Dreamways

The top three-quarters of the full-page newspaper ad shows a young girl, perhaps ten or eleven years old. She wears a white dress, with a bow in back, white tights, and white shoes. She is looking over her shoulder, preternaturally gazing at us, her brown curls cascading down her back, an aqua-colored bow in her hair. Behind her are several white tree trunks, like aspen or birch, fading into a watery-blue mist. At the front of the photo’s plane is a seemingly very large, white child’s sled, its pull-rope in the girl’s hands.  read more »

This Sunday edition of “Prickly City" by Scott Stantis (24 Feb 08) features our canine hero, the scraggly yellow mutt, Winslow. The first panel shows Winslow airborne, holding onto the handlebars of a red, flame-spewing jug on his back. “Jet Packs!” a disembodied voice exclaims. The second frame has Winslow shoveling a large spoonful of ice cream and syrup from a large goopy concoction into his greedy mouth. “Must eat dessert first!” exclaims the bodiless voice.  read more »

"America is getting cleaner, litter experts say. They estimate that deliberate trash-tossing has fallen about 2 percent a year since the mid-1970s in communities where it’s been measured. On U.S. beaches, cigarette butts, beverage cans and Styrofoam peanuts for packaging are down, cleaners say. In most communities, pooper-scooper laws now make carefree strolls possible. Even along roadsides, more of what’s visible today is grass.“ This good news, what many would describe as a dream come true, is reported by Frank Greve in his article "Talkin‘ Trash?  read more »

"Growing up on a farm in northeastern Colorado, I was constantly told, 'Any American boy can grow up to be president.‘ I dreamed of doing just that during those long hours on the back of a John Deere tractor. Today, at age 62, my odds of working in the Oval Office don’t look good. But that‘s OK, because the dream served its purpose.“ With these words, Bob Ewegen commences his editorial on politics and dreams, "Black Child, Girl Child, Today Your Dreams Are One“ (The Denver Post, 26 Jan 08.)

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"Does anybody know of another city with portable toilets in its most important civic space? ... I travel quite a bit, and I can't think of one." Thus does John Temple challenge the reader in his editorial, "Vision for Civic Center Blurry" (The Denver Post, 26 Jan 08). He jumps into the ongoing fray about how to refurbish Denver’s Civic Center Park, asserting that in Denver "we treat our civic heart like a junkyard." This is what the idea to give the park a facelift is all about, to make this space pleasing and perhaps even grand.

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The black-and-white photo shows a Chinese fellow squatting in the middle of a solid mass of pale fish that range from a foot to 2 feet long. It is an unbroken, writhing mass of fish, a vortex, taking up the entire frame of the photo. The fellow is holding a round net, a couple of feet in diameter, on a long pole, in the direction of the camera. In his net are half a dozen or so fish. The caption reads: "A Chinese fish farmer with one of his catfish, bred on the outskirts of Hanzhou.  read more »

"Four simple behaviors – being physically active, not smoking, drinking moderately and consuming fruits and vegetables – can increase longevity as much as 14 years, researchers have found.“ This amazing news was reported in The Denver Post ("Four Healthy Habits Linked to Longevity“ by Jeannine Stein, 21 Jan 08).

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"The trees around George and Agnes Spaulding’s 170-year-old farmhouse [in Royalton, Vt.] are as good as money in the bank, many old-growth maples valuable not only for the quality of their wood but also for the sweet sap boiled into syrup each spring. So when a neighboring farmer crossed onto the Spauldings‘ land and chopped down 30 or so of their best trees, the couple was devastated.“ People stealing trees seems unbelievable, something ridiculous created in a sleep dream.  read more »

"The makers of antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil never published the results of about a third of the drug trials that they conducted to win government approval, misleading doctors and consumers about the drugs‘ true effectiveness, a new analysis has found.“ This disturbing news comes in an article by Benedict Carey ("Researchers Find Bias in Drug Trial Reporting,“ The New York Times, 17 Jan 08).

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"A species of self-destructing palm trees that flower once every 100 years and then die has been discovered on Madagascar,“ The New York Times reports (17 Jan 08). Mijoro Rakotoarinivo of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Madagascar is quoted as saying: "It does not flower for maybe 100 years and can be mistaken for other types of palm.  read more »