aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Saturday, September 08, 2007
The Shadow Behind the Flame: The Anjette Lyles Story
It’s my birthday weekend (for the human being, not the blog). To celebrate we’re heading to Macon
to see The Shadow Behind the Flame: The Anjette Lyles Story:
In 1958, and for years afterward, the Anjette Lyles murder case was the talk of the town.
Five decades later, Lyles can still create a buzz.
The story of the popular Macon restaurateur convicted of poisoning her daughter and implicated in the deaths of two husbands came to the Macon Little Theatre stage last November in “The Shadow Behind the Flame: The Anjette Lyles Story,” a play written by Maconite Denver Pickard. [...]
The case had all the makings of good theater: Murder, ambition, even voodoo. There are poignant moments, but it’s not a heavy courtroom drama. Pickard breaks up the horror with humor, much of it from the three cooks who grow suspicious of their boss.
Denver’s a pal of ours; more on Anjette after the jump.
Read the rest of "The Shadow Behind the Flame: The Anjette Lyles Story" in the extended entry.
Student loan bill
"I don’t understand it and when they explain it to me I don’t know what they are saying.”
That’s my nephew telling me how he got into the raw deal he’s got on his student loans. I can only hope this bill might signal the beginning of the end of subsidizing big banks to take advantage of and impoverish our young people:
Congress approved a $20.2 billion boost in financial aid for college students yesterday, a package that backers said would be the single largest increase in federal tuition funding since World War II.
The bill, which President Bush is expected to sign, raises the maximum Pell grant for low-income students from $4,050 to $5,400, and temporarily slashes interest rates on student loans by half.
It also establishes debt-forgiveness programs for graduates who enter certain poorly paid fields such as law enforcement, firefighting, and teaching. According to the Department of Education, the average student now graduates with $19,000 in debt.
At $10,000 after 5 semesters in college, my nephew’s topped that. The NYTimes:
Democrats likened the legislation to the G.I. bill that sent millions of veterans to vocational training and college after World War II. “Today we’ll need a similar bold new commitment to enable the current generation of Americans to rise to the global challenges we face,” said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the education committee. “Today will help millions of students achieve the American dream.”
Representative George Miller of California, the Democratic chairman of the House education committee, said that last year, Republicans took nearly $12 billion from student Pell grants. “We took $11.39 billion and put it back into Pell grants,” Mr. Miller said. “That’s the difference that an election makes.”
For my nephew’s student loan debt he earned a 1.65 GPA. No one was looking - or helping - as he slid downhill. It makes me wonder if we should link loans to grades. No one I see is discussing that.
