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JEROME DAVID SALINGER’S best known character has been given a reprieve from aging and being thrust into an unfamiliar plot.

Swedish book publisher Fredrik Colting who published 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye under the pen name John David California, holds that the new work is “a legally protected commentary and parody”.

But today a federal judge indefinitely banned publication of the unauthorized sequel in the United States. If it really is that bad, I’d rather a copy got leaked on the intertubes so we can all enjoy a good laugh and Mr Colting doesn’t get to see another red cent as penance for using an awful title, pen-name and legal defense.

After all, banning something tends to generate curiosity and push up the price for satisfying it.

JERRI NIELSEN was hired in 1998 to spend a year at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. It was the year she found a lump in her breast, did her own biopsy and eventually diagnosed herself with breast cancer.

It was winter and the station was cut off from the world, but she was able to consult with medical personnel in the US via telecommunications. A military plane was dispatched to drop equipment and supplies. Nielsen trained a small team, none of whom had had medical experience, to assist her in administering treatment.

Amid much publicity, a plane was sent — ahead of schedule and despite dangerous weather — to rescue the doctor. After a mastectomy and extensive treatment, the doctor lived to write a book on her experiences, make several visits back to the pole and travel the world on speaking engagements. Sadly, her cancer was not to stay in remission.

HERE IS an obvious question — if somewhat tasteless in its phraseology: is the White House stonewalling on LGBT issues?

Well, yes and no. On one hand the LGTB community feels progress is not being made quickly enough:

[Obama's] relationship with the LGBT community still seems uneasy. On June 22, 77 members of the House signed a letter to President Obama asking him to sign an executive order to stop the military from any further discharges under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

On June 25, demonstrators picketed outside a pricey gay Democratic fundraiser to send a message to the keynote speaker, Vice President Joe Biden. According to a White House pool reporter on the scene, about 50 protesters held up signs saying, “No Money for DOMA,” “No Money for DADT,” and “Gay Uncle Toms.”

IN THE US Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has resigned from a women’s club to avoid controversy and accusations of participating in behaviour which encourages discrimination of any kind.

“I believe that the Belizean Grove does not practice invidious discrimination and my membership did not violate the Judicial Code of Ethics, but I do not want questions about this to distract anyone from my qualifications and record,” the 54-year-old New York federal appeals judge wrote.

The American Bar Association’s judicial code says that a judge’s extrajudicial activities “must not be conducted in connection or affiliation with an organization that practices invidious discrimination.”

Read the full CNN story

The Belizean Grove is an elite women’s social club for influential personages from the military, financial, and diplomatic sectors. It is invitation-only and is the female equivalent of the male-only social group, the Bohemian Club.

EIGHTEEN MONTHS after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto the United Nations is to investigate the death of Pakistan’s first (and thusfar, only) female prime minister.

After nearly a decade in exile, having been removed from her elected office twice on charges of corruption, Bhutto had been back in her country for just over two months when she was killed.

There has been much controversy surrounding the assassination, both as to the exact cause of Bhutto’s death, as well as who was responsible for the assassination.

Twenty other people in close proximity to Bhutto that day were also killed during the attack.

This week, a close aide to Pakistan’s Taliban chief, Baitullah Mehsud, confirmed reports that Mehsud was behind Bhutto’s assassination, Pakistan’s Express TV reported.

The Pakistani government and CIA officials have said in the past that Mehsud was responsible for Bhutto’s death.

NOT EVERYONE can keep a promise of the breadth that this classy lady did, right up to the day she died.

Clarice Morant made promises — and she kept them. Like the promise she made to keep her brother and sister out of a nursing home. It didn’t matter that Clarice Morant — who was better known by her nickname, Classy — was more than 100 years old. [...]

o she fed and bathed her brother and sister. She was a tiny woman, but she lifted, pulled and dressed them. There were other caregivers in the brick row house they shared in Washington, D.C. But at nighttime, it was just Morant, her sister — Rozzie Laney, who was bedridden and dying of Alzheimer’s — and her brother, Ira Barber, who’d had a stroke and had dementia.

Read the full NPR story

Today
I am looking for a quiet place,
to meditate or to grieve.
Both.
My father’s birthday
today. Had he been alive.

Had he been alive
his pain would have been unbearable.
Not physical, but complete. The total self.
I would not wish that on him,
anyone.

Today I read that 61 miners died
for the sake of gold.
Glittering bodies,
choked,
lost,
entombed before their time.

The mineshaft was closed down;
they were illegally there.
Thirty pieces of gold that betrayed them.
I think of Wilde’s The Young King, of Steinbeck’s The Pearl.

This is a country where a bus driver earns more than a young doctor.

I am looking for a quiet place
to begin to understand the rape of Africa,
the avaricious salacious DNA
that shapes my blood
cutting my ancestral keys.

JUST UNDER a month ago, Koko Taylor gave what was to be her last performance. Aptly it was at the Blues Music Awards (previously known as the “Handys” after William Christopher Handy, blues composer and musician, often called the “Father of the Blues”).

In addition to her other awards — including a Grammy (1995) — Taylor won over 20 Handys in her lifetime in a number of categories including Contemporary Blues Female Artist, Entertainer of the Year, Traditional Blues Female Artist, and Vocalist of the Year. This year she won her record 29th Blues Music Award.

Although she almost died in a car crash in 1989, after her recovery she still performed 70 to 100 concerts a year. In 2003 she almost died again from gastrointestinal surgery but fought and won.

This time it was not to be and Koko Taylor died last night after similar surgery.

AND HAD Jolie not made an appearance at the ICC trial of Thomas Lubanga, how many news/gossip sites would have made mention of the trial, brought attention to child soldiers and conflict in the DRC?

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Angelina Jolie sat in a courtside booth Tuesday at the International Criminal Court and watched the trial of a Congolese warlord charged with using child soldiers.

In a statement released by the court, Jolie, a mother of six, said the case against Thomas Lubanga is a “landmark trial for children” and paid tribute to the former child soldiers who travel to the court’s seat in The Hague to testify.

“After watching the proceedings from the viewing booth, I stood up and found Thomas Lubanga Dyilo looking at me,” Jolie said. “I imagined how difficult it must be for all the brave young children who have come to testify against him.”

The Woman Behind the New Deal
by Kirstin Downey (from amazon.com)

WE OWE a great debt of gratitude in the US to Frances Perkins, yet she is virtually unknown now — certainly not the household name she was in the 20th century. It is largely because of Perkins’ work with the New Deal, labor unions and social legislation made enormous strides forward.

This remarkable woman had a great sense of moral responsibility and a talent for doing what needed to be done at a time when women did not yet have the vote, although she would be working for the New York State Industrial Commission in 1920 when the 19th Amendment was passed and women in all US states voted for the first time.

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