Tips on landing freelancing jobs at newspapers

(This post first appeared in The Independent Journalist, the freelancing blog of the Society for Professional Journalists.)

Thanks to the economy — or maybe no thanks to it — the market for freelance writers has grown exponentially this past year. America spent much of 2010 pulling itself out of recession, and though that offered hope for a broad rebound entering 2011 publications and corporations that once had large writing staffs still opted to downsize and turn to contract work to save money.

What many freelancers may not realize is that newspapers are among the top enterprises making this turn. Newspapers, of course, suffered through substantial layoffs in 2010 and may yet in the new year. Still, they have print and electronic pages to fill and the pressure is great on the few people remaining in the industry to continue doing that job. What's more, veteran print journalists are under other pressure from non-profit and "hyper local" journalism models to remain relevant, vibrant and competitive despite diminishing resources.So, while looking around for new markets, consider calling the local newspaper to ask if it's willing to farm out one or two or more writing assignments. But before calling or writing an editor, do a few things:

Expect to start small — Any aspirations of uncovering another Watergate-size scandal should stay in a drawer; rarely do first-time newspaper contributors receive a big investigative project to start, regardless of experience. The early assignments will be small — low-level government meetings, high school sporting events, etc. — to help editors determine a freelancer's dependability, writing skill and ability to accept criticism. Believe me, not even seasoned journalists shine in all of these areas, but being amenable is key to getting more assignments.

Expect the pay to be small, if at all — Typical pay ranges between $25 and $50 per story, with three-digit sums possible for feature pieces after a freelancer has a body of work under the newspaper's masthead. Sometimes, however, newspapers will propose first-time assignments without compensation but dangle a contract if they are impressed with the results. Keep in mind that assignments may not be frequent or fulsome enough to constitute steady income.

Know the value of deadlines — Newspaper and online journalism are a fast-paced, get-it-done-now businesses that do not suffer people who miss deadlines. If an editor says a story has to be completed and on his desk or in his e-mail inbox by a certain time, get it in well before that time if possible. And if that's not possible, stay in touch with the editor to explain the situation and ask for guidance; they can be understanding when the situation calls for it. But missing a deadline — just one, even — can undermine a writer's credibility and make it that much harder to receive additional assignments.

Read the newspaper — This may sound like a no-brainer, but in fact newspapers often hear from hopeful writers pitching ideas that lack a local story peg, ideas that already were printed in some form, or ideas that amount to writers talking about themselves instead of talking to other people. Take time to carefully read either the print or online version of the newspaper (preferably both) and study several editions. Newspapers, like magazines, have writing styles and subjects of particular interest to their audiences; know what these are to have intelligent conversations with assignment editors.

David Sheets is a sports editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and STLtoday.com, and president of SPJ's St. Louis Pro chapter. Reach him by e-mail at dsheets@post-dispatch.com, on Twitter at @DKSheets, or on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Crowdsourcing: What it is, how it works

(This entry first appeared on Net Worked, the digital media blog of the Society for Professional Journalists.)

Technology's impact on American society the past decade has been tremendous. We can communicate and interact with each other easier than ever — technically speaking. Amid this progress, however, is a heap of new terminology some of us are only now beginning to understand.

The burgeoning list of terms is too long to dwell on here in one post, but elements of that list are poised to become day-to-day jargon during the next decade, and one of them is "crowdsourcing," a word believed to have appeared first in Wired magazine almost five years ago and now readily on the lips of anyone who spends much time building social networks.

Crowdsourcing amounts to what's called a portmanteau — two distinct terms blended in form and meaning to create a third. In this case, the words "crowd" and "outsource" were combined to underscore the narrowing gap between amateurs and professionals due to shared, inexpensive technology. Now, thanks largely to the ubiquity of non-wired and portable networks, professionals in assorted fields can solicit answers to problems from whole groups of people at once and maybe tap a collective wisdom not easily discerned by questioning one person at a time.

A form of crowdsourcing has been used to try solving complex math problems, troubleshoot software, edit literature, search for missing persons, monitor international borders and fund a Broadway play. One blogger even tried it to drum up paint color selections for the inside of her mother's house.

Journalists, too, are warming to the idea of crowdsourcing to help them report the news. As reported in Editor & Publisher, the technique was applied by the Washington Post at the rally by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert last month by having rally participants connect through a beta website to share information. The nonprofit, Minnesota-based MinnPost.com has used crowdsourcing to sift for government fraud, among other things.

Meanwhile, the Miami Herald, Charlotte Observer and the online-only ProPublica and St. Louis Beacon are among the news-gathering organizations using something called the Public Insight Network, a sourcing service affiliated with American Public Media that maintains a large network of experts on a variety of subjects.

Of course, two heads, or for that matter 2,000, are not always better than one, what with the potential for inaccuracy or unreliability inherent in an uncontrolled group. Thus comes the distinction between "bounded" crowdsourcing and "unbounded" crowdsourcing. With the first kind, as exemplified by the Public Insight Network, the "crowd" possesses defined boundaries and its members have specific professional skills. The second kind relies mainly on opinion and the emotion of the moment — good for collecting random YouTube videos of a rally at the National Mall, for example.

Crowdsourcing, as a word and an approach to gathering news, gained considerable traction in 2010. Expect to hear it a lot more — and use it a lot more — in 2011.

My mother, my grandparents, and Pearl Harbor

On a bright Sunday morning 69 years ago, my mother looked out her parents' kitchen window and saw black smoke rising in the distance.

Then she saw planes soar out of the smoke, and the whole world was forever altered.

That morning, my mother watched the attack on Pearl Harbor from her home. She was a child, living across the harbor from the U.S. Navy yard. My grandparents' house sat on a hill slope, their back yard overlooking the battleships moored in port a couple miles away, and on this Sunday morning in December my mother and grandparents saw the smoke, heard loud bangs coming from the same direction, left their unfinished breakfast sitting on the kitchen table, and went outside for a better look.

They heard the planes before seeing them. A whining roar, as if from a million large, angry mosquitoes, echoed across the hillside, gaining in volume, until the planes appeared as black darts flung across the bright sky. My grandmother remarked how unusual it was to see military maneuvers on a Sunday. My grandfather noticed these planes were unlike any he had seen parked on the airfields.

The planes came closer at incredible speed, and there were more of them each passing moment. It occurred to my grandparents that they should move back closer to the house when one plane, so close now the Rising Sun emblem on its fuselage was clearly visible, wagged its wings on approach to the slope, pitched starboard and with the tip of one wing carried off my grandmother's clothes line.

My mother recalls seeing the pilot's face. She says that given enough artistic talent, she could draw it now, 69 years later, from memory.

Everybody ran back into the house to watch the black smoke and noise intensify across the harbor, and it was at about this point when they saw a bright flash followed by the swelling bubble of an intense shock wave envelop the harbor and race up the hillside to rattle the kitchen windows. The USS Arizona, already critically wounded, burst nearly in two as the ammunition magazine ignited.

At that, the event became profoundly personal: What should we do? Where should we go? Neighbors were walking out into the streets crying, shouting, comforting each other, even as the planes continued to zip overhead. My grandfather, who had joined an all-volunteer civilian defense corps a year earlier as tensions heightened between Japan and the United States, expected he would be called to do … something. But no word came; the few phone lines around the island were jammed.

Hours later, a Jeep came down the street. The military police officer behind the wheel was going around asking every able-bodied male, particularly those who had guns, to meet in the town center for further instructions. My grandfather expressed concern about leaving my grandmother and mother alone, to which the Jeep driver responded, "Look, we're expecting an invasion by the Japanese. If you don't get down to the beach now to try stopping them, we're all screwed anyway."

So, my grandfather packed his only gun, a small-caliber pistol, and boarded a truck en route to a long shallow beach a few miles past Honolulu where Japanese landing craft loaded with troops were expected to appear overnight. Dozens of civilians in several trucks made the trip with him, including one man who brought the only weapon at his disposal: a pitchfork.

Upon arrival, the men busied themselves initially by digging shallow trenches and building defensive positions behind rocks and trees. Then they waited, the only sounds coming from the surf, the only light from the moon. And waited.

And waited.

By daybreak, the threat of invasion had subsided, though the intensity wrought from the previous morning never did. Thereafter until the war ended, the Hawaiian islands, not yet one among the United States, were under U.S. martial law. The rationing and blackouts common elsewhere in the nation during this period were many times more constraining in Hawaii because of difficulty protecting the islands' supply line to the mainland. And the happiest times of my mother's childhood ended as the freedom she had to play with friends and roam was curtailed by stringent rules on civilian movement except for essential needs such as school, work and hospital visits.

The onset of war ended my grandfather's job, servicing the pineapple harvesting equipment owned by Dole foods, as many industries on the islands shuttered during wartime. About a year later, my grandparents and mother left for California, riding a cargo ship under destroyer escort.

There was one humorous moment out of it all. When my grandfather returned from his beach patrol early on the morning after the attack, he went to put his gun away and noticed a box of bullets sitting open on the bedroom dresser. That's when he remembered …

He had forgotten to load the gun.

SMO: What it means and why it matters

(This entry was first published in NetWorked, the digital media blog for the Society of Professional Journalists.)

The Internet may be omnipresent in our lives but it's becoming more friendly. Credit SMO for that.

SMO is short for "social media optimization," a somewhat new and evolving concept employing social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to promote content on websites, blogs or across other social media.

Until recently, the top tool for spreading the word online was SEO, or search engine optimization, in which words themselves are used to increase Web traffic by serving as online road signs of a sort for search engines to stop, read and announce to everyone else.

SMO, however, assumes that people, not search engines, are better at doing that. It relies on the notion that ideas are more important than individual words and that like-minded individuals will increase the publicity those ideas receive by sharing them with their family, friends and colleagues.

SMO's origins go back to the mid-1990s when audio and video were gaining traction online and the public realized the Internet was destined to become a kind of clearinghouse for people's whole Web identities, not just individual words. Marketing strategist Rohit Bhargava coined the term and proposed a five-point guide for it to increase one's virtual visibility.

In time, the guide grew to accommodate the Web's evolution and its audience's increasing media savvy, so that now the overall strategy for effective SMO encompasses several key considerations for Web content producers:

Linking — It's one thing to have a blog; it's another to have people read it. Adding links that point to other blog or social media content provide attribution and illustrate depth of research. Other sites in turn may link back, thus increasing everyone's visibility.

Tagging and bookmarking — Tags help describe content and simplify online searches. Embedded buttons for bookmarking services such as del.icio.us also point first-time visitors to specific content that they may want to use frequently.

Making portable content — PDFs and video and audio clips, for example, can be carried by other sites and help drive traffic back to the original source.

Encouraging mashups — A mashup borrows bits of content from several sources to produce new information in a unique way, much as human-interest interviews  can be combined to create a news story. Mashups often incorporate audio, video and mapping elements to tell stories.

Becoming a user resource — Posting interesting information, including information from rival publications, can turn occasional readers into devotees. They'll see the information is always useful, accurate, and devoid of fluff and promotion.

Rewarding users — Giving credit to other information sources enhances credibility and distinguishes those sources as credible as well. It's also a way of saying thanks to people trying hard to get their message across.

Participating — Speaking out, engaging in online conversations and sharing one's knowledge or perspective in forums and other Web-based interaction advance ideas in ways mere words on a page cannot.

Targeting the audience — Location matters in real estate; the same can be said about the Web and its vast, ethereal landscape. Finding a niche is essential in an environment where being vague or general invites indifference.

Creating fresh, original content — Inside that niche, original content has a greater chance of getting noticed. That's not to say though that old ideas should be ignored; even just a slight twist, either thoughtful or humorous, can put them in new and interesting light.

Being honest, staying true to one's beliefs — Tricks and gimmicks intended to drive up Web traffic often have the opposite effect and damage audience loyalty. It's better to be honest with the audience and remain focused and on message.

Thinking about SMO always — SMO should not be applied randomly but be used a tool of constant content creation the way notepads and pens have been for news reporters. It should be at the forefront of planning, at the forefront of organization, and include tactics and strategy.

The skinny on Microsoft's new Kinect

For those of you who didn't know the world of gaming had changed in a big way recently, or didn't care, here's the skinny on what you missed.

* Microsoft released its long-awaited Kinect controller-less gaming experience last week. The infrared webcam for Xbox 360 allows body movement, including facial gestures, and spoken commands to direct action on the screen, making Kinect — formerly Project Natal — a major improvement over the wand controllers available with Nintendo Wii and PlayStation Move.

* Kinect costs $150 by itself, $400 if bundled with a new Xbox 360. The games designed to highlight Kinect's capabilities cost $40 to $70, before discounts.

* The name is an amalgam of the words "kinetic" and "connect."

* Microsoft expects to sell 5 million Kinects this year alone.

* The debut of Kinect today in Europe has been hampered by demand in the United States.

* Key technology for Kinect came from a lab at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.

* Kinect translates movement in part by measuring light reflection from 48 points on a player's body.

* You can stand or sit while playing with Kinect.

* An alleged $2,000 bounty for hacking Kinect to use it on PCs may already have been met.

* Rumors that Kinect does not respond well to players with dark skin appear to have been disproved.

* Electronics manufacturer LG is offering a free Kinect with purchase of a television.

* Gamers have been slow to test Kinect's voice-recognition capabilities.

* Speaking of slowness, Kinect has a bit of a lag time responding to player movements. Individual players should stand at least six feet from the webcam, further if two people are playing.

* With Kinect, Microsoft may have taken a step closer to controlling your living room.

* And speaking of living rooms, Kinect may require you to rearrange furniture before playing any games.

* To that end, interior lighting, your clothes and your pets may adversely affect Kinect's performance.

* Expect Kinect to launch a new fitness revolution, just like Wii did.

* If you thought I was at least as impressed with "Call of Duty: Black Ops" as Kinect, guess again.

Olbermann Agonistes

America's brief national pundocratic nightmare appears over. Keith Olbermann, doyen of television's liberal-leaning wordsmiths and current poster child for media ethics, has been given a green flag to resume table-pounding on MSNBC, ostensibly to help square the media's sails against the starboard tack of neighboring Fox News.

All that remains is for Olbermann on Tuesday to don a hairshirt matching one of his shiny ties and with humility aforethought navigate the rough passage between the media's own Scylla and Carybdis: respectability and ratings.

Recall that Olbermann's hands were summarily slapped last week when Politico pried into a batch of campaign contribution records and found his name among those media mavens who reach from beneath their shroud of self-proclaimed journalistic integrity to pad a few candidates' finances, ahead of the just-ended elections. Recall also the berating he received by MSNBC in the name of company policy and the subsequent silence by rival Fox News, who could have joined the flagellation in response to Olbermann's constant harangues but didn't at the risk of turning unwanted attention to Fox's own policies.

We've had a weekend to mull the media quandary Olbermann brought into focus, a predicament long stewing in the mingled juices of outrage and obligation squeezed from journalists striving for objectivity in the employ of an industry driven by market forces. The responses to his behavior have been predictable. Less so are the pronouncements regarding MSNBC's obligation in the matter.

When Olbermann's "Coundown" launched in 2003, its debut portended analysis from a broadcast professional brandishing wit, insight and, it seemed, a ready copy of Roget's Thesaurus, all of which had been apparent in Olbermann's banter with co-sportscaster Dan Patrick during their turn on ESPN's "SportsCenter" through much of the 1990s. Over time however, "Countdown," which examined five timely events in reverse order, morphed into a kind of counterpoise, with Olbermann devoting more time to commentary that skewered official statements made by the Bush Administration. MSNBC's tacit approval of this transition was clarified by the addition to its programming calendar of "The Rachel Maddow Show," whose host has adopted an unbashed liberal stance on issues, and more recently "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," a political analyst who, if viewed at certain angles, can be seen tilting perceptibly to the left.

One wonders then what all the fuss was about at MSNBC, company policy against overt politicking notwithstanding, after Politico revealed Olbermann's contributions worth about $7,500 to Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway and Arizona congressional candidates Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords, all three campaigning as Democrats. MSNBC president Phil Griffin said in defense of Olbermann's suspension that the broadcaster violated a specific policy requiring network employees to state their political proclivities "before" writing endorsement checks, this defense suggesting Olbermann's behavior was justified had he filled out the proper paperwork in advance.

The precondition, if any exists, surely is not that simple. However, the solution is overtly so, and it would require that MSNBC balance its scale of ethical behavior in reality and not in a reality-TV kind of way. Olbermann's show is ratings gold for the network (though Fox News is mining platinum, at present) because its host chooses positions, takes stands, tries to be the last and loudest voice in the room, and does not attempt to sneak his behavior or his politics past the network. If this evolution of "Countdown" to support this was a mistake, an aberration of some sort, then MSNBC should at least admit that much; otherwise, the network should give its cash cow more grazing space, well away from other real journalists in the field.

Don't make me move, Google

I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to move.
Move from my house, that is.

The reasons are, I think, fairly acceptable to most people: My wife and I just put the mortgage to bed — a prodigious accomplishment in this economic climate.

We recently rehabilitated the house's federalist-style facade, giving our 126-year-old abode the look of something worth saving through the 21st century.

And, with other urban renewal inching forward again around the neighborhood, I finally feel confident about walking to the grocery store and not see someone pull a gun on me before I get there (Yes, this has happened to me once already).

The one thing I'm not so confident about is Google appearing to prowl around like a stalker, snapping photos of me while I'm bending over the begonias or picking up the dogs' latest expression of intestinal relief. I have seen the Great Aggregator traipse through here twice, quietly, snapping pictures like a tourist on a two-day trip through 10 cities, and leaving me to wonder whether the photographer got my good side.

But then I go back to what I was doing, unabashed and accepting of the scratch Google just made on the patina of my privacy. I mean, it's not as though Google knocked on my front door and asked if I wore matching socks.

However, I also accept that not everyone takes Google's passing picture-taking with similar grace and indifference. For some people, the sight of themselves or their property in a satellite photo via Google Street View compares to getting caught with their pants around their ankles. They didn't ask to have their picture taken and nobody sought their permission, and so they rail against the slightly surreptitious photography as if the camera operators performed an invasive procedure with the snap of a shutter — like removing a person's spleen without first asking the patient to sign a waiver.

Besides, there's an ethereal sense of presence borne by seeing the results of one's personal space captured by satellite — the creation of a connection that our innate sense of individuality needs time and attuned perspective to process.

This is why an offhanded statement by Google CEO Eric Schmidt this week rubbed all these concerned citizens the wrong way. On CNN's "Parker Spitzer" show Monday, he suggested, with humorous intent, these people "just move" after his company comes through with their Street View cameras. He insisted the shooters pass through neighborhoods once only, that this is not a "monitoring situation," thus making it impossible for Google to track comings and goings from homes and businesses and perhaps allaying the concern voiced by CNN's Kathleen Parker that Google can show others when her car is parked in front of her house.

"They cannot" see that, Schmidt told Parker. "The (image) resolution does not allow it."

In fact, it does, as my own experience demonstrates. After Schmidt spoke, I reviewed Google's visual accounting of my own house, and my car shown parked in front. The photos depicted the same blue car I have driven for years, and though apparent care was taken to distort the image just over my license plates I had no problem making out the bag of groceries sitting in the passenger's seat. Google's Street View shutterbugs passed by that day as I was unloading from a trip to the supermarket.

As for Schmidt's insistence that Google makes just one pass, a screen capture I grabbed about one year ago from the result of a previous Street View photograph proves otherwise. In that image, my other car is on display, and there is evidence for everyone including my mother to see that my yard can indeed look better than it does right now.

If I were I on the lam, or if I knew for certain that my mother had been checking the condition of my yard, this revelation might unnerve me. To a lesser extent, I feel uneasy regarding Google's ability to put faces with places, or connect real with virtual addresses and read license plates, unlike anything we have seen in public record-keeping to date.

In Germany, this ability has fostered outrage and prompted more than 200,000 citizens, or about 2 percent of the total population, to request their places of home and work be obscured ahead of Street View's debut in that country, where history has cultivated a delicate sense of individuality that's difficult to comprehend among self-aggrandizing cultures.

Schmidt told CNN his company acts responsibly at all times with the information at its disposal, but that's not what worries me. The people unaffiliated with Google who view the same photos cannot all be similarly responsible. And that kind of makes me want to just move.

One last word about trivia

On Friday, the St. Louis Pro Chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists turns trivial for a few hours to again sponsor its annual "Hacks vs. Flacks" trivia competition.


Despite the title, anyone with a mind for mundane facts and figures is welcome to participate, at $20 a head or $150 for a table of eight. There will be munchies, cooked up by SPJ faithful, plus beer and wine to facilitate trivial thinking and help start the weekend right. And there will be the added benefit of watching the cream of St. Louis-area media and public relations try to show how much they really know. (Hint: their knowledge varies greatly.)

But the reasons for this trivia contest belie the name. The chapter's chief goal is to raise money for student scholarships and programs such as a monthly luncheon series where special guests speak about new ideas and current events. It's hoped these scholarships and luncheons give the media and other communicators additional tools to do their jobs — or just find jobs. Because today, every little bit we can do to help the protectors of civic fairness and democracy is welcome.

So, please, come by at 6:30 p.m. tomorrow to Immaculate Conception at 2934 Marshall Avenue in Maplewood, Mo., to lend some wisdom and have good cheer, all for a very good cause.

The dad who never died

It was odd timing that two socially relevant icons of popular culture passed away within the week. Barbara Billingsley, the mother on "Leave It to Beaver," died Saturday. Tom Bosley, the father on "Happy Days," died today.

Both represented characters who were stereotypical of their television times — the doting, devoted housewife and the insightful but lovably stern father. Both symbolized elements of a stereotypical family norm that neither existed in the 1950s nor is pervasive today. And though the roles were not meant to be permanent, the impact of June Cleaver and Howard Cunningham continue to impress decades later.

I arrived on the world scene a little past the point of understanding or appreciating who June Cleaver was. Howard Cunningham, however, was central to my life in the 1970s because "Happy Days" dominated the Nielsen ratings about the time TV turned for me from being noisy living room furniture into societal touchstone. My friends talked about the show the mornings after each episode aired, their friends talked about the show, and over time we began dressing like the characters at special school events and parties. In sixth grade, I did a long project with written report, photos and a slide show of the 1950s' impact on the 1970s, inspired no doubt on the impression "Happy Days" left on me.

It was during this time, while conducting interviews for the project, that I learned about June Cleaver, the "Leave It to Beaver" craze and how the show seemed to make a cultural impact on people similar to what "Happy Days" did on me and my generation. And what I came away with from those interviews was this: TV alternately unifies and divides us. It can show us the faith, hope and compassion of humanity through worldly characters such as June Cleaver and Howard Cunningham while portraying an ideal of life we can't hope to emulate. Life is life and Hollywood is Hollywood, and though Hollywood may imitate life the reverse cannot be said with any certainty.

My grade-school friends who watched "Happy Days" — those in particular who came from broken homes — on occasion wished aloud they had dads just like Howard Cunningham, a guy who seemed to trust that his children would learn valuable lessons from their mistakes, and when they didn't would ride to their rescue dispensing the kind of earthy wisdom they didn't expect him to have. They believed in him, because he believed in them.

How many children of the '70s, or today, can say that or would admit it about their own parents?
That's why for me and my generation, Tom Bosley's role as Howard Cunningham — or "Mr. C," as The Fonz called him — remains as rich and relevant now as 35 years ago. Many of us still wish, deep down, we had a dad just like him and wonder, as parents, if we'll be anything approaching him.

That's why Tom Bosley may be gone, but Howard Cunningham lives on.

Taking my work with SPJ one step further

As president of the St. Louis Chapter for the Society for Professional Journalists, my job is simple: assist journalists in doing their jobs and trumpet their successes. As a committee member with SPJ national, I work with others around the country to do the same on a much broader stage.

A portion of that stage will be here, on Posterous, one of the must-visit lifestreaming sites on the Web, and another trumpet heralding new ideas and experiences. Journalists the world over are encountering new technologies and challenges in their jobs — among those challenges, the rise of social media and public newsgathering. Some would say this rise creates interference for traditional newsgathering practices that defined credibility and dependability in the larger media. Others welcome the broader reach of information sharing by everyone, not just traditional media, hastened by fast-evolving technical innovation.

Regardless, both views will find a voice in this space, and perhaps other voices will have their utterances recorded here as well. The key is finding ways to make social media and technology work for journalists, not the other way around. Because when it comes to being heard in the 21st century, intellect must trump ignorance, facts must trump fallacy, and sound judgment must trump noise; otherwise, our wonderful and varied means of communication, no matter how advanced, will devolve from tools into toys. And our republic will follow suit.

Return engagement

This wasn't what I expected — a big gap between my previous post and this one. At least not a gap of such prodigious size, prompting friends to wonder aloud if I dropped off the planet.

In response to all of them, no. I'm still here but my list of obligations has been reordered. That gaming blog I wrote? Gone. The technology writing for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch? Not a daily thing anymore. I continue to edit sports, or try anyway, though the still-tenuous state of newspaper journalism has made the job seem as essential as buckboard repair.

So, what prompted the shift in status? Look down a few dusty entries to the one marked "SPJ," the moniker of the Society of Professional Journalists. I went from local programming director to chapter president in one leap and now have much more on my mind than gaming and gadgets.

There remains, however, some space in my head for those things, and when they spill out a couple blogs should catch them. One encompasses a concept that remains in development. The other involves a national SPJ committee I joined while attending the society's annual convention in Las Vegas.

In time, you'll see more of my musings in this space, just not with yawning spaces in time between them. If your opinion of me is favorable, this is a good thing.

Right?

Cold-brewed conundrum

The girl was uncomprehending, her face unlined but for the soft crinkle above her nose. She had mixed the ingredients for a large, cold-brewed vanilla latte but produced something much less than a large-sized beverage.

In the “large” transparent cup was only enough fluid to fill a container half its size, foam topping included. The girl — she preferred the title “barista” — knew exactly the proportions for a drink of this size poured over ice. I had asked for the drink without ice, or whipped cream topping.

She stared at the cup a moment and, finally, said, “I’m not sure what to do about this. I mean, you’re like asking for it without ice, and we always include ice. I mean, the recipe calls for it.”

“So, is this a problem?” I replied.

“Well, um, no ... not exactly,” she said. “It’s just that I don’t know the amount of ingredients to put in without the ice.”

The 20-ounce cup was holding what one would suppose was 10 ounces. I guessed at a glance she could double the mixture and not risk overflow. But then, I never have been a barista; there may be a complexity to the job that escapes my estimation. Also, someone behind the scenes might keep score on things like this, comparing amounts of fluid poured to the amount of money in the cash register.

I once held a job where exactly that kind of someone existed. For two summers during high school, I bagged groceries and helped stock shelves at a supermarket near home. The least appealing part of that job — besides rounding up abandoned shopping carts in the parking lot on 110-degree days — was re-shelving the items called “go-backs,” or merchandise people deposited around the store because they couldn’t be bothered with returning it to its proper place.

Maybe they would pick up a box of white rice instead of the brown rice they needed and realized their error four aisles later. Or maybe they decided they didn’t need rice after all. Onto the nearest shelf the rice would go, even if that nearest shelf was reserved for allergy medicine. Restocking go-backs involved cruising the aisles looking for out-of-place goods and putting them in a cart which I later emptied item by item when customer traffic was slow and I wasn’t needed to bag at check-out.

One colleague, a bagging veteran from way back, was more particular than most about the condition of the go-backs. Yes, some go-backs were damaged goods, dropped by customers who then didn’t want dinged cans or bent boxes. If the seals weren’t broken, they went back on the proper shelf anyway and discounted at the register.

This colleague, however, possessed a particular talent, he claimed. He insisted he could discern accidental from intentional damage — that is, he recognized which packages were torn and their contents consumed, which in the vernacular of the grocery business amounts to shoplifting. And, he believed he could tell who was doing the consuming, the customers or the employees.

Late one night as my shift was ending, he directed me to the storeroom adjoining the large outer entry where we unloaded inventory from trucks, reached into a small basket of damaged goods, pulled out a torn bag of Reece’s Pieces and said, “I know this is your doing. I saw you reach into this and grab a handful and eat it. I’ll have to report this to Merlin,” the supermarket’s general manager, who was not in the store at the time. Then the accusatory colleague dropped the bag back into the basket, scattering candies on the other goods and the floor, and bolted in three large steps through the storeroom door before I managed even a whimper of defense.

There’s a moment when a person meets an unfair charge or claim with sensory confusion as the brain tries to assess what the eyes and ears have presented against logic or belief. It’s the instant when one could be, as the saying goes, “knocked down by a feather” and not notice. One moment, your surroundings make sense and an assumption forms that they will remain in this order until you change them. The next moment, something unexpected kicks out the feet propping up this assumption and the brain hesitates like an engine with a drop of water in its fuel line.

Well, once my synapses resumed firing I moved to answer this allegation. When I caught up to him, the colleague refused to stop what he was doing to face me. He seemed certain of the charge and unconcerned with my response, a fluctuating mix of incredulity and outrage. Then he leveled another charge, still without looking at me or stopping what he was doing, that I wasn’t spraying the produce with cool water enough times to suit him.

This was the “pile-on” — a claim against procedure intended to suggest I was irresponsible and likely to be criminal as a consequence.

The colleague did not know at the time I had specific instructions on the care of produce that was given to me by our mutual supervisor, who already had left for the night. He also did not know that peanut butter was not among my favorite foods, so stealing Reece’s Pieces was nonsensical.

My parents were prepared to explain all this to him, and the general manager, the next day. They made an appointment to do so. The colleague, however, called in sick soon afterward. He called in sick the next two days, too. He looked fine to me though when he made his accusations.

After three days, he didn’t call. He didn’t show up again, either. By then, the general manager had dismissed the charge against me without prejudice. I continued working; the colleague, if I recall correctly, turned up at another store on the other side of town.

I doubt the barista with the coffee conundrum needed to concern herself with comparable banality. After looking at the half-filled cup, she said, “Well, I can give you a little more coffee or a little more cream, or I can split the difference, but I’m not sure how it’s going to come out.”

“How about a little more coffee?” I asked.

She reached under the counter into a small refrigerator and withdrew a carafe of coffee, poured until the tan-colored mixture turned a couple shades darker, then pulled out a quart container of cream and poured just enough to restore the drink’s original color. I presumed then that company policy dictated adherence to appearance over recipe.

Regardless, the drink tasted fine. I presume that’s all that mattered.

Her struggle ends

The last time I saw my aunt, Joyce Sheets, she was in her rocking chair, head tilted back and to the left, her silver-gray hair mussed by the head bands of an oxygen mask that she wore all the time by then. A portable respirator clicked softly from a metal stand next to her.

This was November — no, maybe December. Sometime right before Christmas, I’m sure. She was dressed in loose clothes, a housecoat and a blanket for her legs and feet. Two big down-filled slippers poked out from beneath the blanket. On her face, were bug-eye-frame glasses propped up not so much by her nose as the oxygen mask. Her face looked almost too small for those glasses.

But it was the eyes behind those glasses that drew my attention. They were bright and small and tired-looking. They told you she was still alive, still fighting, still thinking up bad jokes. But they also told me they had seen enough of all this, of the housecoat and those slippers and that infernal breathing machine that was a closer friend to her now than her husband and children. The world around her rocking chair was small. Full of love, mind you, but very small, and shrinking with each breath.

If you were to name the cruelest diseases known and list them with the worst in first, ALS has to be atop that list. It became famous for making Lou Gehrig a martyr and, somehow, a sports hero, though even he said there was nothing heroic about showing up at work every day.

No, real heroism arises after the farewell speeches. ALS robs sufferers of their ability to reach, hold and touch, so they can’t hug their children and grandchildren. It eliminates their mobility, so they wind up in wheelchairs or rockers, looking up at the pity flowing down onto them. And later, when every other motor function becomes a memory, ALS moves in on the lungs, resisting sufferers attempts to expand them.

My aunt once told me, in the rasp that had replaced her speaking voice, she felt as if she was always exhaling, always wondering whether her next breath would ever come. Her mind operated on two frequencies: in and out. That is, until her grandchildren were in the room. She felt then that her suffering was justified.

On Tuesday, my Uncle Les roused Joyce from her night’s sleep and prepared her for the day. He lifted her out of bed, helped her use the bathroom, bathed her and dressed her. He had learned to primp her hair, and she said he was doing a pretty good job at it. Then he made breakfast for both of them and sat at the edge of the kitchen table feeding her — one bite for her between every two bites for him.

This whole process from first kiss to last bite took nearly three hours, and it exhausted both of them. So Les carried her to the rocking chair about 12 feet distant, tucked her in and kissed her again. “I’ll be in the next room taking a nap, too,” he said.

It’s an old rocking chair with velvet flowers on its cushions and bare wooden arms. I used to sit in it to do college homework while babysitting my cousins Jennifer and Cynthia. Long before that, when I used to imagine rocking chairs were horses, I rocked back wildly and tipped the chair over with a crash. The frame fractured and thereafter the chair squeaked when it rocked — a raspy squeak much like my aunt’s enfeebled voice.

The chair sits at an angle to the rest of the furnishings so that the person in it can glance to the right and see a collection of family photos — baby pictures, graduation pictures, wedding pictures — atop a desk transformed long ago into an oversized photo album. Informal  snapshots stick out at all angles from the frames of formal portraits, and they’re all of smiling, laughing, playing children. I imagine that Joyce, her head lolling right on an almost useless neck, could see the smiles, hear the laughter in her mind, and agreed that whatever happened next was justified.

SPJ is my life, now

I'm writing a new chapter in my life by leading a chapter – the St. Louis-area chapter of SPJ, the Society of Professional Journalists, to be specific.

Election was easy; nobody else wanted the job. Installation this afternoon at the chapter's monthly luncheon was just as effortless. The current president pointed to me, announced I'm the lone candidate, asked if everyone in the room was OK with that, and upon hearing no objections declared the handover of power official and passed the gavel.

(Our group does not own a gavel; however, a cliche seemed a fair punctuation mark for that sentence.)

In fact, my one-year responsibility does not begin until June, but before then the current president will mount her formal campaign for regional SPJ chairman and needs room on her schedule to build a policy platform.

This is not to say we take chapter responsibilities lightly, passing around board memberships like copies of this morning's newspaper. SPJ remains an important resource to the local news-gathering community by showing ways that veteran journalists and budding ones can improve on their craft and deal with the changes wrought by technology and the Internet.

Rather, we'd like to think the quick transition represents an eagerness to move forward and impress how interested St. Louis-area journalists are in the state of the industry. Having the current chapter president move now into the regional chair, and subsequently a seat on the national board of directors, helps raise St. Louis' profile within SPJ.

As for me, I'd like to just see more faces to meetings, increase membership, brainstorm for ideas on bringing more online journalists aboard, and help out-of-work journalists continue to practice their craft to its fullest potential. I'm not sure how to do all of that just yet, but as ideas arise this vehicle may be the first place they see light.

Bad habits reduce your lifespan

I have bad habits, but none are listed in Yahoo's republishing of an Associated Press story. Does this make me a better person? Or is it proof I don't know how to have fun?

Why I'm waiting to buy an iPad

The gadget world went wild this past weekend with the release of Apple’s iPad, a tablet computer that resembles an oversized iPhone. Early estimates put first-day sales at 700,000, with more in inventory awaiting eager buyers at Apple stores everywhere.

I wasn’t among the eager ones; I steered clear of the lines and crowds at St. Louis-area retailers with remarkable self-control. Even now, after reading a couple dozen reviews and first-impressions of the device, my often twitchy gadget-loving fingers are still, my heart beats at a regular rhythm and I feel strangely calm for one who took enormous pride in muscling through like-minded throngs to snatch up the latest must-have, trend-setting, life-altering technology.

My uncommon mood could be a sign of aging. I look at my gray hairs and wonder how many were due to past gadget quests (A couple of scars certainly were). I peer through the stacks of dusty high-tech toys in my house and try hard to remember which ones evoked passion and which ones I merely liked and soon cast aside like an overeager kid on Christmas morning.

Or, maybe my calm results from the muscle relaxant I’m taking to ease a sore back (Here, I pause to praise the pharmaceutical industry for assisting me more than any gadget).

Probably both factors are at play.

However, one thing is certain: I have the wisdom of experience, and I point to those stacks of dusty gadgetry as proof.

Much of the menagerie consists of first versions and barely tested concepts launched with more hype than common sense. Some came from companies that vanished along with the hope their devices inspired. Some are third and fourth and sixth editions of good ideas that have not improved by degrees to remain interesting or relevant. Some are simply more strange than useful (Example: a pen-shaped document scanner that even James Bond wouldn’t rely on for important work.)

Yes, gadgets come and go and change, much like fashion. The ones that stay with us though are of prescient design, possess form and function in equal parts, lack quirkiness as a selling point. They are devices with which we need only our hands, and not our brains, to operate.

This is why Apple succeeds year after year with each new idea. The digital music player and mobile phone were time-worn ideas when Apple revealed the iPod and iPhone. So, too, is the tablet computer. Yet Apple’s products become market standards in spite of their hype. They’re monuments to technical simplicity — typical users need not rely on a manual to discern how they’re used; they just press that one round button at the bottom.

But that’s not enough to get me in the door of an Apple store lately. I already expect Apple’s products to be intuitive; what I need now is dependability. I now require some assurance that my first visit to an Apple store, either in person or online, will not lead to several others involving service or repairs.

In over a quarter century of using Apple products, I have taken five such trips, far fewer than with less complicated equipment such as clothes washers and microwave ovens, to be sure, but a majority of the trips coming within the past two years to try resurrecting dead iPods and laptops.

Apple service personnel explained away those equipment failures as particular to the model I owned.

“I’m sorry Mr. Sheets, but we’ve had trouble with these lately,” an in-store “genius” at Apple’s Genius Bar in West County said of my unresponsive MacBook last summer. “All I can tell you is, repairing it will cost a lot more than replacing it.”

Naturally, I heard this about a week after the warranty ran out.

So now, I watch the crowds rush in and out of Apple’s stores with iPads and I skim through reams of user feedback generated through the first 48 hours of our new iPad-infused existence, and I’m waiting for the first complaints to surface. None may arise, but I’m not so sanguine about that. (Apple already warned about a potential problem with excessive battery drain and promised replacement iPads to anyone whose new toy suffered from it).

Important to me at this point however is my understanding, accumulated through years of tech troubleshooting and related disappointment, that the first iteration of any idea often isn’t the best. The marketplace always sifts out surprise, and Apple will respond as always with an improved device that not only addresses current consumer complaints, but also major bugs that even Apple’s accomplished brain trust could not foresee.

Thus, six to nine months from now, the iPad finally will have become the device everyone wishes it was from Day One and truly be worth the $500 to $830 Apple expect you to shell out for it.

Besides, I appreciate all the geniuses at Apple and all the work they do. I just prefer not needing to deal with them.

Happy birthday, dot-com

Happy birthday, dot-com

I missed an opportunity to write a timely commentary on this, but it's still worth noting:

Three Letters and a Punctuation Mark That Changed the World

Sony pulls a Toyota

You may remember that Sony's PlayStation Network took a powder late last month.

For more than a day, the network and some games relying on it were unplayable on PlayStation 3s sold before last September, when the new slimmer systems debuted. The problem went away, the firestorm of criticism died down and Sony attributed the problem to a software "bug" that tricked system clocks into resetting a decade late.

Nice, but I'm inclined to think the term "bug" is generous to a fault. It suggests the software somehow tripped over its own shoelaces, when in fact software doesn't trip by itself -- if it falls, it's because people did something to push it. And in this case, those who did the pushing probably were inattentive programmers.

The network shutdown resulted when system clocks misinterpreted "March 1" as "Feb. 29," a date not on any calendar this year, and when the clocks couldn't find that date they kicked over to a default setting, Jan. 1, 2000. This is like a Y2K joke only Rip Van Winkle could appreciate.

As everyone lumped into the broad category between Harvard grads and Oprah watchers should know already, Feb. 29 shows up only on calendars for leap years, those quadrennial events that make us think we're getting more bang for our year.

Feb. 29 is in reality like that free cup of coffee you get after being overcharged for the three cups you bought before it.

Sony, in effect, spilled that cup and burned everyone at PSN, maybe burned their reputation a bit as well. Because no matter what excuse Sony offers, the fault lies with the dunderhead(s) who programmed a leap day to appear where none should.

That nobody thought during the code-writing process to consult a cheap calendar, or one that was turned to 2010, or ask someone nearby who might have a clue about when leap days appear -- well, that just makes Sony look almost as clueless as Toyota.

Furry kids, with benefits

These are my kids.

That's Augie on the left, Missy on the right. They're dachshunds rescued from abuse and neglect. As you can see, both are doing fine right now.

I call them "kids" because, against all good sense and rational behavior, my wife and I treat them like they're human children, not like dogs. I suppose if we had children already, the dogs would be just dogs.

So I guess it's a good thing we don't have children; they might wind up competing for our affection with the dogs.

I've heard though that this tends to be normal behavior among humans because dogs and other pets satisfy a paternal or maternal instinct in all of us. But dogs respond to our overtures better than just about any other animal, hence the special relationship all dogs seem to have with humans.

That special relationship elevates to another level regarding discard dogs, which are the kinds of dogs my wife and I prefer to have. These are the animals who suffered in some way by dint of being born into cruel circumstances or merely falling into them ... such as when owners feel their dogs are no longer cute or cuddly, or are bored with them, or perhaps more tragically are unable to care for them due to economic concerns.

The dogs we've acquired (four, over the past decade) all have suffered from one or more of these things. Augie, for example, was rescued from a puppy mill where the workers were indifferent to her health; she lost all her teeth and contracted a virus that destroyed her hearing. Missy, on the other hand, spent her first year cooped up in a cage that was too small for her; her ears have tears from banging the sides of the cage when she shook herself.

Our previous dogs, Tara and Lindy, who have since died, were discards, too. My wife and I like to think they passed away happy and comforted knowing their last years were much better than their first ones.

We think this way because we're not convinced that dogs were born to suffer. They enter the world as meek and unaware as humans do, and they're just as hungry for affection. Unlike humans however, dogs remain loyal to the source of affection, and they're intensely loyal to anyone who relieves them of agony.

Augie and Missy have shown us as much. Tara and Lindy did, too. And as long as that continues to happen, my wife and I will continue to try giving abandoned or abused dogs a better life.

Italian court makes Internet lovers nervous

Internet addicts take note - Italy may have mussed your mojo.

A legal ruling last week from the land of Leonardo da Vinci has instilled doubt about the future of openness on the always open Internet, and that doubt maay trickle over into gamers' goings-on.

At issue was whether Web search giant Google impinged on the privacy of an autistic Italian boy in 2006 by posting a video of him being beaten by bullies at school. The film clip appeared on Google Video and was viewed thousands of times before it was pulled down and the boy's father pressed the case that posting the clip violated Italy's privacy protection laws.

An Italian court agreed Wednesday and sentenced three Google executives - chief legal officer David Drummond, global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer and former chief financial officer George Reyes, none of whom were involved in posting the video clip - in absentia for the violation, ruling that Google was responsible for upholding Italy's law and should have pulled down the video in a timely manner.

The executives will not serve time; their sentences were suspended. The ruling, however, hangs over the Internet like a sword of Damocles. In effect, it demands everyone who posts content online to take responsibility for that content regardless of the content's origin.

This threatens to be a particularly sticky wicket for content aggregators such as Google and Yahoo and YouTube, whose main task has been posting instead of policing. Social and gaming networks, too, would suffer if it means that not only sites like Facebook and services like PlayStation Home, but also the users of such sites and networks are held legally responsible for whatever they contribute.

Advocates of Internet freedom lament the ruling's potential chilling effect and parrot Google's statement that if left to stand "the Web as we know it would cease to exist." On the other hand, Italy is said to have a low rate of Internet commerce compared to the rest of Europe and its government has been debating various legislation to assert more control over Italians' Web usage.

Furthermore, the European Union, of which Italy is a part, asserts through its own regulations on Internet commerce that content providers should be free from the kind of crushing obligation imposed by the Italian court's ruling; thus, the ruling may conflict with established legal precedent.

In the end, this may be an example of the mouse that roared. The question is, will that roar have an ominous echo.

Workplace anger and Facebook

More frustrating to me than technology failures in the marketplace are people unclear on concepts related to technology and the marketplace.

To wit: A colleague's outburst last week on, of all places, Facebook, after his onerous experience with our employer's productivity software.

Exactly what prickled him wasn't made clear in his post, but his general disparagement rang bells with a few other colleagues, and they therefore felt the need to chime in.

I can guess what happened. You see, our workplace software is, to put it mildly, uncooperative about 2 percent of the time; files are lost or erased, templates must be reloaded time after time, network connections fracture and the servers have a hard time swallowing commands when too many come through the pipe at once. Not to mention that the computer system itself is aging. (What the heck; I mentioned it anyway.)

From this standpoint, anyone unfamiliar with our systems might nod in understanding, as I doubt our issues are either new or unique. 'Tis always thus for people and institutions who expect electrons to maintain a constant charge.

There is, therefore, a certain amount of hair-tugging, fabric-rending, desk-pounding, heart-racing and blue language expected with such matters when said matters arise at or near a project deadline.

What galls me though is not these animated displays in the office (no, that's not right; they do, in fact, gall me), but animated displays artlessly distributed through social networks. In particular: Facebook.

I attribute this distribution to a desire for emotional outreach, a search for understanding among kindred souls who may have stumbled down the same dark path. Basically, these folks are just venting and demand an audience to gage their performances.

But when I next crank up my workplace computer, that venting will not have released whatever silicon-based pressure initiated the trouble. The software will be, as before, balky at times. (Perhaps more so if addressing the users' initial complaints leads to alterations in the software interface that in turn force users to revise their behavior.)

That is, in part, because the venting goes out to people who may understand but cannot fix the problem. The wrong audience is listening.

But the other part is design of the system and the need. Our software was created with one goal, and we are able to achieve that goal adequately. Anything more demands an expenditure the company had neither the time nor inclination to accommodate. Here too, this is nothing new in the American workplace.

In other words, we've got what we've got because it does the job and fell within a specific price range, not because it was apt to coddle its users.

Of course, this doesn't stop people from treating software as a friend, instead of as a tool. As a result, we're hurt when it jilts us.

Whatever subsequent closure we seek, however, cannot be found on Facebook. Or Twitter. Or any of the social networks we use. They become little more than conduits for noise when we try.

So, folks, please just, you know, keep a lid on it. Bite your tongue. Bite someone else's tongue, if you prefer. But refrain from taking a one-step approach to what could be a 12-step problem. And be mindful of your employer's perceptions regarding publicized workplace issues. (Employers do read Facebook, you know.)

Because while you may feel better after venting on Facebook, your boss might feel just the opposite.

Praying for time

Adopt an old dog, one with frailties and potential for chronic illness, and expect to get your heart broken.

I'm feeling the fractures develop now, almost four years after my wife and I took in Lindy (left), a 10-year-old Pomeranian rescued from a puppy mill and offered up for adoption by a group that finds homes for senior dogs, ages 6 and up.

We took Lindy because she was cute, but also out of pity. Her black fur was made ragged by a thyroid condition, and her seven remaining teeth jut from her jaws at oblique angles. Two lower canines curl out over her upper lip, giving her a comical look of perpetual ferocity.

She was little more than a baby factory and treated in ways that are heartbreaking to describe. Adopting her we thought would afford her the comfort and love she probably never had, and sorely deserved.

Given her problems - including brittle bones caused by having too many puppies - we expected to have Lindy maybe two years. As of today, it's past three and a half.

But she may not make it to four. Last week, a chronic cough caused by a heart murmur and related swelling of the pericardium grew much worse, making it more difficult for her to breathe and sometimes even move. The coughs are loud, raspy and deep, and they ripple through her body. Once occasional, now the coughs come in a series lasting a few minutes to almost an hour.

My wife and I lose sleep from the coughing; you can hear them through the house, and they're almost as tough to listen to as they are for a 9-pound dog to have.

The several veterinarians who have examined Lindy are certain this latest convulsing is the inevitable and irreversible next symptom of her condition. (The swelling pericardium is pressing against her windpipe.) Drugs that were prescribed to minimize the swelling have lost their effectiveness. And so, in a short time, this little girl who's always happy, even despite the awful coughs, will lose the shine in her eyes.

Lindy's old and frail, and susceptible to numerous maladies. Yet my wife and I like to think there's a miracle out there looking for someone deserving ... someone small and furry. So we keep hoping Lindy's next cough will be her last, her next pill will be unnecessary, and three and a half years will stretch to four, five or six.

And even if that happens, we'll still think the end has come too soon.


UPDATE: Lindy passed away just after 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 10. My wife and I were with her when she died peacefully after a long struggle with heart failure. Lindy leaves a huge hole in our home and hearts, but we take comfort in the joy she gave us, and we tried to give in return, in the short time she was a part of our family.

Late to the party

It figures. Just when I muster the courage to start a blog, the practice is past its peak. Makes me feel like the guy who was the last person on the block to buy a TV back in 1970.

Honestly, until now, I haven't wanted to spill my guts all down the front of the Web. Everyone else has and now it's all sticky, like a movie theater floor after the midnight show.

But blogs aren't just places to vent; they're nice places to store ideas. And photos. Lord knows I've run out of places to stash them.

Up to now, the majority of my Web traffic has been steered through STLtoday.com and Facebook, which are good but limiting. On the other hand, brevity is the soul of wit, so I risk appearing witless with all this space to play in.

I hope not to drift in that direction. You'll be sure to tell me when I do, right?