xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
In a December profile, The Washington Post examined the breezy American history curriculum being sold to schools by presidential brother Neil Bush (more in the news lately for his messy divorce). The course’s premise is that future “hunter-gatherers” (i.e., rambunctious boys) don’t have the patience to read and should be taught by music, graphics and other techniques. For instance, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 is taught in a rap song, “It was 55 delegates from 12 states/Took one hot Philadelphia summer to create/A perfect document for their imperfect times/Franklin, Madison, Washington, a lot of the cats/Who used to be in the Continental Congress way back.”
A pickup truck driver was arrested by an Indiana state trooper because its cargo was blocking sight of the license plate in the back window; on closer inspection, the cargo was revealed to be 900 pounds of marijuana (Indianapolis, March).
And in Lafayette, Ind., Joshua K. Kochell, 27, was charged with robbing two gas stations; his probation officer was able to track his whereabouts precisely that evening because Kochell was still wearing an electronic monitor from a 2001 sentence for theft (March). More third-world visitors arrived at Western airports illegally carrying in their luggage indigenous meats destined for family festivals. A 48-year-old woman from Gambia was arrested at Gatwick airport in England with 13 pounds of goat and snail meat and 172 pounds of catfish (March), and at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport, a whole smoked monkey was confiscated from a woman arriving from Cameroon for a wedding reception. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official said these airport seizures are “only the tip of the iceberg” of the illegal importing of traditional meats.
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Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd
NEWS OF THE WEIRD