Doodling
Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley doodles in Cabinet meetings and got sick after his first public appearance, according to Nickelodeon Magazine.
In a five-question interview in the children’s magazine, Mr. Riley revealed that his favorite school lunch was hot dogs and that he lost his first election--for the position of student-body president in his middle school. He also urged readers of the magazine not to watch too much television, even though the magazine is affiliated with the cable network of the same name.
“Actually, I write down ideas rather than doodle,” Mr. Riley said when asked if he draws during meetings. “But I’m good at stars. And I draw people--smiling people, usually. Sometimes I draw muscle-bound people.” The secretary also admitted to drawing airplanes and three-dimensional boxes.
When asked if he had ever been in a play, Mr. Riley said he had portrayed a traffic light in a play on traffic safety as a 1st grader. He recalled his lines, and said he was so nervous that he “walked off the stage and threw up.”
Lamar Alexander defeated Bob Dole, Phil Gramm, and Bill Clinton in New Hampshire recently.
Unfortunately for the former secretary of education, it was not a presidential poll. Rather, 10 horses in a race at Rockingham Park racetrack were arbitrarily assigned the names of President Clinton and the candidates for the 1996 GOP nomination.
“Lamar Alexander” finished first, according to The Washington Times, and was followed closely by “Morry Taylor,” the namesake of a little-known businessman seeking the GOP nomination.
In the spirit of education lobbyists who threw a bake sale to symbolize proposed cuts in education programs, and Young Republicans who hoisted an oversized check to symbolize savings from a balanced budget, religious and charitable leaders last week delivered stones to members of Congress.
In protest of plans to trim feeding programs for the poor, the critics held a lunchtime rally featuring stones served on paper plates “to dramatize that the cuts are the moral equivalent of Congress giving stones, not bread, to hungry people.” They then delivered stones to lawmakers.
The event was sponsored by Bread for the World, a Washington-based, nonpartisan, Christian anti-hunger organization.
--Mark Pitsch
