Do the Yak

D'OH! This is a later addition -- I forgot to include the link to L's terrific inauguration multimedia experience . I took notes on this momentous day because I was just so damn psyched I that I wanted to be able to remember it later. OK, so I didn't get around to actually posting it until 10 days after the fact... whatever. 7:00 – Awoke to NPR, which continued in the exciting historical spirit of last night’s CNN pre-coverage. Kept listening on the car ride to the Alewife subway stop. Highlights included the mayor of Newark and his father, and the story of 105-year-old Ella May Johnson attending the inaugural accompanied by a nurse and bundled in a sleeping bag, and Cory Booker, the black mayor of Newark (“ Black Politician Says He Represents All Americans ”). Lest we get too giddy about everything, this disheartening reader comment on the latter NPR piece reminds us that ignorance and bigotry still alive and well in American as seen in this reader comment on that story:

I had a couple of posts started but they kept appearing in Hindi, for God's sake. Much investigation revealed that deep in the bowels on this blog, SOMEHOW a setting got turned on that said "enable transliteration." So now we're good to go, but I couldn't recover the bits I'd written before, so there will be blatherings about the inauguration etc. as soon as I recover my equilibrium as well as the digestive-tract health of the entire family (three of us dwelt in the House of Heaves earlier this week, and I'm now at home with Sarah, the last to succumb). More soon.

And I'm sad and angry. The Pictorial Gazette, where I had the most fun, learned the most and did my best work is no more. It's a small drop in the deluge of foundering newspapers nationwide, I know, but it certainly hits home. It was a good paper when I was there -- we won several new England Press Association awards. I actually quit in protest over the firing of another employee, high-minded person that I was (not to mention mortgage-less). Here's the story from another paper on Dec. 20, 2008: Journal Register Apparently Shuts Several Papers Weeklies owned by parent of New Haven Register covered shoreline towns Five weekly newspapers serving towns along the Connecticut shoreline, along with several others in the New Haven area, appear to have been shuttered by their parent company, Journal Register Co., which also publishes the New Haven Register. Employees who worked for Pictorial Gazette, Branford Review, Clinton Recorder, Main Street News, East Haven Advertiser and a h

Enjoy the ducks. They love us and we love them. New Years' duck Duck riding shotgun (watch the video)