Posted: 12 Jan 2010 08:29 PM PST

Chicago's Second City returns to Liberty

Comedy tour company turns 50

By SABINA DANA PLASSE
Express Staff Writer

Chicago's legendary comedy theatre company The Second City is on tour with its 50th anniversary show. The Second City will present two shows at the Liberty Theatre in Hailey on Thursday, Jan. 14, and Friday, Jan. 15, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $30 for main floor reserved seating and $25 for balcony reserved seating.

The Second City on tour features the next generation of comic greats performing a diverse array of sketches and songs, as well as off-the-cuff improvisation that can provide completely unexpected comic brilliance. From the battle of the sexes to the battles at the voting booth, The Second City provides a hilarious and insightful look into contemporary American culture.

The comedy performances began in a converted Chinese laundry on Chicago's north side in 1959. In 2010, The Second City has established itself as the premier comedy institution in the world.

The Second City alumni list includes comedy greats such as Alan Arkin, Joan Rivers, Robert Klein, Peter Boyle, Harold Ramis, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, John Candy, Martin Short, George Wendt, Julia Louis Dreyfus, Chris Farley, Ryan Stiles, Mike Myers, Rachel Dratch and Tina Fey.

No topic or subject matter is off-limits for The Second City; if your parents asked you not to speak about it at the dinner table, chances are it will be made fun of in an evening with The Second City.

For tickets, call 578-9122 or stop by the box office located at the Liberty Theatre, 110 N. Main St. in Hailey, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Sabina Dana Plasse: splasse@mtexpress.com

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Military review: Troubling signals from Fort Hood suspect missed - CNN

Posted: 12 Jan 2010 08:36 PM PST

Washington (CNN) -- An upcoming military review of the Fort Hood, Texas, shootings finds that the alleged shooter, Maj. Nidal Hasan, was promoted despite supervisors' concerns about his extremist views on Islam and odd behavior.

The review also says that a lack of communication between the U.S. military and a terrorism task force did not allow the sharing of information to determine whether he was a terrorist threat months before the shooting.

CNN was told details of the Pentagon review by a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the report. The official did not want to be identified because the report, requested by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, will not be officially released until Thursday.

The Defense Department review, led by former Chief of Naval Operation Adm. Vernon Clark and former Army Secretary Togo West, will recommend the Army and the entire military focus more on looking internally for potential threats among the troops, according to the official.

The review does not look into the reported e-mail communications between Hasan and the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is based in Yemen and also has possible ties to the Christmas Day airline bombing plot. Those ties are being looked at in a separate criminal investigation by the Army.

The publicly released part of the report will not discuss Hasan's actions the day of the shooting at Fort Hood because that, too, is part of the criminal investigation.

In November, Hasan walked into the processing center and began firing his two handguns while standing on a table yelling "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great" in Arabic), killing 13 people before being shot numerous times by base security officers.

Hasan remains in a Brooke Army Medical Hospital in San Antonio, Texas, where he is paralyzed from his wounds. He is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder.

The review outlines elements of Hasan's behavior that should have triggered supervisors and senior military officials to look more closely at his behavior.

It questions why Hasan was allowed to keep his security clearance after numerous questionable actions that should prevent military members from getting one.

Among those actions: a class presentation where he said the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were a war on Islam and that Islamic law was more powerful than the U.S. Constitution and justified suicide bombing, according to the official.

Questioning the Constitution is grounds for dismissal as an officer, as well as grounds for having a security clearance revoked or not awarded, the official said. Yet Hasan was given the clearance and continued to be promoted afterward.

During his time in Washington, Hasan's religious views became increasingly apparent. He took a trip to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, to take part in the Haj -- a pilgrimage that devout Muslims are expected to do at least once in their lifetimes if they are able.

In July, Hasan reported to his new position as a psychiatrist at Fort Hood. The report says supervisors knew he had poor performance reviews before the move but was posted at the large base because his poor work would not be as noticeable.

The report is expected to show that Hasan's superiors were all able to clearly see in his records that as an officer, medical student and a psychiatrist, Hasan was a repeat poor performer.

He took six years to graduate from medical school instead of the four years it takes most students. He was on academic probation for receiving numerous below average and failing grades between 1997 and 2007 at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, according to the official.

After graduation, Hassan began his internship in psychiatry, a four-year program at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

Very little changed in his performance reviews, and teachers and supervisors told him of their concerns. He did not see many patients and required monitoring. But the official with knowledge of the review said after being spoken to about his lacking performance, Hasan would focus and improve for a while before slipping back to performing poorly again.

Despite his history of poor grades and performance, Hasan's officer evaluations were strong including the words "satisfactory" and "outstanding." He was promoted to the rank of captain and then major in the standard same time spent in those ranks along with stronger performing colleagues.

Hasan was promoted from captain to major in May, military records show. Because of a shortage of majors in the medical corps, the promotion board was given the authority to promote captains who otherwise would not have been considered for a promotion, according to a U.S. military official who asked not to be identified in connection with discussing personnel matters possibly related to the Hasan investigation.

Hassan was also disciplined for inappropriate conversations with patients about religion.

By 2007, a new supervisor of Hasan's, Maj. Scott Moran, got tough with him. Moran was the director of the psychiatry residency at Walter Reed. He chastised Hasan for not being reachable while on-call and counseled him that his research project about internal conflicts of Muslim soldiers was not a topic appropriate for the program.

Moran also developed a performance-improvement plan for Hasan.

Hasan continued with his presentation regardless of his supervisors reprimand. The review found the presentation was approved as meeting the residency program requirements despite the reprimand, according to the official with knowledge of the review.

Upon completion of the residency program, Moran wrote a positive reference letter for Hasan, saying he was a competent doctor, according to the official with knowledge of the report.

Hasan then started a two-year fellowship in preventative and disaster psychiatry that he completed in last June, before moving to Fort Hood in July.

In addition to retracing Hasan's history performance as a military psychiatrist, the report will recommend changes for the military.

The military needs to develop new and more precise methods of sharing information on people of concern between the military and intelligence agencies, the report will say.

The report also will recommend a new process for encouraging troops to alert commanders to people of concern instead of the current attitude in many units of a more "boys' club culture" of not turning problem troops in, according to the official. The investigation also recommend ways to overhaul the military performance evaluation system.

The review suggests holding officers accountable for their poor performance reviews, preventing them from moving up the ranks. It also finds supervisors "don't want to rock the boat" and prevent junior officers from getting promoted, the official said.

In a separate aspect of the Hasan case, Hasan's civilian lawyer, John Galligan, told CNN on Tuesday he is frustrated with the "deliberate, intentional actions," by the Army to make it impossible for him to conduct the proper discovery in the case.

"He has a right to proper pretrial procedure," Galligan said.

Galligan said his legal team is hitting some resistance in access to basic information from the military, including the Army's Criminal Investigation Division office not allowing the photocopying of paperwork related to the case. He said he has not encountered that in his 30 years as a lawyer.

He also would like to have the courts-martial moved from Fort Hood for a more fair trial. Because the president, the Army chief of staff and the Fort Hood commander all attended a memorial service there it is not a place, Galligan believes, that Hasan can get a fair trial.

Galligan's access to Hasan has also been limited by the military, he said. He has had trouble seeing him on visits to the hospital. He would also like Hasan moved to a closer medical facility to Fort Hood because traveling between Hood and San Antonio is difficult for his legal team. His requests have gone unanswered, he said.

The military did not return a request for comment.

CNN's Larry Shaughnessy contributed to this report.

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Jesus and Shakespeare? What's the contrast? (part 2 of 2) - Examiner

Posted: 12 Jan 2010 08:43 PM PST

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A few days ago, we examined Shakespeare and Jesus. Shakespeare left us a legacy of wealth in literature and poetry. Although he lived only 400 some odd years ago, very little is known about his personal life. (For more on this read "To be or not to be, that is the question!)

Jesus' birth, life and death changed the world; even our calendar is based upon the date of his birth.

Let me say this: we find it easy to "believe in Shakespeare" even though there are some literary "experts" that attribute Shakespeare's writings to his rival, Christopher Marlowe. (see below for some links regarding them)

The contrast that jumps out at me here is that many struggle with Jesus Christ and his divinity as well as the church that He founded: The Catholic Church, but can easily accept that Shakespeare was who he was--the writer of great plays such as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and MacBeth.

Jesus gave St. Peter the keys to the kingdom (the Church) which was a Jewish tradition that dates back to the Old Testament (Isaiah 22:20-24) where the king gave his most trusted servant the keys to protect the king's castle till he returned.

St. Peter, who held the keys given to him by King Jesus in Matthew 16, was the one to whom the apostles would turn when there were questions about Gentiles becoming Christian and if they should be circumcised. (Remember that the first Christians were mostly Jewish. They were not particularly thrilled about the Gentiles coming into their group.) Peter resolved issues, arguments, and situations as they arose in the early church.

Successors would be chosen when apostles died and as the Church grew. In the book of Acts, we are told of the remaining eleven apostles casting lots to determine the successor of Judas Iscariot. The seat of St. Peter was passed on after his death by crucifixtion upside down and has undergone the same transfer of authority since then.

Some want to rail against the authority of the Pope and of the teachings of Christ. There has been a faithful preservation of the canon and of the oral tradition. Follow the documents. Read the writings of the early fathers. Read Eusebius and Josephus. You may be surprised.

When those who would like to say that the Pope or the Bishops have no authority, they display a tremendous ignorance of church history. (Please remember that The Da Vinci Code is fiction.) Some would say that we, as Catholics, can pick and choose what we believe. Sure, I suppose we have that right, but if we chose to buck the authority of the Church, then there are other places to go where one might find someone that agrees with them. Why Catholic if that be the case?

But if one chooses to call him or herself Catholic, even an "ardent" one, is it an oxymoron to then start to bash the Holy Father and/or the teachings of the Church? Do people within the Church make mistakes? You betcha! We are a ragtag army of misfits and sinners. Warts and all, Jesus loves us and helps us to grow to be more like Him. We are all in different places of our journey.

What puzzles me are those who are sometimes known as "cafeteria" Catholics. They are the ones who pick and choose which part of the Church they like or makes them feel "comfortable" and discard the other prickly parts. They can pick and choose as they please, but please allow those who wish to fully embrace the faith, to do so. The Church and its sacraments are gifts to us… we don't take presents and just pitch them... we open them and appreciate the giver. Ought we also do the same with the gift God gave us, Our Lord Jesus Christ?

How did I get from Shakespeare to here? Although there really is no comparison between the two, there are some distinguishable differences we can see. Shakespeare is, in a sense, a contrast to Jesus. He wrote multitudinous amounts of wonderful literature that has impacted our lives and culture, even though we don't know much for sure about his personal life.

In contrast, there is no written record of anything Jesus wrote but we know many details about him through the writing of the apostles, carried on by the Church and the careful preservation of the canon of scriptures as well as the oral teachings.

Shakespeare is dead—his works live on.

Jesus is alive—and His works and Church will stand forever. Amen.

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School board considering ‘snow day’ - Cumberland Times-News

Posted: 12 Jan 2010 08:29 PM PST

Published: January 12, 2010 11:46 pm

School board considering 'snow day'

Proposal: If classes are off, so are after-school activities

Kristin Harty Barkley
Cumberland Times-News

CUMBERLAND — School officials are considering simplifying Allegany County's "snow day" policy to end confusion about whether after-school activities take place when school is canceled.

A proposed revision succinctly clarifies the issue: If school is canceled so are all after-school activities.

Period.

"I like the change because it's consistent across the county, and I think that's important that we are consistent," said board member Tom Striplin. Currently, principals decide on a school-by-school basis whether to cancel sporting events and other after-school activities on snow days.

"I think it's hard for Principal A here to say 'We're going to have the event,' and Principal B to say, 'We're not,'" Striplin said. "And people say, 'Well, why are they having an event and we can't?'"

The board didn't vote on the matter, which came up for a first reading during Tuesday night's business meeting.

Administrators came up with the change because of confusion among students and parents about whether a sporting event, for example, would still take place if school was canceled because of the weather, especially if the weather had improved over the course of the day.

According to the new policy, only in "unique" situations could an after-school event still take place on a snow day, such as if a sports team had traveled to town in anticipation of a playoff game, for example, said Janet Wilson, assistant superintendent of curriculum. The school's principal, in concert with the superintendent, would make the decision on a case-by-case basis.

"If weather conditions improved enough to play, we would most likely evaluate that as a unique situation and allow the game to go on," Wilson said.

Winter weather has caused school officials to delay or cancel school on more than half a dozen occasions so far this year. The decisions aren't made lightly, said Superintendent David Cox.

"The first thing we're always thinking about is safety of our students, staff and parents," said Cox, who explained the process officials go through to determine whether to delay or cancel. They typically start at 4 a.m. and aim to make a decision by 6 a.m., he said.

"It's one of those things where any decision we make, whether that's to open on time or close or have a delay, it does cause inconvenience for folks," Cox said, adding that the wide variance in elevations in Allegany County makes it especially difficult to generalize about conditions. "And people let us know that. But it's not uncommon at all to get feedback that is in direct conflict."

In other business Tuesday, the board:

• Approved a resolution to offer prevailing wage rates for companies who bid on the Greenway Avenue Stadium project, in an effort to encourage local contractors and stimulate the local economy. Bids are scheduled to be opened on Jan. 28.

• Heard a report about proposed changes to the school system's programs of study which would eliminate "merit" and "non-merit" courses, giving students the option of choosing "academic" courses instead. The other programs of study — honors, dual enrollment college, and advanced placement (AP) courses — would remain the same.

"We will not use the terminology merit and non-merit," said Karen Bundy, director of secondary education. "This is all in an effort to raise and sustain a culture of high expectations by heterogeneously grouping students in academic courses."

Other changes include altering the weight of GPAs for each of the programs of study to 4.0 for academic, 4.5 for honors and early college, and 5.0 for AP.

Contact Kristin Harty Barkley at kharty@times-news.com.

Ragamala Dance to impress its Indian spirit - Idaho Mountain Express

Posted: 12 Jan 2010 08:29 PM PST

Ragamala Dance to impress its Indian spirit

By SABINA DANA PLASSE
Express Staff Writer

Bringing world culture to the Wood River Valley, the Sun Valley Center for the Arts has planned an intriguing and beautiful dance performance with the Ragamala Dance company as part of its current multidisciplinary exhibition, "Outside In: Indian Art Abroad."

Ragamala Dance will perform at the Community Campus auditorium in Hailey on Friday, Jan. 15, at 7:30 p.m. The company's home base is in Minneapolis, Minn., but it tours the world continuously, displaying its ancient Bharatanatyam dance tradition.

"Bharatanatyam is one of the major Indian dance styles," said Aparna Ramaswamy, Ragamala Dance co-artistic director. "There are five major forms and this dance form is from southeastern India."

The classical dance form emphasizes supple hand gestures and stylized postures. Ragamala Dance is internationally acclaimed for the beauty, elegance and rhythmic complexity of its performances.

"It's very important to us to have a wide audience and for people to find an entry point for what we do," Ramaswamy said. "The basis of the dance is spiritual. People connect to the music and the dance tradition."

Ragamala members come from diverse backgrounds and each has been chosen for rigorous training in the Pandanallur method. This intensive study not only steeps the dancer in the vocabulary, form, line and spirit of Bharatanatyam, but also in the intricacies of southern Indian culture, a vital part of this ancient artistic tradition.

The company was started in 1992 by Ramaswamy's mother, with whom Ramaswamy has been dancing since she was 3. The women return every year to India to receive instruction from Padma Bhushan Alarmel Valli, one of India's greatest living masters of Bharatanatyam.

"We take an ancient dance form and meet it with other art forms around the world," Ramaswamy said. "A piece in the show we will perform in Idaho has Indian dance movement set to a Japanese Taiko drummer."

Ragamala will be joined by special guests the Wadaiko Ensemble Tokara, a Japanese Taiko drum troupe that will perform as well as accompany the dancers. In addition to the twist of Taiko, Ragamala uses unconventional music from the likes of Zap Mama, a Belgian-Congolese singer, for its performances.

Tickets are $25 for center members and $35 for nonmembers. Tickets for those 18 and under are $10. For details and to purchase tickets, visit sunvalleycenter.org, call 726-9491 or visit The Center in Ketchum.

Sabina Dana Plasse: splasse@mtexpress.com

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Cultural

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

“Chicago’s Second City returns to Liberty - Idaho Mountain Express” plus 4 more

“Chicago’s Second City returns to Liberty - Idaho Mountain Express” plus 4 more

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