Kansas City . . . Kansas City, Here I Come!

Dateline: SWA Flight 85 from BWI to KC, 17 November 2004

Vonne Mei Ling Barnett officially became a Rhody today at around 9:45 in the Newport County Courthouse in downtown Newport, just one room over from where Klaus Von Bulow went on trial those many years ago. We celebrated later (Vonne, me and the baby) by stopping by our favorite bakery in the world, the Mad Hatter bakery on Broadway. I bought a couple of nice things to munch on during my two flights down from Providence to Kansas City later in the day, only to grab the wrong bag running out the door (I am always dashing to the airport at the last minute), so I got Vonne Mei's half-eaten scone instead of the lemon bar and poppyseed muffin I picked out.

That wasn't my only screw-up on this trip so far: I forgot to pack a dress shirt with my suit. So I got to see a bit of Kansas City MO tonight upon landing and checking inóspecifically the JCPenney on Barry Road. I found it just before it closed and picked up a very special $15 white shirt with pointed collar. That, and a bag of chips with salsa at the sip-n-gas on the way back and I had just enough energy to finish all the article blogging I needed to accomplish in order to bring me back up to date.

Tomorrow is Leavenworth and the Army, so enough said as I need a decent night's sleep.

Oh, one interesting thing today: it looks like I've found a venue that C-SPAN is interested in taping. More miraculous, the venue in question proved willing to let the cameras into the session, so it looks like there will be a second DVD in the works. This brief will be somewhere short of the NDU almost-3-hour extravaganza and the tight, Pop!Tech version of 35 minutes. It also looks more and more like it will be shown in the first week of December, meaning the night of the same day as the taped talk in DC. If so, I would follow the prime-time broadcast with a live, in-studio, period of talking calls from viewers. Should be interesting if we get all the details worked outómany, many cellphones calls from now.

Here's the delayed catch going back quite a ways:

■ Rice to State: same as it never was

■ The unspoken reality of "Iraq's future"

■ There are many roads leading to Jerusalem

■ Iran's latest deal with EU on nuclear armsódon't bet on it

■ How secure is Kim Jong Il?

■ The oil boom buys time for states facing change

■ China's economy is an experiment for the entire world

■ How the war on terror transforms the notion of givingóon both sides

■ Smart dust for a smart world



■ The hi-lo mix of tomorrow's U.S. military

■ Putin's straight talk on taxes and property rights

■ In ten years, globalization won't feel like Americanizationóthanks to the movies!

■ Strutting their stuff in Asia, to the delight of war-planners inside DoD