November 2003

Dear Readers,

I’m always hesitant to hail new heroes, especially when all I have to go by is a single action. With that disclaimer, my new hero (not displacing Chief Tonasket out there in Washington) is Nathaniel Heatwole. If you’ve been living in a box, Heatwole is the 20-year old Massachusetts lad who loaded a couple of Southwest Airlines flights with dangerous contraband like boxcutters and bleach on several occasions from February to September without getting caught, then told the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) about it by email on September 15. A month later, when they finally got around to reading it, they contacted Heatwole at the phone number he left them. He was promptly arrested and now faces up to ten years in prison. He claims he committed an act of civil disobedience out of concern for a lack of real airport security. The Fed, naturally embarrassed, is dying to prosecute him to the full extent of the law. U.S. Attorney Thomas DiBiagio has made his position perfectly clear. “This was not a prank. This is not poor judgment,” DiBiagio said. “This is a crime… ” Right he is. But what, exactly, is the nature of the crime? And, one could argue, who committed it?

Also from the “scary but true file,” George Bush recently told Brit Hume in a Fox News interview that he doesn’t bother reading the news. It’s so bizarre that I have to print a portion of it here:

HUME: How do you get your news?

BUSH: I get briefed by Andy Card and Condi in the morning. They come in and tell me. In all due respect, you’ve got a beautiful face and everything.

I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what’s moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who probably read the news themselves. But like Condoleezza, in her case, the national security adviser is getting her news directly from the participants on the world stage.

HUME: Has that been your practice since day one, or is that a practice that you’ve…

BUSH: Practice since day one.

HUME: Really?

BUSH: Yes. You know, look, I have great respect for the media. I mean, our society is a good, solid democracy because of a good, solid media. But I also understand that a lot of times there’s opinions mixed in with news. And I…

HUME: I won’t disagree with that, sir.

BUSH: I appreciate people’s opinions, but I’m more interested in news. And the best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what’s happening in the world.

HUME: Mr. President, thank you very much.

Indeed. I don’t even have anything to add to that. Except that the hair on the back of my neck won’t lay down. Maybe some gel or something would do the trick, I don’t know.

By now you’ve probably heard that the letters have come down from Bay View’s Avalon Theater marquee. Office and retail space is the new direction, after years of frustration on the part of once-enthusiastic owners Craig Ellsworth and Greg Cepanica. They’ve had problems with some neighborhood residents since a drunk Avalon patron peed on somebody’s lawn a few years back. Unbelievably, the building doesn’t even have a historic designation, so well-wishers like the Bay View Business Association are powerless to halt the deconstruction. It’s a sad tale with no winners, only losers. With office space going for $8 a foot or less in the city these days and, by some reports, at least half a mil needed to bring the building up to code, the owners can’t possibly win. Bay View loses a piece of history. Thousands of Milwaukeeans lose a reminder of cherished memories. And all of us lose another little piece of our collective city soul.

On the bright side, most of us will get to spend at least a whole day, if not an entire weekend, with our families later this month, stuffing our faces with tryptophan and butter or butter substitute. Pass the cranberries!

Peace,

Jon Anne