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Newsgroup: Weekly Reader

Birmingham Weekly writers share the latest must-reads for Birmingham and Alabama.



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    • Jesse Chambers of Birmingham Weekly linked this on March 18, 2010 at 9:30AM EDT
    • Jesse said: Alex Chilton, singer and guitarist of Big Star, one of the most influential rock groups to emerge from the early 1970s, has passed away at the age of 59.
      Quote: "While they only lasted a few years, Big Star’s impact continues to reverberate decades later. R.E.M. and the Replacements both named Big Star and Alex Chilton as major influences."
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    • Jesse Chambers of Birmingham Weekly linked this on March 5, 2010 at 4:10PM EST
    • Jesse said: An old tire warehouse is on fire on 1st Ave. North in downtown Birmingham. The phone has been ringing off the proverbial hook here. Here's a link to the first post on al.com.
      Quote: "Mardis said the building used to house the Warehouse Direct Tire Inc. It is vacant, but is used by vagrants, Mardis said. Old tires were still in the building."
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    • Madison Underwood of Birmingham Weekly linked this on February 22, 2010 at 4:34PM EST
    • Madison said: Alabama Congressmen Jo Bonner and Robert Aderholt, in regards to the stimulus bill, both asked "Where are the jobs?" in July, but then tried five times to get stimulus funds for Alabama because they would create thousands of jobs. Bloomberg also says Rep. Parker Griffith, who voted against the stimulus bill before switching to the Republican party, has worked to get stimulus funds for Alabama. Jobs are good. Hypocrisy bad.
      Quote: Over the next three months, Bonner and Aderholt tried at least five times to steer stimulus-funded transportation grants to Alabama on grounds that the projects would help create thousands of jobs. They joined more than 100 congressional Republicans and several Democrats who, after voting against the stimulus bill, wrote Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood seeking money from $1.5 billion the plan set aside for local road, bridge, rail and transit grants.
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    • Madison Underwood of Birmingham Weekly linked this on February 17, 2010 at 11:38AM EST
    • Madison said: A witness who encountered Amy Bishop fleeing after shooting her brother in 1986 has come forward. The witness says that Bishop, who is accused of killing three people on the University of North Alabama campus last Friday, threatened him with a gun.
      Quote: Bishop came over and, "from 15 or 20 feet away, she pointed the gun right at me, and she said, 'Do you have a car?'" He put his hands up. "And I said, 'I don't have a car.'" "She was so close, I'll never forget her face," he says. "She was obviously upset, nervously looking around."
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    • Madison Underwood of Birmingham Weekly linked this on February 16, 2010 at 8:01PM EST
    • Madison said: A police report detailing an incident in which Amy Bishop shot her brother in 1986 has been found. Bishop, a former University of North Alabama professor, is accused of shooting and killing three of her colleagues last Friday. The police report was thought to be lost, but a District Attorney in Norfolk County, Maine found it and released it today.
      Quote: The DA concludes that, "The analysis of the newly received documents, as well as the previously released March 30, 1987 State Police report indicate that probable cause existed at that time to place Amy Bishop under arrest..."
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    • Jesse Chambers of Birmingham Weekly linked this on February 5, 2010 at 5:05PM EST
    • Jesse said: USA Today was often referred to as “McPaper” and the “Tacky Times” when it launched in the 1980s, but those facile judgments are perhaps no longer fair, if they ever were. The Columbia Graduate School of Journalism announced Thursday, Feb. 4, that a series of articles regarding the smokestack effects of toxic air around America’s schools by USA Today reporters Blake Morrison and Brad Heath has won the 2009 John B. Oakes Award for excellence in environment journalism. According to a Columbia news release, the series—“The Smokestack Effect: Toxic Air and America’s Schools”—focused the nation’s attention on the quality of the air that children breathe during school hours. As a result, the Environmental Protection Agency has launched a $2.25 million program to monitor air quality outside schools, and a campaign is underway in the U.S. Congress to tighten the rules regarding where schools can be built.
      Quote: "The exposure to toxic chemicals in the air outside some schools appears so high that students could be at risk of suffering a range of ailments, from asthma to cancer."
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    • Jesse Chambers of Birmingham Weekly linked this on January 28, 2010 at 5:08PM EST
    • Jesse said: J.D. Salinger, author a "A Catcher in the Rye," a book that mattered tremendously to hundreds of thousands of American youth in an age when American youth still cared about books, is dead. He was 91. To say he was a recluse in recent decades is an understatement. Salinger made Thomas Pychon seem like Ryan Seacrest in comparison. Check out this report on the NPR web site
      Quote: "Jerome David Salinger retreated to a New Hampshire farmhouse in 1953, a few years after he published the high-school classic The Catcher in the Rye. And there he stayed, for the next 50-plus years, scowling at photographers who dared snap his picture."
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    • Madison Underwood of Birmingham Weekly linked this on January 26, 2010 at 3:54PM EST
    • Madison said: Birmingham News reporter Thomas Spencer had a great article in Sunday's paper on the rise in the cost of coal (from $70 a ton in 2003 to $200 in 2008) and the surge of interest in mining sites in Alabama previously considered cost-prohibitive. Residents in Cullman and Blount counties are organizing and fighting back against proposed strip-mining sites in their area, which they worry could lead to water pollution, barren land and air pollution. The well-reported article features interviews with residents, developers, the director of the Alabama Surface Mining Commission and a statement from the coal company. It's a must read, so kudos to Spencer.
      Quote: Coal prices skyrocketed in recent years, prompting companies to look again at coal reserves that had been written off as too hard to reach. Johnson said his agency has experienced a surge in mine permit applications. But in the three to four decades since these sites were abandoned, many more people have moved to the countryside, often building expensive homes for recreation and retirement. The new residents have shown themselves able to launch quick sophisticated responses and bring more resources and political clout to resist the coal companies' plans.

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Weekly Reader Contributors

Kyle Whitmire New Media Editor, Birmingham Weekly
Madison Underwood Staff Writer, Birmingham Weekly
Jesse Chambers Special Projects Editor, Birmingham Weekly
Glenny Brock Editor, Birmingham Weekly
Matt Hooper Staff Writer, Birmingham Weekly