One Doug's making his chocolate dream come true, in Bucks County. Soon, they'll be going nuts, too, along with "marzipan, old-fashioned hard candy, chocolate-covered espresso beans and gummy candy," sez thrill-seeking Doug.

Let's hear it for Doug Niesen and wife Jan. Jan came to the Lord in 1961 and started praying for Doug's salvation. Jesus came into Doug's life about 15 years ago and took away his desire for alcohol and nicotine. Doug and Jan recently completed eight weeks of lay ministry work in remote Alaskan villages, living their faith. "Doug said he’d be ready to go back to Alaska on a moment’s notice because their experience there was so meaningful," reports The Pine Journal of their home town, Cloquet, Minnesota. 'The people there love the Lord, they love to sing and they’re just so hungry for the Word,' he said. 'We will be going back– the good Lord willing – because he has certainly blessed us, and to God be the glory. And if Jan and I can do it, anybody can, because we do not have any special skills and we only made it through high school. Maybe it will be an encouragement to other people in Cloquet to do something like this.' "

Amen, Doug.

Today brings a double-Doug-twist with Bushes shaken lightly and not stirred. Doug Racine received a letter from Presidential bro' Jeb congratulating him on his victory in the Vermont gubernatorial race, but Bush was blowing smoke in the wrong man's ear. Jim Douglas, who ran Slayer of Evil-doers' Vermont Presidential campaign, actually won the election.

Parents are up in arms because Santa Fe High School band director Doug Morris told band members some dirty jokes, reports KTRK TV in Houston, Texas. A dozen parents wanted him fired but the school board is sending Doug for sensititivity training instead. No word yet on where the parents will go to remedy their humor deficiency. Nobody's laughing in another sensitive spot down south, either -- Washington State Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald discovered that the hard way after he declared, "We are the Mississippi of roads," according to the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce. It turns out that Mississippi recently decided to spend nearly $9 billion on roads while Washington voters rejected an $8 billion road construction program. Still, it's hard to beat a good Mississippi joke. My personal favorite, heard frequently while growing up in yet another southern state: There are a lot of dumb people in Louisiana, but the dumbest are the ones who moved there from Mississippi.

Walmart or bald eagle habitat? St. Lucie County County Administrator, Doug Anderson is working with a real estate developer to make both possible, says the Press Journal of Vero Beach, Florida. If Flagler Development balks at donating the land necessary to protect the bald eagle nesting site, Walmart can always plaster some pictures of the endangered species on the Web site touting its commitment to the environment.

Dr. Doug Travis knows what's needed, but is the head of Western General Hospital's urology unit just pissing in the wind with his ideas on how to improve health Down Under?

President (that's got a nice ring to it) Doug Bennet banned chalk talk on sidewalks at Wesleyan University, because of "explicit sexual messages" he said. No word yet on what the anonymous chalksters suggested that President Doug do.

Doug James confirms it, in today's Dispatch Online: "The municipality is experiencing an increase in the theft of guard rails from bridges," says the acting director of engineering services, referring to the Buffalo City area of East London in South Africa. Doug failed to speculate why but does observe that the thefts endanger the lives of pedestrians and motorists. Meanwhile, a "concerned citizen" told authorities that he caught a man in the act of smashing guard rails into small pieces near a bridge. The man said he was going to sell it as scrap metal because he was hungry.

The good news, according to Doug Nyman, is that the trans-Alaska oil pipeline survived a 7.9 magnitude earthquake on November 3. The temblor "struck Alaska's interior, producing a 145-mile-long crack across the landscape and sending boats bobbing on lakes more than 3,000 miles away in Louisiana," reports today's San Diego Union Tribune. Doug was the pipeline's seismic design coordinator from 1973 to 1977.

The bad news is that we still have to worry about the oil spill that might happen if an even bigger quake shakes the pipeline, which crosses the Denali fault -- all the more so, given the wishful thinking that seems to have informed the pipeline's construction in the first place. "Before Nov. 3, seismologists didn't think the Denali fault could produce a really big earthquake, even though it had historically been very active, said Roger , state seismologist for the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska," reports the newspaper. "Indeed it was a sleeping giant so far," Hansen said.

Doug Millroy worries about wastewater, in Sault Ste. Marie.

This Doug fights molds and flesh-eating fungus, like the one that attacked Mark Tatum's face.

Doug Day .... 'nuff said.

Another Sad Doug and Dog Story

Here comes another Doug, helping to pick up the pieces. This time it's Doug Odney, of Calgary's Foothills Hospital, which treated a stabbing victim after this horrific scene, according to today's Edmonton Sun: "A stabbing victim was traumatized when his attacker ripped apart his pet puppy with a knife, snapped its bones, and left it screaming in such agony, police had to shoot it dead." Said Detective Ryan Dobson, "We don't know if the savage attack on the dog was by way of revenge, or whether it was stabbed as the victim held it in his arms when he was being stabbed."

This Doug knows how to start a stampede: lock the doors to a room that people are required to enter, and punish the few who don't manage to arrive on time. Funny thing is, that doesn't sound so strange in this double-bind world: "Come here! I don't want you!"

Doug Pray sounds like good advice, to me at least. That he's made a documentary film called "Scratch" -- released in 2001, now available on DVD and video -- is cool, too.

When they're nice, the police are great, aren't they?

Doug declared outstanding officer

Too bad they're not all like Doug; another headline:

Police brutality is top concern of NAACP, in the happy Hub City of the Cajun Country, no less.

Today, a NY Daily News headline says it all:

Stray cats? Drown 'em, sez state official

"....Biologist Doug Little suggested holding the furry animals' heads under water for several minutes in a telephone call that was secretly taped by the radical group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals...."

Still a few rough edges on that compassionate conservative approach (scroll all the way down to the bottom of that linked page), it seems.

New Zealand health ministry spokesman, Dr Doug Lush warned travelers of a typhoid outbreak in Samoa -- watch out for unsanitary food or water. And, when visiting Moscow, be careful of the air you breathe if you go to the theater.

Somebody said, "America just elected Lula president."

Not Bush's America. Watch closely as Bush and the CIA use tested tactics to try and take Lula down, to protect the profits of the multinationals. (One Doug recently observed that US and European drug companies are pushing hard to stop generic drug manufacturers in Brazil and elsewhere, to keep them from selling low-cost knock-offs of their anti-HIV/AIDS drugs, profits a higher priority than health, apparently).

Or, will the south rise again?


A Christmas Greeting
From a Northern Star-Group to a Southern, 1889-'90

by Walt Whitman

Welcome, Brazilian brother--thy ample place is ready:
A loving hand--a smile from the north--a sunny instant hail!
(Let the future care for itself, where it reveals its troubles,
impedimentas,
Ours, ours the present throe, the democratic aim, the
acceptance and the faith;)
To thee to-day our reaching arm, our turning neck--to thee
from us the expectant eye,
Thou cluster free! thou brilliant lustrous one! thou, learning
well,
The true lesson of a nation's light in the sky,
(More shining than the Cross, more than the Crown,)
The height to be superb humanity.


...Only a dream in Whitman's day, yet this Doug dares to dream it still....

Feeling sad today for the unfortunate victims in Moscow, and for all people who suffer in violent conflicts around the world. How many innocents will we kill in our sometimes well-intentioned but misguided and oxymoronic attempts to use violence to stop violence? Knowing that hundreds of thousands of people marched against war yesterday -- one of the many non-violent tactics available -- blunts the pain's edge a little bit. Not much but a little. I wonder if it helps to make a ritual entertainment of violence, as this Doug does, to the applause and delight of many: do we discharge the unhealthy tensions that way, or in glorifying violence do we set the stage for more?