| Top Trends |
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!
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| JULY 4TH SUDS: |
| In a poll conducted for the Beer Institute, IRI InfoScan found that the Independence Day holiday period is the number one occasion for sales and servings of beer in the United States, ahead of Memorial Day, Labor Day, and even the Super Bowl. Drop in on some of your beer retailers over the July 4th holiday period to check on sales as well as talking with any local brewers in your area. |
| For further information see www.beerinstitute.org or call spokesman Marc Desito at 202-777-3528. |
| BEST RESTROOMS: |
| Bathrooms aren't just for... you know. Does one of your local public bathrooms also demonstrate style, flair and taste? Bathroom services provider Cintas is currently taking nominations for the America's Best Restroom award at www.bestrestrooms.com. For a fun feature get people to tell reporter where their favorite local public restrooms are, and explain why. |
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| HOME VALUE: |
| Americans are confident their homes are retaining, even gaining, value, according to a nationwide survey conducted by The Boston Consulting Group. Of those polled, 55 percent said their homes would sell for more now than a year ago, and 74 percent say they're confident they could sell their homes within the next six months at a price they think their homes are worth. Furthermore, 76 percent said the current real-estate market is not affecting their spending habits. Does this reflect local sentiment in your area? |
| For more info contact Alexandra Corriveau at 212-255-8386 or alexandra@sommerfield.com. |
| PEDIATRIC CARE: |
| Children who die of a chronic illness are more likely to spend their final days at home compared to children two decades ago, but nonwhite children are still less likely to die at home, according to a study in the June 27 Journal of the American Medical Association. Speak to local hospitals to find out if this is reflected in your community. Ask hospitals to connect reporter with parents who have lost children to illness both in hospital and at home for a story on how to best provide care to very ill kids. |
| For info contact Rachel Salis-Silverman at 267-426-6063 or salis@email.chop.edu. |
| POLICE BEAT: |
| July 4th will be one of their busiest days of the summer season for police dealing with traffic snarls, drowning tragedies, drunken picnic brawls, family disputes, etc. Also, police are increasingly on the lookout during holidays for any potential Homeland Security situations. |
| Arrange for reporter-photographer team to spend the July 4th holiday riding with a local police scout car. Will make for a good first-person feature. |
| KEEP PETS COOL: |
| Pets need special care during the summer months to keep from becoming overheated. On an 85-degree day, the temperature inside a car with the windows opened slightly can reach 102 degrees within 10 minutes. |
| Talk to local veterinarians, shelters and animal humane groups and get their advice on how to keep pets cool. Ask local police about any recent rescues of pets from hot cars or other dangerous, potentially fatal situations. |
| LOCAL WRITERS: |
| Many writers -- published and not -- belong to and rely on feedback from a circle of fellow scribes. |
| Attend a local writers' circle in your area for a feature on what this is like for writers. Are there any tense moments during feedback? What's it like for members who've never been critiqued? |
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| Book of the Week |
| THE FORGOTTEN MAN |
 A New History of the Great Depression
By Amity Shlaes
(Reviewed by AEI)
In The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes, one of the nation's most respected economic commentators, offers a striking reinterpretation of the Great Depression. Rejecting the old emphasis on the New Deal, she turns to the neglected and moving stories of individual Americans, and shows how through brave leadership they helped establish the steadfast character we developed as a nation. Some of those figures were well known, at least in their day -- Andrew Mellon, the Greenspan of the era; Sam Insull of Chicago, hounded as a scapegoat. But there were also unknowns: the Schechters, a family of butchers in Brooklyn who dealt a stunning blow to the New Deal; Bill W., who founded Alcoholics Anonymous in the name of showing that small communities could help themselves; and Father Divine, a black charismatic who steered his thousands of followers through the Depression by preaching a Gospel of Plenty.
Shlaes also traces the mounting agony of the New Dealers themselves as they discovered their errors. She shows how both Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt failed to understand the prosperity of the 1920s and heaped massive burdens on the country that more than offset the benefit of New Deal programs. The real question about the Depression, she argues, is not whether Roosevelt ended it with World War II. It is why the Depression lasted so long. From 1929 to 1940, federal intervention helped to make the Depression great -- in part by forgetting the men and women who sought to help one another.
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| http://www.aei.org/books/ |
| Web Site of the Week |
| WWW.GLOBALHOMETOWN.COM |
 GLOBALHOMETOWN.COM, where you can post memories, descriptions, narrative accounts, and more, about your hometown. Global officially opens July 2. For those posting a story, descriptions can be as short as a sentence or hundreds of words long. Pictures of hometowns also required. GlobalHometown.com is a production of CityDesk.org and resulted after a conversation by a group of journalists at the National Press Club about wanting to read about hometowns from all over the world. |
| http://www.globalhometown.com/ |
| The Date Book |
| July 1, 1863 |
| (144 years ago), Battle of Gettysburg began; |
| July 2, 1881 |
| (126 years ago), President James A. Garfield shot and mortally wounded in Washington, D.C.; |
| July 2, 1908 |
| (99 years ago), first African-American on U.S. Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall, born in Baltimore, Md.; |
| July 2, 1964 |
| (43 years ago), President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964; |
| July 3, 1775 |
| (232 years ago), George Washington took command of the Continental Army; |
| July 4, 1776 |
| (231 years ago), Declaration of Independence approved by the Continental Congress; |
| July 4, 1804 |
| (203 years ago), writer Nathaniel Hawthorne born in Salem, Mass.; |
| July 4, 1872 |
| (135 years ago), President Calvin Coolidge born in Plymouth, Vt.; |
| July 5, 1946 |
| (61 years ago), the Bikini bathing suit debuts; |
| July 6, 1953 |
| (54 years ago), "Name that Tune" premiered on TV: |
| July 6, 1854 |
| (151 years ago), Republican Party founded; |
| July 7-14, |
| Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain; |
| July 10, 1943 |
| (64 years ago), Allied Invasion of Sicily began. |
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