It's been a busy month

Sorry for the lack of updates.

Been a busy month, personally and professionally.

First off, it seems as though the Silverton Appeal and Stayton Mail are not updating their Web pages anymore. If they start posting stories to them again, I will have links to the stories I do for them. Otherwise, you are stuck with what makes the Statesman Journal and Oregon.com.

Personally, my Aunt Jean and grandmother passed away in the month of December (a week apart too) so I have spent a large amount of time being with family and making trips to Bainbridge Island where they lived. I will always cherish the summers I had hanging out with both of them. We would go up for a month at a time during the summer and mess around, see sights and walk down to the bay to skip rocks. Good times and I am very sad to see both of them go.

On a more cheerful note, December normally is a pretty slow time for me, so I got to spend a lot of time with Violet. We visited the Oregon Zoo and the Portland Children's Museum, so I put together stories for Oregon.com. They can be found here:

Portland Children's Museum (with Violet photos!)

Oregon Zoo

I have also done a number of stories for the Silverton and Stayton papers, but they aren't online.

Have a Happy New Year!

Pat

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!

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. :)

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

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.

Wow, I keep updating people might read this.

Anyway, my last post was for an article that was in the Silverton Appeal, well every so often the Statesman Journal picks up my stories from the Appeal. They edit them some -- editors are like dogs, they don't feel like it belongs to them unless they mark their territory -- and this time they even ran a picture.

Art house Statesman Journal article

That link will only be good for a week, so keep that in mind. :)

Otherwise another Wednesday another couple of news articles got posted in the Silverton Appeal and Stayton Mail.

The first one was a Saturday event called "Unmasking the Arts" in Silverton that raised money for the art association out there. It was fun, although one of the Silverton Art Association board members was a real jerk. I told this person I was from the Appeal and they said, "Go ahead and make up my quotes, that's what the Appeal does anyway."

It never surprises me that people I have never met can be so rude. I usually let it slide, but this person was just a jackass. I gave up a Saturday evening -- Cindy and Violet went to a party I passed on to go to the event -- to cover the arts. Sure I am getting paid for the article, but I did it to make sure the art association got some coverage. Guess I won't be doing that again. I don't need the money that bad. :)

Anyway, enough whining.

Unmasking the Arts ran in the Silverton Appeal

Natural farrier is an article that ran in both the Appeal and the Stayton Mail, so I linked the Mail story.

Have a great rest of week!

Pat

Another news article

Well, I got another news article in the Silverton Appeal. This one is on a Kid's Art House that the Silverton Art Association has almost completed.

It was a fun story and the lady who is running it is quite a character -- very nice.

The other thing to note is that I wrote this story with a full-on head cold.

We are all better here now -- the cold got Cindy, Violet and myself. I think it's because Cindy has been making out with homeless people downtown, but don't tell her I said that. She can kill me in my sleep. :)

Hope you are having a good week.

Pat

Well here is a surprise!

Looks like the Statesman is putting up their special sections online faster. So today I have a couple of sections that are live online.

First off is Senior Life, where I got to interview a 100 year old lady and do a story about keeping your mind sharp.

Secondly, is the Women's Show special section. It's mostly just sponsor stories that I did in there.

I have also submitted three more stories for the East Valley Papers, so I may be updating again on Wednesday.

Have a good week!

Pat

Staying busy in Silverton

Sorry about the lack of updates, I have been running around like crazy the last month.

I had a number of articles for the Statesman Journal (all of which probably won't be on the web), and I wrote the biggest newspaper article I have ever done.

The Statesman is starting a new feature where they profile someone in the community who has made a difference. This is an advertising-sponsored feature, so I get to do it. Otherwise the news department would take it and I would be sad.

Anyway, I wrote about 3,000 words on a very interesting lady who lives in Salem. If they put it online I will link it here. I am pretty happy with the story and looking forward to seeing it. It's never amazes me that you can always have new things to learn after 10+ years in your profession. I had never written something that large, so I did a lot of reading of longer features to figure out how to structure it and whatnot.

After I finished the Senior Life, Women Show, RV page and the monster feature, I got a call from the folks out in Silverton. They want me to do some stories for them every week now, so this blog should be updated on a regular basis.

Art on her terms

A good meal worth the journey

The long road home

So, that's me this week. See ya next week.

pat

Busy week -- in Stayton

Well this week's Stayton Mail features three stories from me. Which I think is some sort of personal record out there.

Anway, I did a feature story on the Turner Fire District women volunteers.

Then I was dispatched to the Stayton Public Library to do a story on their foundation and history.

All in all, a fun time. I love covering small communities and it's great when they are positive stories to boot.

Pat