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Randy Cassingham's BlogHistorical Details and Author's Notes from This is True®
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International Relief
The first charitable organization plug in TJI was for earthquake relief, after a 7.2 shock hit Kobe, Japan, on January 17, 1995:
John Bobbit: Immortalized Through Verbification
I use the term "Bobbitized" in this week's edition.
Continue reading "John Bobbit: Immortalized Through Verbification" »
Fornigate
When the Clinton sex scandal broke, readers started feeding me stories. No worries: I was already on top of it (as it were). I find so many stories -- either on my own or as submitted by readers, I start thinking about whether I should do several stories in True on the subject.
But there are so many -- and I have so many "regular" stories in my queue already -- that I just threw up my hands and pounded out two columns today: a regular one, and a special Clinton Fornigate issue.
The Red Planet
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Pathfinder and Sojourner rover have completed their primary mission on Mars, returning 9,669 pictures of the surface and a huge amount of other scientific data about our red neighbor.
After 9/11: Flying the Friendly Skies
Exactly six weeks after terrorists turned several of our airliners into guided missiles, I flew again. Going through security at Denver International was interesting: because my shoes apparently have metal in them, they asked me to remove them so they could run them through the x-ray machine. I actually think that's fairly smart; if you want to smuggle razor blades onto an airliner, that'd be the place to do it. The only gotcha: do you think they provided chairs for the dozens of people they were doing this to so they could put their shoes back on? Nope.
9/11: More (but Happy) Aftermath
Wow: what an incredible response to the last issue. There were kudos for being able to write an issue at all, kudos for staying on schedule, and overwhelming support for my American Taliban story. Yes, there have been a couple of complaints about it, as I expected, including one today about how the reader is tired of my "regular attacks on Chrisitanity", so I need to make something clear: I do not attack Christianity, I attack the stupid rantings of some Christians -- just as I attack the stupidity of some lawyers, politicians, school officials, cops, etc. I often get letters complaining when I "attack" religious stupidity, but I rarely get them from cops when (say) I "attack" something stupid a cop does. I'm often called "anti-Christian" but not "anti-cop". Why do you suppose that is?
9/11: The Aftermath
This week Premium subscribers wrote in huge numbers thanking me for speaking out strongly against the downright treasonous comments made by two of America's self-appointed "religious leaders".
And thanks so much for your notes of support for my decision to publish last week, to get back to "normal" as soon as possible. Charles in Ohio was one: "Thank you for your newsletter. Not only does it provide some levity during a somber time, but it also shows that life does and should go on. As you indicated, to let these tragic incidents disrupt our daily lives lets the terrorists succeed." Candy in Texas: "I would like to thank you for sending out this week's TRUE. I am saddened by the news, but I am hungry for diversions."
Trying to Work in the Days After 9/11
It was hard to write true this week. Very hard. It was hard to be funny, though the lead story is definitely not meant to be funny. I consider those two men's comments downright treasonous. But the response to last week's Premium edition (which many did not read until after they saw last Tuesday's morning news), and the response to the free edition Friday night, told me how much people need things to return to normal. How much people need to have something to smile over. So I did my best to meet both of those needs. If I can be one of the people to bring you a smile, I'm gratified.
Babies 'R' Us? Yes They Are
A story this week brought in a huge reader response -- and an unbeliveable reply from "Babies 'R' Us" to my readers who complained to them:
Wardrobe Malfunction? Hah!
Never Has One Boob Created Such a Phenomenon
You either saw it or you heard about it: the Janet Jackson "flash". I happened to be walking by the TV (my wife was watching the Super Bowl) at the exact moment it happened. I stopped in my tracks, backed up, and said to her, "Did I just see what I thought I saw?" My wife, a bit stunned, said "I think so...."
Goodnight, Johnny
Before I get started each week, I do a last scan of the news to make sure I haven't missed anything big. And one of the first stories I found was a report that one of my mentors had died yesterday morning: Johnny Carson.
Dick Ebersol's Plane Crash
You may have heard about the plane crash last weekend (November 28, 2004) in Montrose, Colorado, mainly because a "celebrity" was aboard (NBC Sports head Dick Ebersol; his wife is actress Susan Saint James). Three people were killed. Montrose is the small airport I fly out of, about 18 miles from my house. It's the "big" town around here, but it's still pretty small -- the population is around 12,000. I live in the next county; by contrast, my entire county only recently passed 4,000 residents in its 550 square miles.
Republican Bash?
I have something to say about last week's story "about the vice president" (as most people are terming it):
Ability Meets Need
I watched the news reports last Wednesday from the school in the small mountain town of Bailey, Colorado, with a bit of dread. (It was nothing like Columbine: some drifter took hostages, and killed one of them -- a 16-year-old girl he didn't know. He then shot himself.) Not only was it a small mountain town in Colorado -- and I live on a mesa in Colorado just outside a town of just 700, and so it felt pretty "close to home" -- but I know the school well: I was a Red Cross volunteer during the summer of 2002, when Colorado was hit by so many wildfires in that area, and one of them started on the hill behind that very school. I was stationed there as a liaison between the Red Cross and the fire officials who set up a command post at the school. My job was to keep Red Cross Denver Headquarters up-to-date on where the fire was going so shelters could be set up for evacuees.
Looking Back at 9/11
So here it is, 9/11 -- the first time I've published a True newsletter on that date since the fateful events in 2001. "The" 9/11 was a Tuesday, so Premium had already gone out. That gave me a few days to get it together before I ran a free edition, and a couple of more days before I actually had to write again, which I do on Sundays -- that's why every column has a Sunday date on it. Kit (my "significant other") and I were Red Cross volunteers back then, and spent most of that week helping out at shelters taking care of hundreds of stranded travelers.
Higher Education
I do a lot of research when looking for stories, and I see quite a bit of amazing stuff. Most of it I use for stories, but sometimes even truly wonderful items just don't quite make it into the final product. This is one such case.
Janet Jackson 'Wardrobe Malfunction' Update
You all remember the Janet Jackson 2004 Super Bowl "Wardrobe Malfunction", I'm sure. The Federal Communications Commission slapped CBS television with a $550,000 fine over that, but today a federal appeals court threw out the forfeiture, ruling the FCC "acted arbitrarily and capriciously" in fining the network.
Continue reading "Janet Jackson 'Wardrobe Malfunction' Update" »
Another April, Another Mass Shooting
There was another mass shooting today, a nut with a gun at an immigration office in New York, with at least a dozen killed. Here's what I want to know: why do these things so often happen in April?
The War on Kids
There will probably be two responses to the first story in this week's issue: 1) I was too hard on the public library/librarian, and 2) I wasn't hard enough on her. To be sure, my tagline was judging her based on the standards of the American Library Association.
But first the story, from True's 10 May 2009 issue:
Bear Country
A few comments about this week's lead story. If the location sounds somehow familiar, it's because that's where I live. Ouray County is pretty big (550 square miles), but is otherwise pretty small (around 4,100 people). And since I'm a volunteer with both our EMS agency and (occasionally) the local sheriff's office, I was quite aware of this event while it was happening. (I'm happy to say it wasn't in my response area, so I didn't have to go.)
Bear Country Update
An update on the Bear Story from a couple of weeks ago.
Now that Donna, the woman who was feeding them, is dead, sure enough: more bears are now invading town, breaking into houses far more than before to try to find food -- Donna isn't there to feed them, and what they now know is humans = food. Winter is coming, and they need to fatten up for hibernation; they're ravenous. Last week another of my friends had her place broken into; she has two teen daughters; one was home at the time, and came face to face with the unafraid bear.
Swine Flu
Yeah: Looks Like I Got It!
I've been out of the office for the better part of a week, and am even farther behind on e-mail and other work than usual. Last Thursday I drove with a friend to Reno, where we were both speakers at the Mensa "gathering" put on by a friend of ours there. I'll have more to say about that later, but my talk went very well. We drove back Sunday, through a couple of snow storms and a sand storm in the Utah desert, and again straight through -- I only took over at the wheel for a few hours. (My paramedic buddy Norm is a road warrior!)
Zero Tolerance and the 800-lb Gorilla
The New York Times had an article today on a ridiculous zero tolerance situation: a kid in Delaware who was so excited to get his Cub Scouts camping utensil -- a fork, knife and spoon combo -- that he took it to school to eat his lunch with. Yeah, a Cub Scout: Zachary Christie is just 6 years old. Wait: it had a dull, kid-appropriate knife included? Why, knives are weapons! Run in circles! Pull out your hair! Scream like a little girl!
