The Loneliest Road

Late in the evening in back-road America, you tend to pick the motels with a few cars parked in front of the rooms. There's nothing less appealing than an empty courtyard, with maybe Jeffrey Dahmer or Norman Bates waiting to greet you in the reception office. The all-night clerk at the Lincoln motel (three cars out front) in Austin, Nev., who checked me in at around 11.30 p.m. a few nights ago, told me she was 81 and putting in two part-time jobs, the other at the library, to help her pay her heating bills, since she couldn't make it on her Social Security.

She imparted this info without self-pity as she took my $29.50, saying that business in Austin, Nev., last fall had been brisk and the 57 motel beds available in the old mining town had been filled with crews laying fiber-optic cable along the side of the road, which, in the case of Austin, meant putting 20 feet under the graveyard that skirts the road just west of town.

Earlier that day, driving from Utah through the Great Basin along U.S.-50, billed as "the loneliest road," I'd seen these cables, blue

Words and Pictures

of all the words i've read about our current military adventure, none have spoken as strongly as the pictures i have seen.
the pictures that the western media monopolies refuse to even allow out of Iraq.
you find them other places.
like al-jazeera.

oh, no,
am i an enemy sympathizer?
if the children who have been decapitated by u.s. cluster bombs are the enemy,
then yes, the enemy has my sympathy.
because, pathetically, that's the most i can muster.

last night i learned,
through a photograph,
that 3 iraqi children
can fit in one wooden coffin,
especially when one is missing half of her head.

it seems that only those who don't need to hear of this, (my fellow sympathizers),
will.

wouldn't want to darken a birthday party
being held for a lovely american child
attended by her pro-war relatives
and 3 young cousins
whom we wouldn't dream of placing in one coffin.
that would be barbaric.

Alice's New Adventures in Medialand

Alice climbed out of the news hole. She seemed badly shaken. "I thought Wonderland was curious indeed," she said, "but Medialand is even more peculiar."

Responding to my quizzical look, she quickly added: "Don't worry, I stayed away from the hookah-smoking caterpillar, the 'Drink Me' bottle and the 'Eat Me' cake. I did not converse with a single playing card, dormouse or mock turtle. I was simply observant."

Alice's sudden appearance in the sunlit meadow gave me an idea. No longer a girl, she was clearly an intelligent woman. "Here," I said, pulling a laptop from my briefcase, "please write about your latest adventures." And before she could decline, I ran off.

Returning hours later, I found these words:

Oh dear, how to begin? The Hatter and the March Hare could never match the lunacy I've just seen in Medialand. I'd heard of people subsisting on treacle, but the current media diet is rather more grim. I've got half a mind to write a poem: "The Walrus and the Journalist wondered where they'd been. / They wept like anything to see such quantities of spin..."

NPR and the Fallow Triumph of Public Radio

A triumphant story about National Public Radio appeared in late March on the front page of Current, the main newspaper of the public-broadcasting industry. "NPR Lands Most Listeners Ever," the headline announced, over a summary of the latest Arbitron figures: "NPR programs reached 19.5 million listeners a week last fall, and member stations drew a record 28.7 million listeners. One in seven Americans age 25 or older listens to an NPR member station each week."

Network officials are exultant about the impressive numbers. "This demonstrates that NPR is a leading source for news, information and entertainment in America," says Ken Stern, executive vice president. By far, the biggest audiences have been tuning into NPR's two weekday drive-time news programs -- with an average of 1.87 million people listening during any 15-minute period of "Morning Edition" and a 2.22 million average for "All Things Considered."

For a pair of shows with combined airtime of 20 hours between Monday and Friday, that's a very wide reach to a whole lot of ears. "The data seem to validate a systemwide trend toward adding more news and

Where are the Democrats?

AUSTIN, Texas -- Across the length and breadth of this great land of ours, from the mountain to the prairie, from every hill and dale comes the question, "Where are the Democrats?"

They're among the missing, along with Judge Crater and Osama bin Laden. The venerable political organization, the party of Jackson and Jefferson, is not to be found in action. OTAM -- out to all meals. So this is what it's like to live in a one-party country.

Is it possible, remotely possible, that Democrats are frightened by the John Ashcroft-Trent Lott school of "patriotism," which holds that questioning our elected (or even not-so-elected) leaders is tantamount to disloyalty if not treason? That expressing concern about our fundamental liberties helps terrorists? For that line of attack to be treated with anything but the contempt it deserves is itself un-American, not a word I use lightly.

As if the argument is not contemptible enough, one has only to look at the performance of these same definers of "patriotism" as blind obedience when Bill Clinton was struggling to fight a war. When the Clinton

Tax Code Woes

AUSTIN, Texas -- Did anybody vote for this stuff? I mean, aside from Congress.

Just to make Tax Day even more exciting than it usually is, we have been treated to a series of recent reports that the Internal Revenue Service is busy cracking down on poor folks, while letting an estimated 1 million rich folks and corporations move to Bermuda to avoid taxes.

If you are a worker poor enough to apply for the Earned Income Tax Credit, your chance of being audited is one in 47. If you make over $100,000 a year, your chance of being audited are one in 145.

This is not only unfair, but also stupid, on account of rich people who cheat on their taxes tend to owe a lot more money than poor people. Thus, their cheating leaves a larger hole in federal budget, which all the rest of us then have to make up for by paying higher taxes. We also pay through all that bad economic stuff that comes with big deficits about which Alan Greenspan is always worried.

This situation came about during the unhappy reign of the

Coleman is No Hog

Readers "On the Same Page" in Cincinnati are discussing William Gaines A Lesson Before Dying in a community wide effort to improve racial understanding. The author will visit during the week Cincinnati¹s notorious serial killer, Alton Coleman, has an April 26 execution date.

Gaines' novel tells the story of a black southerner sentenced to death by an all white jury for a killing committed by two other men. In closing argument to the jury, defense counsel characterized his client as a "hog." Gaines poignantly describes the death row inmate's struggle to recover his humanity and to face execution with dignity.

As a black defendant, Alton Coleman faced similar racial bias in Hamilton County¹s criminal justice system. The prosecutors used nine of their twelve peremptory challenges to exclude prospective black jurors, and only two African Americans were included on the trial panel.

The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Top Five List of Nuclear Events in 2001

1. The US gives notice of withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

2. US Boycotts the UN Conference to Advance the Entry Into Force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

3. US President George W. Bush pledges to reduce the US nuclear arsenal to between 1.700 and 2,200 strategic nuclear weapons over a period of ten years.  Russian President Vladimir Putin says that he will “respond in kind.”

4. The Ukraine destroys its last nuclear missile silo, fulfilling its pledge to give up the nuclear arsenal it inherited after the dissolution of the USSR.

5. Germany decides to phase out nuclear power by 2025.

www.wagingpeace.org/resources/

Bush administration’s nuclear policy termed “schizophrenic and dangerous"

The recent leak of classified sections of the Bush administration’s Nuclear Posture Review [NPR] shows that Bush’s nuclear policies are schizophrenic and dangerous. Twelve years after the end of the Cold War, Bush policies are pushing the world closer to the use of nuclear weapons,” said Kevin Martin, Executive Director for Peace Action.

The revelations in the L.A. Times show that under the NPR the President intends to produce a wide array of new nuclear weapons and to expand the conditions under which nuclear weapons would be used. Bush’s NPR is the first nuclear review to target non-nuclear nations and the first to list the nations Pentagon planners are slating for nuclear targeting. The nations listed are non-nuclear weapons nations, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and Syria and nuclear weapons powers China and Russia.

“On one hand, in the wake of the revelations, we have Condoleezza Rice

Family Environmental Activities

Now is the time to share with children the importance of caring for our environment. If we want quality environmental conditions to exist for our children’s children, now is the time to educate the upcoming generation in order to make this happen. The following are tips that can lead to discussions:

  • Reduce, reuse, recycle!

  • Recycle plastic and paper grocery bags.

  • Turn off unused lights.

  • Take your lunch in reusable containers to school and work.

  • Shower in less than 5 minutes to conserve water.

  • Write an essay about the importance of caring for the environment.

  • Make your own glass cleaner by mixing 1/8 cup vinegar and 1 cup water.

  • Start some seeds indoors for a garden.

  • Turn off the water while you brush your teeth.

  • Think of five ways you can produce less trash.

  • Donate used magazines to a nursing home or hospital waiting room.

  • Decorate and use empty cans to hold nails, pencils, paper clips, etc.

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