grist for the mill

Screamin' Jay Hawkins: "Feast Of The Mau Mau"

WSJ.com - Cubicle Culture: "As a result of information gleaned from exit interviews, Amy Jantz, who formerly managed employee relations at a nonprofit health-care company, was able to help win remaining employees a pay raise and streamline some inefficiencies. But a manager at the company also retaliated against an employee who gave a frank exit interview, providing a less-than-stellar reference to the employee's prospective employer. Ms. Jantz's department eventually intervened, persuading the employer to call a few more of the employee's prior colleagues and supervisors. 'It wasn't really pretty,' she says."

Ex-KKK leader's robes bring $6,000 at Howell auction: "Ron Lehr, 49, a contractor from Howell who identified himself as a Klan sympathizer, placed the winning bid on the two black Klan robes. He paid $6,000 for them but told The New York Times that he would have paid 'whatever it took.' "

A Radical Youth Journal Based in the U.S.: "James Baldwin, in his canonical The Fire Next Time wrote:

The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed that collection of myths to which white Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes, that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that Americans have always dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors or inferiors, that American men are the world's most direct and virile, that American women are pure (Baldwin 1993)."

Mexico in the Context of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Uneasily, a Latin Land Looks at Its Own Complexion - New York Times: "A columnist for the Mexico City daily Reforma, Guadalupe Loaeza, wrote Tuesday that President Fox's remarks reflected what she called an 'involuntarily' racist attitude. 'He was educated like millions of Mexicans, conscious of having been born white, and that it makes him very different from those who are born with dark skin.'
Audiences here still get a laugh from performers in black face, or newspaper cartoons that show Africans drawn more like apes.
Mexico's 10 million Indians are not only last in almost every social indicator, including levels of literacy, infant mortality, employment and access to basic services. They still appear on television mostly as maids and gardeners."

Tarver, Ulekowski Share Spring 'Sledgehammer Award' :: Duo Earns Army Football's Highest Spring Practice Honor; Weisner, Chasten, Lay Cop Most Improved Plaudits: "Tarver, the squad's top returning tackler after having amassed 83 hits a year ago, moved from free safety to cornerback this spring and impressed the coaching staff with his smooth transition. Renowned as one of the team's fiercest tacklers, and considered by Ross to be one of the hardest hitters he's ever coached, Tarver's versatility gives the Black Knights a host of options defensively. I DON'T MEAN TO BRAG I DON'T, I DON'T MEAN TO BOAST... well I do actually, he's my nephew - Barry."

WSJ.com - A Historian's Quest Links J.P. Morgan To Slave Ownership: "J.P. Morgan's unusual odyssey into the history of slavery began after Bank One, which it acquired last year, financed a bond issue for the city of Chicago in May 2003. The move triggered a city rule, called the Business, Corporate and Slavery Era Insurance Ordinance, that requires companies doing business with the city to disclose any ties to slavery."

North Carolina man finds employee's severed finger in pint of frozen custard: "'I thought it was candy because they put candy in your ice cream ... to make it a treat,' Stowers told WWAY. Stowers said he spit the object out, but still couldn't identify it. He went to his kitchen, rinsed it off with water - and 'just started screaming.'
Unlike a recent incident at a Wendy's restaurant in California, no questions about Stowers' honesty have been raised.
Officials of the state departments of agriculture and labor went to the shop to investigate Monday, and the shop's owner confirmed that one of his employees lost part of a finger in an accident with a food-processing machine. "

Comic Book Artist Magazine #15 - Jaime Hernandez Interview - TwoMorrows Publishing