Citizen Mom

Write hard, read FREE

Just in time for your Labor Day beach reading, here's an offer you can't refuse: Today and tomorrow on Amazon, you can get Howard Weaver's "Write Hard, Die Free" book FREE for your Kindle or Kindle app! Not only will it be well worth the price (har har), but it's a rollicking good read, full of colorful characters, vivid accounts of the "good old days" of newspaper journalism, and unflinching examinations of the times the good old days kind of sucked.

Who should read this? News nerds and newspaper folk, of course, but I'd also highly recommend this to my journalism students -- it's the kind of book to stoke that fire in your belly and get you in the right frame of mind for going out and afflicting the comfortable. 

I think what I liked most about "Write Hard, Die Free" is that it doesn't smack of that particular kind of hubris too many old-school newspaper guys have, that is, the notion that "real" journalism as THEY knew it is dead and things will never be that good again.

Howard Weaver just isn't wired that way -- yeah, he won a couple of Pulitzers, led a newsroom in a fight-to-the-death finish with a competitor, and got into the whole online news thing back when other newspapers were still debating whether to run color photos on Page One. But the sense I get is that he did those things not just to preserve newspapering as it was, but to sustain journalism for the future.

And there are lessons in the book for today's journalists too -- what it's like to run a startup publication and why it's good to fail, why professional disappointment is as instructive and valuable as success, and what kind of car not to drive when you're doing surveillance.

So get on that -- download it free for Kindle today and tomorrow here.  

Tell 'em Citizen Mom sent ya.

 

PLANET JERZ: Pigs On The Wing, Roaches On The Campaign Trail, and Underwater Peril!

* Hey, what smells like bacon? Wild hogs on the loose in Gloucester County! From Thursday's Star-Ledger:

As many as 100 feral swine are ripping up golf courses, rooting through flower farms and generally making a mess of things in the swamps, forests and fields of Gloucester County.

Thought to be descendants of domestic hogs freed from pens at least a decade ago, the belligerent boars have mentally and physically regressed and are no longer the familiar pink porkers slopping it up on lazy little farms.

"We caught one boar that weighed in at about 250 pounds -- tusks and all," said Christopher Boggs, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The Inquirer didn't get to the story until Saturday, but made up for lost time with this tasty morsel:

"One day we shot five," [Wayne Biagi] said. Mixed with deer meat, they made for good sausage.

We are a nothing if not frugal here in the Jerz.

* While Obama Nation was sitting around with its hand on its butt waiting for a txt from Barry, McCain won handily in the contest that really counts: The New Brunswick Roach Race. I'm still technically on vacation, and so will leave you to write your own politician/cockroaches jokes.

* Finally, Cape May folks have talked for years about how all that beach replenishment sand from towns to the north found its way south -- hence, Cove Beach -- but did you know about the underwater peril created by the town's own beach-building project?

When the Army Corps of Engineers began replenishments in Cape May in 1990, the ocean bottom gently sloped. The city had few emergency calls for suspected spinal injuries each year.

This summer, Cape May's beach patrol has had 17 emergency calls from swimmers and boogie-boarders with symptoms of spinal injuries, such as difficulty walking, after a wave sent them crashing into the shore, said Mayor Edward Mahaney. Last year, there were 11 calls, he said.

City officials embarked on a public-awareness campaign this week to warn people about the hazard. [Inquirer]

I'd say the average beach bather experiences this in the reverse, when you're walking out into the surf and suddenly the sand drops off and you're up to your neck, or deeper. Be careful out there, poopies.

 

Road Song

I'll be out most of today for a story -- Lehigh Valley, hoooooo!  Have a dance party while I'm gone, K?

Duffy, "Mercy"
RELATED: Duffy among Virgin Mobile Festival 2008 artists

Dad and newsman

Tony Bersani, 47. Philly guy, Jersey guy. A true character, and a man with character as well.

Ever gone on a first date with another couple, one half of which is your date's close friend? Intimidating, right? That was me a decade ago, going to see the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra with Steve Giegerich and the Bersanis. We went to some restaurant in New Brunswick, where Tony and I proceeded to spend the whole meal talking about Philly and how nobody at the Press understood South Jersey.

The AP obit.

Disorder in the House

This is the post where I talk about how parenting is the biggest, most challenging job in the world, and how at times I wonder if I'm up to the task.

It's the one where I remind myself that "it's not about me," that the difficulties my incredible son will face are not somehow my fault, the result of shoddy parenting by a lazy, self-interested, unworthy woman.

The one where I tell you about the last few weeks, and how the anxiety made thoughts rage around in my head but left me unable to express them. About how I became fixated on buying curtains and drapes for all the windows, telling myself we need them to block the cold air but really wanting them to block out the world outside.

Look, I can't speak for parenting girls, since I've never done it. But raising up a boy? It's an assignment fraught with intrigue, danger, and a ponderous responsibility. From time to time it occurs to me that we're raising someone's husband here. And since, as the saying goes, you can tell everything about a man by how he treats his mother, if he grows up to be an asshole it's at least some reflection on me. As a result, I've felt the need to be fairly strict with Jack when it comes to manners, being polite, asking for things, waiting your turn (still working on this one), calling adults "Mr." and "Mrs." Not being a jerk.

This was all well and good in the early years, when I was there to remind Jack to say please, to wait his turn, to chew with his mouth closed. The problem is that eventually the kid has to go to school. The goal, of course, is that he'll remember all the rules we've taught him and why it's not OK to cross-check the kid next to you on the way to your cubbies.

Suffice to say, it doesn't always go quite so smoothly as one might hope. In times like this, I become unable to think beyond my household, the laundry pile, and when to release Jack's favorite game from Toy Jail.

So that's where I've been, cowering under the blanket of hearth and home, trying to refine my approach, clarify my thoughts and Get Over Myself.

How have you all been?