Thursday, March 22, 2007

Journalism 016

Today is World Water Day. The theme this year is "Coping with water scarcity".

Americans enjoy the privilege of having reasonably sanitary tap water at our beck-and-call for free. So today some restaurants in New York City are giving patrons the option to donate $1 for such tap water, the proceeds of which will go to UNICEF's Tap Project, which provides children throughout the world with safe drinking water.

More than 1.6 million people die every year due to lack of access to sanitary water, most of whom are children under the age of 5, said Margaret Chan of the World Health Organization today.


Massachusetts has one of the best drinking water treatment systems in America. So maybe that accounts for why when I contacted state Sen. Pamela Resor, D-Acton, who is chairwoman of the Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture committee, she was unaware that today was World Water Day. As was the Department of Public Works in Brockton, MA.

The day was initiated in Brazil at a UN conference on environment and development in 1992.


Friday, March 9, 2007

Journalism 015

On Thursday, Reuters reported that about 325 U.S. Law Enforcement officials were in the second day of "Operation Vigilant Sentry" training exercises in Miami, which teaches officers to thwart possible illegal migration attempts, when two boatloads of migrating Cubans landed on a nudist beach miles away, and went undetected.

Under the U.S. "wet-feet, dry-feet " policy, the Cubans will legally be granted asylum.


The training exercises were enacting the possible exodus that some have imagined when Fidel Castro dies.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Poetry 005


Tonight,
The most magnificent of muses
Entered the subway of my life's trepidaton,
A series of tongue twisted dwarves
That guide umbilical beliefs
Into the gutters of human disparity.

And yet I'm left
Requesting rights
That have yet to arise
Upon the tastebuds of tangled tyrants,
Twisted beyond illusion,
In an attempt to gentrify
A never-ending phoenix,
Shooting hope in between the toes
Of bed-ridden angels,
Whose wings no longer perspire or aspire
To the ancestral heights
That came before them,

Sharpening talons, instead, hourly
To ensure some form of engraved bedrock.

Copyright 2007 Jordy Yager

Monday, March 5, 2007

Journalism 014



It's not a bad theory, take a little bit over a long period versus alot in a short period.

But it didn't work for Robert Gibson, 69, who is being accused by MBTA Transit Police of stealing more than $40,000 in coins and tokens, while working as an electrician on vending and collection equipment.

Gibson worked for the MBTA for 20 years and just retired last October. Police paid a visit to his home in Revere, Ma. over the weekend and carried out 17 five-gallon plastic drums filled with tokens and coins in paper bags.

The MBTA switched last year from tokens to the electronic Charlie Card and perhaps if it hadn't, Gibson would be a richer man. He was recently caught on surveillance cameras depositing at least $3,500 in tokens and putting it onto 45 CharlieCards. I mean, maybe he just really liked to take public transportation.