Israel and Jordon are on the verge of a peace agreement. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordon’s King Hussein met into the early hours today in Amman, Jordan and reportedly reached an agreement on two issues – water rights and the disposition of land seized by Israel in 1948. An Israeli official says no date has been set for the full signing of the treaty.
Haiti’s newly returned president is acting quickly to dismantle the military that forced him into exile. On his first day back in the country, Jean-Bertrand Aristide summoned the new Haitian army chief to the National Palace to discuss scaling back the military to 80-percent.
A flash flood watch remains in effect and motorists should expect numerous delays because of flooding of low water crossings – on campus at Caldwell Boulevard and Fifteenth Avenue, as well as on portions of Highway 242 and south Morra Country. Currently it’s 71 degrees.
The Communication Building wasn’t just regulated to the broadcast studios of the radio and television stations, but also was the home of the campus newspaper, the Student Screed. I actually came to college thinking of myself as a Journalism major and probably would have continued as such except that to get to second floor newspaper office you had to pass by the first floor radio station. Perhaps the three years of high school newspaper had been enough? Perhaps the gestation period of each issue of the Eyass had convinced me that this medium was too slow? Whatever the case, it didn’t take long during mid-summer orientation to drop the Journalism courses I penciled in and choose “Introduction to Broadcasting” as one of my freshman courses.
Issues of the Screed were naturally all over the Communication Building, specifically at all entrances to the three-story building and in high concentration the closer one was to the newspaper office. You could also find issues in the wooden newspaper display stands that sprung up in most every building on campus. These waist-high “stands” appeared to be nothing more than backwards podiums that looked to have been cheaply produced en mass by the physical plant during the early 1980s. An older logo of the Screed was stenciled on the backboard of the stand; the logo was usually covered after issues were dropped off but usually visible by the end of the day.
Screed offices were on the second floor of the Communication Building in a long, white room full of desks, mockup tables, and file cabinets. One side of the room was floor-to-ceiling windows that would have looked out into the quadrangle had they not been blocked because of the wild overgrowth of the Chinaberry shrubs outside. This then was genesis of a long-running “gag” that had started years before I arrived and seemingly appeared in the paper at least once a semester in the form of an editorial column or cartoon about the Screed staff “tarrying in the chinaberry shade” or some such nonsense.
Because I never got involved with the Screed I never ventured too far into their offices except a few times my freshman year. That was the semester when the writers had the idea to gage their readership into admitting why it was they picked up a copy each Tuesday and Thursday. For some reason I thought I could have some fun contributing the “top 10 reasons you read the Screed” and so I jotted down a few ideas and ran them upstairs one morning after my newscast. I was surprised a week or so later when my name appeared in print alongside the following:
- Makes great papier-mâché in the Art Building.
- To hide behind, like from my roommate in fits of anger.
- Adds color to the pile of papers on my desk.
- Two weeks’ worth of the Screed makes a great doorstop.
- Somewhat cheaper than the Examiner.
- Line the bottom of my bird cage.
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Bird Nest on the Ground
(Maurice Dollison/Monk Higgins)
Lil' Ed Williams & Willie Kent
From the album Who's Been Talking
1998