From the West Coast to the Gulf Coast, here are some news stories you may have missed throughout the week:
FRIDAY APRIL 11, 2008
DALAI LAMA BEGINS FIVE DAY STOP IN SEATTLE
SEATTLE - The Dalai Lama began his five day tour of Seattle today. He will be giving a speech and receiving an honorary degree at the University of Washington on Monday, April 14. I have a ticket and will be at the event. With any grain of luck, I will try to meet or get as close to the Dalai as possible. No guarantees. But I do have a way with getting to meet potentates, so we’ll see how it goes! Pictures for sure. UW President Mark Emmert has reaffirmed that the Dalai is free to speak on whichever topic he chooses. My hope is that the students selected to ask the Dalai a question will diverge from the pre-selected question and ask him something about the unrest in China/Tibet. Unrelated to any of the current happenings, the Dalai Lama is in Seattle for a spiritual conference of sorts, known as Seeds of Compassion; its discourse is the spiritual and scientific basis for compassionate behaviour.
GOVERNOR SAYS SHE WAS LIED TO REGARDING SEATTLE SUCKY SONICS
SEATTLE - Governor Christine Gregoire told local media outlet KING-TV today that she was lied to and that, “[a]ll of the people of the state of Washington have been lied to,” upon the public disclosure of emails between Clay Bennett and other leaders of the ownership group which purchased the Seattle Sonics in 2006. The emails, which were made public as part of the ongoing lawsuit between the City of Seattle and the team over its lease of the Key Arena, reveal that GUESS WHAT?! majority owner Clay Bennett really intended to move the team to his hometown Oklahoma City, while ostensibly claiming to support finding a solution to keep the team in Seattle. I could go on a tangent about how anyone dumb enough to say that they actually believed that an Oklahoman ownership group ever had any interest in buying a Seattle basketball team to stay in Seattle is just lying to himself, but I’ll save that for a separate post.
THURSDAY APRIL 10, 2008
HOUSTON PRIEST NAMED AUXILIARY BISHOP TO SAN ANTONIO ARCHDIOCESE
HOUSTON - Rev. Oscar Cantu of Holy Name parish in central Houston has been named auxiliary bishop-elect by Pope Benedict XVI to the Archdiocese of San Antonio. The priest, who holds an advanced degree in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, and has worked in various parishes in the Houston area will be at 41, the youngest bishop in the United States.
TUESDAY APRIL 8, 2008
HOUSTON TO HOST LATIN GRAMMY AWARDS FOR FIRST TIME
HOUSTON - The City of Houston has been selected to host the Latin Recording Academy’s Grammy awards show for the first time on November 13. The show will be broadcast live from the Toyota Center downtown and carried by the Univision television network. Other American cities which have hosted the Latin Grammys include New York, Miami, and Las Vegas. I think that the choice of Houston, with (depending on who you ask) the nation’s 3rd largest Hispanic community/market reflects growing national and international acceptance of Houston’s place as an eminent city within the Hispanic/Latin American world. And hey, this can’t hurt Houston’s exposure as a global city for it’s 2020 Olympic chances, right?
MONDAY APRIL 7, 2008
CLEARCHANNEL AGREES TO REMOVE 800 BILLBOARDS ACROSS CITY
HOUSTON - After working through a series of kinks and complaints from community lobbyist groups, the City of Houston and Clear Channel have reached an agreement which will remove 831 billboards throughout the City of Houston. Beautification and quality of life issues have been central themes of Bill White’s tenure as mayor for the City of Houston and a plan to ameliorate the urban blight of billboards which stare down motorists and pedestrians all over town has been on his agenda for some time.
The billboards, 51 of which are currently located in so-called “scenic districts”, are scheduled to be taken down by the end of the year. While the settlement will allow Clear Channel to leave 24 massive 14×48 ft. billboards up for another 20 years, the sheer reduction in numbers of billboards throughout the various neighborhoods in Houston should have a tremendously desirable impact. It will be interesting to see if the average person will feel like the city is any less billboardy, as signage and billboards in my mind can rightly be considered a native species of tree in Houston–though one that deserves to be on the endangered species list.
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