Street Cleaning

Imad al-Hashemi and Laith Mahdi Latif, Baghdad street cleaners, earn roughly $8 in bonuses for cleaning up the streets of human remains - fingertips, scraps of flesh, heads, and torsos - after bombings.

A Slight

Anthony Fontane, a roofing contractor and single father of a 13-year old son, was shot to death at a birthday party for a young man himself killed several weeks ago in a carjacking. According to reports, Mr. Fontane was pointing a finger at a woman from his old neighborhood when a man standing next to her took offense at the gesture. A fight broke out and, after walking outside to the parking lot, Mr. Fontane was allegedly shot to death by Donte Guzman, 19.

Kwanzaa

Of the diminishing popularity of Kwanzaa among African Americans, Afi-Odelia E. Scruggs asserts somewhat remarkably:

Black Americans were never a monolith, but more and more we seem to be splintering into factions. Kwanzaa has brought us together, providing a common ground.That's why it's so important that public observances of the holiday continue.

Whatever divisions exist among African Americans, they cannot be healed by celebrating Kwanzaa. The significance of this so-called observance, which is the creation of black cultural nationalist Maulana Ron Karenga, has largely been overblown. The reality is that the observance never really took hold among African Americans and that its decline in popularity hardly comes as surprise because it is rooted not in the cultural experience of African Americans but rather in one man's imagined African past and its cultural traditions.

No Room

A Japanese woman, aged 89, suffering from vomiting and diarrhea, dies after an ambulance spent two hours contacting 30 hospitals that refused admission because they were full or no doctors were available for treatment. The deceased woman's name and specific cause of death are being withheld.

Frank Morgan

Alto saxophonist Frank Morgan,73, is dead. Like many musicians of his generation, Morgan came under the influence of Charlie Parker and also, unfortunately, emulated Parker's more self-destructive tendencies, namely, heroin addiction. As a result, Morgan spent thirty years in prison for crimes related to his heroin use. After kicking his habit in 1985, Morgan fulfilled his promise with some of the best recording of the last twenty years.

In the early nineties while hosting a jazz show on WPFW-FM, I was asked to interview Morgan in conjunction with his appearance at Blues Alley. This proved to be no ordinary interview for me. First, I was called upon to do the interview not face-to-face but over the telephone. Not the best method for an intervewer of limited experience. And second, Morgan, for whatever reason, was something less than a cooperative subject. As expressive and free-flowing as he was on the bandstand or in the recording studio, he was short and laconic with me, often limiting himself to one-word responses.

An Inconvenient Slip

Yesterday CNN conservative talk show host Glenn Beck appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" hawking his recently published book An Inconvenient Book. When the conversation turned to the various presidential candidates, Mr. Beck uttered the name "Osama" but quickly caught himself and correctly identified the individual in question as "Barack Obama." Mr. Beck's slip suggests a level of discomfort with a candidate decidedly different from the standard mode.