June 01, 2007

And ... We're Back!

First Things First: This morning I awoke to find a "free sample" of A Local Newspaper on my front porch. This is at least the third time recently that they have delivered a "free sample."

I'm so glad they're delivering "free samples" of a product that's been around since 1786, because otherwise I never would have heard of it.

I mean every time I walked into GetGo or 7-Eleven and saw those big piles of flat, printed material near the entrance, I wondered, "Gee, what's inside those?" Now I know, thanks to the "free sample"! Boy, what a dummy I was!

Seriously, A Local Newspaper (a.k.a. "The Toledo, Ohio-based Block Bugler" to the editorial page of the Greensburg-based "Tribune-Astonisher"), the reason people aren't subscribing isn't because they haven't heard of you.

Perhaps they don't have time to read you, or perhaps they're using that nasty, rotten Interweb that the kids are always "surfing up."

I like newspapers. I really, really do. (They don't like me, however.) I like newspapers so much that I recently subscribed again to the McKeesport, Pa.-based Daily Soon-To-Be-A-Trib-Total-Media-Joint after a decade of buying it on the newsstand.

Besides the fact that the McKeesport Daily STBATTMJ offers news about Our Fair City that I can't find anywhere else --- it has a "unique selling proposition," as they said in the 1950s --- it also has local obituaries, so I can check and see if I died. (And it has "Snuffy Smith." He's still fightin' them revenooers, God bless him.)

I also often buy a Washington Post and a Noo Yawk Daily News, even though they're damned expensive, but they're also damned well written. I subscribed to the Christian Science Monitor because it's got superb international news coverage. Those newspapers have "unique selling propositions."

A Local Newspaper wants to deliver 12-hour-old wire stories to my front porch in a soggy, sodden mess. That's "unique," I'll admit, but it's not a "selling" proposition.

So thanks for the "free samples," Local Newspaper. You would make better use of your time by trying to figure out how to (1.) improve your local content, (2.) minimize your dependence on wire copy, and (3.) make money on the Interwebs. You know, lighting a candle instead of cursing the darkness.

'Cause the whole cursing-the-darkness bit is making metropolitan newspapers look like the buggy-whip makers of America circa 1920. And I haven't received any free samples of buggy-whips lately, if you get my drift.

. . .

Good News You Missed: Then again, underneath all of the wire stories, you find things like this from Eric Slagle. More stories like that, please, and "sample" me again.

. . .

In Other News: The state Department of Education is finally taking Duquesne High School out to the farm:

Gerald Zahorchak, secretary of the state Department of Education, said Tuesday that he will ask the district's board of control to dissolve the high school at its June 5 meeting and will ask the Legislature to give him the power to select multiple districts to take Duquesne's approximately 200 high school students. (Karen Zapf, Tribune-Review)

Naturally, West Mifflin school directors are busily welcoming their neighbors with open arms. (Ha ha ha! No, they're erecting barbed wire fences and machine-gun nests. The brotherhood of man, the milk of human kindness, etc.)

We can lament the loss of Duquesne High's identity and its sports traditions, but public school does not exist to support sports teams. It exists to prepare young men and women for productive careers.

The evidence is overwhelming that Duquesne School District is not able to do that. The young people of Duquesne deserve better. Yes, pause a moment to mourn the loss of Duquesne High, but cheer that someone has finally come to their senses.

. . .

Speaking of Coming to Their Senses: The Allegheny Institute of Public Policy is bemoaning the fact that the state has been subsidizing Duquesne to the tune of $16,000 per student, "far more," they write, "than the 'rich' district of Mt. Lebanon." This is proof, they say, that Duquesne has not been treated "inequitably."

It should be obvious that Duquesne can't possibly generate as much tax revenue as Mt. Lebanon. That's what's meant by "inequitable":

• One mill of property tax in Duquesne generates $16,000.



• One mill of property tax in Mt. Lebanon generates one mill generates $2 million.

The idea of "equity" in public education is that a student should be able to move from Mt. Lebanon to Duquesne --- or Steel Valley or West Mifflin or West Jefferson Hills, for that matter --- and receive roughly the same education. Clearly that isn't the case.

Don't "think" tanks have dictionaries? "Equitable" means "dealing fairly and equally with all concerned." (Like "Equitable Gas Company" ... they hose the customers, but they do it equally to everyone.)

The only "equitable" solution would be for Pennsylvania to have many, many fewer school districts and a uniform statewide tax. Right now we have "separate" and "unequal," and if it looks like Jim Crow, and squawks like Jim Crow ...

. . .

To Do This Weekend: Pittsburgh Area Jitterbug Club is holding its annual Summer Beach Bash today through Sunday at the Palisades, Fifth Avenue at Water Street, starting with a party at 7 tonight. Dances are from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. today and Saturday, and the Daddio of the Raddio, Porky Chedwick, will be tomorrow's special guest. Tickets are only $15 each night. Call (412) 551-0830 or visit the club's website.

Posted at 08:22 am by jt3y
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May 28, 2007

Memorial Day

I have not come here today with a prepared address. The committee in charge of the exercises of the day have graciously excused me on the grounds of public obligations from preparing such an address, but I will not deny myself the privilege of joining with you in an expression of gratitude and admiration for the men who perished for the sake of the Union.

They do not need our praise. They do not need that our admiration should sustain them. There is no immortality that is safer than theirs. We come not for their sakes but for our own, in order that we may drink at the same springs of inspiration from which they themselves selves drank.

I can never speak in praise of war, ladies and gentlemen; you would not desire me to do so. But there is this peculiar distinction belonging to the soldier, that he goes into an enterprise out of which he himself cannot get anything at all. He is giving everything that he hath, even his life, in order that others may live, not in order that he himself may obtain gain and prosperity.

And just so soon as the tasks of peace are performed in the same spirit of self-sacrifice and devotion, peace societies will not be necessary. The very organization and spirit of society will be a guaranty of peace.

We admire physical courage, but we admire above all things else moral courage. I believe that soldiers will bear me out in saying that both come in time of battle. I take it that the moral courage comes in going into the battle, and the physical courage in staying in.

There are battles which are just as hard to go into and just as hard to stay in as the battles of arms, and if the man will but stay and think never of himself there will come a time of grateful recollection when men will speak of him not only with admiration but with that which goes deeper, with affection and with reverence.

So that this flag calls upon us daily for service, and the more quiet and self-denying the service the greater the glory of the flag.

We are dedicated to freedom, and that freedom means the freedom of the human spirit. All free spirits ought to congregate on an occasion like this to do homage to the greatness of America as illustrated by the greatness of her sons.

President Woodrow Wilson
Memorial Day Address
May 30, 1914
(full text)

Posted at 12:00 pm by jt3y
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