Longtime supporter, Michale Graves, is embarking on a 61 date tour and spreading the word about the WM3. Be there!
Although we typically post on Team Vox to let you know about things that are going on with Vox (to, uh, state the obvious), once in a while, we like to let you know about other cool things that are happening around the blogosphere. And we think the idea of four hilarious mommy bloggers traveling across the U.S. on their way to the BlogHer '08 conference - all the while blogging and video blogging the journey - is one trip you will not want to miss.
Four adventurous bloggers from the Silicon Valley Moms Group were selected to participate in the Summer Road Trip '08 and blog about their travels, hotel stays, media appearances, time away from their families, and life on the road. Six Apart helped them partner up with General Motors, who provided the blogging mommies with a Chevy Tahoe Hybrid SUV to help make their journey comfy, safe, and a little more green.
In case you're not familiar with them, SV Moms is a group of over 200 bloggers who showcase the ups, downs, outrages, struggles, victories, and everyday humor of motherhood. There are currently nine regional and demographically tailored sites that give mothers from D.C., New Jersey, the Deep South, Rocky Mountains, L.A., and Silicon Valley a powerful voice and sense of camaraderie across the country. Whether you're a mother, a child, or just a person who enjoys a good blog, you'll really love reading the words of these amazing women.
The moms buckled into their Chevy Tahoe Hybrid SUV on July 11th and even got an encouraging message from Katie Couric to kick things off! They are currently somewhere in the middle of America making their way to San Francisco where they'll attend an SV Moms Group Party, as well as BlogHer '08.
You do not want to miss these entertaining and irreverent bloggers -- or their spontaneous contest giveaways! -- as they blog from the road. Experience the journey at MomRoadTrip.com.
And let us know about your summer road trip - or plane/boat/bus trip - in the comments! (I like to live vicariously.)
Do you live in or around Cincinnati, Ohio? If so, you're in luck because Scott and the Queen City Voxers Group have organized a Vox user meetup!
WHERE: Ault Park Playground. 3600 Observatory Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio 45208. "We'll look for each other at the playground marked by the red X below. If it's raining, head for the shelter to the north of the [red] X."
To RSVP (which is not essential, but is appreciated), reply to Scott's announcement or send him a private message. All Voxers, as well as their friends and family, are welcome to attend.
If you do attend the meetup, have a great time and please take lots of pictures and send them to me so I can post them in Team Vox for everyone to see!
Thank you so much to Scott for organizing this meetup. Wish I could be there!
Jessie's birthday is July 10th--hopefully the last one at Varner Unit-- so we're asking everyone to send him birthday wishes. He will be 33 years old.
What would make him the happiest is helping out with his commissary account. The commissary is the only way Jessie, Jason and Damien get nutritious food and supplies such as stamps and paper for all the mail they get so a decent balance is essential to their health and mental well-being in there. Any amount is appreciated.
Supporters can also send him books from Amazon if they so desire -- cars/trucks or pro wrestling will make him happy. Click here for his Wish List.
Help out however you can! Thank you!
Arkansas Online
by Cathy Frye
Ark. court denies defense requests in boys murder case
LITTLE ROCK (AP) - The Arkansas Supreme Court has denied
requests from defense lawyers seeking to expand what a circuit
judge can consider this fall in reviewing cases against their
clients in the murders of three West Memphis boys.
Without comment, the Supreme Court denied the petitions from
convicted killers Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley. But the
ruling allows the defense to renew the requests later.
Baldwin, Misskelley, and Damien Echols were teenagers when the
8-year-old boys were found dead in a ditch near their neighborhood
a day after they went missing May 5, 1993.
Circuit Judge David Burnett, the original trial judge, plans to
review claims by the defense in September of new evidence that they
say exonerates their clients. Burnett has ordered lawyers in the
case not to talk about it to the public.
In the rulings today, the Supreme Court denied two similar
petitions from lawyers for Baldwin and Misskelley, asking that the
court allow Burnett to consider evidence that they say was kept
from trial lawyers and the jury.
Among that information, they say, is evidence that the police
and possibly the prosecution considered that animals caused the
injuries found on the victims' bodies that the prosecution says was
caused by a knife; and that at least two witnesses told police the
likely murder weapon was thrown into a lake before the murders
not afterward as presented at trial.
Also, the defense says, there was information that would have
raised doubts about testimony from the prosecution's DNA expert,
Michael Deguglielmo, but trial lawyers did not have that
information. In addition, the DNA testing 15 years ago could not
have produced the details needed to support the state's case
against their clients, the defense lawyers said.
In responding to the petitions, Senior Assistant Attorney
General David R. Raupp characterized the requests as "a fishing
expedition" and said the defense had no proof but only "tentative
allegations" that evidence was withheld from the trial lawyers.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Although almost every day at Six Apart is Take Your Dog to Work Day, Friday was extra special because it was the official Take Your Dog to Work Day! Plus, as lovers of blogs and animals, we think it's great that active blogger and Human Society's President and CEO, Wayne Pacelle, thinks having dogs around the office is a good reminder of "who we're working for."
We realize some people have it ruff and aren't lucky enough to be able to bring their dog to work, but hopefully these pictures taken at Six Apart last Friday will get your tails wagging... And let me tell you, it's harder than it looks to get all the doggies and their fetching owners in one picture.
For those of us in the northern hemisphere, today is the summer solstice. For ancient civilizations, this day was akin to our modern day New Year's Eve and was viewed as a time to reflect and renew. So why not kick off your summer celebration with a new theme?
See all of our themes in the Design Area.
Or choose from one of these brand-new themes. (Available under "New.")
CMJ
By Michael Tedder
Below excerpted from full story here.
The West Memphis Three
There was a time, she calls it the early days of the internet, when so little information was available about the West Memphis Three that Lisa Fancher— who runs the L.A.-based Frontier Records—said she actually thought they had already been let out of jail. But this assumption was one of many things that changed for Fancer when she saw the 1996 documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills.
Paradise recounts the arrest and trial of the Three—Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley—for the 1993 murder of three 8-year-old boys in Jonesboro, Memphis. The Emmy-winning film depicts what many have called a miscarriage of justice. Among the most notable scenes are the three young men being accused of participating in Satanic rituals because they enjoyed the works of Metallica and Stephen King, and "expert" testimony from an occult specialist with a mail-order degree from a discredited college.
"I didn't really think about it that much," says Fancher, who now volunteers for the Free The West Memphis Three Support Group. "And then a year later a friend of mine told me she was watching Court TV and saw Damiem and he was suing the prison because he was being abused by the other inmates. At that point then I really felt sick to my stomach that I hadn't done anything about it."
Fancher soon got heavily involved in the West Memphis Three case. And she wasn't alone. In years since the case and the documentary, celebrities such as Eddie Vedder, The Supersuckers, Winona Ryder, Natalie Maines, Margaret Cho, Trey Parker and Alkaline Trio have publicly voiced support for the Three, and many have written songs, played benefit concerts or donated to the cause. But according to Fancher no one has been a "soldier" for the three young men like Henry Rollins.
Like Fancher, Rollins said he was inspired to get involved after watching Paradise. He called the West Memphis Three support group to volunteer to help, and performed at a benefit show with Tom Waits and Bad Religion. But Rollins said that he was so deeply affected by the case that he felt the need to make "a statement" with a tour and album.
"It really just got me going," says Rollins, "because I saw myself in those three guys. 'Oh well, this guy sat in his room and moped around a lot. He must be evil!' Well, that's me! I sat in my room and moped around, and I don't think that I'm all that evil. And the more I read about the case, it just really bugged me. You know, these three guys are sitting in jail. The horror, the sheer horror, of the idea of sitting in jail for life for something you didn't do. I could not, in good conscience, walk away from that."
Rollins released a benefit album, Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three, that featured Mike Patton, Iggy Pop, Tom Araya (Slayer) and many more covering songs from Rollins' first group, Black Flag. Rollins then went on a benefit tour performing Black Flag songs for the first time since that band disbanded.
All of the money raised from the tour and album went to pay for new testing of DNA retrieved from the murder scene. Though Francer declined to give a specific number, she put the cost of the new testing in the neighborhood of "hundreds of thousands of dollars. Pretty much everything Henry has done has gone to DNA testing. It's made a huge, huge impact... that's the stuff that's going to get the guys out."
After years of legal maneuverings, this September the Three will get a new hearing that will allow their lawyers to submit new tests of the DNA found at the Jonesboro, Memphis murder scene. Francer and the rest of their supporters believe that this evidence will exonerate the trio, as they say that none of the Three's DNA matches the DNA retrieved from the scene.
"It doesn't match. Anything that they have discovered thus far does not match the West Memphis Three," says Fancher Though she admits that she doesn't believe that Judge David Burnett will "change his mind and suddenly go 'Oh yeah, they're innocent,' because it just hasn't been like that ever," she does feel the new evidence will be enough to help the Three's supporters push for a new trial. Which, in her opinion, "couldn't come soon enough."
Fancher says that Echols health is rapidly deteriorating in prison, while Misskelley keeps to himself and Baldwin works at the library, has become a favorite of the guards and is an unofficial counselor to new prisoners. Rollins said he communicates with the boys and the progress being made keeps their spirits raised. But not everybody was happy about the work Rollins was doing. When the benefit tour reached Nashville, the owner of the venue wanted to cancel the show because of local protests. Later, Rollins conversed with one of the mothers of the murdered boys for a local news taping.
"And the news crews are there waiting for the fight to start and they were very disappointed when she hugged me and thanked me for what I was doing," Rollins says. "I told her, 'Well, you might not believe me, but I can't describe to you how badly I feel about what happened to you and your son.' I can't bring those kids back to life, but ...there're these three people sitting in jail who did not get, in my opinion, due process. And you've got to police that. America has kind of sunk unless we all are always minding that store," he says. "You gotta care."
A couple of months ago, we told you about Blog It powered by TypePad, the first cross-platform blogging application for Facebook the enables you to post to your Vox blog - and ALL your blogs - with a single click.
Within a week, Blog It had nearly 4,000 active users posting tweets and creating blog posts, as well as updating their status messages with the title and link to the published post. Today, Blog It's Facebook application has nearly 10,000 users. But here's the thing: You're not always sitting in front of the computer when the inspiration to blog strikes. And at Six Apart, it is our goal to provide you the tools you need need to blog where you want, and when you want.
Which is why this week we introduced Blog It for iPhone, a free web application just like the one we introduced for Facebook - only now - on your iPhone. Built specifically for iPhone's Safari browser, Blog It for iPhone enables you to post blog entries or status updates from wherever you are to more than a dozen different online services. And just like the original Facebook version, you can choose to share your posts with the people you know across various social networks.
To start blogging with Blog It for iPhone, go to http://blogit.typepad.com with your iPhone's Safari browser and install the Blog It icon onto your mobile desktop. Then, all you have to do is click the Blog It icon and start creating posts!
Whether you're riding the bus to work, cheering on your team courtside, or enjoying a picnic by the lake, now it's easier than ever to Blog It.
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