Inwood Bureau Chief Leaving, But There's Some Good News, Too
This is all newspaper stuff.
News, notes and comment from and about the local paper:
LEE SAYING GOODBYE, BUT FORGET THE CAKE
From: Essex, Randy
Sent: Friday, May 13, 2005 2:43 p.m.
To: DES MOINES-NEWSROOM
Subject: J.D. Lee
I'm sad to report that Inwood Bureau Chief Jennifer Dukes Lee is resigning from the Register effective Wednesday, May 18.
We've been lucky to have Jennifer working two days a week from far northwest Iowa -and we will continue to benefit from occasional freelance pieces.
Jennifer has a long and distinguished history with the Register, starting with her term as an intern while she attended Iowa State University. After a post-graduate stint at the Omaha World-Herald, she returned home to work in the Ames Bureau and, later, work as our lead political writer.
She's done a great deal of great work for us, including "The Tattered Countryside," which won the top writing award in Gannett for work published in 2000. She also was a Chuck Capaldo award winner as the top staff writer that year.
Wish her well from afar; she's got too busy a life to make it in anytime soon for cake.
[RON MALY'S COMMENT: It's good to see that there's still some humor left on the 4th floor. I mean, "Inwood Bureau Chief" and all that! Adios, Jennifer. You did a good job, and you'll be missed].
AFTER 37 DAYS, DON MUHM IS HOME
From: Perkins, Jerry
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2005 5:49 p.m.
To: DES MOINES-NEWSROOM
Subject: Don Muhm
Don Muhm is home after 37 days in the hospital, his wife, Joann, said. He is very grateful for the cards and prayers from all of us at the Register, she said.
[RON MALY'S COMMENT: It's great to hear that you're on the road to recovery, Don. I'll bet it won't be long before you're writing another book!]
AND SPEAKING OF GRACEFUL WRITING
Dawn Sagario continues to write outstanding stories.
I mean, she displayed her versatility in the last couple of days by authoring a story headlined "Back Home Again" in the Iowa Life section, then showed up with a superb "workbytes" entry that was headlined "Throw rejection to the wind and try again" in "Business & Career."
It doesn't get much better than that.
I've got to admit that "workbytes" didn't grab me when it first began appearing in "Business & Career" a while back, but the reason may have been the guy who shared the "workbytes" spot with Sagario.
I hear that he did everyone a favor by taking another writing job somewhere.
These days, I'll climb over the Monday morning humor columns by my friend Ken Fuson, the golf columns by my friend Rick Brown and the list of bankruptcies to get to Sagario's "workbytes." I'll get to Kenny, Brownie and the bankruptcies on my second and third cups of coffee.
One other thing. I found out the other day that Sagario has been writing good stuff for some time.
I was scanning the Internet and ran across something Sagario -- or at least someone who looks like her and spells her name the same way -- wrote when she was an intern for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 1999.
I liked what she wrote, and I'm sure you will, too. Here it is:
The Goddess Speaks
By Dawn Sagario
Tuesday, July 20, 1999
A pure and simple fact of life
SOMETIMES I feel like a four-eyed monster that's emerged from the woodwork when I tell people that at 22, I have yet to be "intimate" with someone else.
Immediate physical responses include eyes rolling toward the ceiling, smirks forming at the corners of mouths and heads slowly bobbing in patronizing fashion. Verbal reactions range from praise for "upholding such moralistic values," to exclamations of disbelief.
The latter disturbs me. I think I would remember if I had had sex with someone. Yet individuals will insist, upon discovering my virginal status, that I'm the hugest liar in the world. "You???!!" they yelp. "Right, Dawn, and I'm one too," they say with a wink.
In the realm of collegiate society, there is an unwritten list of taboos that a senior such as myself is assumed to have broken as a rite of passage into adulthood. By now, I apparently am supposed to have made a fool out of myself while drunk, experimented with some type of illicit drug and prayed to the porcelain god after a night of partying. By the ripe old age of 18, it's almost a given that one has already had sexual intercourse. More often than not, the activity falls into the high school, "Top 10 Been-There-Done-Thats."
REMARKABLY, a question as personal as that of virginity does come up in general conversation. When it does, some will look strangely at me -- as if I had a pimple on my nose -- when I tell them I am "one of those." Inevitably they ask, "Why?"
People want to know if I had a traumatic sexual experience as a child, while others will wonder if I'm a religious fanatic who believes that sleeping with someone before I marry will grant me eternal damnation in a fiery hell.
Several of my peers simply believe it is physically impossible to have been around for so long without getting it on. I remember telling one guy I had never "been with someone," and for the rest of our conversation he just looked at me as if I were a creature he had never seen before. At that point, I truly felt like a freak.
My choice to remain a virgin does not have to do with an obscure childhood experience or extreme dogmatic belief. Rather, I've heard too many tales from friends of pregnancy scares, possibilities of sexually transmitted diseases and just plain old heartache, to want to risk physical involvement with someone. Honestly, I don't think my conscience would let me get away with it either.
Having sex is easy enough, people tell me. It's not hard to find someone who wants to do it. But I believe (and you can call me a hopeless romantic or an impractical, idiotic fool -- I don't care) that waiting for that right person and getting married before having sex makes all the sense in the world.
It's not just about gratifying a physical need. It's about the love behind the act and taking on all of the stuff that comes with it (good and bad). Traditionalist, old-fashioned or archaic, call it what you want and pin the label on me.
Young people so often forget that with the act comes consequences. Being a busy college student on the cusp of graduation and anxious of what awaits me in the "real world" is stressful enough. The last thing I need is to be worrying about whether or not that little pregnancy test strip is going to come out with a plus or a minus.
What's the rush anyway? I've waited this long, why break the streak?
Dawn Sagario is an intern at the Star-Bulletin.
The Goddess Speaks runs every Tuesday and is a column by and about women, our strengths, weaknesses, quirks and quandaries. If you have something to say, write it and send it to: The Goddess Speaks, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802, or send e-mail to features@starbulletin.com.
News, notes and comment from and about the local paper:
LEE SAYING GOODBYE, BUT FORGET THE CAKE
From: Essex, Randy
Sent: Friday, May 13, 2005 2:43 p.m.
To: DES MOINES-NEWSROOM
Subject: J.D. Lee
I'm sad to report that Inwood Bureau Chief Jennifer Dukes Lee is resigning from the Register effective Wednesday, May 18.
We've been lucky to have Jennifer working two days a week from far northwest Iowa -and we will continue to benefit from occasional freelance pieces.
Jennifer has a long and distinguished history with the Register, starting with her term as an intern while she attended Iowa State University. After a post-graduate stint at the Omaha World-Herald, she returned home to work in the Ames Bureau and, later, work as our lead political writer.
She's done a great deal of great work for us, including "The Tattered Countryside," which won the top writing award in Gannett for work published in 2000. She also was a Chuck Capaldo award winner as the top staff writer that year.
Wish her well from afar; she's got too busy a life to make it in anytime soon for cake.
[RON MALY'S COMMENT: It's good to see that there's still some humor left on the 4th floor. I mean, "Inwood Bureau Chief" and all that! Adios, Jennifer. You did a good job, and you'll be missed].
AFTER 37 DAYS, DON MUHM IS HOME
From: Perkins, Jerry
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2005 5:49 p.m.
To: DES MOINES-NEWSROOM
Subject: Don Muhm
Don Muhm is home after 37 days in the hospital, his wife, Joann, said. He is very grateful for the cards and prayers from all of us at the Register, she said.
[RON MALY'S COMMENT: It's great to hear that you're on the road to recovery, Don. I'll bet it won't be long before you're writing another book!]
AND SPEAKING OF GRACEFUL WRITING
Dawn Sagario continues to write outstanding stories.
I mean, she displayed her versatility in the last couple of days by authoring a story headlined "Back Home Again" in the Iowa Life section, then showed up with a superb "workbytes" entry that was headlined "Throw rejection to the wind and try again" in "Business & Career."
It doesn't get much better than that.
I've got to admit that "workbytes" didn't grab me when it first began appearing in "Business & Career" a while back, but the reason may have been the guy who shared the "workbytes" spot with Sagario.
I hear that he did everyone a favor by taking another writing job somewhere.
These days, I'll climb over the Monday morning humor columns by my friend Ken Fuson, the golf columns by my friend Rick Brown and the list of bankruptcies to get to Sagario's "workbytes." I'll get to Kenny, Brownie and the bankruptcies on my second and third cups of coffee.
One other thing. I found out the other day that Sagario has been writing good stuff for some time.
I was scanning the Internet and ran across something Sagario -- or at least someone who looks like her and spells her name the same way -- wrote when she was an intern for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 1999.
I liked what she wrote, and I'm sure you will, too. Here it is:
The Goddess Speaks
By Dawn Sagario
Tuesday, July 20, 1999
A pure and simple fact of life
SOMETIMES I feel like a four-eyed monster that's emerged from the woodwork when I tell people that at 22, I have yet to be "intimate" with someone else.
Immediate physical responses include eyes rolling toward the ceiling, smirks forming at the corners of mouths and heads slowly bobbing in patronizing fashion. Verbal reactions range from praise for "upholding such moralistic values," to exclamations of disbelief.
The latter disturbs me. I think I would remember if I had had sex with someone. Yet individuals will insist, upon discovering my virginal status, that I'm the hugest liar in the world. "You???!!" they yelp. "Right, Dawn, and I'm one too," they say with a wink.
In the realm of collegiate society, there is an unwritten list of taboos that a senior such as myself is assumed to have broken as a rite of passage into adulthood. By now, I apparently am supposed to have made a fool out of myself while drunk, experimented with some type of illicit drug and prayed to the porcelain god after a night of partying. By the ripe old age of 18, it's almost a given that one has already had sexual intercourse. More often than not, the activity falls into the high school, "Top 10 Been-There-Done-Thats."
REMARKABLY, a question as personal as that of virginity does come up in general conversation. When it does, some will look strangely at me -- as if I had a pimple on my nose -- when I tell them I am "one of those." Inevitably they ask, "Why?"
People want to know if I had a traumatic sexual experience as a child, while others will wonder if I'm a religious fanatic who believes that sleeping with someone before I marry will grant me eternal damnation in a fiery hell.
Several of my peers simply believe it is physically impossible to have been around for so long without getting it on. I remember telling one guy I had never "been with someone," and for the rest of our conversation he just looked at me as if I were a creature he had never seen before. At that point, I truly felt like a freak.
My choice to remain a virgin does not have to do with an obscure childhood experience or extreme dogmatic belief. Rather, I've heard too many tales from friends of pregnancy scares, possibilities of sexually transmitted diseases and just plain old heartache, to want to risk physical involvement with someone. Honestly, I don't think my conscience would let me get away with it either.
Having sex is easy enough, people tell me. It's not hard to find someone who wants to do it. But I believe (and you can call me a hopeless romantic or an impractical, idiotic fool -- I don't care) that waiting for that right person and getting married before having sex makes all the sense in the world.
It's not just about gratifying a physical need. It's about the love behind the act and taking on all of the stuff that comes with it (good and bad). Traditionalist, old-fashioned or archaic, call it what you want and pin the label on me.
Young people so often forget that with the act comes consequences. Being a busy college student on the cusp of graduation and anxious of what awaits me in the "real world" is stressful enough. The last thing I need is to be worrying about whether or not that little pregnancy test strip is going to come out with a plus or a minus.
What's the rush anyway? I've waited this long, why break the streak?
Dawn Sagario is an intern at the Star-Bulletin.
The Goddess Speaks runs every Tuesday and is a column by and about women, our strengths, weaknesses, quirks and quandaries. If you have something to say, write it and send it to: The Goddess Speaks, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802, or send e-mail to features@starbulletin.com.
posted by ronald wesley maly at 4:52 PM
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