Last Autumn, The Community Festival provided $1,000 to fund the planting of dozens of trees in Iuka Park, between Summit St. & North 4th. Several species, including paw paw, ironwood, beech, tupelo, & swamp white oak were planted. The work has been done in conjunction with the Iuka Ravine Association, and currently includes added mulching and chicken wire surrounds. ComFest regulars Maynard G Krebs (dubbed "The Ranger of Iuka Ravine" by an area neighbor) and Bill Winkle are seeing to the latest efforts. If you'd like to help them care for young trees, contact: billwinkle1@hotmail.com and use "Iuka Park Trees" in the subject line.

I nominate The New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg as the Remington of our time, though without the artistic talent. Remington? Back in 1898, William Randolph Hearst was trying to fan war fever between the United States and Spain. He dispatched a reporter and the artist Frederic Remington to Cuba to send back blood-roiling depictions of Spanish beastliness to Cuban insurgents. Remington wired to say he could find nothing sensational to draw and could he come home. Famously, Hearst wired him, "Please remain. You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war." Remington duly did so.

I wouldn't set The New Yorker's editor, David Remnick, in the shoes of a Kong-sized monster like Hearst. Remnick is a third-tier talent who has always got ahead by singing the correct career-enhancing tunes, as witness his awful reporting from Russia in the 1990s. Art Spiegelman recently quit The New Yorker, remarking that these dangerous times require courage and the ability to be provocative, but alas, "Remnick does not feel up to the challenge."

That's putting it far too politely. Remnick's watch has been

Send your own version of this email to your Senator if you want to stop the Patriot Act.

Dear Senator,

I write to express my strong concern about media reports indicating that the Bush Administration and certain members of the Senate are considering moving quickly on legislation that would make permanent provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act that are scheduled to sunset in 2005. I believe that not enough time has passed to evaluate the intrusive impact of these provisions, and that the Bush Administration’s reticence to share information about the implementation of powers authorized by the USA PATRIOT Act should be addressed before any consideration of legislation to make these expansive new powers permanent.

As the U.S. spends tens of billions of dollars on a pre-emptive war in the Persian Gulf, we demand that this money be spent on the real global priority - the HIV/AIDS crisis.

AIDS is the greatest global threat to human security that exists today. It is more deadly than terrorism or the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. AIDS has already cost 25 million lives worldwide. In Africa, ground zero of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic, whole communities are being wiped out and the future of the entire continent is at risk. Around the world, HIV infection rates continue to rise at alarming rates. In the U.S., the toll from AIDS is mounting, particularly among AIDS is a clear and present danger to all of humanity. That it is not the top priority of the U.S. government highlights just how misguided U.S. priorities are. This year, while the U.S. focuses on potential threats in Iraq and possible terrorist attacks at home, it is certain that AIDS will kill more than 3 million people globally, most of these in Africa.

AIDS is an urgent wake-up call to a deeper crisis in the state of the world. The huge global inequalities that fuel this pandemic are

Nurses are digging graves in front of the Al Mansour Hospital. Baghdad University is a smoking ruin. Other disasters loom, as the Red Cross warns that Baghdad's medical system is in complete collapse, and the millions of Iraqis dependent on the old Oil-for-Food program wait for rations that are no longer being delivered . "Water first, and then freedom," said one Iraqi man on a BBC report this morning.

Two musicians, Majid Al-Ghazali and Hisham Sharaf, came to our Hotel four days ago, hoping to call relatives outside Iraq on a satellite phone. Hisham's home was badly damaged during the war. "One month ago, I was the director of the Baghdad Symphony Orchestra," Hisham said with an ironic smile. "Now, what am I?"

We joked that he could direct the telephone exchange as he tinkered with our satellite phone's solar powered battery. I told Majid we had some sheet music and a guitar for him. "What are notes?" he said, "We don't even remember."

Majid had a particularly rough experience. During the first week of bombing, a neighbor called the secret police and turned him in for