i'm feeling much better after i got to sound off in last night's gina & krista round-robin roundtable. i'll be participating again tonight and i will be apologizing to c.i. during that. i've asked members to put a tag at the bottom of the posts (i'll explain why in the round-robin so you can read that tomorrow). that's why the morning posts wouldn't go up at the common ills.
you get an error message sometimes with that and you just check to publish anyway in a little square. if c.i. would have seen the screen, no problem. but with dictating and using some 1 not familiar with the blogger program, there was a problem.
so i'll apologize for that tonight in the round-robin and i'll say i'm sorry to any of my readers who are also common ills community members.
for mike, i'll note this from democracy now:
State of Texas Executes Frances Newton
The state of Texas has executed Frances Newton. She was killed by lethal injection shortly after 6 o'clock last night despite widespread calls for a stay of her execution. She is the first African-American woman to be executed in Texas since Reconstruction. Her supporters included Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, the Austin American Statesman and the head of the American Bar Association. Numerous questions were raised about whether Newton received a fair trial when she was convicted of killing her husband and two children 18 years ago. Her state-appointed attorney, Ron Mock, did not interview a single witness in preparation for her trial. He has since been barred from handling capital cases due to incompetence. Hours before her execution, the Supreme Court denied a petition to stop her execution.
by the way, be sure to check out mike's interview with cedric. i'll be interviewed next week. i'm emerging from my funk so hopefully i'll be semi-amusing.
but i watched democracy now this morning and i wasn't amused. i can't believe they really went through with the execution. on the one hand, i can believe it. on the other hand, it makes perfect sense, in the world we live in, that we're all comfortable with the execution of a woman that was given no real defense (the problem for that falls on the state) and that serious questions of guilt had been raised about.
it was too much for us to say, 'hold on, let's seriously look at the new developments.' in 20 or 30 years, i expect that we'll hear that she's been posthumously pardoned. that it turns out she wasn't guilty. and the media will run with it as an example of 'justice.' they may note that many people voiced her probably innocence before she was executed, but they won't make an effort to put any of the officials on the hot spot, if they're still around.
i know that the issues of devestation are important but i do wonder why we could spend so little time on issues like iraq and frances newton? the john roberts confirmation hearings have taken up a large amount of media space. i wish i could say i've been impressed. i haven't. i've listened to pacifica like ruth's recommended and they've done a good job. democracy now has done an excellent job. but most of the media wants to, as c.i. has noted, just since 'you're a good man, charlie brown' over and over.
so it's not even as if they used all the space they devoted to john roberts junior to seriously explore john roberts. the new york times has filed one fan piece after another, many times each day. frances newton gets one small story in the paper of record today.
bully boy's going to speak tonight. god save us all.
gina and krista have a long essay on children's lit in tomorrow's round-robin. so i'll note my pick from sunday's the third estate sunday review book discussion:
Rebecca: I'm going with a book I hated. It left an impression, but I hated it. Martha Tolles' Katie For President. So here's the basic plot. Katie wants to be president of the class. Her rival is Lynne Colby. They don't like each other. Turns out Lynne envies her just as much as Katie envies Lynne. What that has to do with election, I don't know. But Katie has to deliberate over whether to even vote for herself. That's before she finds out that Lynne's an okay person. The "happy" ending? Katie loses the election to Lynne. Katie's fine with it. Even when a note that destroyed her chances to win was written by Lynne's friend and Lynne knew about it. It was all too much to stomach and another "Empathy, girls!" story. Young girls need more victory stories, not lessons in how to be happy about losing.
lauren asked me in an e-mail if i had a book that i really loved when i was little. like ava, i would pick charlotte's web. here's what ava had to say about that book:
Ava: I asked to go first because when this feature was discussed, I claimed E.B. White's Charlotte's Web which was something that many of us involved would have selected. The illustrations are done by Garth Williams and this is a book that had a huge impact on me. It was read to me before I could read myself and it's one I read repeatedly in elementary school. Confession, it's also a book I still pick up when I'm feeling depressed. Last paragraph of the book:
Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren
dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was
in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true
friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.
charlotte's web was my favorite book growing up. ava called it first and got dibs on it but a number of us would have named it. read gina & krista tomorrow because i've read part of their essay and it's amazing.
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