Loitering in the newsroom.

That's what I'm doing now.

The lady of the manor decided out of nowhere to radically restructure her servants -- too many part time people costing her too much money. All the maids and cooks and the gardener -- that's me (or was) -- were basically let go with zero notice. She's hired a brother/sister who don't speak a word of English to work full time -- the brother outside, the sister inside. I'll still go back for plantings but I wonder how he's gonna do at maintaining the garden. Not my problem, now, and that's a blessing.

Charles has pulled me to work at Sissy's. I *way* prefer it. She's a lady. A *real* lady. My biggest worry with her is that I'm painfully un-fashion-conscious; but I get the impression that as long as I deal straight with her, she'll deal straight with me. Her garden is a labour of love on Charles' part, and she loves *being* in it. I *much* prefer working there. It just *feels* different.

Recorded David Barsamian giving a lecture on Iran last night. Good speech, but a cursed event. The PA system wasn't working. And good god, some of the people in the crowd! The normal crowd from the Peace and Justice Center and protests and such were there, but it's not them I'm talking about. (They were wonderful, as always.) There was a heckler who must have been some sort of Trostkyite, judging from what he was spouting. From his behaviour, I would not be surprised to hear he was smoking crack. Very disruptive. David was critical of the press, including NPR, of course. None of which I have the slightest problem with. (He's *doing* something to make radio *better*.) But with that crowd there were a bunch of people who I *never* see who obviously just crawled out of their holes for this single event. The kinds that *don't* see me covering all the events around town, who don't know who I am, who don't recognize my voice because they don't listen to the local news. The kinds of people who just see a mic and think "enemy".

I know. I've done that *once*. At one of the police riots in LA there was a guy from some AM station. We talked for a few minutes and I told him I had problems with the press. He said a lot of people did. He took the time to talk with me though, and I learned a lot. I stood *transfixed* as he called a live feed accurately describing the scene, which was fast spiralling into total chaos, in exactly 59 seconds. I told him I don't know what I would have done differently and we went our separate ways. I thought to myself, "now there's something I'd like to be able to do", and I'm working on getting there, still.

"When is this going to be broadcast?" is something I get asked all the time, and the answer is almost always "I don't know". Sometimes if it's an issue someone's involved in, they'll ask me to contact them before it airs and I am glad to try to do so, but my first priority is *always* to meet the deadline and get the actual piece on air. Sometimes I won't know until two minutes to air. And with something like this I need to discuss it with several people before a decision is made. A radio station's not just one person with a live mic saying anything they feel like saying any time of day. A couple of people last night were just plain downright rude when I told them I didn't know, and didn't want to hear why I did not. People who don't know how a radio station works, and don't understand that I can't take over the control room at gunpoint to rebroadcast a 98-minute lecture unedited.

Then there were the people who come up to you and say things like "you guys need to do a better job of covering issue X". Fair enough -- this kind of person wants something and can usually be made to tell us what they want us to do better. But sometimes not. Last night it was "not". Sometimes you have to just let people vent. Wouldn't help to ask questions that would just devolve into an argument. "So you mean the six-minute commentary we did day before yesterday, the ongoing coverage of it with stories that run about once a week, and the in-depth feature of it that we did six weeks ago to introduce the issue to listeners isn't enough? Do you even *listen* to the radio? Or do you just come out of nowhere with your issues and accuse the press of not covering it without knowing what you're talking about? Or *do* you in fact listen to the radio and just believe your pet issue is the *only* newsworthy thing on earth?"

When I casually mentioned "editing" in regards to the evening's lecture, one woman jumped on me as though she *knew* that I'd editing specifically to distort David's meaning. I tried to explain that the people he himself records for Alternative Radio (*great* show, btw) probably *don't* always just happen to talk for precisely 55 minutes, and that he himself *has to* edit. It's inherent to the medium. Useless. In some people's minds, the fact that we carry *any* NPR programming makes us -- everyone at the station, apparently, "the enemy".

Then there's the guy who was campaigning for Jason Call, who's planning to run in the Democratic Primary against Martin Heinrich for the CD 1 seat (currently held by Republican Heather Wilson). I'd spoken with Call himself at the Bush demonstration, and used a clip of him in my story. Was there a "thank you" from his minor functionary at last nighyt's event? No. Not that I expected one. But he started in on Call's platform, talking about nationalizing the oil companies. Fine. I said something to the effect that "that's a good issue to raise, a conversation that needs to happen", trying to give him an opening. He came at me like a bat out of hell: "It's not a CONVERSATION that needs to happen! WE NEED TO NATIONALIZE THE OIL COMPANIES! NOW!" All right. This conversation is *over*. As in, *now*. I'm serious, he started shouting in my face. I can talk to Mr. Call about it directly, but talking with this guy is useless. He's just a "true believer". Does he *really* think that even *if* Mr. Call wins the primary and then the CD 1 seat that as *one* person in the 435-member US Congress that his precious nationalization will just magically *happen*? Apparently he does.

This goes with the territory. I'll get used to it. But in the meantime I am *desperate* to get a *story*. Not just a "report" on what a visiting lecturer *said*.

Of course we may still use the Barsamian lecture. There was some really good stuff in it. But I don't know when, or how, and *won't* until I've talked with several people. And it *will* be edited. Get used to it. If you don't like it, volunteer at the station and make it better.

Busy news day.

I wake up waiting for a "yea" or "nay" on whether I can cover this or that story.

First sound in my ears from the radio as I wake up:

"Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is expected to resign..."

Enough said. I'm out of bed, incapable of sleeping further, on my way to the station to get a recording kit without permission and head out to Bush's appearance at the fundraiser for Senator Domenici, who set the whole chain of events in motion leading up to this historic resignation, regardless what happens.

Of course, because of what's happened, the Governor is running late flying out of Crawford. Of course, I'm running early.

I know a thing or two about how to try and get in to tightly controlled events like this. Hell, I knew Governor Bush before he had to be protected by the secret service. (Doesn't work. Fine, then. He's "not available for comment".) I gather up the recording equipment I need and head out to the site several hours early, before the cops stop people from walking up and down the road (without stopping drivers. Go figure.).

I call the newsroom a couple of times from the site. At this point I don't know whether or not Damon Scott -- a journalism major/work-study -- has gotten credentialled by the White House to cover the event from inside or not. I hope he has, with visions of "bookended" "inside/outside" stories running off eachother dancing my in my head. He hasn't been credentialled, it turns out, because they're not issuing press passes for this event at all. It's totally secret -- you have to pay a thousand bucks to Senator Domenici's re-election campaign to even get in the door.

Damon tried -- and tried -- like five times -- to get the Senator to comment on the fundraiser. No luck. Domenici's office would not return his calls, and the Senator was always "unavailable". Likewise he had no luck trying to get Larry Abraham, the mayor of Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, to comment on the fundraiser happening at his own house. Both referred him to the White House Press Office, which he duly contacted, and got nothing in response except a "when and where" type press release.

We tried *repeatedly* to get "the other side". They stonewalled. They just flat-out refused to comment, or even return our calls. Thus when I went out to the event, there *was* no "other side" to *get* besides that of the protestors. That and Bernalillo County Sherriff's officers telling people to stand off the pavement, a few hundred yards from the entrance to Mayor Abraham's property. There *were* some pro-Bush people directly oppposite the gate to Mayor Abraham's property, standing on their own property, which unverified rumour had as the Rainoceks, the owners of Frontier Restaurant, where I used to work. But the police would just not let us through, not even to interview them. I tried. Way to go, on a day NPR reports confidence in the Administration hitting "Watergate lows". (If *ever* there were a time to open to the press, or even court it, THIS WAS IT, unless you had something to hide.)

Protestors spoke, for the most part, very well. They were aware of Gonzales' resignation just a few minutes before, and overwhelmingly called for Senator Domenici to resign, as well. The sense of the hour was that the whole administration was collapsing in a way no administration has collapsed since Nixon's.

Is there another angle on this? Certainly. There are probably dozens. But no one from the administration, and no one from Senator Domenici's office, would discuss it with us; while the cops wouldn't even let me walk over to interview the handful of pro-Bush demonstrators standing on their own property.

We had to run with the story we had. In the wake of Gonzales' resignation, the Senator's office refused to comment, beyond a press release bemoaning A.G. Gonzales' "situation", which the Senator himself helped create with his call to David Iglesias, which Iglesias perceived as "pressure" to pursue untenable prosecutions of Democratic Party-affiliated institutions.

Damon showed up to the protest a couple of hours after I did. (I showed up *way* early 'cause I know how these things run, from Crawford, Texas, to Los Angeles, California.) He got several interviews of his own. I'd already gotten several of my own. We coordinated to make sure we didn't interview the same people -- we didn't. He headed out before I left. I should have asked him for his windscreen since I didn't have one fo my mic -- but oh well. (Such are the joys of community radio.) I'd done all the interviews I would that day, regardless, by the time the wind kicked up.

As soon as I left, I got word that the presidential motorcade had left Kirtland Air Force Base. Tough decision, but not *too* tough. I knew the protestors would hardly get to see the motorcade because of how the White House has insulated the Governor. But I had to get back to the station to edit what simply *had to* be a story for the evening news. No one seemed prepared to do civil disobedience -- like lie down in the road of the oncoming motorcade -- so there was nothing for me to do but head back to download and edit.

I did so. When Damon showed up I was tasked with guiding him through the download and editing process. He's a journalism major, but specializing in print. So he knows what he's doing in terms of how to conduct interviews. But when it comes to editing "tape", it's a whole different world, technologically speaking. (I put "tape" in quotes because it isn't really tape. It's all digital, now.) He's done live feeds from the field, and is pretty damn good at that, as his tapes attested. A fair bit of his tape is very good stuff of him speaking, describing the scene, as if it were all live. Totally different from how I do things. But for the purpose of this story we've got to use both our interviews and combine them in a single narrated story in a few hours' time. He's got a great style. But with a deadline looming before which, in adition to editing the story, I'm kind of put in charge of training Damon on how to edit his tape (in addition to editing my own), this is just not the time to change the whole station's way of reporting.

I edit and transcribe my own clips in front of him, verbally justifying every cut, then let him loose to do his own.

He does his own, and we wind up with three cuts.

Steve says it's not enough. He wants five minutes. I'm *always* glad to have more time to play with, but the three cuts we've got really are *just* the best. Winds up Jim's working on an interview he did with David Iglesias, the US Attorney who was pressured by Senator Domenici in the first place before Attorney General Gonzales fired him, which ultimately led to Attorney General Gonzales' resignation. The "bookend" won't be "inside the fundraiser"/"outside", it'll be "Iglesias"/"protestors", because no one inside the fundraiser will talk to us. I want Damon to write and voice the piece, but with five minutes to play with, it kind of falls to me -- winds up newbies in the newsroom do short stories. (Hence my coverage of the legislature a few months ago, the cardinal lesson of which seems to have been "first, be concise".) But with two guys in the field and no one returning phone calls, this is just way too big a story for two minutes. OK.

I edit my own sound, then Damon edits his. He "gets" it. Fast. Editing out "uhms" is fair (usually), and desirable (usually) but is sometimes impossible on purely technical grounds. Other times it's central to the speaker's statement -- showing how they're thinking as they speak. But you *never* want to change the *meaning* of what your speaker is saying. Both of our interviews wind up in the story. He has to leave at four, so by default, I wind up doing the final edit and script.

Steve helps tremendously with rewrite as I find myself rapidly falling into the trap of "He agrees/She disagrees, but otherwise agrees". BORING. He gets me into "writing" it -- not just introducing one voice after another, but taking the time to breathe and say where I am, what's going on. It's a luxury I'm not accustomed to, at this point. But I'm glad to have it. It's the difference between "he said/she said" and "this is what happened: YOU ARE THERE".

Then Jim jumps in -- with a story of his own to finish -- and in about five minutes solves all my multitrack editing woes. I *still* edit way too close. Too tight. To save those precious hundredths of seconds. I do go overboard -- airtime is priceless, yes, but people don't want to get peppered with Walter Winchell's delivery, which is really best suited to utterly trivial stories. They need to have "breath-time" to *understand* what's being thrown at them.

Jim loosened it up. Big time. By the miracles in editing that only he can work, the story got "loosened up" but *still* somehow wound up two seconds shorter than what I'd had. Thanks therefore go to both Steve and Jim. Whatever "story" I got wouldn't have worked like it did without both of their taking the time out to help me, between twenty and five minutes to air, when they had their own stories on deadline. And weather. The story was finished right then. Steve was literally on air when the file got saved to the folder it needed to be in.

Thanks also go, obviously, to Damon, without whose interviews I wouldn't have been able to fill even four minutes. It may be me saying my name "for KUNM" at the end of the story, but it's *not* just *my* work, all alone. Without everyone else's help it would have been *far* weaker than it is. (And I'm still *barely* satisfied with it.) The facts reported would have been the same. But as it turns out, it's not weak, it's not dry -- and the credit for that goes to three other people I worked with. That, as I see it, is the *meaning* of "community radio". I eagerly look forward to the day that I contribute more to a story than I take public credit for.

Is that *maybe* why literally dozens of awards for journalism wind up sitting in a cabinet instead of hung up on the walls?

A motorcycle cop was killed in the presidential motorcade when he hit a curb, then a tree. The papers and TV of course were filled with that, the day after it happened. But those motorcade cops drive crazy. Second time a motorcade cop has died on Bush visiting Albuquerque.

Bush doesn't have to do anything more than come to town for people to die. Do these things happen in other parts of the country? I wonder.

At the end of the day it was, I think, one of the best sounding news broadcasts we've had in a *very* long time. I'm grateful, glad, and proud to have had a hand in it. With the new format -- no discrete "Evening Report", but local and regional stories interspersed throughout NPR's national news -- I think we've run the risk of losing coherence as far as local/regional news goes. Yesterday, I firmly believe, we got it back. It was a *totally* coherent news package, very adeptly broadcast.

Alas, this doesn't come through in my story on its own -- it only comes through on the air. But that's the point. Regardless. Here's the story:

Bush Visits New Mexico

How Sam gets these things up online so fast is beyond my capability to start to understand. And here's a *very* wonkish story you would have to follow state politics extremely closely -- or be paid by the state --- to even begin to pretend to care about:

State Treasurer Lewis Reports on Commission Findings

And here's one I didn't think would make it to the web: the story that convinced me, finally, of the importance of getting the other side, where I treated a whole category of phone companies like they were elves, faeries, or leprochauns:

Inquiry Opens Into Inmate Phone Service Provisions

Not my best work, that! Not by a long shot! But it *is* what got me *serious* about this. It's not a game. It's not a hobby. It's deadly serious, and deserves my full attention. (File above story under "lessons learned).

I'm posting all out of order, if you can't tell. That's a good thing. It means I'm putting more attention and effort into making stories than posting them.

Training wheels: off.

Rachel wasn't even in the building when I did last night's broadcast.

I was on my own. No training wheels at all.

Screwed up only once when I said Steve Shadley would host tomorrow's "Morning Edition". Whoops. Apologies to Elaine Bamgertel, who's actually hosting ME, these days. Might as well as said "Tom Trowbridge", or for that matter, "Ed Murrow". DUH. Noted it on the non-equipment log, hope it's not a big deal. Otherwise was minor stuff -- "talking too loud, too fast, have had too much coffee" over "music bed too low". Live and learn. I love radio.

Governor Bush comes to town tomorrow.

Might cover the protests.

That's all I've got for now.

Dead air.

Not on my shift. Not that I'm gloating -- these things are kinda out of the control of the operator, until (s)he notices 'em. I'm sure I'll have my chance with this sort of thing soon enough.

A glitch in the programming during "Alternative Radio" featuring Tariq Ali:

Last thing I heard: "slums in Tehran".

Next thing I heard: "hispanic population in this country".

Inbetween there was some fast-forwarding of the CD -- on air -- not that I wouldn't panic under the circumstances and forget to turn off the module and hit the CUE channel before trying to skim through to about wherever what was just playing stopped playing. Also some music, which was nice.

But it was a couple of minutes of music, tops. Awkward, but not earth shattering.

I wonder if they had a backup running. It wasn't a *perfect* save, but it *was* saved pretty quick compared to some of what I've heard happen on air at other times!

I sure am glad I'm not there in CR to take the crazy calls -- "it's obviously a worldwide conspiracy involving the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the Freemasons, the oil companies, the skull and crossbones society, NPR, Florida voters, and of course, the hispanic population in this country to prevent something from being aired that THEY didn't want us to hear".

Not that I don't take callers seriously -- but anytime there's real technical difficulty, there's always *someone* listening who is convinced it's *way* damn bigger than it really is.

Apologies to whoever was running the shift -- I don't mean to rub anything in, but just to "think out loud" on my own listening to the radio. It's just a matter of time before I have to handle something like that, and I need to know what I must do. It helps to hear other people's mistakes just like it helps to hear my own.

I just hope you got a good laugh out of it once you got off the air. :)

Fun day.

Last time I went a day without smoking at the station I found "Tracy's
Uranium Story" and a week later had my first half hour special.

Today -- much the same thing. At the station, puttering around, NOT
SMOKING, and Steve hands me a story he hasn't had a chance to cover.
We figure (initially) it'll be a ten minute phone call, then a
soundclip or two for a cut and copy. Winds up being a 2:18 standalone
piece about State Treasurer James Lewis' "Blue Ribbon Commission" on
IT problems which have led to State workers not getting paid, among
other things.

Uncovered something interesting in researching stuff online today.
Made a connection I don't think anyone else has, just about facts in
the public domain. I need to check and double check and triple check.
It's possibly *that* big, and it would be a scoop for KUNM if it's
true.

There was a moment today that reminded me of that great scene in "All
the President's Men" when Robert Redford's calling around tracking
down money and contributors to Nixon's reelection fund and then he
asks *the* right question and the other end of the phone just goes
completely dead silent. That happened *twice* to me today, *just* like
that! One minute, everything's all chatty cathy, the next minute it's
just half a step shy of "you'll hear from my lawyer". I may be on to
something really neat.

Now if only I could get the blogger "new post" page to load -- thanks
to alltel's *fabulous* connection, it's only taken 54 minutes so far.

Random stories.

Response to the Uranium special seems, so far, to be largely positive. I've heard we've had "a lot" of requests for hard copies of the story. Don't hold your breath for me to get a gold record or anything; it's probably just someone from the NRC, someone from an anti-nuke group, and some random other person. But if anyone's complained, I haven't heard of it -- which I'm a little surprised (and honestly a little disappointed!) by. Live and learn -- next time I'll be sure to call someone a dirty name -- within the bounds of FCC acceptability, of course.

A news anchor I deeply respect -- enough *not* to mention his name in this context -- just happened to be talking about that football playing prick from wherever down south tonight when he said "dogfarting charges" instead of "dogfighting charges". While I did indeed nearly choke to death laughing at this, it gives me some hope that I might get really good, myself -- and also warns me that no matter how good I get, on-air flubs *will* happen! And even an old burnt-out animal rights type person like myself can honestly say, under oath, "I never knew dogfarting was a crime".

I guess that's why I'm a reporter instead of a lawyer. :)

And since having a couple of ON AIR shifts myself, I've begun to truly *master* the art of "yelling at the radio". NPR had some hip-hop music review at the end of All Things Considered tonight which I ignored except to notice that the little 11 year old Brazillian girl or whatever it was that was singing REALLY JUST PLAIN OLD GOT ON MY NERVES. (I don't *know* what her politics are, but she sounds blonder than Monroe, making me wonder why we're wasting priceless national airtime on this -- to get a "younger" audience? At the bottom of the hour? Puhlease.) I only yelled at the radio once -- but it was perfectly synched with the broadcast delay. Basically I told her ENOUGH ALREADY and whaddaya know? She shut up. Then and there. The moral of this story? It pays to have an innate sense of timing. Or maybe, one's sense of timing is heightened by doing local weather reports. Who knows?

I love radio. That's all I know, and I'm stickin' to my story.

Meanwhile, back at EQNM (the out-of-state based organization masquerading as a grassroots in-state LGBT rights organization), I'm sent a mass email which includes the following choice phrases:

Thank you too all the amazing volunteers that collected Legislative cards at the 16th Annual Zia Rodeo.

If you our interested in joining our team please contact chris@eqnm.org (Italics, mine.)

Is it any wonder we don't have marriage equality in New Mexico? Might it be that our legislators just don't take us seriously when we demonstrate that we can't spell at a third-grade level even when communicating amongst ourselves? (Huh -- maybe "ho-mo-sex-eew-all-itty" *is* some sort of genetic "in-fan-til-eye-zay-shun".)

Is it any wonder EQNM goes back to the state legislature year after year fighting for less and less every time, even knowing that severely curtailed "states' civil unions" legislation will just open the way up for Representative Gloria Vaughn to push her redefinition of marriage into state law? They can't even bother to run their mass emails past someone in the office who can both read and write, even though they share office space with the ACLU, where I presume a fair number of lawyers may be present during office hours.

I shouldn't be surprised that they get so severely tunnelvisioned that they fail to see the context within which they're fighting for -- whatever it is they're fighting for. Less and less, as time passes, that's for sure. Thanks loads, but I can cry out "no, please don't!" against the rednecks throwing beer bottles at my head from pickup trucks without contributing funds or volunteer time to your effort to make yourself look good for doing the same, as though so doing somehow made you "radical".

Apparently they depend on spell check programs. Fine with me. Next time they want someone to walk precincts for them, they can depend on the "precinct check" program. I sure won't be there.

They got me to the roundhouse in 2004, and for that reason alone I won't ever stop listening to what they have to say. But it was basically them on the Thursday Morning's "Call In" show that got me up there. In the time that's ensued, I've come to see there's *much* more that happens at the roundhouse than the highly scripted nonprofit legislative morning theatre.

Arcie Chapa (spelling?) may indeed have occasional weak shows when she hasn't had the time to research an issue, but you know what? She's the reason I got involved. That means KUNM. Not EQNM. I know where my bread's buttered.

All the time and effort and passion and love and desperation that I give to KUNM could be EQNM's. But they've proven themselves unworthy. Astroturf activists for hire, in my eyes.

If it's not obvious by now I have a vested interest in the whole "marriage"/"civil unions" issue which has refused to die these last few years, and probably will not be covering it.

High as a kite.

Just passed my broadcast certification test. Like it or not, I'm now officially a radio broadcaster. Had some interesting moments tonight in the Control Room, while writing out scripts to go on air five minutes away and timing them for the breaks literally thinking "jeezus -- Edward R. Murrow did this. Daniel Schorr did this. Back in the thirties. Some things just never change." (I never said I don't suffer delusions of grandeur -- now only if we could get the Germans to start bombing London again, I'd find myself a nice rooftop!)

To quote Steve Shadley -- "not only do they let me drive, they let me talk on the radio. What a country!"

Hosted "This American Life", "All Things Considered" and "Radio Theatre" tonight. The more I'm in the control room the greater my confidence becomes, and it comes through loud and clear on air. No trouble hitting the right buttons and sliders tonight -- biggest "goof" was starting the 5:38:30 weather forecast at 5:38:27, since that's when the funding credit clearly ended. I got itchy and sorta jumped the gun. Result? The music bed on the satellite feed from NPR changed three seconds into my weather. Not terribly smooth, but no biggie -- that's how you learn.

Next biggest mistake, which I discovered on hearing my aircheck, was basically having one of my music beds too low, since I was watching the meters more than listening to myself at the time. Third biggest was not having enough stuff scripted for one of my 30 second breaks, and saying the call letters *twice* in the same break, once at the beginning, once at the end -- better too often than not enough, but it would be obvious to critical listeners that I just ran out of things to say and fell back on "legal ID". There's always room for improvement and fine tuning, and I think at least my intent was correct: no one wants to hear music blaring *over* a soft-spoken announcer, and struggle to hear the weather, which is way more important than the underlying music which just serves to relax listeners (and me).

Otherwise, things went pretty smoothly -- even managed having my own music beds beneath my voice. The last break, I swear, sounded like I was having a party in the control room, what with the funky Hammond B3 as I forward-announced the next couple of programs, just slopping over with near-lunatic enthusiasm encouraging our listeners to stay tuned for a great evening of interesting, engaging programs. (If the announcer sounds interested, he may interest the listeners in staying tuned. If the announcer's just "holding down the fort" for his shift, listeners will probably tune out when the program they're listening to ends. At least that is my theory and I'm sticking with it -- part of my job is to keep them glued to their receivers long after I've signed off the log.)

Took my first call from a listener, too; a guy who *really* disliked one of NPR's promos. Recommended he get in touch with the program director, which I understand is the proper thing to do, and logged his comment in the non-equipment log. He *really* wanted to talk about how this promo for tomorrow's Morning Edition story was "militaristic". Uhm -- maybe it was, maybe it wasn't; I honestly don't know! I was in no position to agree or disagree with him, since at the time it was airing I was busy yelling "STANDBY" down the hall to the youngsters who seemed to be throwing a party in the music library and preparing to go on air, memorizing the order in which I had to manipulate various buttons and sliders on board, and breathing deeply so I wouldn't sound like Walter Winchell ("FLASH!!!JoanMansfieldDiesInHorrificCarCrash!!!"). All I know about the promo is that I heard the word "Iran". The exchange was surprisingly pleasant -- I just kept in mind that a few years ago it might have been *me* calling up the control room to complain about NPR, so I took him seriously, told him who to get in touch with, explained that I hadn't really heard it since I was running the board, and logged his comment. Listener feedback *does* count. (In retrospect, I should have given him Jeffrey Dvorkin's number, probably.)

Here's the link to my half-hour Uranium special, which aired Thursday:

NRC May Be Changing its Uranium Mining Regulations

now available, thanks to Sam and Craig, as an mp3 file. (Way better than the RealAudio streaming thing they used to use, IMO.)

We have *way* complicated weather reports on KUNM. It's not just current conditions and forecasts for Albuquerque, because our listening area's huge, as this state goes. The main transmitter's well placed high atop Sandia Crest, where the signal goes out to most of the flat lands surrounding the mountain ridge. Then the signal gets rebroadcast at different frequencies through several different translators, providing coverage for outlying areas in different terrains. So weather's never just about *one* place -- it's about five or six different places with sometimes wildly different conditions. Five places will be fine (e.g., "continued partly cloudy with chances of precipitation tapering off near the end of the week") but that sixth will be expecting catastrophic hailstorms and we *have to* get that information out to listeners affected. Lucky for me it was nothing so dramatic today, but hearing the weather's a basic public service our listeners in *all* areas have a right to *expect*.

Finally -- I posted some cameraphone pictures that have been cluttering my cellphone on the RMC Supplement. Enjoy.

Air check.

Finally listened to my air check -- the CD I made of myself on air last Sunday.

I sounded like a goddamned newbie! You could tell I was trying to be all chatty conversational but was nervous. I'll improve. I played one cart over the music from the satellite feed, which would have been fine, if the cart didn't have sound effects. Whoops! And I kept sliding up the wrong CD player, so the nifty music I'd chosen to back up my weather forecast wasn't there. And then I coined the term "percicipitation". But everything got done that needed to be done. I'll improve. It helps to go back and listen later.

TOMORROW: Thursday, 16 August, at 6:30 PM, KUNM presents a half-hour news special. Public testimony from the meeting of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is considering a Generic Environmental Impact Statement for in-situ leach mining of Uranium.

Guess who gathered the sound and did all the production. I canhardly wait to get the angry calls. ;^)

The cabinet cleaner.

Mi3ke -- thanks for the good wishes! Sorry about the confusion, I haven't been blogging the last several days. I'll now officially try and avoid saying anything *terribly* mean about KOB.

3dMike -- great to hear from you! And sorry about the confusion -- but dude, if you *ever* get back to the palace you'll have a warm reception of at least the few of us who do remain.

Weasel -- great to hear from you! And sorry about the confusion -- and, well, jeez. Talk about flubbing the blog. It's been five eventful, gloriously eventful days since last I have bothered.

Tueday: News Department meeting. Don't remember what was on the wires, I think Heather Wilson was visiting Sevilleta or something. For whatever reason -- probably because I wanted the coffee, and wanted *not* to smoke, having just run out of cigarttes, I play around in Audition for a while without accomplishing anything. Then I go to the cabinet in the newsroom to get I don't even rememer what, now. Maybe the printer needed ink. Apparently I had to move something else out of the way to get whatever it was I needed, because I tore the place apart and put it back together. First one shelf, then one whole side of a cabinet, then the whole cabinet, then the whole room. It was an organizing fury.

It was a mess. Years of people just throwing things in there. Cassettes of award-winning news stories underneath things that could crack or completely destroy them. Empty boxes and near-emmpty boxes. HUNDREDS (maybe thousands!) of colour-coded cellophane rolodex card protectors -- guess they must have been on sale when everyone started using computers. Literally piles of awards and a handful of frames from when someone decided to hang 'em and then gave up halfway through. Three Marantz professional tape recorders, which I'm sure still work fine. Dozens of batteries in sizes we don't use anymore, and very few of those in boxes, dead and live all mixed together, which I only know 'cause I found a battery tester, as well. Printer ribbons. Dozens of 'em, for printers we can not have possibly had since the '80s. Even less useful than the falling-apart box of uniquely useless wires.

I'm sure every radio station on earth has one of these. I have one of these at home. You know: headphones that come "included" with consumer electronics, wires with "play" and "stop" buttons, obsolete, or worse, proprietary connectors, the occasional wiretapping device that doesn't work and you wonder how got into the house in the first place, wires that split cables in ways cables ought never be split, et cætera. But of course, you can't GET RID of it. All that, I gave a place. Far out of sight. Where it belongs.

Tons of usable minidisks. (No more racing to the station to make Rachel hunt one down for me because I have to be in Santa Fe in forty minutes.) Same thing with CDs. Lots of brand new pens and notebooks, a coffeepot, a digital camera, and all the basic things we really *need*. Lots of it. Just buried under clutter. Clutter creates drama.

And then there were the treasures. The news archives, on CD, going back to 1999. Sam's spent a good bit of time organizing them. Still got a ways to go -- they're literally in milk crates and boxes -- but at least now they're all out from under his legs. (We should get a rack.) I had no clue Sam had organized the archives! He never told anyone. I figured those boxes were just "there". He's so quiet and unassuming. Seems like just some sort of goofy guy. In fact he is our archivist. Who would have guessed?

And then at the very bottom, in back, one reel of tape from 1971 with what appears to be a story about Vietnam. I handed it over to Trisan who seems to have made that a project of his own, and it should be getting dubbed shortly. The tape's in good hands.

And then, my prize, for having cleaned the cabinet. A three-ring binder marked "Tracy's Uranium Story".

A whole binder for one story? How odd, I think. I'd never seen *anyone* do that before. But it makes perfect sense, expecially if there's a lot of information, or handouts involved. Curious to see how she used this unreporterly implement, and always interested in "stories" about "uranium", I open it up.

It is a treasure trove of information. I immerse myself, deeply, in this archived reporter's notes on a controversy that played out in 2001 surrounding proposed Uranium mining in the Four Corners region, near the Navaho reservation. Scrawled notes -- leads to follow up on -- contacts -- key players, and eventually, a narrative developing from that huge, tangled mass of facts. All in one place. The whole process. Start to finish.

Among other things, I'm interested in chemicals and radiation. so when I see a story about saltcedar elimination that mentions Imazapyr by name, I do a little looking into it, and print out what interests me. And when I find a note that indicates the Nuclear Energy Act of 1954 is relevant, I look it up and print it out. (In this case, only to find out that the NRC website has been "recently redesigned" to hide this 53 year old public legislation.) Eventually I've got a little stack of papers and -- hm, sure would make sense to put 'em in a binder with a tab, now wouldn't it?

It fell into my hands -- it gave me the idea -- it captured my imagination and held me spellbound late at night for *hours* in the newsroom -- BECAUSE I WAS THE ONE WHO CLEANED THE CABINET. Shortly before daybreak, I set it aside and went home to sleep lightly.

Two days later, the story that hasn't been NEWS since 2001 comes back to life, on a day I happened to be shadowing Rachel in Control. I don't think Jim even knows I'm there that day when he forwards Rachel some copy about a hearing about -- you guessed it -- Uranium mining.

I actually edit *his* rewrite, for once. Just some tiny factual thing or another I happen to know because I had just spent an evening as fascinated by descriptions of a process as someone else might feel reading a novel. I decide I *must* cover the upcoming hearing. Not since my drainpipe in Los Alamos days have things come to me like *that*. It's magic.

I'm thrilled when my shift with Rachel is done to see Jim's also emailed me asking if I'm interested in covering a hearing. I jump on it. We are on the same page. I already have been working on it for two days, effectively. I am compelled. I keep researching, until at some point I realize -- enough. At precisely 2 Pm, each further thing I look at starts to lead me *away* from the story. I go a little down this or that rabbit hole and -- nope. Come back. Or barely get the whiff of red herring and -- nope. Come back.

The story is *one thing*. Not seventeen zillion things and the metathings of their interconnectedness and relation. I write out questions ahead of time -- a practice I have done far, far too little. Two different sets of questions for two different sets of people, in fact. I get there and nothing -- *nothing* goes according to how I expected. It didn't matter. I was prepared.

Jim wants 4:50 "on the nose".

I've got 3h30 of tape to download from three minidisks, in real time, and eight hours total between the end of the hearing and deadline.

I get it in at 4:48 with seven minutes to air the last morning drivetime break of the week.

I enjoyed doing this story like I have enjoyed no other to date.

New Uranium Mining in Four Corners Debated

3-D Mike? Is that you!?

I can't think of anyone else I know who might comment anonymously on a post of mine about the radio, and talk about "hte air", and then sign off anything even remotely like "Mi3ke".

If it *is* you, welcome back to the world of the more-or-less living!

We still meet at flem's -- when he's up -- which is mostly Saturdays around, uhm, 10 PM your time, I think. (Nine mountain's all I know -- I've ceased to pretend to know what that translates to in terms of other time zones.) Show up fashionably late and you won't miss anything worth not missing.

Join us sometime, won't you? PLEASE!? We're increasingly desperate. Palace is still dying, but not yet quite dead. My email address is in my profile if worst comes to worst. I have several old ones for you, but they seem to keep changing.

We'd all love to see you again, or even just hear from you again, regardless.

Broadcast training: at the helm.

Trained with Rachel Kaub today. AMAZING experience! Had physical control of the signal for most of the shift I will likely start working. That's the best way to learn -- going through the exact motions of that shift so they get "natural".

Total adrenaline rush going on mic as she ceded control of the board to me and stepped back just to save me if and when I needed it. (Of course she had things organized, to start with, as she began the shift, and told me lots and lots.) Just as natural as anything, I sorta magically wound up standing in front of the operator's mic with things to play and things to say one minute before they needed playing and saying. If I'd frozen up completely she could have jumped in but I didn't.

It's all about learning the mechanics -- kinesthætically -- of knowing where *everything* is and how to work it. Basic ergonomics, same as with cooking. Where your eyes need to be -- usually *not* on the faders (where your hands are) but on the clock. Things are timed to the second, and if you're late on anything you can throw everything off for hours for other hosts. Music hosts can take it a little easier, aside from transitions and with regard to when carts are played. They can also afford to be gracious about mistakes if something doesn't "fire", or goes offline. A scratch in a record is "sorry about that, now how about some of this?". But a CD that stops playing 37 minutes into an hour-long public affairs show can cause a complex cascade of failures that destroy an entire afternoon's programming. With news programming, tolerances are *always* to-the-second, and multiple redundancies are the *rule*.

Which is why I had a sense of the world ending as I stood there. Thirty seconds I could play with -- tell the weather, say -- instead I have the mic turned off in front of me, and am discussing what to say on air. 45 -- 46 -- 47 -- 48 -- WHOA!, turn it on and SAY SOMETHING!!! People are expecting it. And the FCC has rules about station identification, you know.

"This is KUNM, Albuquerque." Wow. Two whole words more than the legally required minimum.

Trick is to practice, practice, practice, preferably *the* same shift(s) I actually intend to do, until it's second nature. Once I know what's where, it *is* easy. But when you're live on air and realise you're screwing up, looking down to the fader, in itself, *won't* help you! Knowing that the thing to do is move it this or that way *will*. The dumb, inanimate object that the fader is, it is incapable even of staring back at you inertly, or saying "you want ME to tell YOU what to do!?".

Made two simple mistakes on air today that if I'd been listening would have set me off to yelling at the radio about incompetent nincompoops running the station. Both were different aspects of the same exact basic problem: not knowing where to look, and having my hands in the wrong place at the right time. So the first time I had some crazy "flight of the bumblebee" thing on accordion going as background music, and I'm already giddy when I fade up the mic to talk over the music, because damn it, it *is* an extra thing to keep track of, but announcing sounds *way* better with music than without, so I've got to learn to do it, and *right*, and the sooner, the better. I wind up fading the music out -- for what reason, I haven't the foggiest notion. My brain was telling my hand "no! no! no!", but my hand wouldn't stop. I doubt it's pathological, though. My hands, eyes, brain, and ears are just in four different places all at once and trying to coordinate things in ways that are almost *completely* novel to my senses. (Imagine ballroom dancing, mixing cement, talking on the telephone, and researching the mating habits of fruit flies -- not all at the same time, exactly, but within successive miniscule, precise windows of time in which you can do *one* of those things, only, in a very certain order. It's like that.) Live mixing. Live miking. Combined. ON AIR. In the ears of possibly tens of thousands of listeners.

I realize I'd done it wrong (turning the music bed off) but had to keep talking. Having a written script made *all* the difference, here! I do not have to *think* about what to say, I simply have to read the words off my piece of paper. There's a moment when the mic goes live when I get this feeling of the deepest, most profound fear and obligation all at once. First the fear: I'm talking, live, to probably tens of thousands of people. What to say? Then the obligation, which is nothing short of sacred: I have something to tell them. I have to tell them. Something. But what? (The script helps.)

In training they keep drilling it in: "a legal ID at the top or bottom of the hour consists of the call letters and station location". Today, I found out, first hand, *why* it's being drilled in! You can get on mic and have your mind go completely and totally blank. Legal ID is your life preserver. Once you grab onto it and start talking, it's *easy*. But talking to people and going through motions your body's hardly ever gone through before, live, to do things that are profoundly counterintuitive because of the sheer technological sophistication involved, *and* doing several different things at once, I goof up and turn the music off. (It's not a *super* big deal -- not like failing to air an underwriter's credit, but it *does* affect the quality of broadcast. In short, it doesn't sound professional. Not that this isn't community radio, but I WANT my broadcasts to SOUND GOOD.)

Rachel reaches over and turns the background music back on, with the weird end result that the music started, went away after I started talking, and then came back, out of nowhere. This is where I start to break up, on mic, comletely giddy. Somehow, I don't know how, I finish the announcement about what's coming next, squeeze the final words of the legal ID out, turn the mic off, and move on to have my laughing fit and do my ecstatic little happy-dance *off* air.

The second mistake was fading up the satellite feed on asubsequent break briefly because the SAT control module was right next to the CD-4 control module I *wanted* to play for a music bed. So -- whoops! -- there was a little very soft speaking from the satellite feed before I heard it, freaked out, looked down, and was SAVED by the post-it notes with numbers and arrows showing me what to play first, second, third, and so forth. End result? It sounded like someone was being trained on board. It sounded dumb, but everything that needed to get broadcast did.

That's the tricky thing, and why you have to *know* by *feel* where *everything* you'll ever use is: you never know in what order you're going to use the controls until *everything* is set up and ready to go -- all the carts (with various kinds of announcements on minidisks), a music CD cued (instrumentals only) for emergency backup at ALL times, and finally, the source of the actual programming going on air, which may be a CD, a minidisk, a computer file, a satellite feed, or one of maybe half a dozen other possibilities, and if possible, a backup program feed should be running simultaneously on a separate module, synched *exactly* to the main feed going on air. (That last one gets overlooked a lot, but it *can* mean the difference between what listeners will perceive as a "glitch" in a program, and complete chaos if for some unpredictable reason the sound source gets knocked off the air. Having backup sources is, in my opinion, mission critical: nothing ruins a day for me, as a listener, quuite like having looked forward to a promising-sounding weekly show only to hear the meat of it reduced to dead air followed minutes later by music.)

The trick is that *usually* you *can't* have the board set up, say, so you go from left to right, across the board. For carts you can. For CDs you can. But when you're taking multiple sounds and putting them on air in rapid succession from different *kinds* of sources, you have to *know* that the satellite feed is the third slider module from the right, and CD-4 is the fourth, and you have to *know*, as naturally and confidently as like you don't watch your feet when walking, where they *are* beneath your fingertips. Hence the post-it notes, at least until I get the "feel" of it. 1, 2, 2', 3, 4. They're "training wheels". And you have to plan out your next break as soon as you come out of your last break. Then, and only then, are you free to listen to the show, or deal with others in the room, let people into the building, answer the phone, search for music, write scripts, backup the next show, or whatever else have you. At least that's my understanding.

The signal is *everything*.

The whole thing is easier than driving, or riding a bicycle, to hit all the basic legal and contractual requirements. You play the right things at the right time and have backup plans (the more the better) so when something *does* go wrong, you can *usually* prevent a cascade of related failures leading to dead air. (It's not *always* avoidable -- the station was off the air for three hours this morning because of a power outage in the building that knocked Control, C, and the Studio-Transmitter Link all offline at once. Probably no one at the operator level could have prevented that.)

But between being a warm body in the control room, casually pressing buttons to make necessary things happen, and being a veritable *presence* on the air, there is a *world* of difference, and KNOWING WHAT ALL THOSE BUTTONS AND SLIDERS THAT LOOK ALIKE ACTUALLY DO, AND WHERE THEY ARE, AND HOW THEY WORK is the first and possibly biggest, most important hurdle to cross. Buttons and switches affect eachother's functions in complicated, counterintuitive ways that have non-obvious logic underlying their interoperations. (E.g., hitting a simple "Off" button can (a) close a channel path, (b) cue a source, or (c) *play* a source, depending how its associated sliders and sources and inputs and outputs are set.) *Knowing* the signal path -- basically inputs and outputs -- is crucial. The LS (Line Source) modules are the only nonobvious ones where that's concerned, because it's through the LS channels that you get sound from computers and external mics and other studios and stuff. And watching your output levels. And watching the time -- to the *second*. And sounding good on the mic.

Rachel is *incredibly* fun to work with. She is apparently *always* calm and at very least pleasant, while overseeing a mind-bogglingly complex set of operations. She is here at all hours, and *always* on call, like a doctor, should something go terribly wrong. She is also uproariously funny. I think she's affected like I am by being in Control.

Beyond being energizing, I think it is *impossible* to be unpleasant, sad, or angry on live air. Weepy-waily "oh the humanity" stuff doesn't work anymore; there may be a rare place for it still, but how many tragedies in any person's lifetime ever come close to seriously justifying it? If people hear someone coming over their car speakers being confused or frustrated or fed-up, they'll take on confusion and frustration and fed-upness themselves as smoothly, maybe more smoothly, than if you were in the car with them. With no visual cues to clutter the aural signal, you've got a straight open doorway leading right into people's minds and sense of self.

People -- thousands of people you'll never even meet -- are depending on you to set the tone for the rest of their day. They *must* hear a voice that is, at worst, calm, collected, and wholly present. And the happier you are, the better -- just as long as you don't break out giggling on air. I am convinced that going on a live air mic rewires your brain with the speed of a lightning bolt so that the next several hours at least you are *incapable* of thinking negatively or doing destructive feedback-looping self-talk. Something *snaps*, and you suddenly *can't* let sloppy, lazy, unaware, bitter, or cynical habitual thinking leak out of your mouth. So instead of consciously deciding "I should not say this", you spontaneously eliminate that whole *way* of thinking from your mind in a flash of perfect, clear awareness. The Pandora's box of mental chatter and spiral thinking suddenly snaps shut the moment the mic is raised to unity. "I know what's going on". "I'm in Control".

What's going on? Simple. "This is KUNM, Albuquerque." There's more to it than that, but that's the minimum that I can say at this point in time. Better to say just enough than too much, too; certainly until I have got the base mechanics down.

That news story aired once, but got some constructive criticism 'cause it was lopsided, which I only realized myself after it aired. Bad timing and bad interview technique are both to blame. I was talking about a number of different corporate entities by their regulatory designation without ever so much as finding out who one or more of them were, much less getting a reaction from them to the Public Regulation Commission's decision to investigate the rates they charge to families of prisoners making collect calls from jails and detention centers. May as well have have been a story about elves, or leprochauns, or fairies, just because it was "these people say" about "these companies" I can't even prove exist. I've since done some more background research and will continue to follow this story as it develops. My next piece will either be credible, or I'll give what I've got to somebody else.

I enjoy it, but the truth is, I am really a *lousy* reporter! It's not because I deliberately start out with an agenda so much as it's because I manage my time *very* strangely. Or maybe I do bring subconscious agendas into play and wind up doing things in such a way that without feedback everything I do will be at least a little slanted.

With this latest story I worked on it in C for as long as I could, went home, slept, and rushed in at 5 AM the next day to get it on air by seven. And guess what -- Public Regulation Commissioners' offices don't take calls at 5 AM, so I can't do the followup I *need* to do for the story to be *credible*. The sound's good, the editing's good, the writing's good, but without credibility it *isn't* worth airtime. I'll keep reporting but I *MUST* get the feedback from as many of the more experienced newshounds as possible before I *ever* say about a story that it's "finished".

Most people seem a little embarassed about being critical, but please do, I say -- that's the reason the station gets so many awards it doesn't know what to do with them all. I may indeed be a volunteer, but you guys are all *giving* me airtime. That carries a *deep* obligation.

After midnight now. Monitoring the air from the newsroom right next to control. They've gone from news to youth radio to spoken word to experimental avant garde music to jazz and now they're playing the most amazing old big band record, Artie Shaw, I believe. Three pots of coffee later. I should definitely go home now. If only I can pull myself away from this radio.

Not quite.

I kept it short -- 2m47s -- I seriously had enough for more, and expected to run more like 4 minutes, but fit the bare essentials in under 3. I don't know what's up with that. It's nice to know I *can* write concisely under pressure when I *really* want to. Or maybe the story really *is* that simple. Or maybe I'm reporting shallowly. I honestly don't know, but I have my suspicions.

Weird how it works -- tremendous enthusiasm keeps me working on it, then it airs, and all I can think about is how much better it should have been and what I should have done to round it out which would have made it stronger and more compelling.

Then, thanks to this being public radio, I start to *realise* what I *was* missing.

I hate to admit: I'm beginning to appreciate NPR, and not just for its production values. And I'm starting to think critically about Amy Goodman. She had a water activist on today who *didn't* answer a question she'd asked (about water filtration), but completely evaded with a pat, rehearsed answer that didn't even address the question. Ms. Goodman let her slide -- *didn't* press her on it, even slightly -- then simply moved on to the next issue at hand.

I applaud Ms. Goodman for having the activist on air, and certainly stand in *no* position to lecture her over interview technique! Still, I found myself yelling and gesticulating at the radio during her show today (behaviour which I usually reserve for NPR). *That's* the sort of thing people think of when who call what she does "advocacy" as distinct from "journalism", and it's what phone room volunteers at public radio stations get the brunt of. If I had *only* heard today's interview and her President Clinton interview, I might quite well agree with them. She *does* question the president and an activist differently. I understand the reasons that she does it, and doubt *any* interviewer treats *everyone* in *exactly* the same way. I've seen the *same* thing work the *other* way around on NPR far, far more often. (Letting officials slide on their evasions, while badgering activists.) But this struck me quite clearly, today: why undermine your credibility like that? Take the 30 seconds to a minute ask a tough question and get a solid answer.

My story was good -- solid as a rock -- but my reporting on it was weak. Period.

I'm seeing more clearly in her work what I am too close to see in my own, until it airs, and the damage is done. She's *usually* better than that. It's nice to see her make a mistake -- maybe that means there's hope for me. If not, I guess I'll just read funding credits. And it's still frustrating. I *have to* be better.

I love public radio. Everyone is so insanely ethical. Writing and editing and all that is grand, but you'll *still* get called on the rug for what may be an ethical lapse.

Which is not to complain. I'd rather it be that way than people tell me "your voice is good, so we're airing the thing you just did, even though it riddled with factual errors".

Long story short: the PRC is launching an inquiry into Institutional Operator Service Providers (IOSPs). Those are the phone companies that provide the service of collect calls from the jails. There are widespread complaints that such services are grossly overcharging the families of incarcerated persons, and even demanding deposits of calls' recipients, in violation of existing regulations. The effect is to punish -- not convicted criminals -- but their families. Much as I love existing KUNM coverage, incarcerated populations in the state remains mostly invisible.

My mistake?

I did a story about the investigation without managing to so much as say that "such-and-such IOSP couldn't be reached for comment". Which they couldn't, even though I *did* try. Bad timing screwed me up. (I only finished editing the story a few minutes to air; and guess what: PRC Commissioners' offices *don't* open at five AM.)

I could go and get mad at whatever person pointed it out (one of several, really) but it's true, and the people who pointed out my story's weakness were generally right. The story would have been *way* stronger if I'd just known from whom get a comment -- or even a "no comment".

It's not deliberate advocacy journalism, but unless my story includes at least a refusal to comment, it sure as hell looks like advocacy. And heaven help the person in CONTROL when it airs.

Yes, listeners complain about that sort of thing.

Journalism's a bitch. But I enjoy the challenge.

Looking at my own story after the fact, I'm inclined to agree. I might as well do a story on elves, faeries, or leprochauns -- based solely on what people say about them. "They're tricky, and evasive, and clever, and guard pots of gold at the end of rainbow", says so-and-so, who's not an elf or leprochaun himself. The leprochauns could not be reached for comment.

Screw it.

I messed up. I wasn't fighting for any cause, I just didn't bother to get a response. "Rules of evidence" mayy not formally, legally apply to what I'm doing, but I *must* give those people accused of wrongdoing a chance to respond, if I don't wish to be acused of wrongdoing, myself.

I'm stil following this story and now have the numbers of some elves and leprochauns to call for comment.

And I'll be damned if there aren't more stories coming up all the time.

I'm out of practice.

Tine to get back into it.