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September 30, 2005
Coming Sunday
I recently had a call from Beverly Leo, who for many years was a member of the Monitor’s board of contributors. As executive director of the Concord SPCA, Beverly wrote for our opinion pages about issues and legislative bills concerning animals. She once allowed our news staff to cover the putting down of a dog, including a photo sequence of the sad event.
Beverly, who retired several years ago, was calling to ask what I thought about the possibility of our covering her dying and death. She suffers from a rare lung disease and has beaten the odds she was given at diagnosis, but she is nearing death now.
I had to think about it. Nearly two years ago, Allison Steele of our staff chronicled a man’s death and its impact on his widow. They were a wonderful couple, and Allison wrote beautifully about them.
How would this story be different? What would readers glean from it that they hadn’t read in the earlier stories? The answer, of course, started with Beverly Leo herself. An articulate woman well known to our community is facing death. Through her experience, we hope to inform readers about medical decision-making and care-giving and to share with them the thoughts and emotions of Beverly and her family.
Reporter Joelle Farrell and photographer Lori Duff will have the first installment of Beverly’s story in the Sunday Monitor.
* * *
During the recent trial of a magazine salesman accused of raping a local woman, there was a quiet buzz of complaint about our coverage. It was too graphic, some readers said. It was too prominently played. It favored the accused.
There’s nothing easy about covering a case like this or deciding which details to include and which to omit. The first and by far most important decisions belong to the reporter, in this case Annmarie Timmins.
One challenge is how to tell readers enough so that they get an accurate account of the court proceedings without publishing details that would offend a wide swath of our readership. Another is to represent both sides fairly in what we choose to print.
On Sunday’s Viewpoints page, Timmins explains how she approached these challenges in the trial of Joseph Hannify.
Posted by Mike Pride at 03:50 PM | Comments (2)
September 29, 2005
All in the family
You may have read in yesterday’s paper that the Concord Monitor’s parent company, Newspapers of New England, Inc., is purchasing the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Mass., and the weekly Amherst (Mass.) Bulletin. What does this mean for Monitor readers?
My answer might differ somewhat from the one the owners and publisher of the Monitor would give, but here it is:
In a time when newspapers, including ours, are struggling to grow circulation and ad revenue, the expansion of Newspapers of New England is good news. It is evidence that the financial health of the company is strong. You don’t go into the marketplace and make a significant purchase if you are struggling.
The purchase is also a victory for the forces of community journalism. Profit is vital to any company's stability, but Newspapers of New England is not a bottom-line chain. It’s not a chain at all, really – it allows its papers great autonomy and retains the best traits of family newspaper ownership.
I’m certain the owners of the Daily Hampshire Gazette chose NNE as the buyer because they saw an affinity among the Gazette, the Monitor and other papers owned by NNE. I don’t know the sale price, but I’m guessing a lively, respected paper like the Gazette would have brought more on the open market than NNE paid for it.
One other thing Monitor readers might want to know about this purchase is that it reflects the optimism of the new guard at NNE.
We underwent big changes at the top after the retirement this past summer of George Wilson, the president of NNE for many years and the Monitor’s publisher for many years before that. Tom Brown, the Monitor’s publisher for the last 18 years, succeeded George as president of the parent company. George’s son Geordie is the new publisher of the Monitor. Aaron Julien, George’s son-in-law, recently joined NNE as a senior executive.
The purchase of the Gazette is a sign that the new generation of family leadership is doing what new generations are supposed to do: not just accepting the torch but also running with it.
No one knows the challenges the future holds, but the bet here is that Monitor readers – and readers of the Daily Hampshire Gazette and the Amherst Bulletin – can look ahead with confidence in their newspapers.
Posted by Mike Pride at 10:06 AM | Comments (1)
September 28, 2005
You go your way, and I'll go mine
Although I was an early Dylan fan, I never knew much about his life. He was purposely enigmatic, and it was his lyrics and performance that interested me, not what was behind the façade of celebrity. So I probably learned as much as anyone who watched No Direction Home, the superb PBS documentary on early Dylan (it airs again tonight at 7:30 on WENH, Channel 11).
It did not surprise me that as a young man Dylan was a liar and a bit of a thief. He lied about where he’d come from, an effort to pad his résumé, a great American tradition. He stole his friends’ records to drill Woody Guthrie’s songs and persona into his brain.
There is an amazing transition in Dylan’s career that remains just as mysterious to me after the film as it was before. This is when Dylan goes from gulping and aping the work of Guthrie, Lead Belly and others and suddenly becomes a song writer who performs his own work almost exclusively. And what songs! Yes, they have roots in the folk tradition, but they are like nothing that existed before them. They are at once raw and polished. There are so many of them, and they are so long and so complex and come so fast, that it is wonder Dylan could remember the lyrics, much less perform them with such feeling.
And while these songs fit – even defined – the moment, they have also stood the test of time. Sure, we boomers can all break out in a Beatles tune, but Dylan’s lyrics are something else again. Forty years later (ouch!), they remain alluring, mysterious and challenging. They call us back, they call us forward.
This is a blog, not a review, so I’ll add just one other point: I saw the film over two nights. The first part I found mesmerizing. The making of the artist, the evocation of the Village in the early 1960s, the interviews with Dave Van Ronk, another old favorite of mine, and others from that period – all great stuff. There were hints of the second part throughout the first, namely the British performance with the Band in which the electronic Dylan was booed and scorned.
I found the second part hard to watch – almost a chore. It wasn’t the music. I liked the electric Dylan as much as I liked the folk Dylan, although the sound quality of the electric performances was flat. But the division of the film into two parts reflected the sharp divide in the experience of the 1960s. For young people, there was a spirit of discovery in the early 1960s, a hopeful break with the past. The optimism and resolve soon crumbled. Things fell apart. Assassination, the draft, the war, drugs, racial strife and violence all moved front and center.
Dylan moved on, too, determined to follow his talent where it took him, not wanting to explain himself, make grand statements or join any movements. His contact with the world became surreal – fans groping at the windows of his limos, cynical reporters asking stupid questions. It was an ugly time for him and the start of an ugly time for the country.
Posted by Mike Pride at 09:10 AM | Comments (1)
September 26, 2005
In focus
During political campaigns, focus groups get a bad name. They’re the straw man when a candidate says that unlike her opponent, she’s not going to base her policies on polls and focus groups. Of course, then she does.
We’ve been working on a content-driven redesign of the Monitor for two years, and we are just over a month from our launch date. We’ve been soliciting reader opinion all along in making decisions. Last week, we showed a prototype of the redesigned Monitor to two focus groups, one of subscribers, the other of lapsed subscribers. You can learn a lot from focus groups.
Since you haven’t seen the prototype, it’s not possible to delve into specifics, but I will list five notions about newspapering that the focus groups reinforced for me:
– Readers are smart and they know newspapers. Anything these groups perceived as a dumbing down of content, they disliked. There were times when, unprompted, group members talked about fonts, anecdotal lead paragraphs and column rules, sounding much like the editors who had pored over these same pages.
– Readers are good at multi-tasking. They read letters to the editor to see what the neighbors are saying but also “to see what whack jobs they are.”
– Readers are pressed for time. They want stories that get to the point and organization that makes sense. They want like news items in one place. They want to be able to tell at a glance the difference between news and ads.
– Readers form strong habits. Leave a regular feature out of the prototype, and they’ll ask where it is.
– Subscribers and lapsed subscribers differ on some things, creating a dilemma for us as we go forward. Regular readers like national and world news, lapsed subscribers less so. Readers don’t necessarily want more coverage of television and popular culture; lapsed subscribers do.
The bottom line for both groups was that the new design is cleaner than the current Monitor. On content, both groups liked the ideas we stressed in the prototype, but they also reinforced the idea that our mission hasn't changed: They expect strong local and state news from the Monitor.
All in all, we read the focus groups' views as a green light. They're willing to accept change as long as they see change as improvement.
Posted by Mike Pride at 07:27 PM | Comments (2)
September 23, 2005
Are you ready for some football?
After years as a well-kept secret, the UNH football team burst into the spotlight last year. The Wildcats won their first postseason game and a date with Montana, a perennial powerhouse in their class. The Griz mauled the ’Cats, but not before UNH’s spirited, talented team had captured the attention of sports fans all across New Hampshire.
The only embarrassment was that the Wildcats’ field in Durham was deemed unfit for a home game in the postseason. The Montana stadium, by contrast, was a gem. Both it and the Georgia Southern stadium, where the ’Cats had won their first tournament game, drew more than 20,000 people. The UNH stadium seats 6,500, but attendance averages less than 6,000.
The success of the team and the inadequacy of the field started talk about building a new stadium for the Wildcats. Of course, this being New Hampshire, the problem was – is – money.
Today at noon, after two road wins, the Wildcats will play Dartmouth at the UNH field. It’s early, but this UNH team seems to be as exciting as last year’s.
The question is whether the enthusiasm of the fans will translate into good crowds. If it does, the idea of building a new stadium may have legs. If it doesn’t, forget it. The Rick Santos-David Ball years will soon fade away, just as the Jerry Azumah years did.
But let’s stay optimistic. Tomorrow should be a lovely early fall day – perfect weather to drive over and see what the ’Cats are all about.
Posted by Mike Pride at 03:45 PM | Comments (4)
September 22, 2005
My back pages
I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see the PBS airing of No Direction Home, the two-part film on Bob Dylan (Channel 2 is running it at 9 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, Channel 11 at 7:30 Wednesday). Megastar that Dylan is (or was), nearly everyone in my generation has a personal history with him. Here are three episodes from mine.
No. 1: Dylan invaded my consciousness in 1965, when I was a college sophomore. My roommate, Jon Wilson, had Dylan’s early albums. We listened to them until they were scratched and worn, but their deterioration just enhanced the old-time folky feel Dylan was after in the first place. Lines like “You’ve got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend” became planted in my brain. They seemed so bold and – pardon my saying so – relevant. But the best thing was that Dylan made me laugh at the world. I mean, who else could pull off a lyric that included a string bean, a parking meter and Anita Ekberg?
No. 2: In 1969, after a year in a small farm town in Germany as an Army linguist, I was transferred to my unit’s main base. I went to the NCO club for cheap beers the first night back. Someone was playing the same song over and over on the jukebox. I liked it but didn’t know who was singing. I asked a fellow there who it was. Oh, he said, that’s “Lay Lady Lay” – Bob Dylan. When I heard the rest of Nashville Skyline, especially the new “Girl from the North Country” duet with Johnny Cash, I couldn’t believe how different it was from early Dylan and electric Dylan. The times were a-changin’ again.
No. 3: This was the best. I was in Florida in 1976 when the Rolling Thunder Revue passed through. As I walked into the concert, the ticket-taker handed me an envelope. Inside was an invitation to show up the next day at 1 p.m. at a grand old hotel. The invitation didn’t say why. Outside the hotel, I joined a long line as it snaked through the lobby and into a ballroom with scaffolding on one side, a stage on the other and a floor in between. A small portion of the previous night’s crowd had been chosen as the audience for a television special with Dylan and Joan Baez. Dylan wore a big white hat, and the director told him to take it off. Dylan said no. From maybe 30 feet away, I watched Dylan and Baez and their band sing and play for two hours. The program never aired, to my knowledge. In memory it remains my own secret jam session with Bob Dylan.
Posted by Mike Pride at 03:21 PM | Comments (4)
September 21, 2005
Content
“Tempers flared over skyboxes, unity emerged with a Poynter quote-out, and one editor said the new color gray made him want to eat fish.”
In a playful e-mail, Deputy City Editor Danielle Kronk suggested that this might be the first sentence of the story if a reporter were covering a meeting we had today at the Monitor. I won’t bore you by explaining what it means. The point is that today a group of editors and designers continued their arguments about the minutiae of what the Monitor will look like in a few weeks when we introduce our new typography.
When passions cool over these issues and the decisions are made, we’ll share them with you.
In the meantime, I’d like to call your attention to work already under way on the content of the paper. It was a content review, after all, that started us down the road to redesigning the paper.
I’ll focus on two areas: community news and opinion.
We publish community news inside the Local/State section. The challenge is to make this feature even more vital and informative.
Rebecca Tsaros-Dickson, the new community editor, has already begun to report more fully on certain items and to expand on what we publish. A former reporter, she is taking a proactive approach, seeking out news rather than just publishing what people send us. Becky would love to work with correspondents from local high schools, for example, to get more school news on the pages – especially news with names and faces.
We’ve also retained our Town Criers, community volunteers who write for the Sunday paper. There are towns without criers, incidentally, and we would like to remedy that.
Now, about opinion. It has always been the goal of our editorial pages to be a community forum. We have opinions, and we put them in editorials, but these take up just a fraction of the space. We want to increase dramatically the number of voices who use our opinion pages to discuss the issues of our state and communities.
Opinion Editor Ari Richter has joined Editorial Page Editor Ralph Jimenez to develop a broader forum. Among other things, this entails e-mail interviews with newsmakers and pro-con presentations on issues. It includes excerpts from speeches and public testimony. It means soliciting more public response on major events as they happen.
People around here have never been shy about sharing their opinions. The result is a rich public debate. One goal of our redesign is to stir up even more of it on the Monitor’s editorial pages.
Please stay tuned!
Posted by Mike Pride at 05:53 PM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2005
Smash hit
I grew up in the South and knew plenty of guys who spent more time under the hoods of their ’57 Chevies and 327 Impalas than they did with their girlfriends. As a young sports writer, I covered small-track stock-car racing at an old-fashioned speedway and sprint cars on a dirt track at the Tampa fair. But even with two big races a year a dozen miles from my house in Concord, my interest in NASCAR is more professional than personal.
Yesterday was an exception. Between the little-boy petulance on the track and the suspense at the finish, the Sylvania 300 in Loudon was a great race. I tuned it in on TNT while sitting on my couch paying my bills.
With just over 100 laps to go and the caution flags out, Michael Waltrip ran Robby Gordon into the wall. Gordon exited his smooshed car, took off his helmet and waited for Waltrip to come around again. When he did, Gordon walked out among the racers and slammed his helmet into the driver’s side of Waltrip’s car.
Gordon’s next stop was a TNT microphone into which he referred to Waltrip as “a piece of ----.” As Gordon stalked away, the nonplussed announcer apologized and I wondered, “Can they say that on television?”
Back on the track, the thrill of the Chase, the 10-driver, 10-race grand finale that decides the Nextel Cup, soon overshadowed the bizarre – and perilous – feuding between Waltrip and Gordon.
Two drivers in the Chase, Ryan Newman and Tony Stewart, were running 1-2 with 16 laps to go. As they entered each curve, Stewart dropped down the bank and tried to pass. Newman fended him off until just eight laps remained.
Then it was Newman’s turn to try to squeeze by Stewart. On the next-to-last lap, he did it – a miracle finish on the Miracle Mile.
“We raced clean, we raced hard, we had fun,” Newman said afterward.
Stewart had less fun. He was surly, turning away from the microphone with the same disgusted look Gordon had worn after his tiff with Waltrip.
The private jets flew out of Concord airport into a blue late-summer sky late yesterday afternoon as the NASCAR caravan headed out for the next stop. But anyone who watched this race – in person or on the tube – had to acknowledge that the oft-maligned Loudon track had provided the setting for one of the circuit’s better shows.
Posted by Mike Pride at 03:48 PM | Comments (0)
September 16, 2005
Morning ritual
Don’t tell my doctor, but I’ve started to run again. It’s been 12 years since a medical condition forced me to give it up. I have short legs and a stocky body, but I used to run five miles three times a week and 10 or 12 miles on some weekend days. I had done my first 10k road race a few days before chest pains doubled me over, the first sign of the condition that stopped me in my tracks.
My aims are modest now. I’ll be running slower, if that is possible. I’m hoping I can build up to a two-mile habit. And because I dislike indoor workouts and swimming pools and never developed a yen for skiing or skating, I want to run again in winter.
My official reason for sharing this personal story is to say a word of praise for the track at Memorial Field. What a community asset! Some days I wish it had a dome over it, but even though the resurfacing job is several years old, the track is much better than the crumbled asphalt I remember from my running days.
During the last month or so, my wife and I have spent many early mornings there walking and running. Sometimes we have the track to ourselves. There are never more than three or four other people there.
More should come. Lanes are going unused. And for people like me, who want to avoid hills while working themselves back into shape, the track beats city streets.
As we circle, we often see a community of dog walkers gathering nearby (though not on the track, where they are forbidden). There’s a black dog with a white face, a couple of reddish dogs that are probably setters, and pound dogs of various shades and patterns. The dogs are friendly and fast, and their owners are responsible and seem to enjoy one another’s company as much as their dogs do.
Crows sometimes watch us on the track. One in particular perches on a light stanchion on the north side of the football field. I tell my wife it’s the same one every day – I can tell by the caw. She’s doesn’t believe me. But I know it’s the same one because when it goes caw-caw-caw, I hear, “Run, Mike, Run.”
At first I took this as encouragement, but then it occurred to me that this was a crow talking, and I began to wonder.
Posted by Mike Pride at 03:37 PM | Comments (0)
September 14, 2005
Rape trial
Two readers whose letters will appear in tomorrow's Monitor criticize our coverage of the rape trial of magazine salesman Joseph Haniffy in Merrimack County Superior Court. One complains about the headline “Woman says she danced for rape suspect” on Tuesday’s story. The other says we are giving the story too much play and questions our naming the defendant but not his accuser.
The complaint about the headline mentions the 1988 movie The Accused. Jodie Foster plays a rape victim in the movie, and her behavior before the rape becomes an issue at trial. As I remember it, the movie was disturbing and challenging.
Although all the details in the Concord case are not yet known, it parallels the movie in some ways. The Haniffy defense is that the sex was consensual. Considering the testimony, the jury will clearly have to consider the accuser’s behavior before the sex.
I did wince when I saw our headline “Woman says she danced for rape suspects,” but on reflection I thought it accurately conveyed the most important aspect of the previous day’s testimony.
Likewise I believe our play of the story reflects its importance. When the story was first reported, it was absolutely chilling. Public interest in the case remains great, and not for prurient reasons. The public needs all the facts it can get to evaluate the investigation, the decision to bring charges, the testimony and other evidence, the conduct of the lawyers and, ultimately, the jury’s verdict.
Whether newspapers should name accusers in rape cases is the subject of ongoing debate. The Monitor follows tradition here.
We do name the accused even though they are innocent until proved guilty. Readers know an arrest is not proof of guilt, and they have a right to know who has been arrested, not just that someone has.
Unless the accusers in sex crimes request to be named, we grant them anonymity in print. Society still attaches a stigma even to those who allege such crimes. And, as in the current case, questioning the character and the actions of an accuser is standard defense procedure. If we named accusers, fewer victims would come forward.
People I respect in journalism make the opposite case, arguing that not naming rape victims actually enhances the stigmatization and makes it easier for defense lawyers to assail their character in court (for more on this argument, click here). Philosophically, I can see the logic of this point, and as a journalist, for the sake of credibility, I would prefer that we name everyone we write about.
But practically – especially in a small community – I think naming accusers would hurt them more than it would help readers.
Posted by Mike Pride at 05:44 PM | Comments (1)
September 12, 2005
'A Woman in Berlin'
Not entirely by design, I spent nearly all my leisure reading time this summer on diaries and memoirs. I started with Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell, moved on to Lillian Hellman’s Scoundrel Time, delighted in Russell Baker’s Growing Up, and spent hours digging into the early Cold War period in Drew Pearson’s diaries. All these books I came by at library book sales, to which I am addicted.
Then, in mid-August, I read a rave review of A Woman in Berlin, a diary written by an an anonymous woman during the Russian capture of Berlin in 1945 and its immediate aftermath. It is a stunning book, in part because of the writer’s candor about surviving a regime of wanton rape and utter defeat.
As I read it, I did wonder about two things. First, the writing is beautiful – nuanced, thoughtful, reflective as well as descriptive. It seems polished for a diary, particularly one written under such desperate conditions and supposedly transcribed from scraps of paper. Second, I wondered why the book was published anonymously. In the review I read in the New York Times Book Review, Joseph Kanon wrote: “Anonymous died in 2001, but she remains officially unnamed, a private woman who has bequeathed us an extraordinary public legacy.” I choked a bit on the word “officially.”
Then, in yesterday’s Times Book Review, Christoph Gottesmann, a reader from Vienna, had a letter addressing just these two points. The author of A Woman in Berlin, he said, was presumed to be Marta Hillers, a German journalist. Gottesmann also recounted what he knew of the history of the handwritten diary, beginning with its transcription to a typed manuscript a month after it was written.
The controversy over these issues – the naming of Hillers and the possible editing and revising of the diary – broke out in Europe in 2003, when A Woman in Berlin was republished in Germany and became a bestseller. (Germans rejected the book when it was first published in 1959, complaining that it impugned the reputation of German women.) A German literary critic disclosed Hiller’s name, and the essayist who had republished the diary slammed the critic (for a fuller account, click here).
I think the introduction to the new American edition should have named Hillers. I also think the publisher should have disclosed all that is known about the process Hillers’s words (presuming she wrote them) went through between the spring of 1945 and the new English edition in 2005. I would not mind if the original was cleaned up and polished; I would just like to know it.
In spite of the controvesy, A Woman in Berlin is a fine book, at once troubling and enlightening.
Of course, its revelations are unwelcome in Russia. Antony Beevor, the historian who wrote the introduction to the new edition, is the author of a 2002 book, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, recounting the Russian takeover. He estimates that Russian soldiers raped 100,000 women in Berlin. The Russians have denounced the claim.
Posted by Mike Pride at 09:25 AM | Comments (3)
September 09, 2005
With the Guard
Our photographer Preston Gannaway and reporter Dan Barrick have spent the week in and around New Orleans with members of the New Hampshire National Guard. If you’ve followed their stories and photographs, you know that each day they have gotten closer to the heart of this great disaster.
Barrick’s story today describes the smelly water in the city as “dark brown with an oily sheen” and the smell of “rotting garbage, diesel fumes, sewage and decay.” To get close enough to record these sensations – and for Gannaway to shoot pictures – the two rode into the city on a four-seat Jet-Ski.
Previously, a five-ton Army truck had transported them so they could report on the work of New Hampshire guardsmen in bringing security and comfort to people in distress.
One story quoted Sgt. John Evans, who returned home in the spring after a year in Iraq. He had mixed feelings about that assignment but not about being sent to Louisiana. “This is the kind of thing the Guard was meant to do,” he told Barrick. “I’d much rather be helping other Americans.”
The Monitor journalists are scheduled to return tomorrow, but they have more coverage in the works. The Sunday A-section will feature a two-page photo spread on the Guard at work and play. On the Viewpoints page, we'll run a personal commentary about the two journalists' experience. Barrick’s e-mail with editors about how to shape this piece included these sentences:
“When I arrived at New Orleans Naval Air Base with some 500 troops from the New Hampshire National Guard last week, I was superbly unprepared for military life. I have never been camping. I do not own a sleeping bag, a backpack or numerous other necessities of the rough life. I enjoy a daily shower. I am also very cranky. These are not promising characteristics for a soldier.”
We’re grateful to local National Guard leaders for giving us a chance to cover their mission and to bring readers a firsthand look at this national tragedy. We hope our stories and pictures have been useful to readers.
Posted by Mike Pride at 03:53 PM | Comments (0)
September 07, 2005
Legacy
Legacy is a big word. Some are applying it to President Bush’s two appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge John Roberts and a player to be named later. Certainly these are important appointments, but Bush’s legacy? Check back with me in 20 years. Maybe we’ll know by then which direction Roberts took the court and whether the Bush justices turned the court at all.
When Chief Justice William Rehnquist died on Saturday, no one called him Richard Nixon’s legacy, even though Nixon appointed him. You could make a better case that he was Ronald Reagan’s legacy. Reagan’s elevation of Rehnquist to chief justice was a defining moment for the conservative movement.
The odd thing is that when Rehnquist died, nowhere did I read a reference to George W. Bush as Rehnquist’s legacy. There’s a good argument for it. No Rehnquist, no President Bush, at least not in 2000.
This is a legacy forged through irony. Rehnquist and his court majority violated their own judicial philosophy to award the presidency to the candidate of their party.
Florida’s 25 electoral votes were decisive in the 2000 election, but the outcome there was in dispute. After days of piecemeal recounts, political bluster and lawsuits, the Florida Supreme Court ordered a recount. Bush, who led by 327 votes in the state, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
On the basis of their core belief – call it originalist, strict constructionist or states’ rightist – there was no way Rehnquist and the court’s other four conservative justices should have accepted the Bush appeal. But they did.
Here is Linda Greenhouse’s account of these events from her Rehnquist obituary in the New York Times:
“On Dec. 9, the day after the Florida Supreme Court ordered a new recount, the chief justice and Justices Scalia, O’Connor, Kennedy and Thomas voted to issue a stay, freezing the recount that had just begun. They also accepted the Bush appeal and scheduled argument for Dec. 11. Through the night after the argument and the long day that followed, the country waited for the result. At 10 p.m. on Dec. 12, the court issued its ruling. An unsigned opinion by the same five justices held that a lack of uniform standards for counting ballots from county to county meant that the recount would violate the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. There was no time to fix the problem, the majority held, so there could be no further counting.”
If anyone’s legacy came into focus during the last few days, it was Rehnquist’s. In Bush v. Gore, he abandoned his disdain for the encroachment of federal power on the states. This elected Bush, a man likely to choose judicial nominees to his liking. And now Rehnquist’s president has appointed Rehnquist’s one-time clerk to succeed him as chief justice.
Legacies can be tricky, but who could ask for a better shot at life after death?
Posted by Mike Pride at 04:06 PM | Comments (2)
September 01, 2005
First day of school
Dear Grace,
Grammy and I enjoyed talking to you on the phone last night about your first day in pre-kindergarten. We are glad you made a new friend and drew a picture for us.
You’re going to be a terrific student. We saw that again last weekend when you wouldn’t let us stop reading books to you. Your daddy called me a sucker because we read so many, but don’t listen to him. How many did we read? Ten? Twelve? More, I think. (I don’t know about you, but my favorite book was about the little rabbit who thought he didn’t like carrots. I hope you eat your carrots.)
After we read all those books, I told Grammy your mind was like a Xerox machine. You listen and look so carefully, you take everything in, and you can spin it right back out. Sometimes when it’s a book we’ve read before and I’m not sure you’re paying attention, I stop in the middle of a sentence, and you quickly fill in the next words.
You have too much on your mind to think beyond the excitement of starting school – finally – but our talk last night left Grammy and me thinking about your future. You will be going to school for the next 16 years, maybe longer. Wow! In that time, the world will change so much!
You’ve got great parents, and this has given you a big head start. You’ll keep learning from them all your life.
Your teachers have a big job, too. I admire good teachers more than any other people (and I’m not saying that just because Grammy is a teacher). Teachers do the most important work. They offer children like you what they need to become successful and fulfilled adults. It is so amazing that year after year, at schools all around the country, teachers give so many children, small and big, the chance to grow.
You’re going to have a great time in your pre-K class. You’re going to learn new things every day. It won’t even seem like work. And before you know it, you’ll be reading to Grammy and me.
Be nice to your brother. We know you will.
Love, Grampa
Posted by Mike Pride at 07:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack