By Sheila Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros

Updated: The Station Fire Weblog

April 29, 2003, 7:52 p.m. - (Last week's weblog)

I was unexpectedly off yesterday. I'm sorry if you came looking for an update and left disappointed.

Country song lurks in a sad Pa. tale: Man kills new wife, self, eight hours after wedding: From Mill Hall, Pa.,

State police at Lamar said Frank W. Shope II, 34, married Lori Ann Spangler, 35, on Friday afternoon, but they began to argue during a small reception in a bar in Mill Hall, Clinton County.

The dispute escalated after they returned to their home in the Camelot Estates Trailer Court in Mill Hall, and a concerned neighbor called police.

Shortly before officers arrived, Shope got a .38 caliber revolver from his vehicle parked in the driveway and shot his new wife in the doorway of the mobile home at about 12:30 a.m. Saturday, police said.

He then shot himself in the head, they said.

...Shope started dating Spangler about five weeks ago after ending a 16-year relationship with another woman, friends and neighbors told The Patriot-News of Harrisburg. The two worked at the Clinton County Country Club, and Shope also worked at a service station in Mill Hall.

What do you think they were fighting about?
Link to this item | Comment

Open competition for the World Trade Center memorial: Anyone over the age of 18 may enter a design. You must register for the competition by May 29 and include a $25 submission fee. Final designs are due June 30.

Among the judges is Vietnam Veterans' Memorial designer Maya Lin, whose advice to appplicants is,

"You enter a competition not necessarily to win but to say what you truly believe needs to be done there. ... What could a memorial be here? Is it a place? Is it an object? Does it frame the site? But again, I hope we get submissions from people who just believe that their solution is right and they need to say it for them, and that's very important."

Link to this item | Comment

Worth repeating from last week:
Free ice cream today AND tomorrow: Today is Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry's stores (from noon-8 p.m.; you get ice cream too, not just a cone), and tomorrow is Free Scoop Night at Baskin-Robbins: "Visit one of our participating stores on Wednesday, April 30, 2003, from 6 to 10 p.m. and get a FREE 2.5 oz scoop of ice cream. Choose from any available flavor."

What a week to be a kid -- free ice cream two days in a row, followed by a free comic book Saturday.
Link to this item | Comment

The Unholy Army of Catholic School Girls: It's a digital paper doll site. In case that link doesn't work with your browser, this one probably will.
Link to this item | Comment

GeoURL ICBM Address Server: GeoURL is a location-to-URL reverse directory. This will allow you to find URLs by their proximity to a given location. Find your neighbor's blog, perhaps, or the web page of the restaurants near you.
Link to this item | Comment

Who do you think you are, lady? Those dazzled by embedding were not amused by Ashleigh Banfield's analysis of war coverage.

April 24: MSNBC's Banfield: Media filtered realities of war: From the Topeka (Kansas) Capital-Journal,

MANHATTAN -- War's sobering realities never reached American TV screens during the recent U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, according to NBC News correspondent Ashleigh Banfield.

"We didn't see what happen when Marines fired M-16s," Banfield said during a Landon lecture appearance today at Kansas State University. "We didn't see what happened after mortars landed, only the puff of smoke. There were horrors that were completely left out of this war. So was this journalism? Or was this coverage?"

On the other hand, she said, many U.S. television viewers were treated to a non-stop flow of images presented by "cable news operators who wrap themselves in the American flag and go after a certain target demographic."

"It was a grand and glorious picture that had a lot of people watching," Banfield said, "and a lot of advertisers excited about cable TV news. But it wasn't journalism, because I'm not sure Americans are hesitant to do this again -- to fight another war, because it looked to them like a courageous and terrific endeavor."

Audio: Hear the Landon Lecture delivered by Banfield

April 29: NBC's Banfield Chided Over Criticisms

NBC insiders said few people took Banfield's comments seriously because of her lack of experience -- she is largely working for MSNBC these days, and her primetime show on the network failed last summer. "I don't think people look to Ashleigh Banfield to set the standards of journalism," one person said about the reaction inside the department. "People were sort of rolling their eyes."

Reporters who have returned from Iraq have defended the networks' lack of blood-and-guts video, saying it was impossible to film much of it because of logistical reasons. They also noted that embedded reporters did not see action much of the time in Iraq.

Link to this item | Comment

'A licence to kill? Oh heavens, no!' "Daphne Park does not look like James Bond, but she was the true face of British Intelligence for 30 years." From the Telegraph (U.K.):

As one of MI6's most senior controllers for more than 30 years, she ran agents in Moscow during the Cold War, infiltrated Hanoi during the Vietnam conflict and smuggled men out of the Congo, post-independence, in the boot of her car. When she refers to "the office", she means MI6.

"It's been a huge advantage during my professional career that I've always looked like a cheerful, fat missionary," she says, fondling her onyx pendant. "It wouldn't be any use if you went around looking sinister, would it?"

Link to this item | Comment

Playing Card Deck Shows Way to U.S. Regime Change: Updated, 3:26 p.m. From a perhaps surprising source -- The World Trade Organization in Lausanne, Switzerland (GATT) From a WTO impersonator comes the following:

In the wake of the U.S.'s "pre-emptive" destruction of Iraq, her people, and her culture, the Trade Regulation Organization is issuing a "55 most wanted" playing-card deck similar to the one that the Pentagon issued two weeks ago in Iraq.

The TRO, estimating that the U.S. governing regime is no longer consistent with world peace or prosperity, hopes that the playing cards will show the way to regime change and, eventually, large-scale war crimes proceedings.

The cards are here.

More on the hijacked URL later today.
Link to this item | Comment

A new voice and two old hands bring fire to Doors favorites: Following last week's item about Jim Morrison's heirs suing The New Doors, here's Steve Morse's review of their Boston concert.
Link to this item | Comment

The Feral Eye's Cartoon Links: New links added daily in a bloggy way.
Link to this item | Comment

Gilgamesh tomb believed found: BBC reports, "Archaeologists in Iraq believe they may have found the lost tomb of King Gilgamesh - the subject of the oldest 'book' in history."
Link to this item | Comment

Garden blogs: Thanks for the tips and emails. I hope to pull together the beginnngs of a list here Thursday. So please send any more you find.

Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com