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J.D. Salinger

When Less is More | a J.D. Salinger Appreciation

He’s been gone for forty-four years, but today he passed over. Expect the mainstream media to wallow in the “J.D. Salinger” question for the next week: they’ll enshrine his absence from public life all these years and ask whether or not his life was good, or bad.

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Howard Zinn: 1922-2010

After reading Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, Bruce Springsteen sat down, wrote, and recorded “Nebraska,” perhaps his best social and political work. Zinn once said he decided to write A People’s History after listening to Woody Guthrie’s lyrics about Colorado’s Ludlow Massacre. Guthrie goosed Bob Dylan towards political consciousness who in turn moved Springsteen to consider writing stories “from below” — stories against the grain of the “great men” theory of history.

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Broadsheets and Chalkboards | The Daily Talk

The swan song for traditional media is as incessant as it is unquestioned. Don’t tell that to San Francisco’s Dave Eggers or Liberia’s Alfred Sirleaf. In radically different ways, under radically different conditions, they both open a space for the newspaper’s relevance in a landscape of navel-gazing corporate media non-stop blather-a-thon (oh, and blogs, let’s not forget blogorrhea).

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The Upper Cut: Walt Young Hangs up His (and his Father’s) Shears

Walt Young cut hair on East Colfax in Denver for 60 years. His chair was less than 6 feet from the sidewalk, a constant parade of homeless winos. Walt never let that thin sheet of glass get in the way. Everyone came in to his shop.

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Born on Third: on Drinking with Racists (Strike One)

A friend of mine likes to tell the joke: the reason I don’t like George Bush is that he was born on third base and he thinks he hit a triple.

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American Police Force Logo

Hardin Jail/American Police Force President Michael Hilton: Scam Artist or True Western Hero?

Here’s a new joke we tell out here in the windswept plains of eastern Montana: what do you get when you cross a wanna-be Serbian Militant with a Southern California car salesman? That’s right, the keys to the Hardin Jail.

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American Police Force President Michael Hilton

Hardin jail Updates

Shay named spokesperson for American Police Force “American Police Force, the company contracting with Two Rivers Authority to run its new-but-empty jail in Hardin, announced Friday its new public relations person. Becky Shay, a former Billings Gazette reporter whose beat included the Hardin facility, accepted the position Friday.”…..(click link to continue) Job applicants overwhelm American [...]

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The Fix Is In (140Miles East of Cool Recommends)

OK. You surrender. The little white flag is now raised high over your cubicle. Your weekend is all laid out for you. After taking the kids to see Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs you’ll take in The Informant. Why? Helloooooo. Do you really think we have a choice? Is NOT choosing to slap down the green on the new Diablo Cody/Megan Fox vehicle Jennifer’s Body really “voting with your dollars” or are you caught in a double-bind with your consumptive choices cordoned all around you and shoveled down your sometimes-metaphorical throat?

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In Defense of Fanaticism: Breaking Into the Twin Towers

They were a ragtag band living overseas watching the World Trade Center towers go up. And they knew, even before the towers were built, that they were going to break into the towers; they knew they were going to commit crimes.

They spent six years planning every aspect of the operation: where to hide inside the building, how to sneak in, the rotations of the guards. It was an exercise in extreme detail and brilliance.

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Obama Wets His Line in Montana

Obama Wets His Line in Montana

I often find myself checking out the White House Flickr stream, partly because I like Pete Souza’s photography, and partly because Souza uses the same camera and similar lenses to me which makes me curious about his shots (and Flickr posts much of the metadata so the nerds can check out lens, aperture, etc.)

I also find that on the White House Flickr stream, one can find really candid and interesting photos. For example this one, where the Park Ranger at Grand Canyon is clearly holding the President’s ear while the Obama kids are bored out of their skulls, hunched over in the hot sun with that “dad, can we just go now” body slump.

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The Public Option in Short: Robert Reich Lays It Out

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Elk, Yellostone National Park

National Park Fee Free Days, in a word, glorious

While Yellowstone is posting record numbers of visitors this year, National Parks as a whole have seen attendance slide in recent years.

In hopes of reversing the trend and re-introducing folks to our wonderful public lands heritage, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced back in June that the Department would waive entrance fees nationwide to all parks on three prime summer weekends. This is no small offer as park entrance fees have really climbed in past years. Nearby Yellowstone sits at $25 for entrance (that does give in and out privileges for 7 days).

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