A Busy Weekend

Went into work with E. yesterday and will go in today again after we drop by our godson's birthday party. (He is also named E. Hmmmmm.)

A cable channel is going to film the installation of artificial turf -- the turf donated, perhaps because the cable channel is willing to film it; one thing seems to depend on the other -- at a city park, and (from my point of view) E. is the key player among the city bureaucracy in making it happen.

Others may disagree if they wish.

It's all tentative still. Anyway, she's on this seven days a week. No one else seems to be in the building when we go in on weekends, but it's a very large building. I sit in a conference room and keep an eye on things. I've go her back, ya know. I also grade, and my damn flu woes of the past -- lord, lord: past two months -- have put me behind in grading, so there's plenty to do.

Thank god for my feature writing class. They are all competent enough as writers and reporters that I am mostly praising and tweaking, which is happy work. But the reporting class (most of whom didn't know what they were getting into; why isn't it fun?) are fighting the fight that never ends against the demands of listening, seeing, thinking, getting nosy, getting pushy and then boiling it all down into a summary lead.

It certainly was neither my strength or my joy as a journalist, the old summary lead. Yet I think it is what I need to teach them, and I will do it even at the cost of mutual misery.

A small bravery but mine own.