Long Time No Blog....

Sorry for the long hiatus! In addition to general 'busy-ness' we're having some problems with phone/DSL service at home, limiting the amount of on-line time to what I can squeeze in at work. I miss my nightly blog rolling! Oh well...while it may be debatable that 'You can't fight City Hall', it is VERY true that fighting the phone company is pretty much a no-win situation.....

A quick tour 'd horizon of some recent items that have caught my eye:


"'Fist-Bump'-O- Mania" hits the media. And it's called 'Dap' un-down-with-it (white) people! A 'Fist bump'? Plu-eeze....At least the hometown paper got it right!

Two articles (from AP via Yahoo and closer to home, the Baltimore Sun) on how younger people view Obama's rise (Oh! to be 16 again, and be able to say, "If he becomes the president, I can't imagine that there'll be racism...." The Optimism of Youth! )

While I'm pretty sure that my support for Obama, and the increasing-as-the-campain-went-on distaste for Senator Clinton was not related to her being a woman...just as, here in America, "everything is about race" so too many things/everything can be about gender as well. Joan Walsh of Salon and Judith Warner of the NYTimes do their best to keep me honest.

And a quick aside on this: I'm not sure how much of the venom others have directed at Hillary is based on her gender, and how much is based on her being Hillary Clinton, and the eight years she and Bill spent in the White House. I am unclear as to whether or not voting against THIS woman necessarily translates into voting against ANOTHER woman for President. In my own dream world I can concieve of a real "Amazing Race" pitting Elizabeth (Dole) vs Elizabeth (Edwards) for example. I find myself agreeing with the Christian Science Monitor: The "A Woman can't be President" Glass Cieling has been broken, and we are all greatful to 'Hill' for doing it.

In book news:
Although Amazon.com seems to be Kindle-ing along quite well, the brick & mortar Amazon in Minneapolis closes

And has it really been only 10 years since Harry Potter debuted and Random House first stepped onto the World Wide Web? Departing Guardian UK book reviewer Robert McCrum looks back on his term in office and rings some of the changes in BookWorld since 1997.


Finally, RFK remembered

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.