On Saturday, I took a few mini tours of Chicago. (Chicago "Urban Adventures" offered by the city.)  The tours were fine, but the best part of them were things I saw that were not mentioned in the tours at all.  For example, while on one of the tours, I paid $10 to take a guided tour of the Chicago Theatre.  These tours are offered on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.  The times on Saturday are 11 am and noon.

The Chicago Theatre was built in 1921 in a French style by architects Rapp & Rapp.  The same company always picked styles for their theatres – which included Chicago ’s Uptown, State and Lake and the Oriental (which is right around the corner from the Chicago.)  The Chicago style is French.

Click on any photo for a larger view.

One place we didn't see was the floor where one of Chicago's best known tv shows was filmed weekly, with Chicago's two best known thumb-owners:  Siskel and Ebert asked us to save them the aisle seat, at and from the Chicago.

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga’s "Taking On The System" is the playbook that state bloggers, community activists and Democratic activists should read to not only take on the system, but to replace it with a better one.

As someone who joined Daily Kos in the summer of 2004, many of the stories Markos – or kos as he’s known on the site – recounts are familiar. The success of our neighboring Virginia state blog in recruiting and pushing Jim Webb – now Senator Webb, of course – is a well-known story to those of us residing in blogtopia.

What kos does well throughout the 275 pages is to show how to influence the gatekeepers, shape narratives about the opposition candidate and the candidate (or cause) you support, and use creativity and truth telling to counter the right.

A dear friend of ours is in the hospital on O'ahu.  For those of you who know Hawaii and Hawaiian music, it is Braddah Smitty

I just read this story and wanted to get a post up because his friend and fellow blogger is worried, and he wants to get this out, for obvious reasons.

Chris Bogan has this post up at his blog,  he is a good friend  to Brian.

Brian Conley, video journalist and creator of Alive in Baghdad has been jailed in Beijing, China, according to sources. He was there as an activist and a citizen journalist, which is no stretch for Brian. He’s lobbed himself into hostile territory ever since I’ve known him: Iraq, Mexico, and now China.

I can only imagine how he feels.  As fellow bloggers, we should all be concerned for Brian, and the others who have been detained.

Below the fold:

Those of you who already either know me or know of me know that I am a massive pootie person. We are currently unable to have a cat, due to living in a motel; however I grew up with both cats & dogs and I love both. I do not discriminate against any animal & love animal photos of all kinds. Please enjoy the following and add any photos that you think the community would like to see. Now, enjoy the photos & have some fun. :)

Keith Olbermann says he has no time for pie.  Dirty bastage.  Does he not know the Way of the Pie?

Well, since pie is back on the table (har har), I thought I might clear a few things up for the few people (and the unsuspecting newcomers) who still don't understand what the big deal is.  I posted a short series (two!) of diaries on this a couple of years ago, and I'm going to lump them together and serve them up fresh and hot for you now.

Why now?  Because it will knock at least one hair-pulling, hand-wringing VP choice diary off the list, and that's good enough for me.

See, it's like this...

Hey all!  It's Tuesday night and time for the DIDS, short for "Damn, I Did Something." It's a chance for all of us to offer up the cool and awesome things we have DONE in the past week.

Sorry the DIDS hasn't been around much lately.  The end of summer has been busy here at Casa Kendrick.  After I finished my class in July, I spent the first two weeks of August catching up on chores and getting in a lot of fun with the boys before school starts (for those of you who don't know, I'm in secondary education).  And when does school start? Next week!!!  Faculty reported back to school yesterday and students start back next Monday.  This leads me to the DIDS I'd like to share today--starting my new job!  

Those of you who already either know me or know of me know that I am a massive pootie person. We are currently unable to have a cat, due to living in a motel; however I grew up with both cats & dogs and I love both. I do not discriminate against any animal & love animal photos of all kinds. Please enjoy the following and add any photos that you think the community would like to see. Now, enjoy the photos & have some fun. :)

We have so many insightful and powerful diaries written here at Daily Kos. Our diaries inform, inflame, impassion, and even entertain. We Kossacks have strong voices and an even stronger will to be the change we wish to see in this country.

One of the richest, and perhaps most under-appreciated, areas of thought come in the form of comments attached to these diaries.

Here at Top Comments we strive to recognize and promote the talent of this community by highlighting outstanding comments found throughout the day by the diarist, and through nominations at made at topcomments at gmail dot com by your fellow Kossacks.

These nominations are subjective, and certainly not complete (as no one can read the complete site on a daily basis!). But hopefully they will serve to shine a light where deserved, and to give the reader a good starting point in finding conversation on the site.

Please come in and make yourself at home! Join us beneath the fold...

Those of you who already either know me or know of me know that I am a massive pootie person. We are currently unable to have a cat, due to living in a motel; however I grew up with both cats & dogs and I love both. I do not discriminate against any animal & love animal photos of all kinds. Please enjoy the following and add any photos that you think the community would like to see.
Just two things to remember:

1. NO INFIGHTING WITH OTHER COMMUNITY MEMBERS

2. NO DISCUSSION OF ANY ISSUE FROM ANY OTHER DIARY

Now, enjoy the photos & have some fun. :)

Fitness Monday is a community series for health and fitness support.  None of the hosts or diarists are professionals.  Please consult your own general practitioner if you have questions.  

Fit Kos-friends have more energy to elect more and better Democrats!

Hello everyone. This is my third sunset week in review. I wasn't going to do it again because there weren't many sunsets to choose from this past week.

But I browsed the photos this morning and found a few keepers;

Actually this was a pretty colorful week from my window.

If you haven't seen my sunset photos before, I live in a high rise in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. The river is the Hudson and the section of the Palisades I'm looking at is somewhere between Dumont and Alpine, New Jersey.

Below the fold is the best of a mostly overcast week.

Good evening! My usual "diary gig" is the nightly Countdown diary, but, when PastorDan asked for volunteers to cover for him tonight & next week, I decided to throw my proverbial hat into the ring in an effort to let you all know about other parts of my life which are extremely important to me. I am a dharma teacher in the Buddhist tradition in which I practice (the Kwan Um School of Zen). I've practiced in this tradition for 6 years but was raised Methodist. I'm also the director of the Indianapolis Zen Center, part of the Kwan Um School of Zen.

I've been a dharma teacher for nearly a year but went through a 2-year training period before I became a teacher. Part of the training consists of an essay outlining motivations for Kwan Um practice (or participation in whichever spiritual tradition in your life). Tonight’s diary is the essay I wrote. I thought we could talk to each other about our spiritual paths & the journeys along the way. What (if anything) has made you doubt your faith? What sustains your faith?

Here are websites for both the Indianapolis Zen Center & for the Kwan Um School of Zen:
www.indyzen.org
www.kwanum.org

One of the most impressive things about YOU, fellow Kossaks, is the breadth of knowledge YOU have accumulated. Smarts spanning from aardvarks to Zymurgy.  If you ask a question on Dkos, ANY question, it WILL be answered`at the very least with a link or a clue!

The Daily Kos is truly a cornucopia of information. So much so that it can be like Sipping from a firehose ! I don't want to try to tell you how to use it!!! So here is Not buhdydharma's New User's Guide to dKos! The best guide to Dkos ever written IMHO! And for a list of GOOD series on Dkos have a look at part of the FAQ Yes dkos is Wunnerful and with these few extra gems of wisdom in hand, you may peruse its pulchritude at your pleasure!

Any Questions?

I'm a little late today, for which I apologize. My dear husband and I spent most of the day at my mom's house, cleaning out one of her sheds. I have never seen so much rat poop in my life! Packrat poop, that is.

You know, the packrat poop was bad. So was all the bedding - they gutted a cushion, and ripped the bottom out of a dog bed. The worst thing, though, is unexpectedly finding bits of cholla among the mesquite beans, bedding, and prickly pear fruit.

Senator Inhofe,

This may come as a surprise to you but over here in Europe we are worried sick about climate change. It doesn't seem to concern you as your position does not seem to have budged from your speech given on the Senate floor on July 28, 2003:

"much of the debate over global warming is predicated on fear, rather than science." I called the threat of catastrophic global warming the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people"

to this from your latest rant, on July 22 last month:

More and more prominent scientists continue to speak out and dissent from man made global warming. In June, the Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever, declared himself a "skeptic" and said "global warming has become a new religion."

I've got about 20 minutes before I have to shuffle off to work, but I wanted to write in support of "This Diary Should Never Be Written," a diary by Black Leather Rain that's on the Rec list but deserves even more views and more support.

I've sent $25.09 for this cause, which benefits homeless US military veterans here in my state of North Carolina.  Would you consider matching my donation?

Send donations via PayPal to lauraconners(at)earthlink.net
Or send donations directly to the VFW at:
VFW Post 2087, 2605 S. Elm-Eugene St., Greensboro, NC 27406-3622

I spent most of my adult life – from the age of 19 to the year 2000 – working in professional newsrooms. Not at NBC or ABC, not at the NYT or the WaPo, but in far more proletarian surroundings: the kind of workingman’s newsrooms populated by overworked, underpaid grunts with a soft core of idealism buried beneath many inches of crispy crust, accumulated over many years of near-constant exposure to political and corporate lies – lies propagated by official sources, and their own employers.

I hear and read a lot of criticism of Traditional Media journalists, here and in many other places – on the Web, in print, in person. I won’t deny that some of it is valid; when applied to the ego-besotted careerists preening in New York and inside the Beltway, very valid indeed.

But neither will I deny the essential truth that I wrote to my colleagues as I walked out of the newsroom of The Kansas City Star   for the last time as a professional journalist, eight years ago. I said I was leaving behind a room full of heroes. And I was.

And today, that species of hero is facing extinction. That’s my fucking problem tonight.