Famous movie critic Roger Ebert was in the news after appearing on Oprah Winfrey’s TV show to show off his new voice. A long battle with thyroid cancer, which later spread to his salivary glands and jaw, required repeated surgeries which means he can no longer talk or eat.

The effect has been devastating, but a recent profile by Chris Jones on Ebert in Esquire was where I first saw and learned the true damage the disease has wrought on one of America’s most famous talkers.

I’ve always tried to keep up on his reviews because I enjoy his writing though I never particularly followed his TV show. When I learned he had started a blog, I began checking in on that regularly. The guy is a helluva writer and he appears to have a large following there, if the number of comments he gets is any indication.

Here’s a post he did after the Esquire piece was published. The post now has more than a thousand comments.

Rebecca Stead’s “When You Reach Me” has been awarded the John Newbery Medal for best children’s book while Jerry Pinkney’s “The Lion and the Mouse” was awarded the Randolph Caldecott prize for picture books. The awards were announced today.

Read the Associated Press story here.

The American Library Association provides a list of all the Newbery winners from 1922 to the present and also a list of all the Caldecott Medal winners and honor books from the same time period.

Stephen King may have started his newest epic, “Under the Dome” in 1979, but he clearly needed the events of the past eight years in order to flesh it out and finish it. For “Dome” is a microcosm of the United States after 9/11.

I’m about three-quarters of the way through the 1,075-page novel, having absorbed most of it via audiobook to give my eyes a rest in the evening. It took about 200 pages to begin seeing the pattern of the various threads King weaves into the tapestry of exploitation of fear.

All the characters, as interpreted by King, are there:

Andy Sanders, the first selectman of Chester’s Mill, is George W. Bush thinly disguised — a good-hearted, if slightly befuddled figurehead cajoled, controlled and bullied into unspeakable acts by his second-in-command.

Big Jim Rennie, the second selectman of Chester’s Mill, is Dick Cheney, barely disguised at all. Big Jim is sanctimonious, hypocritcal and a world-class crook, with a grasping need for power and avarice. He even has a bum ticker, a la Cheney.

Police Chief Pete Randolph, a dunderhead way out of his league and also controlled by Big Jim Rennie/Cheney, is an amalgamation of several Bush administration officials, mostly Donald Rumsfeld. He steps into power when the fair-minded, well-liked police chief dies within minutes of the dome’s descent. At least in real life Colin Powell didn’t have to die for Randolph/Rumsfeld to gain his position.

The white hats include a Republican newspaper editor and an Iraq war hero whose distaste for the Army and the powers that be solidified during a stint that saw him participating in torture and other actions that turned his stomach.

The body count is large, but the political commentary trumps it. King was clearly deeply affected, if not sickened, by the actions of the Bush administration and its war on terror. His use of his indomitable bully pulpit — a huge readership and worldwide audience — is perhaps an attempt to work out his angst. Readers, particularly those who don’t lean to the left, may find the political commentary a little tough to swallow, but may also find themselves powerless to put down the book, because it is immensely entertaining.

Some have called this Stephen King’s “The Stand” for the 21st century. I don’t agree. “The Stand” was, at its heart, a battle between good and evil. “Under the Dome” is about fear — indidividual, group and societal — and how it can be used to control and manipulate even good people into doing terrible things.

King calls this novel “Under the Dome.” He might as well have named it “After the Towers Fell.”

Jay Leno will return to the stage at Washington State University’s Beasley Coliseum April 10.

Leno will be the Mom’s Weekend entertainment next spring, according to the Leo Udy at Beasley. Tickets will go on sale at 10 a.m. Dec. 4 at all Ticketswest outlets including ticketswest.com and by phone at
(800) 325-SEAT. All tickets will be $45 with a $5 discount for all WSU staff, faculty and students.

Ricky Smith, who graduated in June from Lewiston High School, left earlier this month to begin studies at the Los Angeles campus of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. After two years there, he plans to move on to the school’s New York Campus, according to a news release sent in by his parents, Rick and Leslie Smith of Lewiston.

AMDA was founded in 1964 as a performing arts conservatory and students are selected to attend from auditions held in 35 cities throughout the United States, Canda, Mexico and England. Ricky Smith auditioned in March in Seattle.

Smith was a cast member of various Lewiston High School and Lewiston Civic Theatre productions and was a member of the LHS Golden Voices. He also studied dance since the age of 7.

Ricky Smith