Adopt-a-School kickoff event

Jim with Willie. . .

. . . and Jim the Roper

Remembrance of downtown past

From my apartment near the top of Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001, I watched two lines of black smoke as thick and slow as oil spills pour across the sky far downtown. In my mind, that morning, I also stood in another apartment, just below the World Trade Center, and it was 1974.—by Holland Cotter, The New York Times

Feeling morally, intellectually confused?

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American.

Read Keith Olbermann's essay which ends with this quote from Edward R. Murrow.

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular."

A master of the loft building gets his day in the spotlight

A new book on the architect Ely Jacques Kahn is out, a few months after the Landmarks Preservation Commission protected his signature building: the blocky, brilliantly colored 2 Park Avenue of 1928. Kahn was a master of the 1920’s loft building, introducing variety and expression into an area usually governed by the cheapest product possible.—by Christopher Gray, The New York Times

A crystal showcase reflects a city’s glass legacy

“Without a glass palace, life becomes a burden,” the poet Paul Scheerbart wrote nearly a century ago. Standing in front of the new Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art, designed by the Japanese team of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, can reawaken that belief in the power of glass to enchant.—by Nicolai Ouroussoff, The New York Times

Compliant and subservient: Jimmy Carter's explosive critique of Tony Blair

Tony Blair's lack of leadership and timid subservience to George W Bush lie behind the ongoing crisis in Iraq and the worldwide threat of terrorism, according to the former American president Jimmy Carter.

"I have been surprised and extremely disappointed by Tony Blair's behaviour," he told The Sunday Telegraph.

"I think that more than any other person in the world the Prime Minister could have had a moderating influence on Washington - and he has not. I really thought that Tony Blair, who I know personally to some degree, would be a constraint on President Bush's policies towards Iraq."-by John Preston and Melissa Kite

Silence After the Storm: Life has yet to return to much of a city haunted by Katrina

The amount of insured damage from Katrina was more than $55 billion, greater than that from Hurricane Andrew, the World Trade Center attacks and the Northridge earthquake combined.

Read this by Peter Whoriskey in the Washington Post.