journal.melendez.org

Fun Stuff From My Home Town BUSTER SOUTHERLY, GREEN LEFT WEEKLY - On May 1, poet, teacher, youth poetry coach and Green Left Weekly writer Bill Nevins received a terse notice from the Rio Rancho School District informing him that he has been fired from his Rio Rancho High School teaching position, effective from August. Reasons for his termination were not stated. Nevins has requested an explanation. Nevins was suspended on March 17 from his job as a humanities teacher and coach of the RRHS Poetry Team/Write Club. RRHS is the largest public high school in New Mexico, built with funding from the Intel Corporation in the late 1990s. Nevins' suspension came soon after a student poetry club member read "Revolution X", an anti-government, anti-war social-commentary poem, over the school's closed-circuit TV system. Following Nevins' suspension, student poets were questioned by the RRHS administration and their poems were "investigated" for ...

This week's theme: just how disgusted can we be with American media? Harper's Editor Accuses Media of Aiding U.S. War Propaganda http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030501/lf_nm/iraq_usa_media_dc_1 And even though this article reflects a pissing contest between billionaire media moguls, it's still a good read: Turner Calls Rival Media Mogul Murdoch 'Warmonger' http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=638&ncid=579&e=3&u=/nm/20030425/en_nm/media_turner_dc

Perfect for tax time! http://www.nationalpriorities.org/taxes/IncomeTaxCHart.html

The mood in the city right now is of anger. Anger at this very dark time in history and anger at this scary situation, regardless of whether you feel war is justified. People are drinking harder in bars, driving faster and operating on increasingly shorter fuses.

This guy is such a complete moron I can't even believe it: http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-0/104771311168115.xml Here's my friend Dave's response: Hahh, hahhh! Too funny!! The paper is right; every idea, even stupid ones, must run its course. I am saying, do away with the French Kiss. From now on, straight to blow jobs. dave

We need to share more of everything without reservation. I know this to be true and know that real progress occurs only when we share selflessly, but I’m trying to work something out. Let’s see if I can define the problem first, see if the problem is real and logical (?). I borrow liberally from other people’s ideas to better improve the way I communicate, act, think and basically exist. If I see a good idea, I first try to understand its basic form, why it works and how it can be repurposed for some need I have. I think this is healthy and is what defines humans as smart monkeys. The frustrating part of this is needless duplication. For example, if you think my idea for say, a newspaper on the plight of minimum wage workers is really a good one and you decide to use the concept for a newspaper on I don’t know, let’s say ironwork, I think that you have effectively repurposed my idea and that is commendable. My concern is that when you try to start your own newspaper on the ...

Reprinted from FAIR http://www.fair.org Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr. This year, Martin Luther King Jr. Day comes as the U.S. is moving toward war in Iraq. As media prepare to air retrospectives on King, we thought it would be a good time to circulate this 1995 column by FAIR founder Jeff Cohen and FAIR associate Norman Solomon. ------------------ Media Beat, January 4, 1995 The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon It's become a TV ritual: Every year in mid-January, around the time of Martin Luther King's birthday, we get perfunctory network news reports about "the slain civil rights leader." The remarkable thing about this annual review of King's life is that several years-- his last years-- are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole. What TV viewers see is a closed loop of familiar file footage: King battling desegregation in Birmingham (1963); reciting his dream of r...

Por el camine del sitio mio un carretero alegre paso con su canciones que es muy sentida y muy guajira allegre canto Me voy al transbordador a descargar la carretera (bis) para cumplir con la meta de mi pequena labor A caballo vamos pa'l monte a caballo vamos pa'l monte (bis) Yo trabajo sin reposo para poderme casar (bis) y si lo llego a lograr sere un guajiro dichoso A caballo vamos pa'l monte a caballo vamos pa'l monte (bis) Soy guajiro y carretero y en el campo vivo bien (bis) porque el campo es el eden mas lindo del mundo entero A caballo vamos pa'l monte a caballo vamos pa'l monte (bis) Chapea el monte,cultiva el llano recoge el fruto,de tu sudor (bis)

Journalism's first obligation is to the truth. Its first loyalty is to citizens. Its essence is a discipline of verification. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover It must serve as an independent monitor of power. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise. It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience. In the new century, one of the most profound questions for democratic society is whether an independent press survives. The answer will depend on whether journalists have the clarity and conviction to articulate what an independent press means, and whether, as citizens, the rest of us care. -Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism

And people say politics doesn't matter: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,56600,00.html Hard not to be a pessimist after reading that!

If you ever get the chance, check out a band (now defunct) by the name of that dog. Back in the heady days of the early 90's, when I used to be obsessed by girl bands, that dog was among the coolest, with Los Angeles artiness and ethereal harmonies (did I really just say ethereal?). They had great pop inspired hooks and...a violin! Pretty much any non traditional use of a violin piques my interest, and this was some cool stuff. Here's a picture of them. The two women on the left and the right are twin sisters. The one on the right plays the wicked fiddle I spoke of. You can check them out at this site , which has a few tunes. The best, or at least the most characteristic of the tunes are actually under the "videos" section. One of their great tunes is "He's Kissing Christian" from their strongest album, "Totally Crushed Out." The other videos are pretty good too. The first, "Old Timer," was directed by the auteur of music ...

My parents left for Albuquerque after a six day visit here in the Big Easy. It was great to see them and now I feel ready to pass out from exhaustion. Unfortunately, I've got a lot of work to do before a little trip I'm taking. More on this later.

OK, so lately I have been getting ever so slightly peeved when I am around other seemingly "progressive" types, if that's really a type of person at all. I have been frustrated because I couldn't figure out exactly why I have been getting annoyed. I mean, we're all on the same side, right? I would find myself reading an e-mail and getting agitated to the point that I just wanted to delete the e-mail, and pretend it had never popped into my box. It finally dawned on me. It's a syndrome I am going to entitle "liberal bureaucrat syndrome." This is when people, rather than trying to support an idea with activities like actually doing something become involved by making suggestions of things for you to do. Or, the most irritating habit to me, people making extended critiques of all things done by others in the past, from a safe and distant vantage point. I realized that it's not so much people bossing each other around that annoys me (althoug...

So, what have I been up to lately? Hmmm....well, we just made it through our second hurricane in two weeks, I updated the look of the website , I designed a cheesy little web page for a bike ride I liked very much, and next week I begin as a fellow of the Institute of Politics .

Scary news from New Orleans: NOPD looking for suspects in Mid-City robbery, murder- http://www.wwltv.com/local/WWLrobmdr092702.6415df13.html

HACKERS BEG BORING PEOPLE TO STOP ENCRYPTING EMAIL: http://www.satirewire.com/news/aug02/encryption.shtml

The Disenchanted Kingdom: George Ritzer On The Disappearance Of Authentic American Culture. An interview by Derrick Jensen: http://www.thesunmagazine.org/318_ritzer.pdf

Ok, so I have finally stopped being completely bummed out about the world long enough to document the night I went out with 35 people dressed as Santa: http://www.melendez.org/santa/santa.html Another one happens next year, check it out.

Interesting tutorial about how to lobby your congress people: http://slashdot.org/yro/01/09/16/1647231.shtml

Senate Amendment 1562, adopted Thursday, will expand Federal wiretapping powers: http://www.cdt.org/security/091101response.shtml/ Calls to ban encryption: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46816,00.html http://www.msnbc.com/news/627390.asp Re-emergence of Carnivore: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46747,00.html http://latimes.com/business/la-000073542sep12.story Erosions of civil liberties are coming: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46784,00.html