7/5/02
Stateside: Fourth of July Special
"As the pamphlet 'Common Sense' was to the American Revolution, so 'Fixing Elections' could be to the movement for alternative voting systems in our day.... It deserves the widest readership possible." So says Richard Winger, editor …
7/15/02
Stateside: There Was An Old Lady In London
As you can tell from this column's title, I started writing it in Limerick. The medieval western Ireland city, that is, with its 1197 charter even older than London's. Limerick was the pot of gold at the end of my trip - even magically creating the perfect soundtrack …
7/22/02
Stateside: Aunt Minnie and the Mow-Ped
The United States Postal Service is conducting a trial use of that damned stupid epitome of everything that's wrong about research and development in this country - the Segway.
7/27/02
Stateside: "I'd like to give you a disease."
As opening lines go, I've heard better but the tall dark handsome stranger with the big rig and the twinkle in his eye looked worth the gamble. "OK," I said. "Let's see what fate has in store for you then," said my Doctor Without …
7/29/02
Stateside: 11 September 1: 27 July Nil
I cried when I watched Laila Harre's concession speech, and I'm not entirely sure why. I guess it's because she's one of the people I would have given an all-round Minnie Award to for her integrity, her hard work, her quick grasp of the business .
8/5/02
Stateside: Where have all the students gone?
That plastic comb I call a brain has attracted all manner of tissue-paper scraps this week. Iran, it seems, is about to host a celebration of its 7,000 years of history - in Cuba.
8/12/02
Stateside with Rosalea : Watermelon man
Forget the presidential pretzel; I nearly choked on a cheerio watching a football game last Monday morning. To be truthful, it was just a newsclip of the back of Andrew Mehrten's knees as he waited to take a penalty kick while two blokes - "buck …
8/18/02
Stateside: 37 Cents Can Buy You Love!
Ever had one of those moments when you wish the Red Sea would open up and swallow you? Charlton Heston apparently hasn't or he wouldn't have done that cringingly egotistical video this week about how he's got symptoms consistent with the early stages of Alzheimer's. …
8/26/02
Stateside With Rosalea : North To The Future
Well, beat me with a Klondike Bar if those independent-minded mainlanders up north don't make history this Tuesday, August 27. Alaska - the word means 'mainland' - is holding its primary elections that day and also on the ballot paper is an initiative …
9/2/02
Stateside with Rosalea : Just browsing
Cue sound f/x: audio of Klondike Bar hitting flesh. Woman's voice: "Ouch! Oooch! No! Don't stop! This chocolate and ice cream is delicious!" So. Alaska nixed Measure 1 for alternative voting by a margin of 2 to 1 last week, and I'm bravely …
9/9/02
Stateside: Two Movies And A Lecture
"I can't slip you the tomahawk 20 minutes of the day, but I can give you a wonderful life the other 23:40," says Sy to the woman he loves but has just told he is "two-spirited" (gay). They are both students at a university in Seattle, …
9/16/02
Stateside with Rosalea : The TV Duel
Midweek, a Yugoslavian work colleague went out of his way to tell me what a great team the Tall Blacks are, thus saving me from the conspiracy theory that had been forming in my mind since the previous weekend. Who can blame me for thinking that …
9/23/02
Stateside with Rosalea : Middle-politics
Halfway through each President's 4-year term, the entire US House of Representatives and one-third of the US Senate is elected, thus mid-term elections are seen as a way of measuring how effective the President has been in building support for the …
9/25/02
Stateside With Rosalea : Civility
Ooops! I said I'd provide a Wednesday-lite column and then forgot that I'd have to write it on Monday night, my time. Blame it on the Civil War. Or at least on the epic documentary called 'The Civil War', which first aired in 1990 and has now been …
9/30/02
Stateside With Rosalea : Who votes and what for
I'm somewhat discombobulated this Sunday morning from having just seen a US Democrat visiting Iraq say that Presidents are capable of lying and that the current one is. His comment came during an interview on 'This Week', and the comment and its fallout …
10/2/02
Stateside With Rosalea : I Long To Hear You
Google searches take you to strange places. I was looking for stories about 'American Candidate' - the FX cable TV program to choose a presidential candidate for 2004 - and the search tickled me with an american candidate for sainthood. Her name is …
10/4/02
Stateside With Rosalea : Pollies on Parade
On the last Sunday of September each year, Berkeley holds a street parade called "How Berkeley Can You Be?". It's a great opportunity for the locals to poke fun at their own reputation for outrageous ideas, and in election years it comes at just …
10/7/02
The wheres and what-withs of voting
In this third background piece on the California elections, the topic is polling places and equipment. On Monday, October 7, California's Secretary of State is coming to Alameda County to declare absentee voting open. In California, the Secretary of …
10/9/02
Stateside With Rosalea - Quiet, please!
The monarch is here. She flew in from Canada to be at a garden party last Sunday at the Museum of California in Oakland, which is where I saw her. No, I don't mean Betty Windsor! I mean the monarch butterfly. Thousands of them have arrived, as they …
10/14/02
Slimin' Simon and His Gray Eminence
I wasn't going to write about the California Governor's race so soon, having heard from a pollster that it won't get interesting till two weeks before the election, but really! the events of this week beggar even disbelief.
10/16/02
Stateside With Rosalea : Not a pretty story
Monday night I'm standing in the JetBlue terminal at New York's JFK airport looking at the rack of travel mags and the words on one cover leap out at me - "Bali" it says in fluorescent orange, "still paradise?"
10/21/02
Stateside With Rosalea - Here come da judges
On October 17, President George W. Bush gave an address via satellite to the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which was meeting in New Smyrna, Florida to honour Hispanic businesswomen. After congratulating the women on their achievements …
10/23/02
Cheap 'n' Cheerful East Coast Quickie
Stateside With Rosalea - October is the height of the fall foliage on the East Coast, so
10/29/02
Stateside With Rosalea - Battered voter syndrome
The Democrats really are too tragic. To hear them begging voters not to desert them for third party or independent candidates this election is like hearing an abusive partner in a relationship begging to be forgiven for past misdemeanours - just so ...
10/30/02
Stateside With Rosalea - New York, New York
Columbus Day this year was observed on October 14. As usual, it wasn't observed by everyone, including my employer, so I had to take a day's leave in order to have a long weekend. But it was a holiday for most schools and federal and state employees, …
11/4/02
Stateside With Rosalea - Is everybody happy?
The Republicans really are too comic. (Should there be an 'al' in there somewhere?) The sight of the Prez and his Vice lickety-splitting it up and down the country trying to get out the Republican vote is as much fun as watching a couple of chickens dancing …
11/6/02
Stateside With Rosalea - Horse sense
After this year's dramatic - or should I say, theatrical - market slide, the media puzzle only deepens. Was what happened on 14/11 or 15/11 any more significant than what happened on 9/11?
11/7/02
Stateside With Rosalea - One in twenty
Poor George. The golden apple slipped from his grasp, after all. Ironically, the Republicans' success in the South, on the East Coast and in the Midwest was probably the cause of their loss here in the California Governor's race. By the time the polling …
11/13/02
Are YOU buying into WWIII.com?
Monday, being the 11th of November, was Veterans Day, which is observed as a holiday by sufficient people for there to be 'holiday sales' at many stores, but it's not a holiday for the NY stock exchange. Well, why should it be - war is and always has …
11/20/02
Stateside With Rosalea - A House is not a home
Featuring on the Chron's front page last Friday was a photo of San Francisco politician Nancy Pelosi resplendent in red, celebrating her historic win as "1st woman chosen House minority leader". Well, to paraphrase an old saw, you can paint a donkey lipstick-red …
11/27/02
Stateside With Rosalea - We can be heroes
One balmy summer evening in 2000, as newly endorsed VP candidate Dick Cheney innocently aided and abetted terrorists by giving an audience of millions a monument-by-monument description of the flightpath to take for a landing at the Pentagon, my home was …
12/4/02
Stateside With Rosalea - Hale and hearty
Last Thursday was the fourth Thursday in November, so it was the national holiday known as Thanksgiving Day. According to my trusty Readers Digest 'America A to Z', the original celebration at Plymouth in the autumn of 1621 was a three-day celebration …
12/11/02
Stateside With Rosalea : Off with her head!
December 8 marked the third anniversary of me and my luggage spilling on to the footpath outside one of the most expensive hotels in San Francisco. The Amtrak bus, which had come across the Bay from the Coast Starlight LA-Oakland train, was supposed to …
12/18/02
Stateside With Rosalea - Mickey vs Mouse
I really do wonder what I used to do to amuse myself before the Internet. Last week, curious about an icon with a large E inside a square, I clicked through to find myself squarely back in the eighteenth century. Article 1 Section 8 of the US Consititution, …
12/24/02
Stateside With Rosalea The Seven Barbies of Kwanzaa
Clearly I watch too many PBS documentaries, like the one on the 'Mystery of the Three Kings' that aired this week. But the weather's been badder'n a blister on a postie's foot at Christmas, so what's a girl to do but venture gingerly back into TV-land …
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