Mouse 2005, Mice 2021

This morning, 12 hours ago, as I watched snow fall on an unplowed road, I saw a mouse running across the tundra across the street from my house. There is almost never a tundra here. As I woke up, I learned one of my cats had presented me with a dead mouse at the foot of my bed. Strange juxtaposition.

Almost sixteen years ago around this moment, I learned unexpectedly I was a father again. I no longer have any connection to that child. There is so much trauma wrapped up in those words, but the night I learned this information, I saw a little mouse running across the snow near a collision between a motorist and a pedestrian soon after a snowfall.

I can still see that mouse, scurrying around between Memorial Gym and an access road, looking for a safe place. What happened? Who knows? None of us know. We just have to keep paying attention and try to do better next time.

Journalism update

To a writer crafting a story about local media in Charlottesville

It's been a stressful time with national and local crises and so many people splitting the difference and angry at the state.  I will answer all of your questions even though I know it's a bit late.  

Why did you start your podcast and newsletter?
Ten months ago when the pandemic hit, I wanted to learn as much as I could about what was happening. I was not a journalist. With blessings from my employer, I launched a podcast to capture the local and state responses. With everything shut down, there was plenty of time. I had all of this audio equipment laying around from earlier in my career, when I was a public radio reporter and the creator of the Charlottesville Podcasting Network. I fell back on old skills and suddenly I was cranking out a podcast with information! 

In the summer of 2020, when things were in the "new normal" I got distracted by work, and felt a need to get back to journalism. My time as a freelancer and entrepreneur ran out in the mid 2000's for various reasons, including getting a full-time job as a journalist. In 2020, though, I was aware of new ways of getting revenue directly from people interested in learning about the community. Initial interest was enough to help me take a leap of faith.   

What do you offer that might not be found from other local news options?

My hope is to amplify the work of the many people who are writing about this community. There are some issues I am interested in documenting in detail, as I think getting the information in the public record is key to the future's ability to understand where we were, right now. I also bring years of experience covering municipal government, and a renewed interest in documenting how this community gets through the next set of challenges. I can't do this work alone, and I don't have to because there's a lot of talent here.  And a lot of people who aren't writing yet, but hopefully soon will be. 

Your Patreon account says you have 75 patrons. Is that enough to live on?

That's just one of many sources of revenue. What I am doing is an experiment, but I've spent a lifetime in customer service. I ran a business before, and survived off of a freelance career. I try to market the Patreon account for people who want to fund basic research into local government. There's also the Substack platform, as well as sponsorship opportunities. The audience is growing slowly, and I've demonstrated I'm here to do this work. I've produced over 130 newsletters now, and every day I get more efficient at finding ways to pay for me to do this work. My hope is to be able to hire people in the future, and train younger people in the kind of civic journalism I believe every American community deserves to help restore our democracy. 

How many people follow you?
I don't want to give out the circulation numbers yet, but I can state I have 4,550 Twitter followers! Currently around 500 people read each newsletter. A lot of people I do not know are paid subscribers now, and I thank every single one and write a note saying how appreciative I am. This is an experiment and I'm pleased so far that this leap of faith is still in the air!  

What are the odds of survival for local print media?

Good question, and I can't speak to that. I know I seldom pick up a print piece of anything. I read the Progress digitally, and appreciate that we still have a newspaper of record. I hope that print picks back up in popularity. I don't pick up C-Ville like I used to because I'm at home most of the time right now. I do know how much I appreciate picking up print publications and reading them. You can learn so much about a community by reading the ads, and I so hope print can continue to survive. I would like to return to a time when Sunday mornings are spent going through a thick newspaper, but the reality is that so many of us want to know what's  happening right now. 

Yet, maybe this is a time for zines? My friend Ramona Martinez and some of her colleagues just made one to get out voices that aren't represented in the media out there. When we come out of this pandemic, we enter a new time in a way. People want copies of information. We've seen what relying on digital only does to our community. Holding her zine in my hand right now, it's a physical manifestation of thought and artistic practice. Work went into this, and that work needs a wider audience. 

Anything else I should know?  

I thank you for allowing me to write this out. This is a stressful time for all of us, but I think through community journalism we can figure each other out and learn ways to live together. That's really all I've ever wanted to do as a journalist. 

Sign-up!

This is a test post but I shall keep it up for a while. 

A statement for this moment

Last night I feel asleep around 9 or so. I woke up at 2 or 3, and tried to go back to sleep. I could not will the dreams to take me away, so I got up. I was groggy, but I knew I wasn't going to fall asleep. I had a nagging sensation I needed to do something.

I didn't want to get up but I knew I wasn't going to sleep. So I got up, and I went into sleepwalking mode. I put on a podcast and just turned off my executive function. I just did the work of cleaning up the house, hours before dawn.

Somehow, though, I ended up reorganizing my studio, which I've cobbled together over the past ten months. When the pandemic hit, I knew I had to get to work and so I did. And then I started cranking out daily journalism, beginning the process of creating a job for myself.

It's been months since I've spruced up my studio space. Most of my equipment is old, and I don't have the resources yet to buy new stuff. This means there are a lot of wires everywhere that aren't really optimized. I need to get a new mixer, and figure out a way to be add an option to record three events at once.

I did not do that last night. But I moved everything around in a way that seems much more functional. I now see how I can expand the operations to take over this entire room, which used to be my bedroom.

I can barely believe this. My confidence has been dinged the past month or so, but I'm spending my Saturday night working, just like I did when I had a part-time job. My work tonight won't translate into an hourly wage, but I am beginning to feel confidence again that I will find people who want to pay me to do the work I'm doing. I am establishing relationships with so many people.

I am not going to push myself hard tonight. In fact, I'm likely going to stop writing and producing in about an hour. After that? I don't know. Maybe I'll figure out a way to connect the electric organ I have into the mixer, and I'll mess around with sound.

I feel a sense of happiness at the moment. I know so many of us have been going through so much pain. We're human. You don't get through this life without feeling emotional pain. It's okay to feel it.

For me, I want to question my pain, and see how I can use to improve. That takes feeling it, which I have most certainly done. So have you. I hope we can find a way, all of us, to stop pretending that life if something that we should ignore.

New Year's Gambit

I quit my retail job today. I did so because I was told I could no longer use any time on the clock to do personal work. 

So I quit. 

I'm 47. This wasn't a rage quit as much of a statement that being paid $13 an hour is simply not enough to control everything I do for every 60 minute increment. I felt the people I was working for did not respect me, and I quit. 

I worked really hard for them, even in a place with shifting communications and increasing workloads. A couple of weeks ago, I learned I would be responsible for refilling propane cannisters. That is not a skill set I've ever had in my life, and I wasn't really given much training except the owner gently berating me for not knowing how to do it right away.

I didn't quit then. I held it in. I needed that $13 an hour. 

But the email that said we needed to concentrate on the job fully so no one got COVID caused me to issue my two weeks. The rest of my shifts are covered. I turned in my keys. 

For five months, they've let me stay on top of correspondence, occasionally do some of writing when it was slow. And it's slow, a lot. The email felt like a slap in the face, and I stood up for myself.

And finally, finally, finally I feel like I'm back to taking control of who it is and what I want to be. I was spending a lot of time agonizing about things I might have done wrong. There were notes all of the time about things I didn't do right, and a general sense that management was there to scrutinize everything, and to find fault.

So I left. 

As I was leaving work, the same man in the red shirt was getting off work at the same time as me. This time he walked past with no incident, and I drove away ready to begin a new chapter of my life.