satire, but The Borowitz Report at least puts the news out slighly ahead of CNN. 

Ashland is a friendly town, a throw-back to the Cleaver’s America, really.  It has 20,000 residents and a lot of transient students and tourists, but people are still welcome to stop over without an invitation.  Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s company are part of the town folk.  They show up in coffee houses, bars, and at friend’s small dinner parties. When we walked into our Ashland friend’s house earlier this week to participate in an intimate wine swilling evening, two of the guests were young actors.  Nice, friendly, bright 20-somethings.  One of them is an OSF company member this season who has small [...]