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Who or what is dailyplanet?

My name is Robert. There was a time in my life when I was homeless and living out of my car. (I've come a long way since then, and yet not so far.) At that time I found a part time job cleaning up a restaurant/bar downtown in the city where I was staying. The bar was open seven days a week and so I would come in every morning and clean up from the previous nights revelries. Working alone until the delivery trucks showed up and the waitresses and prep cooks trickled in, I had time to think about stuff while I did the chores. I would dream about someday opening a place of my own, not a bar because I dont drink, but maybe a coffee shop or a bookstore where I could while away my old age communing with friends. At the time I was working daily at this bar, a Michigan congressman had secured a project for redevelopment of a vacant area downtown and across the street from where I worked. Funded largely by a NASA educational appropriation, the construction of a planetarium to be operated by the local college had begun. Thus the name of my coffee shop/bookstore would be "dailyplanet".

Well of course many of us are familiar with the newspaper that Clark Kent worked for. This may have had only a subliminal effect on my thought processes in choosing the name, but once chosen the implications were clear and exploitable. As a young american kid growing up in the fifties my introduction to Superman was via George Reeves and the afternoon TV show. The opening credits in particular created a very strong and lasting impression on me. If you have never seen it here is a link to youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0B1ufyXOds ... and many thanks to CptColumbo for posting this video.

It was all good but the end was what really knocked my socks off. George Reeves in his Superman outfit with the wind blowing his cape. The American Flag proudly waving over planet earth and the stirring cry of, "Truth, Justice, and The American Way!" As a young boy I was thus instructed and firmly believed that truth and justice were the American Way and really, I have believed it ever since. No civics lesson or history book or newspaper headline since has managed to kill that seed planted in the fertile element of my youth. The idea that no matter what happens along the way, I was born in a country whose core values are those of Truth and of Justice. Furthermore I saw that (conceptually at least), one of the strongest and most admirable defenders of those values works at a newspaper called The Daily Planet.

So what is dailyplanet? Everyone has their own dailyplanet. My dailyplanet is a process. A daily process of planning and action to become something useful. Usefull for me, for my friends and customers, and for every good soul on the Planet (Earth) as a whole. Much of it is still an idea. It is a good idea whose time has come. A positive and constructive effort.

dailyplanet is growing ever so slowly yet surely and is here for you to explore. Keep looking up!

The Earth casts its shadow on the Moon February 20. 2008