• Margaret Truman, Eliot Roosevelt, Steve Allen - mystery writers? Did they really take the time out of their celebrityhood to craft, write and rewrite those mystery novels you see on the bookshelf?

We all know that politicians don't write their own speeches.

But novelists? Mystery novelists, in particular?

Surely no "novelist" would lend a name to a book that he or she hadn't written. Well, if you think that (as I did for a long time), you are most naive. This kind of intellectual dishonesty goes on more than you would think.

• Monterey Mushrooms - one of East Tennessee's hidden gems, and a great place for the gardener.

East Tennessee is full of discoveries waiting to be discovered, and wife Sally and I found one on Tuesday -- the Monterey Mushrooms Company in Loudon County.

And why go to the Monterey Mushrooms Company? Not for the mushrooms. You can buy those at the local grocery story.

If not mushrooms, then what? Compost.

The talking heads of the TV babblerati certified it to be true -- this is the first time in 40 years the Democratic primary election in Indiana has been important. That would be 1968, and Robert Kennedy had just jumped into the race for the Democratic nomination after Lyndon Johnson had just bowed out.

I know. I was alive. And I was there -- in Indiana, the weekend before the primary election.

At the time, I was a sophomore at the University of Tennessee and news editor of the UT Daily Beacon. As news editor, I was running a staff of reporters, editing copy and having the time of my life. The war in Vietnam

My friend and novelist extraordinaire Cyn Mobley is writing another novel (she has about 45 under her karate black belt so far). But this time she is podcasting about the process.

The novel is titled THE CALLING. Cyn started in late January and promised to have the first draft done in a month. Since then, she has dealt with a new puppy and a touch of the flu. Still, she's making real progress, and she's telling us about it.

A couple of things strike me as we have just gotten past the South Carolina primary and are heading toward Florida and Super Tuesday:

• All of the Republican candidates have hardline antis. That is, there are folks who say, "I'll never vote for . . ." And these are Republicans, not Democrats. Mitt Romney, for instance, will never the get votes of some evangelicals; John McCain will never get the votes of some "social conservatives"; and Rudy and the Huck will never get the votes of some who want non-weird candidates. Democrats, on the other hand, don't seem to be in that mode. Despite their current fussing, each candidate seems to be acceptable to most Democrats.
• Every time Republicans get into a rhythm about targeting Hillary, guess who pops up: Obama. That must be very frustrating. Why can't the Democrats pick a front-runner and stick with him/her? That would make things so much nicer for the Republicans.
• Republicans, we are told, are "salivating" at the prospect of having Hillary as the nominee. Maybe, but just why is unclear to me. When is the last time the Republicans have beaten a Clinton -- Bill or Hillary?
• In South Carolina yesterday, more than 500,000 people voted in the Democratic primary. Last Saturday, the number of votes in the Republican primary was about 325,000. In New Hampshire, there were about 290,000 voters in the in the Democratic primary and a little more than 230,000 in the Republican primary. In the Iowa caucuses, reports were that there were far more people attending Democratic caucuses than Republican caucuses. There are many reasons for these differences, and they don't correlate directly to what will happen in November, but they have to be worrying to Republicans.

Finally, some SSP (shameless self-promotion): First Inning Artworks has a new gussied up new site

A power failure is forcing 1,000 residents of Andy Holt Tower on the University of Tennessee campus to spend the night elsewhere. The TennesseeJournalist.com (tnjn.com) has the story. TNJN.com is the student-operated news web site of the School of Journalism and Electronic Media at UT.

A clear November day in the Cades Cove area of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

This slide show emphasizes the trees without the budding spring greenery or the beautiful fall colors. Absent the leaves, we can see the underlying structure of the tress, which is a beautiful thing.

Kay's Ice Cream, an institution in Maryville since the 1940s, closed this week.

Why? Nobody knows.

The people who worked there were simply told to close up shop.

The closure took away something that was vivid in the memories of many people in this area. That little art deco building had been a favorite hangout for many -- including Maryville High School students -- for as long as anybody could remember.

Now it's gone, and people have only their memories. 

Watch the slideshow (:42).

And share the memories. Anybody got one?

 . . . from the intense political activity that we'll experience in the next couple of weeks.

Unfortunately, baseball couldn't give that to us last night (although, sadly, politics is intruding into even that). The Cardinals-Tigers World Series game was rained out, and more rain is on the way.

Still, First Inning Artworks has posted the fourth of four paintings taking a look at baseball more than 100 years ago. Except for the uniforms, it doesn't look much different than it does today.

Enjoy. 

The day was gray and the field muddy when the Vols and the Tide met in Neyland Stadium in 1966. Despite the conditions, the players on both sides played like champions and produced one of the greatest meetings of the Alabama-Tennessee rivalry.

*  *  *

The St. Louis Cardinals won the National League pennant last night, beating the New York Mets 3-1.

Now, two old time teams, the Cardinals and the Detroit Tigers, face each other in what we hope will be a scrappy World Series full of exciting baseball.

In celebration of all this First Inning Artworks has posted the third of its four watercolor-pen-and-ink studies of old time baseball players.

Enjoy it all! 

A couple of new offerings on First Inning Artworks might be of interest to some of the baseball fans out there.

These are part of a series of four paintings -- pen and ink and watercolor -- that examine and celebrate the players in turn-of-the-20th century uniforms. The site currently has two of the paintings showing and two more will appear later this week.

Back then, baseball was pretty much over by this time of year, so we are the lucky ones to have the season extended into October. The National League pennant winner is still to be determined, and then there will be the World Series. An old time baseball team, the Detroit Tigers, are already in. Let's hope they get a worthy opponent from the National League. 

Lots of good stuff for the sports fan this weekend.

The Vols take on Georgia on Saturday evening in a game that will have a lot to do with how fans on both sides view the 2006 season. What makes it good is that there is genuine doubt about the outcome.

And the day will be full of baseball -- important and exciting games all. Couldn't be better.

So First Inning Artworks celebrates the beginning of the day with a new original work -- Three Hitters. The big guy on the left looks a little like the guy for the red team who's been coming up big all season long.

Enjoy. 

. . . and away from politics and (more importantly) baseball.

First Inning Artworks has a new offering that will hearten football fans who think the world is paying too much attention to baseball and politics. Actually, the world isn't paying too much attention to baseball (and may not even politics), but here's a tip of the hat to the football folks.

A small version is below:

Enjoy. 

As one of the three or four people in America yesterday who was watching the Phillies play the Marlins (rather than one of two dozen college football games that were being offered), I heard Tim McCarver say something that has stuck in my head.

Two words that ought to be banned from sports commentary, he said, are "choked" and "embarrassed." If you play the game, you may lose, but you don't get embarrassed. McCarver did not have time to expand much on the points he was making, but I think the direction of those thoughts is correct.

Winning or losing, especially in team sports, may not have much to do with individual performance. To play -- to give honest effort -- and lose should never be embarrassing. And an athlete who does his or her best should never be described as choking.

These are good thoughts for the baseball fan to carry into the most exciting part of the season -- the October playoffs and World Series.

(And to honor that season, there is a new offering on First Inning Artworks.) 

I thought being infallabile meant not ever having to say you're sorry.

No, wait, that's being in love.

Never mind. 

. . . and another offering from

First Inning Artworks

Go Big Orange. 

This week's incidents of photo-doctoring of pictures from Lebanon that have been published by some news organizations have provoked a good deal of outrage and hand-wringing.

So they should.

Changing a photograph in a way that alters its meaning -- even if only incidentally -- is not a good thing for journalists or journalism. We have been reading about this sort of thing far too much these days, and unfortunately, we will probably continue to hear about such behavior.

But in an article in Slate ("Don't Believe What You See in the Papers"), Jim Lewis has some valuable perspective on how we view photography. A photograph has power because we believe it; we think that if we had been standing beside the photographer when it was taken, we would have seen the same thing. That's not true, and Lewis does a good job of reminding us of that fact.

Lewis also links to a "rogue's gallery" of digital manipulation put together by Dartmouth's Haney Farid that reminds us that this sort of thing happens on a regular basis.

The nation's premier newspaper, the New York Times, is under attack from the government and many of its partisan adherents because of a report about the government's use of bank records to track terrorists and terrorist organizations.

All of this is following a predictable pattern, although the vitriol of those attacking the Times, as Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post reports, is at a high level. Predictable to a lesser degree though still not very surprising is the report from the Boston Globe that a lot of this information has already been in the public domain -- and the source has been the federal government itself.

One wonders, then, why the attack on the Times has been so virulent. The Times is a convenient target; a lot of people don't like the Times anyway and would certainly be willing to believe that it has compromised national security.

But the Bush strategy here may be like that of a baseball team manager arguing the call of the umpire; he knows he won't get the call changed but hopes to intimidate the ump into giving him the next one.

Let's hope that doesn't happen.

The sports editor of my local newspaper wrote a column this weekend that, inadvertently, summed up much of what is wrong with American newspapers. (He and the newspaper will remain un-named and un-linked.)

The column must have been in reaction to some criticism the sports department had received from high school sports partisans. The newspaper had apparently not given enough attention to the schools of these partisans, and they were accusing the sports department of bias.

The sports editor had grown a bit testy with these folks.

In an area that includes over 40 high schools, seven colleges and numerous other sports activities, it’s impossible for a seven-person staff to be everywhere everyday.

Just do the math. We haven’t learned the trick of making five loaves of bread and two fish feed 5,000. Sorry.            

Until we learn how to do that, we depend on the coaches throughout the area. Without their diligence to call in results from games that we’re unable to cover, readers and supporters of those schools would not see the results in the next day’s paper.

Despite his testiness, one can sympathize with the editor. Seven people on the sports staff? He could probably use three times that many.

But the significant fact here, I think, is that people were complaining. They thought that the newspaper wasn’t serving them, and they cared enough to take the time and effort to say so.

And what was the newspaper’s response to this concern?

Do the math.           

The math, of course, does not concern simply asking an underpaid seven-person staff to do an impossible job. Rather, and more significantly, it has to do with the fact that newspapers like this one operate at 15 to 20 percent profit margins (far higher than most other businesses), and they do so because they are a monopoly – the only game in town. The math also concerns the failure of newspapers to invest in improving the quality of their product by hiring more staff and paying them a decent wage. Instead, they have done exactly the opposite – cutting back on staff and staff development and keeping salaries and benefits for editorial and news people as low as possible.

Today the newspaper industry is aflutter with concerns about losing readers and tanking advertising revenue. “What shall we do?” the publishers wail. In the face of this, a newspaper should look at readers who complain about lack of coverage as a blessing. It means that, maybe, there is an audience out there that still cares.

But what has been the newspaper's response? A seven-person sports staff.

And what will be the readers' reaction? Will they say, as the sports editor seems to want them to say, "Oh, ok, we understand. Hey, those profit margins have to be maintained. Thanks for trying."                        

Or will they say to the newspaper just what the sports editor has said to them:                     

Do the math.

Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.

Call me crazy, but if I were Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, I wouldn’t be all that anxious to get a judge to dismiss the suit that Barry Bonds had filed trying stop the collection of profits for the book Game of Shadows (web site).

A judge in San Francisco almost did that this week.

The book details the steroid use of the San Francisco Giants superstar. It tells how Bonds began using steroids after the 1998 seasons to pump himself up and to start – at the twilight of what was probably a Hall of Fame career – putting up monster numbers, especially in the home run category.

The book was painstakingly research by Fainaru-Wada and Williams, two reporters for the San Francisco Chronicle. They conducted dozens of interviews, heard audio tapes, and read hundreds of documents. Some of those documents were grand jury testimony that was supposed to remain secret.

Bonds has not denied the allegations specifically. Instead, he has refused to talk about it. Now he has had his lawyers file suit to stop the authors and publishers from collecting any profits on the book. Why? It’s a novel legal argument that the profits are illegal because some of the documents used in the book were obtained illegally (a somewhat questionable assertion in itself).

That argument has the strength of a piece of cellophane in a hurricane.

This week a judge in San Francisco recognized it as such as refused to grant an injunction against the defendants based on it. He even said the suit had little chance of success. But he didn’t dismiss it.

And that may be a victory for the authors.

If they are forced to defend themselves against the suit, they would probably be able to depose Bonds himself. That would be a reporter’s dream – a major source have to answer questions UNDER OATH.

Man, don’t you know they have a question or two for the slugger.

But, unfortunately, it probably won’t happen. Some judge will do the right thing and throw the suit out as a waste of everybody’s time.

That’s too bad. The thought of Barry Bonds having to tell the truth in the presence of a couple of top-ranked reporters comforts the mind as we head toward Opening Day – when all things become new.

Read more about journalism and issues facing the profession at JPROF.com.

A Federal court has ruled that Tennessee (my home state and where I will soon be a resident again) can issue a license tag that contains the words “Choose Life.” A legal fight about the state legislature’s power to do this has been going on since 2002, and in the news story about the ruling, both sides have claimed the First Amendment supports their point of view and what the other side is doing violates the First Amendment.

The controversy got me – as one who is fond of the First Amendment – to thinking . . .

Read more after the jump...