From Vanessa, who has been thinking THIS is some of the "weirdest, prettiest writing I've seen in a while": Of all the scribbled sentences that have converged to create the Valerie Plame affair, the most remarkable, in literary terms, may belong to Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney's recently deposed chief of staff. "Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work—and life," he wrote in a jailhouse note to Judith Miller. Meant as a waiver of confidentiality, the letter touched off the sort of fevered exegesis more often associated with readings of "The Waste Land" than of legal correspondence.
Someone who gets a chance to wade through THIS, let Gangrey readers know if it's as good as it looks: They are the troops that nobody wants to see, carrying a message that no military family ever wants to hear. It begins with a knock at the door. For the past year, the Rocky Mountain News has followed Maj. Steve Beck as he takes on the most difficult duty of his career: casualty notification. As Beck and his comrades at Buckley Air Force Base keep constant watch over the caskets of the men they never knew, the Marines also comfort the families of the fallen, and choke back tears of their own. It's all part of a tradition that started in 1775: Never leave a Marine behind. After the knock on the door, the story has only begun.
Wright Thompson in Austin: You slide through the front door into the warm, stale air. At all the tables along the wall at Cisco's, the Austin Tex-Mex palace disguised as an Old Havana barroom, the heads turn in unison. One man looks up, then down, finally deciding you've passed the test. "Back room," he says, pointing toward the steps. "It's cooler in there."
Anne Hull with a two-parter on The Price Of Change: On the second floor of a battered building on the corner of 14th and T streets NW, more than 300 worshipers are caught in the driving syncopation of drums and organ. Church of the Rapture has occupied this corner for three decades. Beyond the doors of the Pentecostal storefront, the sun is out and the iPod people walk by. A real estate agent hammers in a "For Sale" sign pointing to a T Street rowhouse that six years ago sold for $282,000 but now has granite counters and is going for $839,000. Upstairs in the church, the music oscillates, and the worshipers are out of their seats, some so deep in the spirit that their shouts of "Yes, Jesus" and "Hallelujah" become bursts of unrecognizable syllables. "I thank God for this church and we can express ourselves," a pastor says when the music quiets. "No one to pull your coattail and make you sit down. We are in a beautiful place, saints, free as a bird flying over this building. No one will hinder us. I see prosperity all over the church."
And a weird one, ( thanks, Kelley ). The AP's Pauline Arrilliga with a cartoonist searching for his lost son: The artist would perch himself on a bench in the town square, sketchbook and pencil in hand. In between doodles of his beloved wife and "Miss Kitty" the pet cat, he'd fill page after page with the other subjects that consumed him, the panhandlers who sat under elm trees hungering for pocket change as lovers strolled to dinner and children played on the grass. Happiness and despair competed for space in the picturesque plaza; also in the artist's sketchbook and heart.
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