Shelby Sheffield is a corporate attorney, but her real passion is the triathlon, a grueling athletic endurance event that consists of three basic elements -- a swim, a bike ride and a run. In 2002, the 29-year-old Sheffield went from being a much respected triathlete on a regional level to a world-class competitor who qualified to compete this October in the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon, the most prestigious triathlon in the world. Bruce Dobie talks to Sheffield as she prepares for Hawaii, where competitors will test the limits of human endurance with a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile run in temperatures that can reach 110 degrees.
Steve May and his wife Cherry Fisher May are picking a fight where other publishers might fear to tread, readying themselves for head- to-head competition with Gannett. Beginning this Friday, they will begin publishing an alternative newsweekly in Lafayette, La., where Gannett owns both the daily newspaper, The Daily Advertiser, and its 23-year-old weekly, The Times of Acadiana. The Mays used to own The Times, and their anger over what it has become is fueling their launch of a paper they have pointedly named The Independent. "Gannett has destroyed The Times," Steve May says. "These guys are Sears managers who have a one- size-fits-all approach to local publishing."
In the winter of 1956, Bill Potts and his trio made musical history in a D.C. nightclub when they played for six nights with jazz legend Lester Young. "We knew on the first tune," Potts says. "It was heaven." When the tapes were released more than two decades later, they helped rehabilitate the reputation of Young's later years. Eddie Dean writes about that magical week and the years leading up to Potts 1959 classic, "The Jazz Soul of Porgy and Bess."
The Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation, a special police unit established in Central Florida to concentrate on vice and drugs, is supposed to keep Orange County clean and family friendly. And they don't care how dirty they have to get to do it. Its agents and prosecutors have harassed and intimidated witnesses, lied about investigations, trumped up charges against old ladies and spent hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to coax a handful of people into committing petty crimes. "It's true the MBI has been successful, but only by degrees," writes Orlando Weekly's William Dean Hinton. "It is, after all, up against a powerful, unbeatable foe: the human sex drive."
After publishing more than 750 consecutive issues, the Flyer was forced to skip an edition when a July 22 storm shut the city down. The blend of heavy rains and powerful winds forced three employees from their homes, including Publisher Ken Neill, who had an 100 foot oak tree fall on his house, rendering it uninhabitable until Christmas. The national press, focused on Uday and Qusay, barely noticed the storm. "We have a joke," Neill says. "If a tree falls in Memphis, does it make a sound?"
By the time she turned 18 in July, Sinika had survived abandonment, sexual molestation, and a long stint on the streets. She had been in Baltimore's foster care system since she was 12 years old. Baltimore City Paper's Afefe Tyehimba looks at what's next for the young woman undergoing the transition from unforgiving control of the foster system to the chaos of making her own way. "Like her tumultuous past, Sinika's future has no blueprint, but her basic life goals are the same as everyone else's: to live a peaceful, stable, prosperous life filled with people to love who love you back," she writes.
