The James Logan Courier

Four jet airliners carried members of James Logan High School’s band and color guard to China last week, where they will be part of the festivities leading up to the 2008 Olympics.

Two flights left Monday, and two more flights took off Tuesday morning for Beijing, where the Logan contingent will be part of the Beijing Olympic Orchestra that is being described as the first foreign group ever to perform in Tiananmen Square.

Logan also is scheduled to be part of pre-Games performances at the Olympic Square in Tianjin, at Tianjin Olympic Stadium (following a preliminary soccer match) and at the Olympic Cultural Square in Beijing. The band and color guard also will perform at one of the Olympic Live Stages in Beijing before televised coverage of the opening ceremonies.

By Rick LaPlante, New Haven School's Public Information Officer

Friends and community members have set up a memorial fund for the family of Catlynne Shaw, an Alvarado Middle School student who died July 22 , six days after her heart stopped while she was riding a roller coaster in Las Vegas.

By Les Payne
Newsday (MCT)

If elected president, Sen. John McCain promises to stage a news conference every week, a singular horror that, of itself, should be enough to doom his chances.

This McCain threat shows no mercy for his staff, which trails this creaky circus doing what the man with the shovel does for the elephant. "Being human and tripping over your tongue occasionally doesn't mean a thing," said one top official for the GOP nominee. By contrast, McCain dismissed his opponent's verbal appeal last week as Sen. Barack Obama blitzed the Middle East and Europe, smooth-talking 200,000 in Berlin.

Time and again, McCain staffers must return to his messes and explain what their boss meant to say. In addition to the verbal slips, even in his so-called areas of expertise, McCain rolls out his thoughts with a disquieting inexactitude.

From wikipedia:
Philippa Duke Schuyler (August 2, 1931-May 9, 1967) was a noted American child prodigy and pianist who became famous in the 1930s and 1940s as a result of her talent, mixed race parentage, and the eccentric methods employed by her mother to bring her up. Schuyler was the daughter of George S. Schuyler, a prominent black essayist and journalist of pronounced conservative views, and Josephine Cogdell, a white Texan and one-time Mack Sennett bathing beauty from a former slave-owning family. Her parents believed that intermarriage could "invigorate" both races and produce extraordinary offspring. They also advocated that mixed race marriage could help to solve many of the United States's social problems.

Read more about Philippa Schuyler's troubled life, free from jrank.com.