Matchmaker Matchmaker .............................

I was merely an egg, or maybe not even that as I am not sure my mother was of menstruating age,( oh wait, we're born with those bitches right?) somewhere sitting around impatiently waiting for the two people who hadn�t even met to meet, finish their grad studies, and get it on when the Jane Fonda thing occurred. Still having heard via media and via �real live people� yeah, and read about the debacle that was Hanoi Jane all I have to say is,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,what is she thinking. You all may think I am being somewhat lazy this summer, I have admitted to it myself; I have however not been totally useless. I work, and teach a class a couple of times a week; the rest of this summer has been a respite for me so bite me. I don�t have to do anything and I am enjoying it. Some people have written and asked for more personal posts and to drop any political notations; this is as personal as it gets hon and I certainly am not going to drop anything. You all know who my daddy is; what more do you want. I did do some awesome architectural photos earlier in the summer as you may recall.I don�t own them of course; I had lunch a couple of weeks ago with the photographer for which I did those photos. He offered me another assignment, a little further away, in another state and I�d be staying for a week. He suggested we work together on this assignment (essentially I�d be going with him), and then he suggested we go to dinner that night to discuss it. I am not as totally stupid as I look nor did I imagine the innuendos. I know I look stupid at times, but that is because we have a genetic thing going on in our family in which an eyebrow and lip crook upward giving most of us a perplexed look most of the time, but not being the ingenue one might suppose me to be this proposition saddened me, and continued to harden me to the way of the world. He is twenty five years older then me if he�s a day and you know although I prefer them old I do have an age limit. (Mostly due to health concerns) I have been useful though in other ways. I am a matchmaker; yes I am. I have successfully matched up my third couple in two years. One might say whoa, that�s impressive, and I would have to agree. I won�t bore you with the details save to say that this was my first matchmaking endeavor involving a homosexual couple, one an old friend of mine who showed up from Maryland looking into grad schools here and my other friend whom you all know as my � gay friend Matt�. It�s early yet of course, but it looks good. I was supposed to go with B to look at Brown and RISD and Matt ended up going instead, they never came home�. I�m rarely wrong. My first successful match was made two years ago when I introduced J to B down in Maryland. That relationship is still strong, and although I am not much of a believer in relationships for people my age I can tell if someone is the kind of person who needs a relationship, and of course if I can help I will. Some of you may remember at the beginning of the summer I had gone out a few times with a guy named Ben. Well, you know how sometimes you just know that a person is just not someone you would enjoy spending a whole lot of time with despite hotness?That was the case here but there is a silver lining to this. I figured he might like to meet a friend of mine from NY with similar interests and as she spends a lot of time in Nantucket and he lives in Boston I figured I�d give it a go. It took a couple of weeks to get them together but it finally worked out and I think it�s a happening relationship at this time. Why do I do this you ask? I�m a control freak I guess.

Those are my personal notes for the summer.

The Weekly Coalition for Darfur Report follows. http://coalitionfordarfur.blogspot.com/2005/07/witness.html Witness Two weeks ago, the Center for American Progress and the Genocide Intervention Fund launched a joint initiative known as "Be A Witness" built around a petition calling on television networks to increase their coverage of the genocide in Darfur. As "Be a Witness" noted

During June 2005, CNN, FOX News, NBC/MSNBC, ABC, and CBS ran 50 times as many stories about Michael Jackson and 12 times as many stories about Tom Cruise as they did about the genocide in Darfur.

This week, tireless Sudan advocate Nicholas Kristof took up the call and chastised the press for its lack of Darfur coverage

If only Michael Jackson's trial had been held in Darfur. Last month, CNN, Fox News, NBC, MSNBC, ABC and CBS collectively ran 55 times as many stories about Michael Jackson as they ran about genocide in Darfur.

Shortly thereafter, Editor and Publisher printed a piece reporting

New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof's attack on the press for underreporting the atrocities and genocide in Darfur, which ran in today's paper, has drawn the ire of some newspaper editors who said they are doing the best they can with what they have.

In this piece, USA Today Foreign Editor James Cox offered a partial but important explanation for the dearth of coverage

Cox pointed to a two-day series USA Today ran in May on Darfur, stressing the difficulty the paper had in even getting a visa for reporter Rick Hampson to travel there. "It was excruciatingly difficult to get the permission," he said. "We had an application that had been stalled for months."

Sudan does not want journalists freely traveling around Darfur for the sole reason that their reports are going to reveal the true nature of Khartoum's genocidal campaign. Considering this basic fact in conjunction with the efforts currently underway to expand the African Union mission in Darfur, it might behoove all involved to consider embedding journalists with the AU just as the US did during the initial weeks of the war in Iraq. People want information about Darfur; journalists want access to Darfur; and the UN and AU want (or at least should want) to disseminate information regarding to crisis in Darfur as widely as possible. The US and NATO are currently providing key logistical support to the AU mission and ought to insist that any reporter who wants access to Darfur be assigned to and granted protection by an AU patrol force. Brian Steidle served with the AU in Darfur for six months before eventually resigning his position so that he could share his photos with the world. Steidle is a hero for doing this - but it shouldn't take personal acts of sacrifice and courage to make the world aware of the genocide in Darfur.