The James Logan Courier

By Carl P. Leubsdorf
The Dallas Morning News (MCT)

It's widely believed that a Democratic victory in next month's elections would launch renewed pressure on President Bush to change course in Iraq. But significant pressure is starting even before the balloting — and it's coming from some key Republican allies.

By J.R. Labbe
McClatchy Newspapers(MCT)

Voting. Volunteering. Raising money for a charity.

These characteristics of a healthy democracy have been hallmarks of American civic engagement since the days when Alexis de Tocqueville was wandering the nation observing its energetic infancy.

If only they were vigorously embraced by today's youths.

Let's start the day off from school with a cartoon about school, Pest Pupil, starring Baby Huey. The oversized duckling's mental deficiences stymie his frustrated teacher, so a tutor is called in.


Click on the picture to view the cartoon, either streaming or downloaded from LikeTelevision, com.

Next, Betty Boop and her dog, Pudgy, appear in "Not Now," in which a yowling, singing tomcat goads Betty and her dog to take drastic measures. Made in 1935.


Click on the picture to view the cartoon, streaming in 256k MPEG4 from the Internet Archive. Click here for more options and information.

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was born in Cheraw, South Carolina. He was an African-American Bahá'í jazz trumpeter, bandleader, singer, and composer. Gillespie, with Charlie Parker, was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz.
In addition to featuring in these epochal moments in jazz, he was instrumental in founding Afro-Cuban jazz. Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unknown in jazz. In addition to his instrumental skills, Dizzy's beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn and pouched cheeks, and his light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop, which was originally regarded as threatening and frightening music by many listeners raised on older styles of jazz. He had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians.

Watch and listen as Dizzy Gillespie and Milt Jackson perform Once in a While, from Google Video.


Dizzy Gillespie at the Nambassa 3-day Music & Alternatives festival New Zealand 1981. Photographer Michael Bennetts.