Curtis, who has a bisexual sister, knows the show’s issues firsthand: "My father is openly gay. He really loved my mother, but their marriage fell apart. When they separated, he told me he was bisexual and unfortunately, I was 12 and trying to figure out my own sexuality. I was really upset and angry and took me a long time to get over it. I’ve seen him suffer. Now we’re best friends, and he’s seen Joy many times."

Asked if he’s ever "experimented" like his character, Christian, Curtis says, "Absolutely, yeah. I appreciate men just as much as women, but I lean toward the female side." So is it fair to say he’s straight? "Umm … I’d say I’m straight, but I’m open-minded. As Darryl says in the show, ‘I’m straight, but I’m not narrow.’" Curtis, who even dresses in drag in Joy, adds, "I love it. It’s fun to bend ideals about gender." Currently single, he says he had his most romantic date when he was 17. "I blindfolded my girlfriend at night and led her into the woods, where I had a blanket, rose petals, champagne and candles. I played a song I wrote for her, and the rest of the night turned out great."

Though the Dell commercials were "a great way to make money and pay for college," the one-time NYU student says, "Suddenly everyone was recognizing me and yelling at me. It was very traumatic. I had moved into Ground Zero before Sept. 11. I really needed to get help and therapy, but the Dell commercials exploded. It was too much, too soon. I got arrested for buying a small amount of marijuana, and it was horrible. I spent the night in jail and was handcuffed to a wheelchair in Bellevue. But it was great because it helped put a stop to a vicious downward spiral I was going through."

Meantime, Curtis has made "Raccoon," an award-winning short that will premiere in Montreal and Palm Springs film festivals this month. "It’s an amazing story about two best friends during the Vietnam draft. We shot during a blizzard in upstate New York, and it co-stars Christopher Togo ['CSI: Miami'] and a raccoon named Lizzie." He’ll also star as a surveillance expert in "Spy," an upcoming action thriller.

Besides acting, Curtis, 24, sings blues and rock and has written songs since he was 12. "Theatre’s my passion," he says, and he’d love to play Hamlet, Biff and Puck. He probably picked up his love of performing "from watching my father as a minister spread the message of love. My mother works with refugees and my sister works with cancer patients, so I’ve always wanted to make a difference in the world. I don’t want to be known as the Dell dude forever. I want to be a great artist. Our cast is incredible, and I love making people laugh. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, doing [theatre]."

"What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.

Grand Rapids Police Chief Leigh Serfling, the city’s mayor, Sue Zeige, and John Kelsch, executive director of the museum, confirmed on Sunday evening that one of four pairs of slippers from that movie still in existence had been stolen from a locked display case. They were insured by the museum for $1 million.

The slippers were on loan from their owner, Michael Shaw of Los Angeles, for 10 weeks this summer — from days of the Judy Garland Festival in June through Labor Day. Shaw had planned to travel to Grand Rapids on Sept. 5 to pick them up. It was the second consecutive summer season that the Ruby Slippers were in Grand Rapids.

Law enforcement and museum officials would provide no more details on the theft Sunday night. A press release was to be issued today.

The Children’s Discovery Museum — which houses the Judy Garland Museum — is located adjacent to the birthplace of actress Judy Garland, who was born Frances Ethel Gumm in Grand Rapids on June 10, 1922.

A pushy stage mother steered the Gumm siblings toward an entertainment career. Frances was clearly the most talented, and was signed by MGM for a movie career in 1936 as Judy Garland.

She was cast as Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” in 1939. Her character was spun by a tornado from her Kansas home to the mythical Oz. The wicked witch in the movie, in a mean and nasty voice, told Dorothy she wasn’t in Kansas any more. Dorothy would finally return home by clicking the heels of a pair of Ruby Slippers.

Garland died from a drug overdose on June 22, 1969, in London.

o

"Dad, I made $69,000 online by 11 a.m. Why go to college?"

Over the next seven years, Christopher William Smith became known as a notorious Internet spammer nicknamed "Rizler," who, the FBI says, graduated to selling addictive drugs online and over the phone.

The golden-haired entrepreneur with a knack for computers was taking in $2 million a month by the time he was 25, enough to buy a string of luxury cars, including a Ferrari, a BMW and four Mercedes-Benzes, and to move into a $1.1 million house in Burnsville, court papers say.

For him, the Internet bubble of the late 1990s just kept expanding. At first he used the Internet to find leads for insurance companies, then filled e-mail boxes with billions of spam pitches for penis-enhancement products, cable television decoders and other products, the documents say.

Smith also leaped into the lucrative prescription drug market, selling addictive drugs such as Vicodin through his online pharmacy and a staff of 85 telemarketers, court papers say.

The bubble may finally have burst in May when federal agents raided his Burnsville company, Xpress Pharmacy Direct, shutting it down and seizing $4.2 million in assets. Court documents accuse Smith of fraud and money laundering, but no one has been charged with a crime.

From his start at age 10 selling popcorn and cotton candy at church fairs, Chris Smith has done well in business.

"I remember Chris sitting on my lap when he was one year old, trying to feed a floppy disk into my old Apple computer," said his father, Scott Smith, 55, of Lakeville.

He described his son as "brilliant but bored" by school. "Chris was raised knowing he could figure things out, knowing he could accomplish a lot with hard work," his father said.

"Chris is kind of like me, only smarter," said Smith, who has made and lost several million dollars himself.

In the 1970s and '80s, Scott Smith was a part owner of Minneapolis night clubs Scotties on Seventh, Graffitti's and Schiek's Cafe. He lost it all after he was critically injured in a car accident in 1985. Smith was divorced soon after that. He now owns Diaper Deck, a Lakeville company that is mainly responsible for introducing diaper-changing stations in public bathrooms.

Chris grew up splitting his time between his father's house on Lake Minnetonka and his mother's house on Crystal Lake in Burnsville, his father said. Chris Smith attended the Academy of Holy Angels, a Catholic high school in Richfield, but began skipping school, his father said.

Father and son then moved to Lakeville, where Chris switched to public school in January 1998 for his senior year. He didn't graduate.

He soon moved to Cannon Falls, Minn., where his dad had a Diaper Deck plant. Chris started a small business installing radios and other electronic equipment in cars, and soon discovered a new business, using Internet ads to seek out potential customers for insurance companies, his father said.

"He found he could do pretty well ... finding people who were looking for insurance and selling their names to insurance companies," his father said. "I was amazed. [The insurers] paid him $35 for a potential customer."

Chris Smith then turned to other Internet ventures -- and trouble was not far behind.

Web-based enemies

By March 2001, private investigators were staking out Chris' business in Cannon Falls. They worked for Time Warner, the cable television giant, which alleged that Chris Smith's new venture, Blast Marketing, sold cable TV decoders on the Internet to customers in New York City. The devices allow people to receive cable TV channels without paying for them.

Federal marshals seized Blast's business records and decoders in June 2001 under a court order obtained by Time Warner. The company alleged that Smith's decoder sales brought in $385,000 in the first half of 2001. When lawyers questioned Smith about selling decoders, he declined to answer, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, court papers say.

A federal judge in Minneapolis told Smith to stop selling cable decoders and ordered him to pay $60,000 in damages to Time Warner. Smith went on to other Internet ventures.

Anti-spam groups began to allege in 2002 that he was hijacking websites of other companies -- in effect taking control of their Internet addresses -- to send out unauthorized e-mails for a variety of products.

Across the Web, Chris Smith made enemies. An anonymous operator of one anti-spam website posted copies of what supposedly are Smith's passport and other documents. The Web page also describes Smith's online activities and lists his home and business addresses. A headline in large, red letters on the Web page says "BEWARE!!!"

An FBI affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis last month said that Smith "appears to be notorious throughout the Internet world for illegal or questionable conduct since at least 2001... [selling] cable descramblers, fake college degrees, eBay auctions, human growth hormones, male enhancement drugs and hair growth products."

Through his father, Chris Smith declined to be interviewed for this article. His father spoke about his son's life, but said little about allegations in government documents that he helped his son disguise profits from the Internet drug business.

"I love my son. I'm proud of him. I know he didn't do anything illegal," he said. "That spamming stuff they talk about, sometimes Chris may have been a middle man helping other business people, but he never broke the law. I'm sure of it."

Smith's attorney, William Michael, said the FBI affidavit and other court documents distort the work of a legitimate businessman.

Operations offshore

America Online disagrees. In March, the Internet service provider sued Smith, alleging that he violated anti-spamming laws through a company called Advistech SA that he established in Costa Rica.

Like the Web, Smith's operation was not limited by national borders.

Some of Advistech's computer operations were based in New York City in 2003, at times operating under a fictitious name, according to the AOL lawsuit filed against Smith and others. Smith authorized wire transfers from a Costa Rica bank to finance some elements of the operation, the suit says.

Day after day, Advistech's computers spat out e-mails that directed potential customers to the operation's websites, court documents say. The e-mails offered generic Viagra, diplomas from Trinity Southern University based on person's "life experience," X-rated images of "the youngest girls on the net" and the Maximum X10 "all-in-one male sexual enhancement breakthrough," according to the AOL lawsuit.

During seven months in early 2003, Smith and his associates transmitted more than 1 billion spam e-mails to or through AOL's computer system, using Internet addresses that had been hijacked from a Delaware company, the lawsuit alleges.

Smith used several aliases, according to the lawsuit, including Dieter W. Doneit-Schmitz, Eric Smith and Bruce Jonson. The suit also alleged that he submitted false information to obtain a Minnesota driver's license under an alias. On the Internet, he created websites with the Rizler name.

Calling to complain

By 2003, Smith was advertising prescription drugs on the Internet, former employees said. He added a call center in Burnsville in August 2004.

"I worked night and day, 60 or 70 hours a week, and Chris expected people to work hard," said Sara Seikkula of St. Paul, who became customer service manager in January.

Seikkula said Smith's operation had 12 websites, but they all linked to Xpress Pharmacy Direct. Employees were told the businesses operated legally. The operation also used telemarketers who called potential prescription drug customers, she added.

"I don't know where the lists came from," said Seikkula, but business "went through the roof" after Smith obtained the customer names.

Some people got multiple calls, making them so angry that they called back to complain, Seikkula said.

Telemarketers could earn $1,000 or more per week, partly through commissions, she said. Chris Smith also pushed them to make calls, she added.

"Chris was basically a nice guy, but he expected you to work, keep making calls. He'd come up with ideas, and he'd expect you to go with it. You didn't say no," she said.

Complaints by some customers and former employees late last year led to the investigation by the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration, court documents say.

Xpress Pharmacy Direct allegedly offered a wide range of prescription medications, including addictive drugs, court papers say. Smith had neither a state pharmacist license nor a separate federal license required for narcotic medications.

Customers often paid inflated prices, court papers say. A 90-pill supply of the anti-anxiety drug Xanax cost government investigators $349.99, more than twice the price charged by a well-known Internet pharmacy.

The FBI estimates that Smith took in $18 million this year.

Xpress Pharmacy Direct didn't require customers to have prescriptions. Instead, a New Jersey doctor was paid $7 per prescription to sign at least 22,000 prescriptions, including many for hydrocodone, the narcotic ingredient in Vicodin, an FBI affidavit says. Orders based on these prescriptions were filled by two pharmacies in California and Oregon and sent to Xpress Pharmacy customers, the affidavit said.

Smith's attorney bristles at government descriptions of Smith's firm. Xpress Pharmacy merely "facilitated doctor-patient relationships and doctor-pharmacy situations in order to help patients. It was not a pharmacy," broke no laws and did not need a license, Michael said.

Smith's father said Chris ran a fast-growing, legitimate business. "Are those investigators after Chris just because he's successful, because he's made good money?" he asked. "Chris is too smart to make the kind of mistakes they say he made. He's just too brilliant."

Anita and the FBI

That's essentially what Chris' wife, Anita, told FBI agents when they arrived at the family's home on May 10, the same day his office was shut down, Scott Smith said.

Guns drawn, FBI agents pushed into Smith's posh Burnsville house, searching for evidence that his Internet prescription drug business was violating federal laws.

Scott Smith said that hours after the raid, Anita Smith offered this account of what happened. Chris Smith wasn't there, but Anita sat holding her 3-year-old son as agents searched the house.

An FBI agent asked Anita why she would stay with a man with Smith's history.

"Because I love him, and because he's the smartest man I ever met," Anita Smith said. "He could learn your job in a week."

Ballmer's commitment came two weeks after activists accused Microsoft of caving to pressure from an evangelical pastor who had threatened to launch a nationwide boycott.

"After looking at the question from all sides, I've concluded that diversity in the workplace is such an important issue for our business that it should be included in our legislative agenda," Ballmer wrote in an e-mail.

In late April, Lorri Jean, CEO of the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center, asked Microsoft to return a civil rights award the group gave the company four years ago. Friday, she said Microsoft should keep the honor.

Ballmer said he would not discuss what prompted Microsoft to take a neutral stance this year on a bill it had actively supported in the past.

Microsoft, one of the first companies to extend domestic-partner benefits to same-sex couples, said its decision came before a meeting with Ken Hutcherson, pastor of a local church who has organized anti-gay-marriage rallies in Seattle and Washington, D.C.

Hutcherson could not be reached for comment Friday. He has said he pressured Microsoft after hearing two employees testify in favor of a bill before the Legislature that would have banned discrimination against gays in housing, employment and insurance.

The bill died by a single vote in the state Senate on April 21.

Now AIDS workers say that troubling new trends are forcing them to take the fight into far more challenging combat zones.

More gay and bisexual men have found the Internet to be a new meeting ground for anonymous and unprotected sex, fueled by rising use of the drug crystal methamphetamine. And the rate of HIV, which leads to AIDS, is rising among heterosexual African immigrants.

Prevention has slowed the AIDS epidemic in Minnesota since new HIV cases peaked at 367 in 1992. But for the past decade the number of new cases has stayed stubbornly around 300 a year.

"We're concerned that with these new problems, the HIV numbers may go up," said Tracy Sides, an AIDS epidemiologist at the state Health Department.

MAP's challenge grew more complicated Friday when the House passed a budget bill excluding it from Health Department funding. The cut was proposed by Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Delano, who said he objected to sexually explicit language on a MAP website.

"It's ironic," said Lorraine Teel, MAP's executive director, "that some people think it's OK to use sex to sell cars and soap, but not HIV prevention."

One of the MAP foot soldiers entering the new AIDS battlefront is Andy Ansell, a k a PozAnswerMan, who cruises Internet chat rooms. That's where men can hook up for PNP -- short for "party and play," or unprotected sex, often including drug use.

Another is Dori Makundi, who teaches African-born men and women about the risks of unprotected heterosexual sex.

"Our traditional face-to-face contact in gay bars has been tremendously successful," Teel said. MAP trains and sponsors the crews that last year handed out about 120,000 condoms. "New infections have been kept in check."

"But the world is changing, and so are we," Teel said.

With 60 employees and about 1,400 volunteers, the 22-year-old MAP is the state's oldest and largest nonprofit agency fighting HIV and AIDS. It uses a wide range of education, counseling, disease testing, legal help and social services, state health officials say.

Since Minnesota's first case, reported in 1982, HIV has infected 7,547 Minnesotans. Of those, 2,697 have died.

New drugs since 1995 help people with AIDS live longer. But the dark side of that success, officials say, has been a more relaxed view of the risk of HIV.

"Too many of my patients see HIV as just another chronic disease," said Dr. Keith Henry, an AIDS researcher and a physician at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis.

Cruising for trouble

For the past four months, Ansell has spent most weekdays from 3 to 5 p.m. visiting two gay-oriented chat rooms on the Internet.

With national surveys showing that about 55 percent of gay men don't always use condoms, Ansell counsels men about the risks of specific sexual practices and helps those with HIV cope with the disease.

"A lot of people just don't know enough about how to stay safe," he said, his fingers flying as he juggled two online conversations with gay men.

Ansell, HIV-positive for 18 years, is a health education coordinator with a MAP program called Positive Link, begun by men with HIV to help others cope with the disease.

MAP staff members say the online contacts appear to be more open and honest than those made by the condom crews in gay bars.

"In the bars, we get five seconds with somebody," said Keith Pederson, a coordinator with another MAP program, PrideAlive. "But online, in the privacy of their home or office cubicle, people get right to the point, a real teaching moment."

Internet outreach is becoming increasingly important, said Kip Beardsley, state AIDS director at the Health Department. "To connect with communities of people at risk of HIV, you have to be where they are."

Online inquirers typically are polite, grateful and graphically explicit.

"If you expect to communicate with high-risk groups about sexually transmitted diseases, you have to talk the language -- body parts, sex practices and all," Ansell said.

Some legislators such as Emmer say some explicit language in AIDS prevention work is gratuitous and childish. The health budget bill passed by the House would require state-funded AIDS prevention work to avoid sexually explicit language. And it would eliminate MAP's Health Department funding, which totals 10 percent of the nonprofit's $4.4 million annual budget.

The Senate health bill does not include HIV spending restrictions. MAP lobbyists expect them to be proposed in amendments on the Senate floor.

Neither the PrideAlive program nor the material that disturbed Emmer receives state money, but Emmer said any use of sexually explicit language by MAP shows that it "can't be trusted to do the job right."

Condoms in bars

The core of the fight against AIDS remains face-to-face work with gay and bisexual men, who account for about 60 percent of all HIV cases.

Dampened by drizzle, Pederson and his crew dodged from bar to bar in downtown Minneapolis one recent Friday night, dispensing smiles and protection against HIV.

Amid the din of music and voices in the Saloon, volunteer Nick Hahn connected with bar patron Jonathan Schulze just long enough for Schulze to grab a few condoms from the proffered tray and smile in thanks.

"Everybody says he's HIV-negative. Maybe so, but man, I never take a chance," said Schulze, 26, waving a packaged condom for emphasis. "I'm always protected."

Like most AIDS prevention workers, those working the bars try to encourage safer sex, not safe sex.

"We talk about all types of protection, including abstinence. But the minute we start preaching, we lose them," said Pederson, 44. "We're talking about risk management."

The fight against HIV probably won't end, he said, at least not until scientists develop drugs to kill the disease.

"People take risks, and most younger guys never went through the years of losing dozens of friends to AIDS," he said. "It's too easy to get complacent."

"That's why we need to be out here -- on the streets, on the Internet, in the African community -- reminding people to think: Don't take drugs that blur your judgment, use protection with sex, and for heaven's sake, don't hesitate to ask for help."

Work with Africans

HIV prevention work is harder among new immigrants from Africa, where AIDS has killed millions. Cultural, religious and social differences among those new Minnesotans make sex and HIV difficult topics.

"You can't overestimate the stigma of AIDS in the African-born community," said Sides, the AIDS epidemiologist.

African immigrants are about 1 percent of Minnesotans, but last year they accounted for 20 percent of the new HIV cases, more than half of them women.

"For many of them, sex is very private, something you don't talk about," Sides said. "Even starting the conversation is difficult, let alone convincing people to be tested for HIV."

Makundi is trying to break through those cultural barriers with a new MAP program called the African Service Initiative.

"First we want to help more people get in for HIV testing," said Makundi, who came from Tanzania eight years ago.

Most immigrants are not familiar with health screenings. "In Africa, you go to the doctor when you are sick. So people think if you get an HIV test, it must mean you already have AIDS and are dying," she said.

The boy, identified by a law enforcement official, a school employee and two students as Jeff Weise, 17, apparently shot and killed his grandfather -- a Red Lake police officer -- and his grandfather's girlfriend before heading to the school in his grandfather's Red Lake squad car, sources said Monday night.

Floyd Jourdain Jr., Red Lake tribal chairman, said Monday was "without doubt, the darkest day in the history of our tribe."

Twelve other people at the Red Lake High School were wounded, said Paul McCabe, a special agent for the FBI in Minneapolis.

The killing spree was the deadliest at a school in the United States since the 1999 killings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in which 15 people died and 23 were wounded.

"Our community is in shock," Jourdain said. "Our thoughts and prayers go to the victims' families. We're a small town, and everybody is stunned."

Only Weise and three of his victims have been identified. They were Weise's grandfather, Daryl Lussier, 58; Neva Rogers, 62, a teacher at the school, and Derrick Brun, 28, a school security officer.

Three other victims remained at North Country Regional Hospital in Bemidji. One of them is in the intensive care unit, KSTP-TV reported this morning.

Brun was reportedly the first one killed when Weise entered the building carrying a shotgun and at least one handgun.

The three victims were identified by family members and a law enforcement official.

McCabe shared few details of the shooting during a news briefing in Minneapolis on Monday night. He said he could not speculate on a motive.

The Red Lake Indian Reservation is in northern Minnesota, about 260 miles from the Twin Cities. The city of Red Lake, where the shootings took place, is the most populated area of the remote reservation. The tribe has an enrollment of 10,000, with roughly 4,700 members living on the reservation. Many other members live in the Twin Cities area.

"We know one another," Jourdain said. "We live and work and play with one another."

McCabe said he was unwilling to provide additional detail until agents were able to interview witnesses and complete their investigation.

"We believe the shooter is among the dead," he said.

Added Pat Mills, director of Red Lake's Public Safety Department: "We're not looking for any other suspects."

'It was chaos'

The school shootings are by far the deadliest in Minnesota's history, coming about 1½ years after two classmates were fatally shot in a hall at Rocori High School in Cold Spring.

Because Red Lake High School is on an Indian reservation, it falls under federal jurisdiction. Nevertheless, officials from the state's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension crime lab will meet with FBI agents, said Kevin Smith, spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.

Authorities and witnesses said the shootings occurred shortly before 3 p.m. at the high school.

Mills said there were several 911 calls to the public safety department about 2:55 p.m. reporting shooting at the high school. He said officers arrived within two minutes.

"It was chaos," Mills said.

Jourdain said the high school "probably was one of the first in the nation to do screening and have security officers." He said the security was implemented "before Columbine, but this just could not be prevented."

According to the FBI's McCabe, the gunman shot two Red Lake residents before heading to the school. Roman Stately, the tribe's fire marshal, said the boy may have gotten the guns from his grandfather, a veteran police officer on the reservation.

Once at the school, McCabe said, the first person shot was Brun, the security officer.

The boy then "walked down the hallway shooting and went into a classroom where he shot a teacher and more students," Stately said.

Later, when police arrived, they exchanged shots with the gunman, who retreated to a classroom.

Nevertheless, McCabe said, "preliminary investigation leads us to believe the shooter's cause of death was a self-inflicted gun shot wound."

Said Jourdain, "It was a normal school day and all of a sudden it went bad. That's the question: Why? There are a lot of unanswered questions. We don't know what the motivations were. And we are afraid the death toll will rise."

A student's account

After the boy shot himself, Stately said, scores of students were moved to a nearby building that is part of the tribal government complex. The school has an enrollment of about 250 students in grades nine through 12.

Justin Jourdain, a student, said Monday night that when he heard booming sounds in the high school, he thought something had fallen in the hall.

Then a panicked janitor came in, telling the students to stay in the classroom.

"Someone's shooting," the janitor said.

The booms grew louder as they closed in on the room. Jourdain and about 25 classmates took refuge in a small adjacent office.

Jourdain and school Superintendent Stuart Desjarlait held the door shut as the gunman entered the room the students had just fled.

"I was holding the door and he fired one shot at the door, but it didn't go through," Jourdain said. "I just heard this loud thud. It was a wooden door and it didn't go through."

Desjarlait called police on Jourdain's cell phone while he held the door. The students were left screaming as the gunman fired shots in the other room, Jourdain said. It wasn't until 25 minutes later that they felt safe enough to leave their refuge.

Sondra Hegstrom, 17, said she heard "a big bang" and then another before a fellow student came into her classroom yelling: "He has a gun, he has a gun!"

A hall monitor locked the classroom door, a fire alarm went off and nine terrified students and a teacher huddled in the darkened classroom, she said.

They heard gunshots, "bang, bang, bang," from the classroom next door, Hegstrom said, along with screams of students and someone yelling, "No, Jeff, no!"

Hegstrom thought of death, she said, and worried about who would care for her five-month-old baby. She had a couple of classes with Weise, and "I don't know if he liked me," she said. "He was quiet, never said anything."

Weise was into goth culture, she said, wore "a big old black trench coat," drew pictures of skeletons, listened to heavy metal music and "talked about death all the time."

A couple of his friends had said he was suicidal, she said, and Hegstrom quoted his friends as saying they were watching a movie once when he said, "That would be cool if I shot up the school."

"They didn't think anything of it," Hegstrom said, but "he got terrorized a lot." He was called names and people thought he was weird. "I'm still trembling," she said late last night. "I just can't believe this stuff is happening."

As the students left the school, Jourdain said he peeked inside a classroom where Ojibwe cultural studies are taught. The blood and broken glass throughout the room told the tale of the afternoon's tragedy.

"It's an awful situation," said tribal treasurer Darrell Seki. "We see things like this happen outside the reservation, but now it's happened here in our home."

Confusion, concern

Audrey Thayer, who lives in Bemidji and works as a researcher for the American Civil Liberties Union's Minnesota chapter, said the reservation was locked down by police with roadblocks after the shootings.

Monday night, reporters were being allowed onto the reservation with escorts from law enforcement agencies in the area. Otherwise, the main highways were shut down to traffic by the FBI and Red Lake tribal police.

A news briefing has been scheduled for 2 p.m. today at the Red Lake Detention Center.

As word of the shootings spread across the region Monday, friends and relatives of those living on the reservation frantically began working cell phones hoping to find out more.

In a hallway at the State Capitol, two women from the reservation town of Ponemah -- LuAnn Crowe, an election judge on the reservation, and Donna Whitefeather -- had just finished testifying on behalf of a bill that would make it harder for partisan poll watchers to challenge voters and intimidate them or prevent them from voting.

As the women emerged from the hearing, they were informed of the killings and immediately began making calls, trying to put together a list of the dead and injured.

Crowe has a daughter and nephew at the school.

Suddenly, Whitefeather announced with panic, that Lance Crowe, the ninth-grade nephew, was dead.

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" Crowe wailed.

Minutes later, however, the news was better.

The boy had been shot, but he wasn't dead.

Lance Crowe underwent surgery Monday night at North Country Regional Hospital in Bemidji for a serious gunshot wound to his hand: He raised an arm to block a shot aimed at his head.

The bullet wounds to his chest may have been shrapnel from that one shot, but that was still undetermined Monday night.

"If he didn't have his hand up there he would have gotten shot in the head," said LuAnn Crowe.

Lance Crowe recently lost a much-loved elder, a man he called Bubba who was like a grandfather to him, said his aunt, LuAnn. The man died in a car crash on the reservation earlier this year.

Lance told his mother that as he lay on the floor of the school, bleeding from his wounds, he thought to himself: "I don't want to die." He told his mom that he could sense Bubba nearby, protecting him.

"I have had a problem with alcohol. I have decided to take action by checking myself into an intensive recovery program," the 57-year-old broadcast journalist said.

"Overcoming this problem is a top priority in my life and I am excited to return to work as soon as I am able," he continued.

There were no details about the recovery facility or when O'Brien entered the program.

O'Brien, who covered the Summer Olympics in Greece for MSNBC and NBC late-night programming, was a TV news reporter in Los Angeles and Chicago before joining CBS Sports.

He occasionally hosted Entertainment Tonight and in 1997 became the full-time host of Access Hollywood. That contract expired last year and he began hosting The Insider.

"We support Pat's decision to seek treatment and look forward to welcoming him back on the air at the appropriate time," said Manfred Westphal, a spokesman for Paramount Domestic Television, which syndicates The Insider.

listening to mo
today being
surviving daughter day
the end and beginning
of everything 4 me

no blog today
i thought
this am
mourning still

the phone
kirstie w/ hurt feelings
i am sorry
4 that

but not the joke
the comment
the truth
about myself
at 220 - now

stand up
that feeling
like rap i imagine
spittin it - yellow

only the truth is funny

never been joan
kickin people when they are down
too ez - not me
u r not the target

once skinny u
cannot imagine fat sex
ouch - that hurts
even with the giggle

feels like u r visiting
planet fattie
temporary visa
pointing at us

we are very sensitive
it's not about u
kirstie -
u r a funny beauty
still - always

and on a side note
the best thing about blogging
is not having to call your publicist
to talk to people
no interpreters
direct me

Rosie O'Donnell, who spent most of the last five years extricating herself from public life, is back, though in a post-celebrity sort of way. Ms. O'Donnell, former K Mart spokeswoman, former talk show host, former magazine editor and publisher, and former Broadway producer, has a new title: blogger.

Ms. O'Donnell's Web log, "formerlyrosie," began appearing late last month and is described as at the top of the page as "The unedited rantings of a fat 42-year-old menopausal ex-talk show host married mother of four." Ms. O'Donnell apparently got the hang of the Web's approach to discourse fairly quickly. She once had a cuddly relationship with millions as the warm and hilarious television personality with a visible crush on Tom Cruise, but she complicated her public image by quitting her show, announcing she was a lesbian, starting and then quitting her eponymous magazine before producing a Broadway musical starring Boy George. In the end, Ms. O'Donnell ended up with a measure of privacy, but she began to drive her friends crazy with all of her opinions.

"One of them finally said that I should start a blog," Ms. O'Donnell said in a telephone interview from her home in upstate New York. "I have had offers to do books, but what I do is too rough and raw for them. They always want it to be more linear than I think. This way I can just put it out there."

The blog - which can be read at the slightly bereft address onceadored.blogspot.com - is part journal and part political rant. It offers a plain view of some rococo mental architecture. Written in a style that eschews trifles like punctuation and narrative, Ms. O'Donnell has used her unlimited space to riff on Howard Stern, Boy George, the television show "Fat Actress" and the serial killer David Berkowitz. A dispatch posted on Tuesday veered quickly and precipitously from "The Nanny" to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Scooby-Doo:

she should go to washington next
put condie rice in the naughty chair
she scares me condi
i expect her to unzip her skin
and have dick cheneys twin brother step out laughing -
like on scooby doo

Jessica Coen, the editor of Gawker, a media-centric blog that is based in Manhattan, said Ms. O'Donnell's version of blogging is distinguished by voice if nothing else.

"I don't know if she is doing some form of haiku or a terrible Faulkner imitation, but I'm not surprised she is doing it," Ms. Coen said, noting that celebrities as diverse as the rocker Fred Durst and the occasional actress Barbra Streisand have penned blogs. She added, "It is really kind of cool that she and others want to speak to the public without the precautions of their publicists."

Not everyone has been thrilled to see Ms. O'Donnell back in the public eye, even though she is hidden behind a keyboard. Soon after she began blogging, her site's comments section began filling up with the kind of hate mail Ms. O'Donnell has been subjected to ever since she came out as a lesbian and began addressing political issues. Ms. O'Donnell switched off the invitation to reply for a time, but has again reopened the two-way feature.

"I know I am a big, fat, lesbian short-hair," she said in the interview. "I plead guilty."

But online yesterday, she reminded readers who has the keys to the kingdom at formerlyrosie, explaining that she had hit the delete key on a few of her respondents' messages of hate.

i clicked and poof -
you are gone but not forgotten
your words resonated and were felt
you hate me
stranger

In an era of celebrity in which all incoming invective has generally been treated as spitballs against a battleship, it is worth recalling that Ms. O'Donnell has always taken abuse personally. There is no veneer to her, no stage-smile, just-meat-and-potatoes amazement about how angry she makes people.

This may not be a great fit with the flame-throwing culture of the Web, but it served her well in her recent legal proceedings, when she was sued by Gruner & Jahr USA for walking away from the magazine called Rosie. Ms. O'Donnell tore into her former partners for what she saw as a kidnapping of her magazine, and by extension, of her identity.

And though the judge found that the company - which sued Ms. O'Donnell for $100 million- did not deserve a dime, her feelings are still very close to the surface, as they have always been. Much of the important evidence in the trial came in the form of Ms. O'Donnell's prolix, idiosyncratic e-mail messages, a modality of communication that may have foretold her step into the blogosphere.

Things have not been easy for Ms. O'Donnell since. "Taboo," the Broadway musical she sank nearly $10 million into last year, closed after three months, a near-total loss. Ms. O'Donnell said that the diversion was worth the price. "It was worth every penny," she said. "I am very proud of that play."

Ms. O'Donnell, who will be appearing on a Hallmark Hall of Fame drama on CBS in May titled "Riding the Bus With My Sister," said that the blog is, "just another totally artistic thing." One of many, she hastened to add. Since retiring from her talk show and leaving the magazine, Ms. O'Donnell has created hundreds of paintings, some of which she has sold, with the proceeds going to charity. And she has founded a cruise company to serve what she calls nontraditional families, with last year's cruise pulling in 1,600 people.

None of which will preclude this former talk show host from thinking about dropping the former from her identity.

"I watch Jon Stewart every night and I am proud of what he is doing, and it has me thinking about what might be possible," she said in the interview.

On her blog, Ms. O'Donnell addressed the same issue less directly, but more vividly:

i am thinking about going back on tv
how when with who
details....

Correction: March 11, 2005, Friday:

St. Paul police Sgt. Jon Loretz will not face any criminal charges in connection with a bar brawl in September 2003, prosecutors said Wednesday. After poring over 21 witness statements taken by investigators at the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Minneapolis city attorneys found insufficient evidence to file misdemeanor or gross misdemeanor charges against Loretz, said Assistant City Attorney Mary Ellen Heng. Several people at the gay-friendly St. Paul bar formerly known as Lucy's Saloon claimed that Loretz struck several women on the dance floor and yelled homophobic remarks. Witnesses also had said that Loretz tried to use his authority as a police officer to threaten patrons and employees. Among the charges Minneapolis prosecutors explored were weapons charges and assault charges, including an allegation that Loretz brandished a gun during the fight, Heng said. This past September, Olmsted County prosecutors determined that there was insufficient evidence to bring felony charges against Loretz. About a month later, the Minneapolis city attorney's office was tapped to examine the case for possible gross misdemeanor or misdemeanor charges. Ramsey County turned over the investigations to avoid a conflict of interest.

Wednesday's decision brings to a close the criminal phase of the case. The St. Paul Police Department will now begin an internal review of the fight and its aftermath, said department spokesman Officer Paul Schnell. "We're going to ensure any officers involved were in compliance with any and all department policies," Schnell said. Loretz, the son of former St. Paul Police Chief William Finney, is assigned to the department's family violence unit but has been on sick leave since Aug. 9, Schnell said. His personnel file includes 15 thank you letters and letters of recognition, and a record of an oral reprimand from Finney for being in a preventable car accident. The most serious disciplinary action was a three-day suspension for excessive force in 1999. That incident involved a drug bust in which a 17-year-old boy's tooth was chipped when Loretz wrestled him to the ground.

Kevin Short, Loretz's attorney, said that he never had any doubts that his client would be cleared of any allegations of criminal wrongdoing in connection with the fight at Lucy's.

We did it! Just moments ago, the Federal Marriage Amendment lost in the Senate by a stunning, bipartisan vote of 50-48. We won this historic victory for two reasons:

First, because the politics of division don't work, and second: the votes were on our side.

But the real reason we won is this: You. You and every fair-minded American, gay or straight, who called, e-mailed, faxed, visited, tracked down, and otherwise urged your Senators not to write discrimination into the Constitution.

Thank you.

This amazing moment belongs to all of us. Please, share this victory with all the friends and family you talked into fighting with us. We join in celebration with each of you. The campaign to defeat this amendment has been a top priority for HRC and with your amazing efforts over the course of many months, today we won this round of the fight. Thank you - again.

What's next:

I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't remind you that it's not over. Our ultra-conservative opponents are determined to spread their discriminatory agenda across the country. Fasten your seatbelts, my friends, because the months ahead are going to be challenging indeed:

Next week, the House will take up the issue of marriage equality as well. Expect a fight. Expect vicious words and fierce debate. And expect to speak up, loud and clear, once more.

During the next three months, no fewer than 11 states - and possibly 13 - are facing ballot initiatives to write discrimination into their state constitutions. HRC will fight these initiatives shoulder to shoulder with state and local GLBT leaders. We'll let you know how you can help. And of course - like you, we will be actively working to stop discrimination at the source by electing equality-minded legislators around the country. We're glad to know you will be with us in that battle, too. All of this work starts tomorrow.

For today, I will take a moment to appreciate this hard-won victory. I hope you'll join me.

Many, many thanks for all you have done.

Cheryl A. Jacques
Human Rights Campaign President

Please call your Senators now, at:

Senator Mark Dayton Direct: (202) 224-3244
Senator Norm Coleman Direct: (202) 224-5641