No child should be allowed to leave school grounds during school hours to see a movie...

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Friday November 16 2:43 PM ET

Witchcraft fears keep Fargo kids from Harry Potter
FARGO, N.D. (Reuters) - A witchcraft controversy brewing in a North Dakota town forced a local school to cancel a field trip to a screening of the new Harry Potter movie Friday.

About 100 students from Agassiz Middle School in Fargo were slated to attend the opening day of the widely anticipated movie, ``Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,'' which revolves around the adventures of a young wizard in a world of nonmagical mortals known as muggles.

All the students, mainly aged between 12 and 15, had parental permission to attend the trip to a local movie house during school hours.

But a few concerned parents and one local radio personality successfully killed the trip after raising concerns about the movie's depiction of witchcraft.

The fact that some consider witchcraft a religion, the protesters said, meant that the school-led trip to the movie theater would constitute a violation of the separation of church and state and possibly lead to legal action.

``It's a little bizarre,'' said Fargo School Superintendent David Flowers, who supported the field trip. ``We believe that we were on firm ground in letting the kids go. But (the school) made the decision ... that they would just as soon not be embroiled in a controversy.''

Meanwhile in Memphis at least two Catholic schools said they were keeping the series of ``Harry Potter'' books by author J.K. Rowling out of their libraries because of the witches and wizardry content.

``Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'' opened Friday throughout the United States and was widely expected to break box-office records.

Reuters/Variety REUTERS

  ¶ 11/16/2001 04:11:29 PM

  ROLL THE DICE  ¶ 11/16/2001 12:19:21 PM

  send e-mail to someone after you die...



  ¶ 11/16/2001 11:32:01 AM

  I think LOTR will be great, clone wars will be okay and Harry Potter will be whatever  ¶ 11/14/2001 07:27:49 PM

  Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2001 2:15 PM
Subject: speaking of steve's blog [Yahoo! Clubs: LJ's Kitchen]

i maintain the funniest thing about it is:

stevekdanceparty

whenever i see that i picture steve in a leisure suit resplendent with gold chains and running around the ke (kenmore east - high school I went to in town of tonawanda, NY) locker room with my underwear that will soon be flushed down the toilet  ¶ 11/14/2001 02:30:02 PM

  MichaelGriffis: i think i know what it's gonna take to make some major improvements in my life now, but i realize that i must be willing to tolerate large amounts of stress (from the uncertainty of change) during the transition...
MichaelGriffis: but more importantly, i need to know exactly what it is that i want in my life, and then be fully "open" to those new things in my life...
MichaelGriffis: i've just experienced a lot of stress in the last 24 hours, and it really jolted me, and got me to think
MichaelGriffis: i'm making a big "push" now for the remainder of november -- a big push to clean and organize my room, get the career/employment "machine" rolling, and ramp up for a more outgoing, extraverted lifestyle
SteveKDanceParty: ok
SteveKDanceParty: what are you doing?
MichaelGriffis: what do you mean? what am i doing right now, or what am i doing in the next month?
SteveKDanceParty: NOW!
MichaelGriffis: i'm watching Kung Fu: The Legend Continues on TV
MichaelGriffis: this is really the first TV i've watched in a few weeks
MichaelGriffis: i actually had a dream involving David Carradine last night
MichaelGriffis: that was strange...
MichaelGriffis: if you want to know what i did yesterday -- I packed up my monitor, took it back to the store, argued with the manager Roman for about half an hour, and he convinced me to keep it, so i brought it back home... and I also disassembled and rebuilt my computer a few times last night   ¶ 11/13/2001 04:38:28 PM