I hate to be negative – but sometimes it's called for.

Are Southern Maryland Blue Crabs fans going to get any love from the stadium, its managers and staff?

Robert's friend Roger contacted the stadium before opening night to find out if it was okay to tailgate. He has yet to receive a response.

Robert, in his excitement for the team started www.crustheads.com as a fan site which he started working on two days ago. Yesterday he emailed them twice – no response. Not even an auto-response letting him know they got the email. Nothing.

But far and away the worst offense I have heard of thus far is the way things went down on Sunday May 4th.

For at least a week I had gotten emails and notices from the school that the Stoddert Middle School band would be playing on Sunday. The school made a great effort to create interest for people to come out that day. The A students would play the National Anthem to open the game. As the story was conveyed to me:  There were many parents and friends of students at the game to see them play. It was even reported to me that the school was listed in the program as the performers. They'd been there practicing for a while.

Not long before game time another performer showed up to sing the National Anthem. For whatever reason Mr. Mark Viniard, the "General Manager" called the two teachers who were in charge of Stoddert's band down to the field and told them that they couldn't play. I was told that Ms. Osborne insisted rather strongly and wanted to if they could both perform. General Manager Viniard's told them that they were a professional operation (I guess being professional mean you get to treat a group of children like crap) and that they couldn't (or rather WOULDN'T) do that. Ms. Osborne's retort was that if they were professional they wouldn't have double booked. She went on to tell him that she didn't even care at what point during the game they played, but that they should be able to play. Nope. She complained and pleaded and to no avail. She and the 25 kids sat in the stands and cried while that other woman – who as it turns out, I was told is a teacher in the Charles County school system – sang the national anthem. I don't know if they told her about the situation or not.

Today I got a note in my email that everybody who attended would get a refund. How about an apology? That would be nice. Oh and an effing EXPLANATION – I want to know WHY the favoritism? WHY? HMMMMMMMM?????? Or is General Manager Viniard just a stellar decision maker?

I sure hope this isn't a sign of things to come.

Another great piece from the always on point Peggy Noonan.

First food drop lands but help woefully short as humanitarian crisis mounts

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor, Ian MacKinnon, south-east Asia correspondent, The Guardian,

The US and France yesterday called for international aid to be delivered to cyclone victims without the permission of the Burmese military government if the regime continues to block the arrival of foreign aid workers and material assistance.

An airplane loaded with UN aid was allowed to land yesterday, but it represented a tiny trickle compared with the humanitarian needs in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, which is feared to have killed 100,000 people and made up to a million homeless.

The US made its navy and air force available to deliver aid to the worst-hit areas, but suggestions yesterday that the Burmese regime might let food deliveries land were denied by government officials later. (more)

By Gina Gallucci @ The Frederick News-Post

Do you own a gnome? Is it still in your garden? You might want to go check.

At least eight garden gnomes mysteriously appeared in front of several businesses near Carroll Creek and Market Street on Thursday morning.

"It's bizarre," said Eric Krasner, owner of CineGraphic Studios, where one gnome showed up.

Krasner was driving to work on Market Street when he saw two women taking pictures of themselves with two gnomes on the pedestals of a bridge over the creek. He thought they had brought them from home but noticed the gnomes remained after the women left.

When Krasner got to his store, he noticed a gnome in front of his business and one underneath "The Awakening" mural by artist Bill Cochran.

"Somebody's having fun," he said. (more)

As my official initation into solid middle class status, I had a pedicure for the first time yesterday. 

It's sometimes difficult for me to treat myself to something - especially something as ephemeral as a pedicure - when there are so many troubles going on in the world. Also, I feel like when I spend $60 on something that feels like total self-indugence it takes away something from another family member.  I think a lot of moms are probably like this. 

But you know what?  A while ago though, I realized something.  There is a beautiful balance to treating yourself.  I realized that treating myself to something now and then made me more relaxed - especially in the case of something like a pedicure or a massage - and I am happier and less on edge.  You know what?  That's good for everybody in the family!  You know how they always say, "If momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!" - well it's true.  I can be grumpy and feel the weight of always being responsible to fill empty stomachs and wash everybody's laundry, etc.  You give from your well - but if you don't give back to the well, the well will be like Charles County's water table, drying up.  Also, it was good for the woman who gave me the pedicure because I gave her a nice tip and the spa made money too, which is a small Charles County business.

When you do something nice for yourself once in a while it makes you feel more appreciated.  It makes you feel more relaxed - which is good for those you have to interact with and good for your health. 

My feet are happy today and I'm feeling more relaxed after the very stressful couple of weeks I've had preparing for Artomatic.

What do you do to pamper yourself, reduce stress and feel better?

House Attendants needed
We need a few more housse attendants NOW! Especially during the Saturday matinee this week, May 10, but also other performances. Easy greeting, selling snacks, see the show for free! Email now to bbhousemanager@gmail.com
or call 301-743-3040 ext 5

Gutenberg! The Musical!

Friday night May 9 you are invited to a FREE Champagne reception after the show with Cast and Crew!!

"The Landless Theatre Company's gleeful little production… captures the pluck and starry-eyed hope of Broadway wannabes stretching back to "42nd Street," and to Mickey and Judy putting on a show in the barn… The Baughmans, directed by John Sadowsky, are
fetchingly eager, singing with skill and gusto while gamely dancing in every style you can think of… You have to love the unselfconscious way the Baughmans just do it."
Nelson Pressley, The Washington Post
Named EDITOR'S PICK!
Don't delay any longer! Reserve now!
Call 800-494-8497 today or reserve now online
Get your tickets asap as
the DC run was sold out!
 Buy Now

These are hilarious. My first computer was a Timex-Sinclair 1000 but I upgraded a bit later to a Commodore VIC-20. Yeesh - a USB cable packs more computing power these days!

I guess Trapper and Frank Burns could come back to Korea for some endorsement scratch!
________________________________
If It's Good Enough for Shatner…

PC World | MSN.com

When personal computers entered the mainstream in the 1980s, the American public was understandably uneasy. Most people didn't know much about using a PC, or how to choose a good one. Where could they turn for advice? Marketers hoped they would turn to on-screen role models, heroes such as Alan Alda, Roger Moore and William Shatner. Understandable, perhaps. But really, would you buy a computer on the advice of Dom DeLuise or wrestler "King Kong" Bundy? MORE

'M.A.S.H.' Cast and the IBM PS/2 (1987)

I haven't been visiting the Charles Street Bakery as much as I used to lately but I did take my youngest this morning on the way to school. She LOVES the blueberry muffins!

If you haven't been there yet, check them out!

They'll also be doing a cake for the Charter Day Gala at Historic Mt. Victoria.

By Michael E. Ruane

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 9, 2008; Page A01

A powerful federal arts commission is urging that the sculpture of Martin Luther King Jr. proposed for a memorial on the Tidal Basin be reworked because it is too "confrontational" and reminiscent of political art in totalitarian states.

The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts thinks "the colossal scale and Social Realist style of the proposed statue recalls a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries," commission secretary Thomas Luebke said in a letter in April.

full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/08/AR2008 050803142.html?hpid=topnews&hpid=artslot

Talley's Folley stars Mrs. Shedman…I'm going tomorrow night.The Hard Bargain Players invite you to the amphitheatre to see their production of Lanford Wilson's Pulitzer Prize winning play TALLEY'S FOLLY May 9, 10, 16 & 17 at 8pm and audition for JESUS HOPPED THE 'A' TRAIN May 10 & 11 at 2:00pm.

Auditions will be held at the amphitheatre at Hard Bargain Farm (2001 Bryan Point Road, Accokeek, MD 20607). Call 301-392-9901 or e-mail dromio94@yahoo.com <mailto:dromio94@yahoo.com> for more information. If you are not available to attend a scheduled audition please contact us so that we can try to schedule an audition appointment. AUDITIONS - Saturday, May 10th 2:00pm & Sunday, May 11th 2:00pm : JESUS HOPPED THE 'A' TRAIN by Stephen Adly Guirgis - looking to cast 1 woman and 4 men. Auditions will consist of cold readings from the script.Casting Requirements

http://www.hbplayers.org <http://www.hbplayers.org/>

Reports Find Racial Gap in Drug Arrests

By ERIK ECKHOLM

More than two decades after President Ronald Reagan escalated the war on drugs, arrests for drug sales or, more often, drug possession are still rising. And despite public debate and limited efforts to reduce them, large disparities persist in the rate at which blacks and whites are arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses, even though the two races use illegal drugs at roughly equal rates.

Two new reports, issued Monday by the Sentencing Project in Washington and by Human Rights Watch in New York, both say the racial disparities reflect, in large part, an overwhelming focus of law enforcement on drug use in low-income urban areas, with arrests and incarceration the main weapon.

But they note that the murderous crack-related urban violence of the 1980s, which spawned the war on drugs, has largely subsided, reducing the rationale for a strategy that has sowed mistrust in the justice system among many blacks.

More here.

· Democrat rival 'would be on anybody's shortlist'
· Congress performance signals changed campaign

Suzanne Goldenberg and Ewen MacAskill in Washington, The Guardian,

Hillary Clinton at a fundraiser in Washington, DC. Photograph: Robyn Beck/AFP

Barack Obama yesterday gave the clearest hint yet that he may consider Hillary Clinton as his vice-presidential running mate in the November election for the White House. With the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination close to finished as a contest, Obama began looking beyond his battles with Clinton to the one with the Republican John McCain.

There are six more primaries left on the Democratic calendar, but Obama has established such a formidable lead that Clinton is no longer realistically capable of overtaking him, and the US media were yesterday treating him as the presumptive Democratic nominee.

The possibility of her serving as vice-president seemed unlikely until yesterday, given the personal bitterness that has grown between the two camps in the course of the campaign. (more)

By ERIC LIPTON and ERIC LICHTBLAU (from www.nytimes.com)

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — He has made millions as a title insurance executive, landlord and real estate developer in this college town, where the economy, despite trouble nationwide, is still growing nicely. Now, as a United States senator, with the mortgage mess fueling a national economic slowdown, Richard C. Shelby has more say over the revamping of housing finance laws than almost anyone else in Congress.

Mr. Shelby, 74, does not run a key Congressional committee. Instead, as the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, he is using his clout and the Democrats’ slim majority in the Senate to help determine what gets in, or almost as important, what is left out, of legislation.

He will soon play a major role in deciding the fate of one such bill, to help struggling homeowners, that the House passed, 266 to 154, on Thursday.

But over the years, his critics say, Mr. Shelby’s ties to the mortgage industry and the Alabama real estate market, and the generous campaign donations he receives from financial services companies, have distorted his perspective and led him to delay critical legislative remedies.

Indeed, Mr. Shelby’s legislative and business worlds have often intersected. (more)

Rachel Stevenson, Julian Borger, Ian MacKinnon and agencies, guardian.co.uk,

Burmese authorities will not allow foreign aid workers into the country to help the survivors of the devastating cyclone Nargis.

The foreign ministry said Burma would accept supplies from overseas, but would control the distribution for now.

"Myanmar [Burma] is giving priority to receiving relief aid and distributing them to the storm-hit regions with its own resources," a statement in the government-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper said.

"Myanmar is not in a position to receive rescue and information teams from foreign countries at the moment."

The authorities yesterday turned back a plane carrying specialist disaster rescuers and aid. A spokesman for the UN described Burma's refusal to allow in foreign workers as unprecedented. (more)

Ya gotta feel good for this guy!

___________________________________
Katrina victim claims $97 million lottery prize

CNN.com

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) — A construction company owner who lost two homes in Hurricane Katrina claimed a $97 million Powerball prize, a jackpot won off a ticket he bought at a convenience store where he stopped to buy his wife a gallon of milk.

When he turned in the winning ticket, Carl Hunter became the largest Powerball winner in Louisiana's history. He won the jackpot in January, but the 73-year-old small businessman waited nearly four months to claim the prize.

An avid lottery player, Hunter said he already had bought a Powerball ticket on Jan. 16 at the gas station less than two blocks from his home in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie. But he stopped at the station again that day to buy milk — at the request of his wife, Dianne — and got a second "quick pick" ticket.

"I had some change, and one dollar was used to buy this ticket," Hunter said Thursday at the Louisiana Lottery Corp. headquarters in Baton Rouge, where he claimed his prize.

"It's all about milk," his wife said, smiling.  MORE