Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Hi RSS feeder type people

I was talking to an old college buddy -- Christina -- and she told me I should turn on RSS feeds for my blog.

So that way when I update it every week you can be notified if you use this mysterious magics known as RSS.

I don't know about that. I am getting old and confused.

Who am I again?

Anyway, Hi Christina!

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Mount Angel Woodcarver... is from Silverton! Ooops

Well, I like to think I have been fairly accurate during my time as a freelance writer. I usually don't get a lot of complaints, and I have gotten several nice cards.

That's why when things like this happen, I look at what went wrong so next time I can avoid the issues.

I wrote an article about a very nice man, Mike Reifle. He carves these incredible dragons and the story is HERE.

I didn't state in the story what city he was from -- which normally means he is from the city the paper is published in. In this case, Silverton. But the editor thought he was from Mount Angel. So that's where the problem came in.

Normally when you are writing about a community other than the one the paper is published in, you use a dateline. For example:

CANBY -- Patrick and Cindy Johnson are expecting another baby, so they bought a minivan last week.

This coming week there is going to be a correction in the paper and Mr. Reifle was very cool about the whole thing.

"I've always wanted to live in Mount Angel," was his response. Nice guy.

Here is his website, buy some of his carvings. :)

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Mount Angel FFA

This story was fun, kids starting a new FFA Chapter in one of the centers of agriculture in Oregon. Somehow the chapter had died off, and the kids with their new advisor are bringing it back, even with some pretty major setbacks.

Anyway, HERE is the story -- I really like this one and had a great time writing it.

Hope you enjoy.

Pat

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Better late than never?

Well I was surfing the Internet the other day and I noticed this story was posted on the Statesman Journal.com -- months after I had written it.

Ruth Stole story


I got a number of favorable comments, so that's cool.