Shockproof bullsh*t detectors

It's what Hemingway says every writer needs and every good writer has. And I realize that the rusty, clanking Rube Goldberg machine that is my BD needs to be applied just as vigorously to my line of work as to ... anything else. ... Today's Bodhi Break: Standing at my bus stop at Southeast 35th Place and Division Street. I pull out my JC. Then I notice that a young man has materialized at my right elbow. He is dressed in a mismatched set of clothes -- blue plaid jacket, yellow shirt, some weird pants, slicked hair. "Are you familiar with Awake! and The Watchtower?" he asked. Yes, I said, yes I am. "Here are some copies that you can read while waiting for the bus." I was about to turn him down. But when I realized that I was getting a little dab of this fellow's creative mythology. He probably wasn't even 19 years old. He couldn't look me in the eye; he had trouble finishing his sentences. Oh, I thought, he's really shy. I smiled and said, "Thanks." And that's how my day began ... can anything get me down after that? Not hardly.

It's hard out here for a scribbler

Greetings, all. The week is barely two days old, and all is hideous for American journalism. Forty years ago, 36 out of every 100 Americans bought a daily paper. Today, it's 18. It's a relief when circulation drops only by the low single digits. Yes, yes, the death of newspapers has been a long time coming, and it's inevitable. I do plead guilty to living in total denial throughout 26 years in the business. And it's not like I couldn't see what was coming: Working for UPI in the 1980s, I saw all the same stuff: We could not hold onto our "clients." They told UPI that they didn't a second American wire service; they could take AP or, in a pinch, Reuter. They watched UPI sink and drown without a backward glance. Now, it's those very "clients" who now writhe and suffer through daily agonies as readers say: We have the Internet. What's your name again? ...

So. Why am I still in it? Because. Because it matters. Because someone's got to be paying attention. Because our survival as a species depends on it. And because, when it's all done, I really do want to leave the world a better place by simply telling the world its stories. And that's what I'm talking about here, in my little corner of the cyber-verse ... stories. And what they mean. And the reasons they matter.