h-well

All posts tagged h-well

1495

Posted by EXIT265C on January 6, 2012
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I can’t sleep. It’s probably because I had not only a chai earlier today but a giganto sweet tea at about 11. I’ve been drinking nothing but water, ginger ale and, with the exception of the past five days, alcohol since maybe the end of November when I had a Mountain Dew on one of the layout days in Hopewell. On the bright side, if I wake up at noon, I still have over two hours to get to work. This may help me anyway since I’m going to Chapel Hill or Richmond tomorrow night after work. I’d get to Richmond at about 2:30. I’d get to Chapel Hill around 1. I’m getting the rest of my things Saturday and I’ll have a new bed by the 30th. My goal is to have a bed by the 16th. My work schedule and needing to go to New York next weekend makes getting a bed next week a little awkward. This whole move has been awkward. You would think, with me having nearly an entire month to prepare for this, I would have been more organized. But when was the last time I did anything the easy way? You know most of those gaps in time in my blog posts? Those are usually because I spent a day like a normal human being.

But I digress.

I’ve learned some more things about what’s going on in Hopewell and I’ve seen the website and Facebook page. To say that I feel disappointed is an understatement. I think, in October or so, I want to give the publisher a call. I doubt he’ll take it but I want to try anyway. It’ll be a cordial call. I just have a feeling about October and I want to ask him a question then. I know it’s odd for me to say this in January but trust me with this one.

Anyway, I was almost finally off to sleep when this popped in my head. Depending on how much privy you had to this blog in its early stages, you may have seen the original ending to my novel, which I hope to enter into Amazon’s publishing contest later this month. I’m finally at a point in my career when I don’t have to think about work until it’s time to go back to work. I haven’t been able to do that in nearly six years.

It’s a little weird how some things in that novel’s plot paralleled things in the last three years, especially since it was a partial commentary on the two years before that. It’s got weirder after I officially declared it finished before something happened in November.

I based my farewell column in the Hopewell paper a little on Lorenzo’s farewell column, which will not appear in the finished novel. To quote what I wrote as him writing on another character,

It was his story that inspired me. I love to write. I love thinking that my words one day shall appear on something other than newsprint. Despite this, I was, in a way, content with dreaming about passing one of my own books in Barnes & Noble without doing anything to make it happen.

I talked to Katy yesterday. She said it was very brave of me to leave behind everything I know and love in Virginia to come to Jacksonville. I never looked at it that way. She’s right. Even given the circumstances, she’s right.

Lorenzo makes a similar leap. He knew a couple of people where he was going but there was no telling how long they’d be there. He called the change a step toward what he hopes is fulfilling his destiny. He also alluded that he was sure it was because it was planned to be a temporary stop on the way to what he is to do. Taking that one step forward is the biggest and toughest. After that, it’s all gravy. But

You’ll never know if you can do it if you don’t take the risk.

… [A]lthough they may look it, barricades are not permanent. If you beat a wall long enough, it will fall.

Break down your walls.

Goodnight.

it’s a long way to tipperary

Posted by EXIT265C on December 10, 2011
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Letter to the Editor I sent in for Tuesday’s edition

First and foremost, I would like to congratulate Elizabeth Farina in her opportunity to continue the improvements to the Hopewell News & Patriot that I began. Secondly, and most importantly, I want to say goodbye to all of you in the Tri-Cities. I have some loose ends to tie up in Hopewell in the coming days. I hope I get to see as many of you personally as possible.

On March 13, 2006, I came here a few months out of college. At the time, I only knew that Petersburg and Hopewell existed. The sole time I had heard the word “Dinwiddie” was in fifth grade. Throughout college, I had planned to be a copy editor and page designer but that wasn’t to be at first. Instead, for nearly three years, I explored and came to love Dinwiddie County.

On Dec. 11, 2008, I accepted the offer to become the editor of the newspaper you now hold in your hands. I think spent three years exploring and appreciating Hopewell, Colonial Heights, Prince George, Fort Lee and eastern Chesterfield County. I also gained the opportunity to design pages, my personal favorites being the award-winning A+E and photo pages. Over these three years, I have seen spectacular growth in the Tri-Cities and I hope the successes outweigh the tragedies and failures this newspaper must also record.

On Dec. 9, nearly three years to the day, I accepted a position as an editor at a family of three daily newspapers with a total circulation of 130,000. That will be the largest market anything I’ve done will appear in print, even larger than the Daily Press in Hampton Roads where I interned twice. It sounds like a daunting task and it is. But, if the Tri-Cities have shown me anything over the past six years, it’s that I’m up for any challenge.

As you read this, I will be searching for my new residence in coastal North Carolina just south of the Outer Banks. The temperature is predicted to approach 70 degrees this week. I grew up in Hampton where snow is a rarity. I came to love it when I came here. I sense that I will miss it this winter.

I’m also going to miss Weston Manor, Old Towne Petersburg, each and every person in Hopewell’s municipal buildings, the lovely back roads of Dinwiddie and Prince George counties, the strong sense of community in Colonial Heights. In short, all of you. I’ll never forget you.

I’ll always look back fondly at my tenure as your editor and, once I have a new address, I will be a subscriber. This community welcomed me with open arms as I moved away from home for the first time. I feel I must stay up to date on my second hometown’s news.

1293: entirely too late

Posted by EXIT265C on April 17, 2011
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So, a week ago, I was at the joint Virginia Press Association/Society of Professional Journalists conference. I was a panelists in the SPJ conference. I talked about social media and how it leveled the playing field when I go against the larger daily papers with my thrice weekly. I sorta expected to completely crash and burn but it went fine. It could have been better but that would have required me to actually prepare for it like I wanted.

During the luncheon for the conference, I sat with the newest newsroom staff for The Captain’s Log. They seemed to have the same determination we had there. They’ve moved the paper in a good direction and Dr. Lee is still going at bat for them and one of their sources is still a reliable source. I also learned that my former supervisor is still in Admissions and I really, really need to go back there during the week. She is seriously going to kill me for not showing up in nearly two years but I was afraid to go after my accident because I didn’t want her to see me all torn up. After that, I just haven’t had a weekday off that warranted taking a trip to Newport News.

Speaking of my accident, although it was nearly two years ago, the saga still isn’t over. My former insurance company didn’t pay for part of the treatment so I probably will. Actually I know I will. that $450 dollar bill is mine. When it’s all said and done, the insurance would have only paid for the stitches whatever equipment they had to use while I was physically in the emergency room. They didn’t pay for the ambulance ride, the follow-up doctor’s appointments or the teeth replacement. Although it was an accident and the policy clearly stated that they should. And that is why they’re my former insurance company.

But I digress.

Anyway, so later that day was the VPA banquet where they gave out the awards. It was the first year that they also combined the advertising and newsroom awards so it was very long, no one got to go up and receive their awards and, since they changed the contest entry procedure, some awards either didn’t happen or some lackluster things placed. I saw some of the judges comments on the VPA site a few days ago; they were brutal. One for a photo said something along the ranges of the picture not being worthy of third but there weren’t any other entries.

The comments I received were a lot better. I got a second place award for a breaking news item. One thing that kept it from being first was how I didn’t add a lot of background. At the time, I was writing for people who were well aware of the background and we were pressed for time. I’ve made a point to add some summary on some ongoing stories this week. Additionally, I won two awards, a second and third, for page design. I believe I have both of them on my jump drive but I’d have to … nope … I don’t have those. But, anyway, this award is coupled with getting design duty for the front page. We’ve been getting very daring lately and I’m glad that we are. Saturday’s paper took the cake. Katy did that one but I hope it’s just the beginning.

In all, we won five awards. I took home three of those. It was a bit of validation. I didn’t know how to design a page at all around this time last year. Since my CLOG days, I’ve done well with layout, photography and writing. I wish I could have gotten a first place but, for me, this was good enough. We’re the underdog paper and we are scooping people. We are garnering awards. Our circulation has gone up and our coverage area has expanded. Our newsroom only has five people. My staff is doing an amazing job.

Our publisher sometimes asks us what’s next. We try to keep it fluid. We are improving and testing our limits. I can’t wait to look back at the issue that came out before I got there and then one from whenever I leave as well as that current issue, which blows mine out of the water, and be able to tell someone that those changes happened while I was there and they kept the course. I can’t take all the credit and I wouldn’t say it in a manner to say I want all the credit. It would be to say I was proud of them and I was glad to be there to experience it.

OK, I guess it warrants an explanation

Posted by EXIT265C on August 24, 2010
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So, for some inexplicable reason, we get shipments of paper every few days despite having a literal warehouse full of paper. I guess it’s better not to run out but, seriously. Today, we were supposed to get a shipment of paper. Instead, one of our employees arrived at about 7:30 a.m. to a hole in the wall.

The driver of the semi full of paper backed up to the bay doors and … well … kinda kept going. So what did he do? He got the hell out of Dodge. After a bit of confusion, he was found and corporate decided not to press charges. I understand. He’s most likely getting fired today; he doesn’t need a fucking felony on top of that. He panicked. He didn’t mean to destroy part of a wall. If I did something like that, I probably would have booked as well until I realized that they would think: scheduled paper delivery • hole in wall – scheduled paper delivery = fucker drove through my wall. And it’s not like you can say it was already like that when you got there.

Anyway, we tried very hard to have a normal workday but, with a huge gaping hole where there used to be a cargo bay, it’s a little hard.

And then I ruined the day.

I totally ruined the day.

I made this crudely-photoshopped image and we were just fucking done. Fuck making it fit the size of my layout. This is too epic to shrink down to 512 pixels.

I’m really beginning to think I have one of the most ridiculous lives in the world.

all my old friends &#8212 they don’t know me now

Posted by EXIT265C on August 21, 2010
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I did not expect to see naked Hispanic children in a front yard.

But there I was, standing in the living room of Butler’s new house in Annandale and there they were in a wading pool while what was probably as close as a caregiver as they had sat on the stoop. They were out of his line of sight but it was obvious that, even if he could see the spectacle, he would have felt nothing was out of the ordinary.

This was a few hours in my odyssey that began Friday at about 10 a.m.

The day before, Butler invoked Rule 76 after informing me of a party at his new place. I needed to be at work this morning. He later said he would understand if I couldn’t make it but it was too late: the gauntlet had been thrown down.

I slept in because I figured I probably wasn’t going to sleep. I headed to Farm Fresh where I bought a giant $5 foot long (screw Subway for now on; that sandwich was the truth), a gallon of water and two Mountain Dew Amps. I effectively organized what needed to be done in the paper, ate half the sandwich, cracked open the Amp and set off on the road at about 3:30.

In a perfect world, it would take about two hours and some change to get from Hopewell to Annandale. Friday at the cusp of rush hour was that perfect world. At 5 p.m. on a Friday, almost everyone in NOVA is driving south so it was nearly smooth sailing all the way there. I conjectured I would be at Butler’s at 5:45 if absolutely nothing went wrong. I was almost on the buzzer. He had no idea I would be there before 7 p.m.

&#8220Friday is the only day I can both come in and leave early,&#8221 I replied.

And then there were naked Hispanic children across the street. They were the topic of discussion for several minutes because who does that? You just don’t let your children let it all hang out in a wading pool in the front yard of a house at 7 p.m. on a Friday in August. Or any month for that matter.

Anyway, the night burned on. Some of the people at the party played some sort of Frisbee lawn game that used the font Revue. This font used to be in my newspaper. I wanted to kill it with fire. If I am in charge of a staff and that font appears in any publication, that person is getting fired on the spot.

At one point, I had the second Amp. Bad choice. It must have been too soon. I could feel my heart racing in my ribcage. It actually scared me. I downed over half a gallon of water and, of course, began to pee like a racehorse. On the bright side, I could literally feel myself become less drunk and less caffeinated with each trip to the bathroom. By 5 a.m., I was sober and well, exhausted. But the show had to go on.

In Spotsylvania, I stopped at a Wawa. I wanted mac and cheese but they had none. So I had mashed potatoes without, sadly, gravy. Also, in my only moment of complete lack of decision making, I got a extra caffeine mocha. It helped me fight off sleep all the way to Richmond. When I got home, though, I was spent. There was nothing in the world that would keep me awake at that point. I had roughly two hours before I needed to get to work so I took a fallacy nap for an hour. I call it that because EVERY TIME I decided to take a quick nap when I need to be awake and rally, I either fall completely dead asleep for eight hours or so or overshoot my target wake up time.

That nap lasted three hours.

I missed one event I was going to cover but I decided that I had to rally and hit the other two. Besides, Katy was coming in to do some things so I needed to be there.

I was miserable for the first couple hours. The caffeine was wreaking havoc on my system and my body wanted me to go back to sleep. I planned on covering the two events and going back to bed but, once I got to one of them, I reached the point where I can function again. When I’m at this point, I can go on indefinitely. I never tested exactly how long I can go but I think right now is a record. The downside to this point is that, for example, if I even stretched out on the ground at like 2 p.m., I would have been fast asleep. I’m lying down the second I finish this and I can guarantee I’ll be asleep in less than 10 minutes.

Although I had told Katy I was going straight home, I planned on going back into the office and getting everything done so I could just sleep through the rest of Saturday and probably Sunday.

When I got there, the room was in shambles.

She got an idea in her head and started to act on it. Of course, I had to help her.

Additionally, since the publisher knew we’d be working that day, he offered to take us out to eat. We figured he had something to tell us so we headed out and he treated us. It’s not worth explaining what we talked about at the moment but I can say we had the man all wrong and we’re definitely on the same page.

Anyway, we moved around the newsroom some more and we decided that we needed to get rid of an extraneous desk. We picked my &#8220new&#8221 one since, although it looked nice at face value, several drawers were broken and it was far too big for the room. Jim told us to just trash it.

Remember when I said it was too big? It couldn’t fit through the door. We would have to take it apart.

At some point, one of us hit it out of frustration. Then one thing led to another.

We attacked it. We destroyed it. We went fucking &#8220Office Space&#8221 on that shit AND played the song while doing it. Every ounce of stress and anger and everything else for who knows how long was unleashed on the grant wreck. We flung the bite-sized pieces in the trash heap.

We now have room for a couch and a small table for informal meetings.

We also prepped for the next step of the transformation of the newsroom and the newspaper itself.

This is going to be amazing.

More on that later.

And this is why I’m the world’s greatest boss.

For now, bed.

i forgot to change my alarm back from 5 a.m.

Posted by EXIT265C on December 4, 2009
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Here a a couple pictures I took this week. The first one is Hopewell City Hall during the Grand Illumination. It wasn’t called that but I like calling it that. You can buy the newspaper with the photos of the actual lighting in it for 75 cents. It wasn’t very grand but what do you expect? There’s 25,000 people in the city. My hometown has 150,000 people and they can’t figure out how to fix a sign someone drove into.

The second photo is of the main branch of the Appomattox Regional Library System. It’s a really cool place. That’s where Santa was yesterday. It’s a little sad that, over time, libraries had to move away from focusing on books. I haven’t truly read in a while but I’m taking a trip to Barnes and Noble and Plan 9 this upcoming week and it is going to be glorious.

The third picture is of the Beacon Theatre downtown. It is probably the single most controversial building in the city for absolutely no reason. Really. It’s not even like they show porn or anything. The biggest problem most people have is that, technically, it isn’t a theatre at the moment.

The fourth photo is just amazing. Because it’s me.

dual grill action

Posted by EXIT265C on September 20, 2009
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Earlier this month, Jonathan perfected his hamburger recipe and pretty much told everyone at work about it. That led to a discussion along the ranges of &#8220how about you make some for us?&#8221

So we had a cookout. Because it was Thursday. I took more photos but I keep forgetting to upload them. To be honest, I kept forgetting to write about it. I KNOW, I’ve been a horrible blogger lately, especially since I started paying for a domain.


dual grill action

The newsroom completely took it upon itself to cater the whole shebang. Jonathan and I headed out to Kroger and got meats and I donated some bags of chicken and onions. Samantha made cookies and got other tools. Chai got a staggering amount of potato and macaroni salad.

Jonathan made fliers about the cookout that he had to revise twice and still wasn’t quite clear on the concept. We decided to buy everything except for drinks. The first time he posted about it, he failed to mention that it was during lunch and we quote questions about when after 5 p.m. it was starting and what drinks they could bring … as in drinks. Then he changed it to say that it was indeed during lunch time after the presses ran. Then we still got questions about if we could hit up the Red Barn next door and get a couple cases. To be honest, if I were the publisher and not the managing editor, I’d set up a bar and give everyone like three drink tickets or something. Eh, no I wouldn’t but, if someone was ballsy enough to ask me if they could drink on the clock at noon, I’d have to consider it.


grillathan howard

We figured we’d only need one grill but Samantha volunteered to bring hers as well. It just so happened that she had the same grill as Jonathan so it made the effect awesome. Speaking of awesome, everything was delicious. I quickly lapsed into a food coma and had to walk to city hall to my next assignment to keep from falling asleep.

Speaking of my next assignment, what I thought was going to take like an hour turned into a bus tour of Fort Lee that lasted over two hours. I was not amused because I had things to do. That delay led to me running into yet another curb in RVA, this time banging up my hubcap pretty good. Like it makes noise when I drive good. As far as I can tell, I didn’t fuck up the wheel. I need to get my tires rotated on the first anyway.

That nice little delay there also cost me in another way. I wound up not cooking dinner or even thawing anything out because I initially forgot when I thawed out chicken for the grilling. I then popped some individually-wrapped frozen boneless skinless chicken breast (talk about unpacking some adjectives) into the oven Friday evening. The package said they’d be done in 25 minutes.

I took a huge bite of not quite warm raw chicken.

I knew that wasn’t going to end well.

So I went out that night.

I didn’t feel sick but I definitely wasn’t in the mood to drink. It took me six hours to have that many beers and there was a large gap in time between the fifth and sixth. I didn’t even want the sixth but there are instances where not taking a beer is rude/weird. It’s called being in your 20s in a social setting.

Anyway, when I got home, I felt a little weird and I used wishful thinking to say to myself that it was just me feeling a little buzzed but nowhere near drunk.

I was awakened five hours later with the overwhelming urge to vomit.

I sat there, wondering in my half-asleep stupor why in the devil I was vomiting because I have had waaaay more booze than that in a shorter period of time recently with no ill effects the next day. Then my stomach rebelled and I had a flashback to dinner. Motherfucker.

I gave myself two assignments for the weekend and I wound up missing one because that one wasn’t a two-day event. I pretty much did nothing Saturday except ride around to get some air around 8 p.m. and forced myself to eat.

And here we are now. I have work to do I don’t want to do because I had all intentions of doing it yesterday. Basically, it’s a typical Sunday.

is it saturday yet?

Posted by EXIT265C on April 10, 2009
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Since I have a very strong negative Pavlovian response to the sound of modern alarm clocks (correct my description if I’m wrong, Roller), I use my cell phone as an alarm clock. I use a variety of sounds on it so I don’t equate any one of them to waking up against my will and hating it. I typically set up three because I don’t trust myself with just one alarm. I once put an alarm clock on the direct opposite of the room from my bed and, whilst still asleep, got up walked across the room, turned it off and got back into bed. I woke up about 20 minutes later after I realized what I had done.

Anyway, today, I woke up and shut off not one but three alarms with my phone. I usually get up by the second or the third but that did not happen. How did I wake up this morning, you ask? By reaching for something in a dream and, in reality, tipping over the floor lamp I put next to my bed so I can work from bed and not have to get up to shut off the light.

Internet, I am a ninja. I felt that I hit something, heard it start to fall and damned if I didn’t wake completely up and grab the lamp before it crashed to the floor and righted it.

Fast forward to about 30 minutes later when I was about to leave for work. The ceiling in my bedroom is maybe seven feet because of the way the roof is sloped. I have a ceiling mounted light. I put on my blazer and whacked it. Thankfully, it didn’t go crashing to the floor. I may love lamp but lamp sure didn’t love me this morning.

On my way to work, I concluded that, with the way today started, things could only get better.

When I finally got to work, one of my coworkers seemed to be in distress over the phone and transferred a call to me before I even sat down. I forgot to mention that someone retired from the United Way when I wrote an article on it. I simply forgot to mention him with everything else that went on at that awards dinner. To be honest, I originally wasn’t going to write an article because I was invited to go and the paper had to pay $25 for me to attend. My rule is that, if I have to pay to attend something, it’s not getting covered. If Jim didn’t hesitate to pay for it when I showed him the invite, I wouldn’t have paid nor gone. Anyway, I’m going to do a profile on the guy for Friday’s paper. It wasn’t that big of a deal. As I was trying to take notes while my camera battery was dying, I simply forgot. My reporter doesn’t have any customer service skills, apparently.

After that, I walked over to City Hall to get the City Council meeting agenda. I ran into the one member of council I’m facebook friends with. I restricted what he can see from my profile. He can see some but not all of my photos. I posted two variations of the following photo illustration I made all by myself in Photoshop to facebook [the cleaned up (and maybe not in Technicolor) version is going in the paper Tuesday].

The councilor was responsible for getting the warning sign, which is not photoshopped in any way, shape or form put on that spot. Seriously. I tweaked the background and added the street sign. In the other two versions, I made the background in black and white except for the sharp turn sign and the no left turn signs. In one of them, the road is in color too. That sign looks exactly like that and is in that very spot. It looks funny because the font is Futura and I think Hopewell is the only place I know that uses a Century Gothic derivative on almost all of its in house street signs. It’s very not Federal Highway Administration standard but I like that family of fonts so I’m OK with it. How I know that this font is Futura and what FHWA standards are is a long story.

But I digress.

Anyway, I wrote a story on said road then met a guy who wrote a 400-page book based on his life that includes a chapter of a supernatural event that happened to him in the 1970s. He is in his 60s now. He never told anyone outside his family about what he saw because he is a prominent businessman and didn’t want people to think he was crazy. He wanted to tell it before he died. &#8220At my age, it don’t make much difference,&#8221 he said.

The old guy and I talked about writing for about an hour. He’s pretty awesome. He’s the second person who has told me to bypass traditional publishing houses and self publish &#8220Brown River Blues&#8221 this month. I still think I have to at least try to get an agent once I get settled here and send it out. Actually, once I’m done here, I’m going to resume reading it all the way through tonight. I still find it amazing that it began as a 25-part friends-only series in this very journal and I nearly tripled its length over the course of five drafts.

After work, I did nothing. Seriously. I was going to take advantage of the nice day but it was rainy when I got home and didn’t want to risk it. I cooked a roast beef and I’ve been kinda sitting here every since, drinking High Life, the Champagne of Beers, Drunk Girl on the Moon as I call it. I made no plans for tonight on purpose. I wanted to just be here in this house for a weekend for once. I don’t think I’ve had a full weekend in Richmond yet and I’ve been here over a month. I have to be in the area the next two weekends, which is good. There are some things I need to take care of. I already have 3000 miles on my month-old car from going to and driving around Hampton Roads every single weekend.

This has been the first week I haven’t had to fill up every week since before I worked at the Petersburg paper. At least I’m not filling up every two days like when I had my ridiculous commute. In retrospect, I don’t know how I did that from December to February. From a fiscal standpoint, I should have done it one more month but I start turning a profit for the first time in my post-graduate working career on Tuesday. That’s another long story too, the moral of which is that extenuating circumstances before you get your first post-graduate paycheck after being unemployed for three months really, really suck.

Anyway, that’s about it. I’m looking forward to these weekends of being more or less a homebody, getting settled and getting things done. It’s about time. The next stop after this is to stop failing. Or as Court Wills puts it, grope it and get it.

Long story short, I’m tired of this Friday. Is it Saturday yet?

Oh, and the dog has stopped hating me and eating my shizz. We’re the only ones here tonight and, from observation, for being just five, she sure is lazy most of the time. But this is coming from someone who had a small dog that was a ludicrous ball of energy for all of his years.

Staff Sgt. Phillip A. Myers of Hopewell

Posted by EXIT265C on April 6, 2009
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Today, I am ashamed. As a journalist, I am ashamed.

On April 4, Staff Sgt. Phillip A. Myers was killed when an improvised explosive device detonated in Helmand, Afghanistan. Due to new rules from the government, his family had the option of allowing the arrival of his casket to Dover Air Force Base, Del. This was the first time in 18 years that this stage has been open to the media. I agree that this is a major event because this should be something that is up to the families. War is hell. People go home in boxes. The sight of that should make you wish the battle to end, for your country to be victorious, for there to be peace, for your sons and daughters to stop coming home in boxes.

And for that, we need to know about the man or the woman inside that flag-draped wood. Myers, 30, was a son, a grandson, a father, a husband, a native of Hopewell, someone who had hopes and dreams and wanted to protect the country in the hopes that his children can live and play in a state of ataraxia.

What we got today were photos of members of the armed forces carrying one of their own out of an airplane and inches of text on how reporters were able to be there and the occasional photo of Myers receiving a Bronze Star last year.

I didn’t get much over the past 24 hours but I know when he graduated from high school, his wife’s name and how many kids he has. He was a person, not a symbol. We weren’t told we were not allowed to get any additional information. Hell, I wasn’t even in Delaware, wouldn’t have gone if I knew in time and I didn’t need to go.

But, maybe I’m being too hard. I got some information. My old paper, since it’s a daily, will have more before my next edition comes out. The regional paper will most likely have something more. I bet, if no one else is killed before we get our info out, it’ll suddenly appear in the larger outlets and on the Internet and, once again, I’ll be told that newspapers are irrelevant and I’ll explain again that, if you’re lucky, the news on the Internet comes from a reputable source somewhere. But no, we aren’t important. It’s not worthwhile to care that someone in your community has been blown up in a foreign land because our cultures clash.

No major outlets may care by the time we lowly fish wrappings talk about his life but Myers will live on as that flag-covered coffin and will live anew as a battle cry for liberal and conservative pundits to scream at each other on countless &#8220news outlets.&#8221 His family’s reason for allowing the media in will be applauded and decried and they might be painted as villains with an agenda if they explain their decision without enough tears or don’t explain at all.

And, for that I am ashamed.

Staff Sgt. Philip A. Myers. Thirty. Graduate of Hopewell High School. Casualty of Operation Enduring Freedom. If your family is OK with it, I’m writing about your life. To me, you aren’t just a symbol being toted to a photo op. You were a Hopewellian who loved, is loved and will be missed. Regardless of your or my viewpoint about our nation’s battles, you were fighting for us with the goal of protecting what we own, something humans have been doing before recorded history. Your story needs to be told. You deserve it.