Now that the holiday season has officially started, shoppers are begining to see the Salvation Army volunteers outside stores ringing bells and asking for donations. However, after Target's decision last year, they and many other big corportate chains, their door ways will be "kettle-free." In Jan. 2004, Target issued a statement that said it's no-solicitation policy included the volunteers of the Salvation Army. "We notified the Salvation Army in January 2004 that we would no longer allow the seasonal bell ringers due to our no-solicitation policy which ensures a distraction-free shopping environment for all our guests. Our policy decision remains unchanged." This upset a lot of people, including myself, because the Salvation Army is such a reputable charity and their volunteer work around the holidays and other times of the year is important.

An article in the NYTimes recently talked about the not-so-new phenomenon of 3 day weekends at many universities and colleges across the nation. The administration at many colleges are learning the term "thirsty thursdays," and, for the most part, aren't pleased.

Colleges traditionally have fewer classes scheduled on Fridays and in the morning and, in many cases, students try to make their schedules without Friday or early morning classes. Administrators see this as a problem in two ways: the rise in campus parties that result from a three-day weekend... and the wasted opportunity in not scheduling classes on Fridays. Colleges feel like they could add new courses if they opened up the week a bit more with Friday classes. As the article says:

My roommate is from Newton North High School, outside of Boston, MA and she was horrified to read this article last night about the members of a Kansas church known for antigay protests across the country who are planning to picket at Newton South HS (close to Newton N) where they are putting on a play called "The Laramie Project." For those of you who may not know or remember, the play was written by Moises Kaufman and relates to the murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard in 1998, who was beaten, tied to a fence in the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming and left to die. His murders later admitted it was because he was homosexual.

President Bush has just nominated Harriet E. Miers as the next supreme court justice to fill Sandra Day O'Conners space on the bench. Not only has Miers never been a judge before... she's also a personal friend of Mr. Bush. He said so himself: "I picked the best person I could find. People know we're close." I find it unsettling that the president is picking his friends to sit the highest court in the land for life. However, I learned that others, including Chief Rehnquist, and Chief Earl Warren, have been chosen without ever having been a judge before.

A NY Times article is reporting about FEMA's former director Michael Brown shifting the blame from himself to the Lousiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. Two days before the storm actually hit, he reported to a special congressional panel set up by House that "My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional." If you're really interested on a detailed (yet liberally biased) breakdown of the article I would suggest this post by Ray DeGraw.

Fact: Bush spends $60 billion a year on the war in Iraq.
Fact: Bush spends $2 billion a year on the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Problem? I think so.
While I know there are enough reasons to take issue with President Bush and his administration right now, I feel that this country can not let the way the US is handling the AIDS epidemic in Africa go by the wayside...

What could wizardry, Mr. Bush, and the baywatch hottie have in common? Blogs on topics that every Bryn Mawr woman can relate to.....
You know you've read all the Harry Potter series... you know you applied to Bryn Mawr because it looks like Hogwarts and at least between your psych lab and multivariable calculus you can pretend you're practicing magic... and we've all heard about Bryn Mawr's Quidditch team that secretly resides in Merion. Whether you want to find out who's going to be cast in the latest movie or write about the Bryn Mawr version of JK Rowlings novels: Harriet Potter... you should visit theleakycauldron.org . Up to date blogs on the most fascinating Harry Potter facts and myths. The hot topic right now: Buying signed copies of the latest book with forged signatures.
And as for President Bush...

Scroll down the homepage of robotwisdom.com and beneath a picture of the solar system you'll find topic after topic in yellow followed by link after link in blue against the stark black backdrop. You'll also find a list of what I assumed to be the jorn barger's top fifty song list... including Barbara Streisand and Joni Mitchell as well as Billy Joel and CSNY. Jorn Barger the creator of the site is described in the book "We've Got Blog," as a "long -haired, thick bearded former artificial-intelligence (AI) programmer" and eats nothing but vegetarian pizza and cheap supermarket coffee to maintain his blogging lifestyle.. and his website.

Now that I've wasted my entire afternoon on facebook (a community in itself-- granted one that my homework would be better for if i didnt belong)... and listening to the blue bus drive past my window.. I feel I'm prepared to write about the communities to which I belong. I think the largest community that I belong to is that of Aquidneck Island in Rhode Island. No, I don't live on an isolated little island with one supermarket and take a ferry to the mainland.. there are actually three big towns on the island... the one in the middle being my town. Middletown... very creative name. But our relative isolation as an island has led to the formation of a very tight knit community.... one in which you always run into someone you know at the grocery store... and never have to carry a house key. Within the Aquidneck Island community I am a part of an equally tight knit and safe community of my old high school.