The James Logan Courier

By Tim Johnson
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

BEIJING — Nervous that troublemakers may slip across the border before the Olympic Games, China is making it harder for foreigners to obtain entry visas and halting public gatherings where embarrassing protests over Tibet might take place.

Authorities suspended a May 1-4 rock festival that's the biggest annual outdoor music event in China, saying the event could be dangerous, an organizer said Thursday.

Other commercial events also have been canceled in recent weeks, including a Celine Dion concert in Beijing and a pillow fight aimed at drawing shoppers to a mall.

By Emily Low, Courier Staff Writer

STAR testing has taken over James Logan in a dramatic whirlwind like it does every year at this time in spring, inducing groans of boredom and cries for freedom from underclassmen and juniors, eliciting teasing smiles from seniors who are allowed to sleep in and thus feel obligated to flaunt it, and loading stress-filled days of preparations on teachers. And, like it has been in past years, one more ingredient has to be added: the student forum.

Student forums. The very phrase makes me frown. I cannot ridicule the intent, for it is a good one: it serves to inform students of situations that involve all of the school’s sizeable population, or which we students are a majority, and to involve the student community in contributing ideas to better the school. Lovely. But, as in most cases, the intent doesn’t quite matter in the long run. What is seen is what actually happens.

So what does happen in these student forums? Next to nothing.

From wikipedia:
Gertrude Malissa Nix Pridgett Rainey, better known as Ma Rainey (April 26, 1886 – December 22, 1939), was one of the earliest known American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of such singers to record. She was billed as The Mother of the Blues. She did much to develop and popularize the form and was an important influence on younger blues women, such as Bessie Smith, and their careers.

Listen to several selections of Ma Rainey's music, free from Rhapsody.com.