EdCone.com

We did some actual memorializing this weekend, attending a tree-planting ceremony at Haverford College in honor of Calvin Gooding, my dear friend and classmate who died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

It was my 20th college reunion, an event I normally would have avoided, but one which drew many of Calvin's close friends for this special occasion.

Calvin's widow, LaChanze, and their two young daughters, Celia and Zaya -- the baby born in October '01, just weeks after her father died -- came down from New York, along with his mom and dad and his sister, Jocelyn.

Ann Figueredo, a classmate and close friend, organized the event and served as emcee. She spoke about the symbolism of trees as givers of life, and their place in native American lore as arbiters between Earth and sky. She was pretty damn great.

Then LaChanze sang a song written about her and Calvin by some Broadway composer friends -- a cappella, clear and strong, as her little girls in their Sunday dresses played nearby. Some people cried quietly as they stood by the red oak sapling and the mound of fresh-turned dirt.

Ann asked that, in Quaker fashion, anyone in the crowd speak if they felt moved to do so. It was, for me, a nervous moment. Earlier, another good friend of Cal's, Danny Harris, said he was getting tired of all the reverence for such an irreverent man. We were hoping to avoid a maudlin display.

We needn't have worried.

The first speaker stepped forward. It was Kevin "Doc" Wilson, who by his third sentence (a random insult about Ward Fonrose's erratic jump shot) had people laughing. He worked Calvin over pretty well, with love and daggers.

I had not planned to speak, having said my piece at the funeral, but I felt strongly that this was a very different occasion. So I said that a good friend had asked if the tree-planting would make me cry, and I had said no, the sadness comes at more random moments -- hearing a song on the radio, or just getting blindsided by a wave of emotion out of the blue -- and that while I know those moments will always come, this was not one of them -- this was a time of renewal, and hope, and looking to the future. 

A woman stepped forward and began by saying she had not known Calvin that well. I thought, if it wasn't for all the husbands in tow, a lot of women in that crowd would have said that moment, "I did."

A few other friends shared stories and thoughts -- Charles Kibel neglected to say he had lobbied for an ebony tree, but he did well anyhow -- and Jocelyn spoke on behalf of her family.

Then something really nice happened. Mr. Gooding stepped up and spoke about his oldest son -- the first time he had spoken in public about Calvin since his death almost three years ago. He told some tall tales about our excellent adventures, said there were others he dared not tell. He laughed. We laughed.

Finally, Mrs. Gooding said that this was indeed a ceremony about life, not death, about moving forward. 

LaChanze sang another song. Family members shoveled dirt onto the young tree's roots. Friends tossed handfuls of dirt into the hole.

Haverford's campus is an arboretum. Calvin's tree, located in a prime spot by the dining hall, was carefully selected to replace an aging oak. It will be marked by a plaque, well tended, and visited from time to time by old friends. It should be there for generations.

The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission has named the members of its panel.

The Commission aims to document the history of the 1979 Klan killings in Greensboro.

Nothing in the online edition of the N&R this morning about the panel -- I don't have the print paper, anything in there?

According the GTCRC press release, the commissioners are: 

• Cynthia Brown of Durham, N.C., a grassroots organizer and leader, former city councilwoman and one-time candidate for the U.S. Senate


• Patricia Clark of Nyack, N.Y., executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation


• Muktha Jost of Greensboro, an assistant professor in the school of education at N.C. A&T State University


• Angela Lawrence of Greensboro, a community activist with a long history of work focusing on education and neighborhood development


• Robert Peters of Greensboro, a retired corporate attorney with extensive experience in arbitration and dispute resolution


• Rev. Mark Sills of Randleman, N.C., executive director of Greensboro's Faith Action International House


• Barbara Walker of Greensboro, a retired manager with Wrangler Corp. and former board president of the YWCA of Greensboro.

No obvious conservative voices, which I've said all along would help sell the project to skeptics.

The selection panel chaired by Judge Lawrence McSwain considered 67 nominations received from community members.

From the release: "The commissioners will be sworn-in during a public ceremony at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, June 12, at The Depot, 236 E. Washington St.

U.S. Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.), will officiate the historic event along with McSwain and former Greensboro Mayor Carolyn Allen."

Here's my 1999 column about coming to terms with the killings, and a more recent column about the Truth and Reconciliation effort.

Previous coverage here, here, here, and here.

I've been on vacation this week, burning some accumulated days during my last week at Baseline before moving to another ZD magazine, CIO Insight, next week. Since the kids are finishing school, we didn't go away, and I've just spent the time goofing off in Greensboro. Played lots of bad golf. Read lots of weblogs. It's been great.

Don't forget to check out my ad in the Rhino Times.

I was a little disappointed that last week's ad ran in the real estate section, which you can just pull out and throw away without perusing, which is what I usually do with it.

The nice and responsive folks at the Rhino promised that won't happen again.

Now that the Times admits it served as a cheerleader in the rush to invade Iraq, here's another question about the "negative" media coverage of the war: where were the warnings about Sadr and the Shiite miliitia before that all exploded in our face?

Jay Rosen is right -- there should be more reporting on the reconstruction effort.

But the idea that the press is too negative sounds more than ever like propaganda.

The cutaway shots during American Idol last night made it look like the Greensboro Coliseum was full to the upper deck.

Annnounced attendance: 8,100, or just over 1/3 capacity. Stage management 101: pack 'em in where the cameras are.

No, really?

The paper of record announces that blogging can be addictive.

Next week: Crack may be habit-forming for many users.

Jay Rosen: "To me it is a sign of strength for the Times to do this." An insightful post about press coverage of Iraq.

Lex Alexander: "The Times is like a battleship: unparalleled firepower but a bitch to turn."

He also links to a dead-on spoof of some popular warbloggers.

The first blog debate between John Hood of the John Locke Foundation and Rob Schofield of the NC Justice Center is winding up now. It was pretty good. More names and numbers and less political philosophy would be better. Reader comments would be nice.

Big party at the Coliseum tonight for American Idol finalist/High Point homegirl Fantasia. Future Branson headliner Clay Aiken is hosting. Free parking. The News & Record is flooding the zone on the story. Although I agree with Simon Cowell that the music on the show is awful (what a conundrum for Orson Scott Card, who includes in his defense of American Idol a paean to Cowell, "the judge who consistently gets it right and says it clearly"), I will tune in, if I remember.

The New York Times reviews its coverage of the war in Iraq and admits its bias...in favor of the pro-war point of view.

Sorry,  press bashers and whiny hawks -- the Times is not saying it's been too negative about the war, it's saying it got gamed by Chalabi and Co. -- it was too credulous about "WMD" and other stories peddled by the let's-invade lobby.

"(W)e have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been... Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged ó or failed to emerge."

"The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on "regime change" in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks..."

"...Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations ó in particular, this one."

Judith Miller's name is not mentioned. Instead, they say the problems extend beyond individual reporters to editors. Atrios says by the Howell Raines standard, those editors should resign.

The Durham Herald-Sun went live with its candidate blog page last Friday, and so far seven candidates have signed up.

"As expected, the first to sign on were Libertarians. However, the most active blogger is a Republican candidate," says Jon C. Ham, director of digital publishing at the Herald-Sun, which prides itself on its coverage of local politics, and has found a great way to distinguish itself in a crowded media market.

I'm guessing that the active Republican would be Whit Whitfield, who has his own campaign blog, too. (Love the chipper post about the NC GOP convention -- who knew ideological purges were so much fun!)

Ham is coaching the candidates, some of whom are complete newbies to the medium. "I'm sending them periodic emails about blogging and sent them links to Rebecca Blood's weblog ethics article," he says. "Some seem to know the drill. Others are totally in the dark but intrigued. My guess is it might take an election cycle or two to get this cemented."

Given the blog site's soft opening -- no advance notice, just letters to all the candidates inviting them to take part -- the response seems impressive. Candidates are free to take their blogs where they wish. "I've encouraged them to promote their blog on their other sites and share their URL with friends," says Ham.

Candidate blogs are a natural progression for Ham and the Herald-Sun. Ham: "Our candidate blogs are under our VoteBook umbrella. VoteBook is a site I dreamed up in 1995 (you can tell I was a political scientist in a former life) to allow unmediated communication (you can tell I was a gubernatorial press secretary too) from local candidates to voters (it won the first Digital Edge Public Service Award in 1996, by the way). We don't even edit their essays. Last year one candidate's was so filled with grammar and typographical errors that we were accused of trying to sabotage her campaign. But our view is that if you don't have the common sense to let a friend edit your VoteBook essays and questionnaires then maybe you shouldn't be in office."

For the techies: "We wrote our own blog application instead of using one of the well-known ones. I'm a blog fan (but not a blogger; too many conflicts with this job) so I worked with our main IT programmer to get it into some form that blog fans would understand. It's in our main template, which was just easier for us to do. It has all the bells and whistles for posting (hyperlink, boldface, italic, blockquote, etc.) It's simplified a bit -- no trackback, but we have permalinks."

Says Ham, "I believe it will become a staple for local candidates."

The Durham Herald-Sun's Jon Ham says (chez Jarvis) that his paper will offer blogs to local candidates. I've emailed Ham for more details. The N&R considered offering blogs to mayoral candidates last year, but that fizzled.

Six days after launching a campaign to use the Family Research Council's anti-gay marriage email campaign to support gay rights, I received a very nice note from my congressman, Howard Coble, in response to my doctored email to him.

Howard says that as a co-sponsor of the resolution (H.J. Res 56) that would amend the Constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman (but "would not affect civil unions or other non-marital relationships"), he regrets that he and I disagree on this issue. "I do appreciate knowing your views and hope you will continue to share your comments with me in the future," he says.

Democracy in action. The web at work. Good stuff.

So, keep those doctored emails coming, boys and girls. They are getting through.

And as always, Howard, when you are ready to set up a weblog, I would be happy to meet with your staff to help get it started.

Remain calm, North Carolinians. You can probably outrun it anyway.

Libertarian presidential candidate Aaron Russo is audioblogging.

JRobb: "Iraq is turning into a maelstrom of competitive non-strategies." Lot's of interesting stuff at John's blog these days.

See ya.

A group calling itself Christian Exodus wants "conservative Christians" to move en masse to a state -- perhaps South Carolina -- and then secede from the Union to form a "Christian Republic."

Mindful of the results when the Palmetto State last seceded, the group's president says his idea will work only if the United States lets it happen without resorting to military force.

Fine by me. They have to keep Myrtle Beach, though.

Backscratching Democrats....

John Edwards campaigns for Erskine Bowles...and Bowles campaigns for Edwards.

Edwards on Bowles: "He is somebody I will be proud to have occupy my seat."

Bowles on Edwards: "If John Kerry does not put him on the national ticket, he is absolutely nuts."

Then they went to a back room and counted up the money.

...and backstabbing Republicans:

"The North Carolina Republican Party purged House Co-speaker Richard Morgan from his party leadership post Sunday, a move likely to heighten factional warfare in the party's legislative races."

Not everyone is happy with the party's direction. Kenny Kidd of Randolph County resigned from the GOP Executive Committee in protest. According to the N&O's Rob Christensen, "Kidd said President Bush promised a 'big tent GOP,' but the party now 'feels like a pup tent to me.'"

"Shagging is the dance you do to Beach Music, not what Austin Powers thinks it is, although one thing has been known to lead to the other."

This morning's newspaper column builds on the conversation at this blog about regional dialect, including the proper use of "barbecue," inverted words like "hoppergrass" and "peckerwood," and my favorite genteel verbal dagger, "bless his heart."

Read the whole thing after the jump.

The civil war within the NC GOP.

N&O: "North Carolina GOP leaders moved Friday to strip the highest-profile Republican in state government -- House co-Speaker Richard Morgan -- of his party leadership post, saying he was 'culpable of disloyalty.'"

"North Carolina Republicans have a long history of factional fights -- mainly between traditional business and mountain Republicans and more conservative Jesse Helms Republicans -- that seem not to have hurt the party's growth."

Morgan: "I'm tired of an extreme point of view holding the rest of the party hostage."

Chuck Close
Self-portrait
1977
hard ground etching and aquatint on paper
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro

BizJournal: "N.C. A&T State University in Greensboro has won a $2.7 million grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research to establish a Center for Nanoscience and Nanomaterials."

Feeling our pain: New York Times coverage of NASCAR's abandonment of its North Carolina roots.

"In the early years of stock-car racing, there were tracks throughout North Carolina holding as many as 21 races in a season. But with the elimination of North Carolina Speedway, the exodus is nearly complete...And there is speculation that the All-Star Challenge will be moved at some point as well.

North Carolina, once called the heart of Nascar country, will be host to fewer Cup points races in 2005 than California."

Does the N&R have an obligation to print letters complete with factual errors, or should it edit the letters for factual accuracy, or run an editor's note with letters containing misstatements of fact?

Today's letter from Joe Talluto: "...all the people who are currently in prisons over there (Iraq) are terrorists, murderers and thugs."

Wait a minute. That's not true, and the refutation of the statement has been well-publicized. For example: "Coalition military intelligence officials estimated that 70% to 90% of prisoners detained in Iraq since the war began last year 'had been arrested by mistake,' according to a confidential Red Cross report given to the Bush administration earlier this year."

Why publish falsehoods?

Thornblog is the campaign weblog of Alan Thornburg, who is running for reeleciton to the NC Court of Appeals.

"Blogging is the new grassroots campaigning, and this campaign is going to show that it can work in judicial campaigns, too."

Bill Gates: "(A) new phenomenon that...started outside of the business space, more in the corporate or technical enthusiast space, a thing called blogging. And a standard around that that notifies you that something has changed called RSS."

He explains it real slow for dummies stuck inside the "business space," including Carly Fiorina, Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell, and Barry Diller. (He even made them sit through a PowerPoint presentation.)

Microsoft has more than 700 employee blogs, one of which I wrote about last year.

Who is Ferrell Blount?

The chairman of the NC GOP is getting national attention for excluding gay Republicans from this weekend's party convention in Greensboro.

Blount took office last year when former chairman Bill Cobey resigned to focus on his run for the GOP gubernatorial nomination. Cobey and Blount and the party they lead seem to be on the same page when it comes to (no) gay rights.

Blount, who is from Pitt County in the eastern part of the state, has close ties to the national GOP. "Blount nominated Ed Gillespie to be national chairman. Blount had worked closely with Gillespie, a Washington political consultant," on the Liddy Dole campaign, reports the N&O.

Blount was endorsed a long list of Republican luminaries, including Dole, Jesse Helms, Lauch Faircloth, Jim Broyhill, Richard Burr, and Howard Coble.

It's interesting to see how Blount has moved rightward with the tide. As a delegate to the 1996 Republican national convention, Blount said "he hopes [Bob] Dole can bring moderates and conservatives together by promoting a 'big tent' philosophy. There should be 'only one litmus test,' Blount said. 'That is to understand that government doesn't have an answer to everything.'"

That was then, this is now.

Guest post from The Oracle

Have you ever visited the Guilford County web site?

It's amateurish in the extreme. There are no persistent navigational tools (the back button is the only way back to a menu), it is over-reliant on verbose text, it is visually unappealing, what graphics it does utilize are not optimized, the only information that appears to change regularly is the employment listings which are updated every two weeks; and the county pays three employees $70,000 a year each (per the Rhino Times) as web developers.

Am I missing something here, or should the county be getting more for its money (or pay less for what it is getting)?

Is opposition to gay rights really a winning issue for North Carolina Republicans?

Some GOP candidates (in line with the example of the state party) are betting that it is.

This radio ad for Vernon Robinson -- one of three GOP candidates in the 5th congressional district to have raised more than a million dollars -- attacks his rivals by name for being soft on gays:

"Today's topic, homosexual rights....Tolerant...a codeword for 'gay friendly'." Etc.

Bonus: he mocks his only female opponent as a "feminist."

Meanwhile, Bill Cobey came to Greensboro and said, ì'A small but vocal number of people are attempting to redefine marriage and tear apart our traditional values. As governor, I will lead the charge in defense of the values we hold so dearly.'

"Cobey also ruled out any middle ground in the marraige debate, calling civil unions and similar arrangements for homosexual couples a ì'red herring' in the debate.

ì'Theyíre not needed. Theyíre just an attack on the traditional family.'î

Uh oh, I better call my wife of 15 years and make sure no homo-shex-ules have been trying to tear apart our traditional values, or attacking her and the kids with red herrings.

(sings) I know who Mr. Sun is...

But I'm not telling.

Leslie Gelb in the WSJ (not posted to OpinionJournal) offers a softer version of his three-state solution for Iraq -- a central government to deal with defense and oil, with autonomy for the Kurdish, Shia, and Sunni regions.

You can see what the Journal editors thought was important by the call-out quote they chose: "How to leave Iraq with our heads held high."

Gelb: "The strategic tide in Iraq is turning inexorably against us...

...President Bush's present strategy -- maximum ends with limited means, tossing political responsibility to the United Nations, no plausible exit plan, and prayer -- will not allow us to prevail, or leave."

Remember, this is the WSJ editorial page, the antithesis of the "liberal media."

And it comes on the heels of Mark Helprin's blast from the same page on Monday: "(T)he inescapable fact that the war has been run incompetently, with an apparently deliberate contempt for history, strategy, and thought, and with too little regard for the American soldier, whose mounting casualties seem to have no effect on the boastfulness of the civilian leadership."

The bankruptcy of the Bush/Rumsfeld strategy is undeniable.

I bought an ad for my weblog in the local alternative weekly, The Rhino Times.

I'm funding this ad campaign in the print media with the money I've made from BlogAds. (I am trying to buy an ad in GoTriad, the weekly entertainment freebie from the N&R, but after trading calls a week ago the salesperson there hasn't returned my call.)

My goal is to raise local visibility and traffic for EdCone.com. So, to anyone who comes here via the Rhino ad, welcome.

(Jack McCook came up with some cool-looking ad designs, but I chose the simplest one, which seemed likely to show up best in the paper. Thanks, Jack.)

Pat Buchanan: "John Kerry does not agree with George Bush on the morality of homosexual unions and stem-cell research. On such issues, conservative Americans have more in common with devout Muslims than with liberal Democrats."

"There is no such thing as an attention span. There is only the quality of what you are viewing."

Jerry Seinfeld, in yesterday's WSJ (subs. required), talking about long-form ads on the Web.

Fantasia is a finalist on American Idol. Fantasia is from High Point. Fantasia is big news around here.

But Simon says Diana DeGarmo is going to win.

He's also blunt about the quality of the music his program is inflicting upon the world.

"Could I sit there and listen to these kids sing in a concert? I couldn't stay there for two minutes. I couldn't think of anything worse," said Simon Cowell to the New York Times.

Even a Clay Aiken concert?, asked NYT's Virginia Heffernan.

Cowell: "Are you kidding? I wouldn't last a minute."

The big tent has no room for homo-shex-ules, says the North Carolina Republican Party. 

The Log Cabin Republicans are not welcome at the upcoming NC GOP convention in Greensboro.

"The 2004 NCGOP Convention - it's not just for delegates anymore!," says the party web site.

But it's still not for homo-shex-ules, as former Senator Helms pronounced the word (accent on second syllable). The NC GOP  platform says "We believe that homosexuality is not normal and should not be established as an acceptable 'alternative' lifestyle either in public education or in public policy." There will be discussion of this enlightened principle at the convention.

The News & Record's version of Rob Christensen's N&O story oddly omits the fact that this weekend's shindig will be held in Greensboro.

The N&R gives the upcoming organizational meeting of Green Dog Dems some publicity on the front of the local news section.

Interesting -- the online headline is "Democrats form action group," but in the print edition that landed in my driveway, the headline is "Left-wing Democrats organize action group."

The Onion on potential problems with electronic voting machines, including:

*Likelihood of electing robot president 83.6 percent greater

*Recurring pop-up screen that reads, "People who voted for John Kerry also ordered these products at Amazon.com"

*Long lines form behind voters who get drawn into system's solitaire game.

A Kerry/Edwards ticket could make North Carolina a real battleground state in November, says a new poll.

"Bush handily beat Kerry 48 percent to 41 percent in a Mason-Dixon poll released yesterday.

But with Edwards as Kerry's vice-presidential running mate, the race tightens to a statistical dead heat - 46 percent to 45 percent."

Previous posts on NC, including the importance of tobacco policy, here and here and here.

The things one learns when conquering the world...tucked into this morning's WSJ article (subscription required) on the independence-minded Kurds of Iraq was the fact that some Kurds practice a religion called Yezidism.

"(S)ome scholars link them to Mithraism, Zoroastrianism, and even ancient Iraqi Buzzard worshippers. Yezidism is an enigma that has confounded scholars and incited debate for some time."

Wikipedia sez ""The Yazidi worship Malak Taíus, apparently a pre-Islamic peacock god."

This is the juiciest ethnographic tidbit I've gleaned since learning that the Hazara of Afghanistan trace their ancestry to the army of Genghis Khan.

Another letter in this morning's N&R with a factual error, this time on the familiar subject of church and state.

"The separation of church and state, phrase or idea, will not be found in the Constitution," writes Steve Gorden of Kernersville. Actually, Steve, the idea permeates the Constitution.

He suggests that people actually read the document. I agree -- they should read this article too: There is no Supreme Being in the supreme law of the land. The Constitution is a bracingly secular document, ordained and established by We the People, without a single appeal to God...The only mention of religion in the document or in the Bill of Rights comes in the First Amendment, which helps ensure that, as James Madison would write, "Strongly guarded...is the separation between religion and government in the Constitution of the United States."

...Then as now, there were plenty of outspokenly religious Americans who wanted to render Caesarís portion unto God. Yet the founders, some quite religious themselves, resolutely kept their words on an earthly plane, and took pains to secularize the ideals found in seminal documents such as the Virginia Declaration of Rights that they adapted for our new governmentís rule book.

Mr. Sun has some thoughts on same-sex marriage...and a sneak peek at the upcoming TV schedule.

"Would Erskine be the first Senate candidate with a  blog?," a Bowles staffer asked me last fall when I started begging the campaign to get a weblog. Then, yes.

Now, well, he could still be the third (after pioneer Brad Carson and early-adopter Obama Barak)...and he could still be the first in NC, which is what really matters here...

The Family Research Council is running ads at Drudge urging people to email their Senators and Reps about gay marriage....so I did. But first I took the liberty of editing the subject line and message a bit, so instead of sending John Edwards, Liddy Dole, and Howard Coble this:

Subject: Please Sponsor an Amendment that Protects Marriage!

I sent them this:

Subject: Please DO NOT Sponsor an Amendment that Outlaws Gay Marriage!

And in place of the long (and I think factually inaccurate) message in the text box, I substituted this:

"Please fight against a gay marriage amendment, and please support civil rights for all Americans."

Now you do it, too.

Colin Powell: "Party on."

The Secretary of State was at Wake Forest yesterday, delivering a commencement address in which he said, "Arab leaders are now talking more about political reform, economic reform, opening up their societies and political systems to participation by women, improving their educational systems." He did not provide any examples.

Powell finished his speech by saying, "(A)bove all, party on, Demon Deacons, party on."

Dick Cheney also came to Winston-Salem yesterday and helped Richard Burr raise $200,000 for his Senate campaign. But Cheney was no help on the issue of a tobacco buyout, which the Bush administration opposes (to its detriment in NC) and Kerry supports. Burr has been a little wobbly on the issue, too.

The News & Record, which completely ignored a Greensboro fundraiser for Erskine Bowles featuring former US Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin, managed to report on the Burr/Cheney event.

John Perry Barlow: "If only he could have died in a knife fight..."

If only we all could.

The Dead lyricist on Jerry Garcia's fate, in a comment on yesterday's post of Jerry audio.

Sheriff Gerald Hege pleads guilty and resigns. How the mighty are fallen.

Good coverage by William Keesler and Rachel Leonard of the Lexington Dispatch.

Hege marketed himself as a cross between Buford T. Pusser and Boss Hogg.

He had the pink jail cellblock and the Spider Car and the fascist-cool uniforms and the show on Court TV.

But he also controlled the county's politics and pulled alarming stunts like setting up a sobriety checkpoint near a Democratic fundraiser.

And as the N&R's Eric Collins sums up Hege's 15-count felony indictment, "Hege was accused of everything from misusing county money, personnel and equipment to encouraging racial profiling, directing officers to physically abuse certain suspects and failing to properly investigate his officers' alleged misuse or loss of money."

Hege copped to two of the charges and agreed to resign, and the other 13 charges were dropped. Dispatch: "Under the terms of a plea bargain with the N.C. Attorney General's Office, Hege will be placed on intensive probation for three years, the first three months of which will be served on electronic house arrest. He also will pay $6,200 in restitution. And he will resign his office as sheriff."

Maybe he tried so hard because he knew he could never become North Carolina's favorite sheriff.

Jerry Garcia audio

A Deadhead archivist who calls himself Slipnut found my post about a backstage interview with Jerry Garcia and emailed to ask if he could make a copy of the tape. I sent the precious cassette to this stranger in California on faith -- and he quickly sent it back, along with a CD copy. So now I had a digital copy of the brief conversation between Forbes editor Allan Dodds Frank and Garcia, with interjections from other bandmembers and Bill Graham. The question I remember asking ("Why don't you ever play St. Stephen or Cosmic Charlie?) is sadly not on tape.

I found hearing Garcia speak to be more powerful than reading his transcribed words.

There are ten tracks of audio (MP3), ranging from about 20 seconds to over 2 minutes in length. Here are links to those tracks (my transcription and annotation here); Tracks 6-10 are the meat of the interview:

Track 1 ADF, Bill Graham, members of Grateful Dead chatter

Track 2 Garcia banter

Track 3 Garcia jokes and talks about money

Track 4 Garcia on possessions, money and happiness

Track 5 Short take on travel

Track 6 Garcia on current projects, what's worth doing

Track 7 Garcia on cycles of creativity

Track 8 Short track of Garcia on illness and renewal

Track 9 Garcia relates Borges story of the death he'd choose

Track 10 Time for the second set.