Kennedy returning to Washington

Aides to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who has been battling a severe form of brain cancer from his home in Massachusetts, said he plans to return to his second home in Washington this afternoon, a sign that his treatments have been progressing well.
The Massachusetts Democrat, who was diagnosed with a malignant tumor about six months ago, will continue his treatments in the nation's capital."His doctors are very pleased with his progress, and he will receive his treatments here," Kennedy spokeswoman Melissa Wagoner said yesterday. The senator plans to remain in his northwest Washington home and return to Massachusetts for Thanksgiving, she added.
Aides declined to speculate on when Kennedy might return to his duties in the Senate, which is in recess for the rest of the year. But his return to Washington for the next several weeks could coincide with Democrats' plans to call a special session of Congress after the Nov. 4 election. Kennedy is also a strong supporter of Barack Obama, and left Massachusetts to deliver a keynote speech on his behalf at the Democratic National Convention in Denver two months ago.
Since his diagnosis, Kennedy has returned to the Senate just once, in July, to cast a tiebreaking vote on long-delayed Medicare legislation. He was briefly hospitalized last month after suffering a mild seizure, which doctors attributed to a change in his medication.

Go to:

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/10/kennedy_returni.html

Kennedy to return to Washington, spokesman says

Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy plans to return to Washington Tuesday for the second time following an operation for a brain tumor in June, his spokesman said.
"Weather permitting, Senator Kennedy plans to leave Hyannis Port to spend time at his house in Washington later this afternoon. He hasn't been there for months and he thought this would be a good time to be back. He plans to return to the Cape for Thanksgiving," spokesman Anthony Coley said.
Kennedy has not decided if he will attend the "lame duck" session of the Senate following next week's elections, Coley said. The 76-year-old senator is not up for re-election this year.
In July, Kennedy made a dramatic visit to the floor of the Senate to cast a vote to help break a deadlock on an important Medicare bill.

Go to:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/28/kennedy-to-return-to-washington-spokesman-says/

Caroline Kennedy to campaign in Florida

Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy, will appear at a campaign event for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Wednesday afternoon at Savannah Center.Doors to the event will open at 3:45 p.m. The event is tentatively slated for 5 p.m.
“Caroline Kennedy is an icon of Americana. She’s been in the public eye since she was just a baby. Many people are excited about Barack Obama in the same way they were excited about John F. Kennedy in the 1960s,” said Laura McGinnis, Central Florida communications director for the Obama-Biden campaign.

(...)

Go to:

http://www.thevillagesdailysun.com/articles/2008/10/28/villages/villages01.txt

Kennedy En Route To Washington

Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy is on his way to Washington after spending months in treatment for brain cancer at his Hyannisport home.
Kennedy's office said Tuesday the senior senator will head to the nation's capital to spend time at his residence there because he has not been there in months and believes it's a good time to visit.
His aides said Kennedy will remain in Washington until Thanksgiving when he will return to Cape Cod to celebrate the holiday.
It was unclear whether Kennedy will visit Capitol Hill while in Washington. They said he will continue to work from his district home on the Democratic agenda, particularly his health care bill.

Go to:

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/politics/17821200/detail.html

'Fitz' house for sale

The Kennedy compound has been restored to its former glory. No, not that one.
While the family enclave in Hyannis Port is indeed known as the Kennedy compound, part of Allerton Hill in Hull is considered by locals to be the original. The property was owned at the turn of the 20th century by John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, then mayor of Boston, father of Rose Kennedy and grandfather of president John F. Kennedy.
The 16-room Victorian multi-gabled mansion had fallen into disrepair over the last several years and was purchased in 2006 by developer Ernesto Caparrotta of Hull, owner of Seven Hills Corp. in Weymouth. He paid $950,000 for the 7,163-square-foot house at auction.
Former owner Jamie Edelkind was sent to prison after his 2005 conviction on charges he used phony mortgage and payroll documents to buy the house in 2000.
Caparrotta wouldn't say how much he spent renovating the house, a project just recently finished. It is assessed by the town for $1.52 million and is now on the market for $2.37 million.
"I don't usually renovate homes, I prefer building them from the ground up," said Caparrotta, a native of Italy who came to America 30 years ago and has lived in Hull ever since. "But I always drove by this house, always loved it, so when the opportunity came up, I took it."
The house was built in 1892, and bought by Fitzgerald in 1915 as a summer retreat for his growing family; he sold it in 1921. After Rose Fitzgerald married Joseph P. Kennedy, her father had a home built next to his, down the hill and next to the water. The Tudor-style house was dubbed Rose Kennedy's Dollhouse.
"You can almost see Rose Kennedy walking up the driveway with little John on her shoulders," said T. David Raftery, who 12 years ago bought the Rose Kennedy Dollhouse and has lived in it since, absorbing the local Kennedy legend and happily imparting it to anyone who asks. "There's a lot of Kennedy history there."
JFK reportedly played on the nearby beach, he said, and many were the quiet, respectful parties Fitzgerald threw in the sprawling, three-story home.
"They weren't wild parties; he'd hire quartets to play in the living room," said Raftery, an assistant district attorney in Norfolk County.
The Allerton Hill area was popular with the Boston elite, he said, as a summer getaway, as was Cohasset, but at the time that town turned a cold shoulder to Catholics, Raftery said.
"The Kennedys weren't allowed in," he said. "It was very anti-Catholic at the time, but they were accepted in Hull. Allerton was a summer home for a lot of Boston people."
And the home may be the only one on the South Shore to have been frequented by three American presidents - or those who would be. A photo in Rose Kennedy's autobiography, "Times to Remember," shows her father shaking hands with President William Howard Taft outside the Hull home. Rose Kennedy's son would go on to be elected president in 1960. Another visitor to the home was Calvin Coolidge, then a Massachusetts governor, who became president in 1923.
(...) On the third floor is a wide-open, airy room that he said was a "gentlemen only" room in Kennedy's day, where men would gather to smoke cigars, sip brandy, and discuss heady matters of the day and most likely the effect on their respective fortunes.
(...) But none of those big names possess the uniquely Massachusetts mystique of the Kennedy clan.
"Not many people know about the history of the Kennedys here - I bet if you asked schoolchildren in Hull today, they wouldn't know," Raftery said. "But the old-timers in Hull, they know."

Go to:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/10/19/fitz_house_for_sale/?page=full

Robert Kennedy's daughter in Derry

A daughter of assassinated US politician Bobby Kennedy was in Derry yesterday to address an education conference in the Millennium Forum.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, was the keynote speaker at the Association of Northern Ireland Education and Library Boards (ANIELB). She was welcomed to the conference by the Mayor of Derry, Councillor Gerard Diver.

Professor Kennedy Townsend, a niece of former American President John Kennedy, teaches at Georgetown University’s School of Public Policy and is the eldest daughter of Robert Kennedy.

The conference, which continues today, was also attended by chief executives from all the education and library boards across the North as well as representatives of conference partners NorthgateIS, and sponsors: PricewaterhouseCoopers, Allianz, Fujitsu, Imex, Eteach and Amey.

Incoming ANIELB President, Pat Brannigan, said that the conference provides a vital showcase for education providers in Northern Ireland during a period of educational reform.

“As we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century, we have the responsibility to develop our education system into one which is not only fit for purpose now but which can meet challenges that no-one has yet thought about,” he added.

Go to:

http://www.derryjournal.com/journal/Robert-Kennedy39s-daughter-in-Derry.4602049.jp

Jackie Kennedy, book editor, to be subject of new bio - October 16, 2008

Jacqueline Kennedy's years as a book editor, many of them at Doubleday, will be the subject of a Doubleday book coming out in 2011.
Historian William Kuhn, who has written about British royalty and politics, is writing a biography, currently untitled, about the years that Kennedy worked in the publishing business, starting in 1975 with a brief time at Viking Press and then her 16 years at Doubleday, right up to her death in 1994.
Kennedy's authors ranged from celebrities Michael Jackson and Carly Simon to Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian novelist.
"Her books were a way of revealing the experiences, recollections and passions of a lifetime; in the end she told her own story — her journey as a wife, a mother, aesthete, armchair intellectual and unwilling celebrity — through the medium of other people's books," Kuhn said in a statement issued by Doubleday.
"My book will mine this critical period in her life, the one in which she became the woman she'd always intended to be."
According to Doubleday, Kuhn will draw upon "previously untapped archival material" and has "conducted a series of interviews with her authors, collaborators and friends from the 1980s and 1990s."

Go to:

http://www.mercurynews.com/books/ci_10738056