Welcome to the party

Michael Kruse (St. Petersburg Times): TAMPA — One day this past spring, her 371st day of unemployment, Cara Christopherson was sitting outside the Tijuana Flats near her Westchase townhome reading the job ads in the paper when she met a local businessman. They got to talking about her job search. Nothing was working.

He asked her: Ever heard of a pink slip party?

It's a common event with a catchy name.

People who are hiring and people who are looking get together in the same room, and there are speakers, snacks and drinks, and people make contacts and swap cards and hopefully somebody gets hired.

-eddie

Marriage and mourning

Geoff Calkins (The Commercial Appeal): She ducked into the small bathroom, just off her baby's room in the neonatal intensive-care unit, a room that has been the center of her life since the fourth day of May. This is where Bridgette Stone spends her time. This is where she watches her baby -- born after just 27 weeks -- sleep and breathe and grow.

The days can merge together in this unit, a blur of hope and prayer and love.

"It's been hard," Bridgette said. "I can't deny that."

But Thursday was special. For Bridgette and the baby and -- honestly -- everyone in the NICU.

Bridgette ducked into the bathroom. She emerged, wearing a white dress.

-eddie

Tebow sells out

Michael Kruse (St. Petersburg Times): The virgin preacher quarterback is the official face of Jockey underwear. He's a cover boy for EA Sports video games. The first limited-edition release of his own line of Nike shoes sold out earlier this month in five minutes in the middle of the night. His new No. 15 Denver Broncos jersey is the biggest seller in the National Football League, bigger than Peyton Manning, bigger than Drew Brees, bigger than Tom Brady.

Tim Tebow is a backup. He's a backup to a backup.

Yet companies that do surveys that measure the marketability of celebrities and athletes say the former Florida Gator football folk hero is more known, more appealing and more of a trendsetter in the eyes of the general public than most of the starting quarterbacks in the NFL and the stars in other sports.

The guy the Broncos call their third-string quarterback is the same guy E-Poll Market research calls the third-most influential athlete in America.

It's almost football season.

The question is worth asking.

In the history of sports marketing — the business of turning success in stadiums into the ability to pitch products outside of them — has there ever been anything like 23-year-old Timothy Richard Tebow?

-eddie

Don't ask, don't tell

Adam Bosch (Times Herald-Record): WEST POINT — Cadet Katie Miller said she couldn't listen to her comrades toss around the word "fag" anymore, and making up stories about fictional boyfriends was driving her crazy.

So Miller, a lesbian who ranks No. 9 in her class of future Army leaders, stepped out the closet last weekend and quit West Point.

"I thought I would have the strength to re-closet myself," said Miller, who was openly gay to her family and friends in high school. "I completely underestimated the personal toll it would have on me."

-eddie

Freedom, and farewell

Dan Barry (The New York Times): MONTGOMERY, Ala. — You can never come back, ever. If you plead guilty to that long-ago murder in Oklahoma City, you will be released from prison, where you have spent most of the last 27 years on death row. But once free, you will be banished from Oklahoma. O.K.?

O.K., said James Fisher, trading his black-and-white-striped prison top for a blue-and-white-striped dress shirt. Then, without shackles or escort, he stepped into the late afternoon of a state that once wanted him dead and now just wanted him gone.

-eddie

Strippers vs. churchgoers

Holly Zachariah (The Columbus Dispatch): WARSAW, Ohio — Strip-club owner Tommy George rolled up to the church in his grabber-orange Dodge Challenger, drinking a Mountain Dew at 9 in the morning and smoking a cigarette he had just rolled himself.

Pastor Bill Dunfee stepped out of a tan Nissan Murano, clutching a Bible in one hand and his sermon in the other, a touch of spray holding his perfectly coiffed 'do in place.

Inside the New Beginnings Ministries church, Dunfee's worshippers wore polyester and pearls.

Outside, George's strippers wore bikinis and belly rings.

-eddie

Dying mother has a deadline

Jamie Thompson (The Dallas Morning News): She tried to fill their minds with beautiful memories, of princess parties and water slide rides, pancakes at IHOP on Sunday mornings.

She longed to wrap her three children in a protective spell. She knew what was coming would leave a part of them forever empty.

That is why she fought so hard, enduring the blood transfusions and chemical burns and painful sores. She was haunted by the idea that her children would grow up without any memory of her.

But here, on this summer morning, Leah Siegel knew she was running out of time. As her husband walked into the bedroom, she spoke to him softly.

"I think I'm dying," she said.

"I think so, too," he said.

-eddie

A canine's war

Dan Elliott (AP): PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. — Gina was a playful 2-year-old German shepherd when she went to Iraq as a highly trained bomb-sniffing dog with the military, conducting door-to-door searches and witnessing all sorts of noisy explosions.

She returned home to Colorado cowering and fearful.

-eddie

Web site redesign

Brief reads' Web site will undergo a makeover in August. We'll keep posting here, but please follow @briefreads on Twitter.

-eddie