Wednesday, March 26, 2008

These People

Long, long ago, in a town just 12 miles from here, I was a newbie intern with fresh white clips from the campus paper. The internship offers were many and various, by which I mean two; I chose the smaller weekly paper and infuriated (this is not my ego talking, it really happened that way) the editor at the rejected paper. He told me I'd never work in publishing in that town, which shall remain named Springfield. I am yet to be stung by that. The paper I did choose: Cottage Grove's weekly Sentinel, at that time an award-winning community newspaper. My editor was young and hip, or whatever we should call cool/phat(?)/awesome. She handed out interesting assignments and listened extraordinarily well. The newsroom atmosphere was lively. I learned to shoot pictures as well, since the only photographer was usually busy with local sports. She attended my wedding and gave me an apron.

After graduation and getting married, I moved to eastern Oregon and worked there for a much more serious daily, covering a military air base and police beats. My editor at the "real" job was as different from the first as could be. I understand now, from this hardly unique position of older and wiser, that he was probably burned out and marking time. He and his wife were empty nesters. He spent his days in deep thought or a semi-comatose state, it's hard to tell. I actually came in late one night to rotate my desk out of his line of stare. We all worked in a bullpen newsroom, listening to the scanner for breaking news and entering copy on dinosaur computers with no "Windows" software. Pagination, as it was called, was newborn and screaming. The Internet too was in infancy. We discussed whether there'd ever be a way to make money on it, whether it would live forever in geekdom, whether it was worth it to have an electronic front page.

I know my memories are beginning to sound like the eulogies of publishing past. I have more to write on this subject, but as usual, today takes over with urgency.

We have a brand new baby since my last post (talk about burying the lead)! Laura Abigail was born January 15 and weighed a whopping 7 pounds 12 ounces. Tons of dark brown hair. Ryan's grandma's nose. Really, really beautiful and a good baby to boot. The sleepless nights have been minimal. So has the farmwork. We moved the mares to short-term leased pasture up above the schoolyard. We moved Two Spot home and he has been packing on the (much needed) pounds. We moved Nestor to the Keenes and then sold him and moved him to the Oregon Horse Center, where he's spoiled rotten and has no pasture mates to pick on.

A cougar or fox or racoon got the last of our chickens. It was grisly and gruesome -- they waited until we were gone to the hospital to deliver Laura. Ryan came home to a mess and had to whisk it away so as not to upset the girls more than necessary. He is currently building a chicken tractor (more on this later too?) and we have eight chicks on order through Deiss Feed & Seed.

We have to move this year's garden because (1) we expanded the horse paddocks and (2) one of the huge maples split in two and fell on the old garden spot. We bought lumber to build raised beds and are hoping to do them lasagna style any weekend now. It is Spring Break, but the forecast is a very unseasonable "snow down to 500 feet."

Our neighbors with the overpriced B&B still have their place on the market. They did drop the price $90,000, but still no lookers. The deli is open on Sundays and serving Friday-Saturday night prime rib again! Life in Lorane goes on.

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