A cautionary tale

I like my job. I want to keep my job. That's why I'll never complain about it here.

However, Amy Norah Burch, an office worker in Harvard's social studies department, thought it was just fine in her blog to threaten to bomb Harvard because she found her co-workers irritating.

Funny? Maybe. But the sheer stupidity of linking your personal blog to your office e-mail is breathtaking.

She called her blog satiric. Her bosses called it grounds for dismissal.

Here's the Harvard Crimson story. Burch also wrote about her firing in a short piece for the Boston Globe's magazine this past Sunday. Here it is (edited a bit for space):

"I used my online diary as a steam valve for my administrative assistant job in Harvard's social studies department. Dealing with obstinate and sometimes nasty professors and students, I found that a quick one - or two - minute rant in my blog would calm my nerves enough so that I could return to productivity. My co-workers took cigarette breaks - how was this any different?"

[From moi: How is it different? Is she high?! No. Just brainless. Alas.]

"To me, blogging became a sort of electronic primal scream, one that saved the eardrums of my neighbors and co-workers . . . until one day last month, when my boss read my blog. Now, it was my own fault that she could access it. ...

I was called into my supervisor's office. ... The HR lady read excerpts from my blog aloud. Coming from a voice other than the one in my own head, the words made me sound like a psycho. I did write things like "I'm two nasty e-mails from professors away from bombing the entire Harvard campus." And "I was seriously livid today. I was ready to get a shotgun and declare open season on all senior faculty members and students who dared cross me."

But in my own head, these words held as much weight as when I'd yelled "I'm going to strangle you!" to my little sister. However, when other people are reading aloud only the offending entries (a small minority, I maintain), it's no wonder that I am labeled dangerous.

I tried to explain my position - "I'm harmless!" "I was just venting" "I never used last names!" Still my employment was terminated, effective immediately. May 24 was my last day. My heat-of-the -moment rants were labeled "extreme misconduct," even though my employer of four years couldn't prove my performance had suffered in any way. ...

I suppose the lesson here is to make rants less accessible to the public. I shouldn't have had a link to my blog on my home page and freely given out my home page address. However, the HR people seemed to insinuate that even had my work e-mail signature not contained a link to my home page, the things I had written would have been grounds for dismissal.

This is where things get murky. I question whether employers have the right to fire people for ranting in online diaries. What if I had gone out to lunch with friends and read aloud from a diary I kept beside my bed? Could Harvard have fired me for that? I didn't reveal any secrets online. I didn't harm anyone's reputation. It doesn't seem right that I should be punished for having and sharing opinions.

[Darlin', what you did was beyond kvetching to your friends. You literally put your rants in front of potentially millions of readers. You putz.]

Daily diary entries have always been an important part of my life. I doubt this will scare me into going back to the old composition book and pen. But in the future, I will be more careful about how accessible I make my blog. I definitely won't put any personal links in my work e-mail signatures. Maybe I'll try harder to conceal the identities of parties mentioned. I'll still write about work, as I don't foresee a job where I'm happy 100 percent of the time. Actually, if I am, I'll definitely write about it."

I hope she likes blogging about working at Dunkin' Donuts ....

Metro Emergency Guide: Better Start Praying

Medical mask. Radio. Bottled water. Flashlight. Whistle.

These are all items listed under a brief article titled "Subway Survivalism," in today's Express, the Washington Post's free daily for Metro commuters. The piece was among other related stories in a special 12-page "Metro Emergency Guide" in case of a terrorist attack.

Another brief article lists different types of respirators (i.e. "Elastomeric Half Mask, $10-$40) that protect against chemical, biological and radiological particles. Above it is a photo of Tokyo subway commuters crouching and desperately covering their eyes, nose and mouth against the deadly Sarin gas attack in March 1995.

This emergency guide, alas, is not borne of paranoia. The bombing of Madrid's subway earlier this year killed 191 people. Five thousand people were injured and 12 people died in the the Tokyo subway terrorist attack.

Washington, D.C. is a big fat terrorist target. It's like we have a red bulls-eye over the National Capital Region.

First, a plane smashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, killing about 200 people. Then there were the anthrax attacks, killing two people and sending hundreds of thousands into high alert. After that were the sniper shootings, killing more than a dozen Washingtonians. It makes you wonder what's next.

Rarely have I seen any security on the metro trains or in the stations. It would be laughably easy to cripple the nation's second-largest subway system, used by 1.1 million people a day, me among them.

Here are a few tidbits from Express that made me giggle despite being alarmed:

"A biological attack would likely be carried out covertly. Most symptoms would not emerge for days or weeks ... The risk of an undetected biological weapon is just one more excellent reason to wash your hands with soap and water after riding the Metro."

And this: "An emergency is no time for modesty. Decontamination will most likely mean taking off all of your clothes."

Cipro shot, anyone?

Bruce Jenner, eat my dust

After four days of shlumping around with a wicked head cold and another week of half-hearted workouts, I finally cleared the fog from my head and got serious again about exercise.

Why? Because I want to look and feel as healthy as possible. Okay, the other real reason: I'm running in the Army 10-miler on October 24th.

The course is probably among the most scenic of race courses: It begins at the Pentagon, heads across the Memorial Bridge, winds through downtown D.C., past the Lincoln Memorial, the World War II memorial, the Capitol, and other historic landmarks.

Today I ran 4 miles in 30 minutes, 20 seconds. Now the trick is doing that for another 6 miles with hundreds of people running next to you.

After that I rode my bike for 20 minutes at a good clip, logging another 7 miles, then did some squats and lunges with 15-lb. weights.

Then I went home and inhaled a pizza. Kidding.

I ate what dieticians call a "heart-healthy meal": pan-seared tilapia with a lemon and caper reduction, risotto and steamed broccoli. Extremely yummy. (Of course, with the exercise I had today, stale crackers and a moldy wedge of cheese would have tasted like haute cuisine.)

Now I must eat a square of dark chocolate before I go to bed because I've been just so damned virtuous.

The $8,000 dog

Just a few thoughts here, before I head out into a gorgeous June day.

We celebrated a friend's 30th birthday last night. The party was held in another friend's house, a stone's throw from the Library of Congress and the Capitol. It was the first house built in D.C. since the end of the Civil War and also once was owned by Ross Perot's 1992 presidential running mate. A bit of obscure D.C. trivia for you.

The food reflected P's heritage, which she describes as "Vietnamese by birth, American by assimilation, and Southern by the grace of God." P likes to remind us heathen Yanks that she's from rural North Carolina, smack dab in the Bible Belt.

Anyway, the groaning board of delights included chambord and champagne punch, piquant Vietnamese sandwiches, buttery shrimp and grits, Krispy Kreme glazed doughnuts, wasabi peas, long-life noodles, and ice cold beer.

It wasn't a big party, only about 25-30 people, but the hosts hired someone to replenish the food, clear away plates, and pour drinks. That's a great idea. That way, the hosts and the birthday girl get to relax and not have to constantly take care of guests' prandial needs.

Almost everyone there worked in the media, heavy on newspaper reporters, me and my SO included. The others were management consultants and one lone person from the medical field. Hmm. Note to self: Must make friends who are in other professions.

Oh yes, the dog. Towards the end of the party, the hosts let their two dogs come out of seclusion on the second floor to greet the guests. One was a chubby, black, laid-back lab/shepherd mix. The other was a spotted brown and white bulldog mix, and it was HYPER. Kept chasing its tail and barking.

I liked the dog, though. It had a sense of humor.

After the dog made itself dizzy, the host took a sip of beer, eyed the dog with a gimlet eye and mentioned that it recently bit a jogger. That stunt cost the host $8,000 to settle. He now calls it not by name, but "the $8,000 dog."

At this point, the dog pointedly ignored him and started begging for treats.

Happy Saturday

Commuting on the Mekong River. February 2004. 

It's the weekend, y'all. To celebrate, here's a photo we took of a passing boat on our daytrip down the Mekong River, in southern Vietnam. The younger man looks non-plussed, no?

Can't leave well enough alone

Don't know if anyone's noticed (or if anyone is even reading this blog), but I've been tinkering with past entries. You know, a little nip and tuck here and there, and a bit more color and elaboration in other places to make the pieces tighter and more interesting.

My editor isn't too keen about this perfectionist tendency to constantly edit, especially on deadline. But he has nothing to complain about, since I tend to file my stories early anyway (she says, pouting).

Saw a re-run of NBC's "Las Vegas" tonight, the one with Jean-Claude Van Damme jumping to an early death (relax sweetie, it was make-believe). The show is an unabashedly glitzy and saccharine piece of mass-market eye candy. "Baywatch" without the beach.

I love it so.

How can you not when the sexy but also smart and sensible "good girl" wears skin-tight hooker dresses. And that Josh Duhamel is a cutie. A goofy one, but a looker nonetheless.

On the road again

On the road back to Saigon. February 2004. 

I like this photo my SO took on the way back to Saigon from the infamous Cu Chi tunnels. He took it from the back seat of our hired car. For those of you not up on Vietnam war lore, the Vietcong dug hundreds of miles of underground tunnels from which they could surprise and kill the enemy (first the French, then us), as well as eat, sleep, hold battle plan meetings, and for all I know, take kick-boxing classes. Cu Chi was where the tunnels were located, about an hour's ride from Ho Chi Minh City, which everyone still calls Saigon.

Ironically, the Cu Chi tunnels are now a major tourist site. There are demos of effective and deathly man traps the VC planted for us Yanks, plastic models sporting stylish Vietcong uniforms, and a shameless propaganda film we were forced to watch about the heroism of the Vietcong and the evil of American soldiers.

And for $5, you too can shoot an AK-47.

Break out the sunscreen

What do you get when you combine:

A muggy and hazy June day, a verdant, quiet park just north of D.C., Old Bay-spiced crabs, picnic tables, bacon-wrapped shrimp skewers and pork barbecue sandwiches, 30 SPF sunscreen, a big green moon bounce, an inflatable playground, pick-up lacrosse, ice-cream sandwiches and lemon bars, tepid white wine, a popcorn machine the size of a mini-coooper, watermelon and cantaloupe slices, a bunch of polite and semi-distracted people in shorts and running shoes, and their many and various progeny?

Why, the annual company picnic, of course.

The picnic, as is the annual holiday company fete, seems to be dedicated to employees' kids. Never mind the employees. Besides the moon bounce, we had a nice lady face painter in case you wanted a flower painted on your cheek, a man whose sole job was to scoop popcorn into little red-striped paper bags, slides and other playground equipment, lacrosse, etc.

This is wonderful if you a) have children and b) you don't mind just sitting around watching your kids have fun. But it's a bit boring if you don't have little kids or if you want to do something else besides stuff your face with catered corn on the cob.

At the company picnic two years ago, I rallied some colleagues to play badminton, but everyone pretty much wilted in the heat after about 20 minutes besides me and my fiance. While the family folks nursed their Sprites and talked about their kids' soccer games and bowel movements, the singletons and others who don't have kids sat there like blinky-eyed toads, making polite chitchat until they felt they'd put in enough time at the event and could leave.

What would be fun for both kids and adults? Water balloons! A Slip-N'-Slide! (Okay, I guess I'm still bit of a juvenile.) A softball or soccer game I don't have to organize!

And another thing: Why can't employees bring their dogs? A park should have dogs running around in it. I like dogs. They're more interesting than babies. This from a woman in her 30's.

Today, my fiance is in Philadelphia, so he couldn't make it to the picnic. It's just as well, because I don't really feel social today and I definitely don't feel like playing camp counselor and rounding up people for an invigorating game of whiffleball.

So I ate, chatted quietly with a few colleagues, then slipped out of the party, nicking a lemon bar on my way out.

Before Sunset

I saw a special screening of the new Ethan Hawke/Julie Delpy film "Before Sunset" tonight, which opens in theaters next Friday. I saw it in the new "luxury" cinema in downtown D.C., which rocks.

As you may already know, it's the sequel to the 1994 movie "Before Sunrise," in which the two play a young couple who meet by chance on a Eurotrain. Jesse's American and Celine is French, they explore Vienna and over one day and evening, and fall in love.

The years have not been kind to Hawke - his face looks gaunt and wrinkled (the furrows on his brow are so deep you can plant potatoes in them) where once it was smooth and unlined. He also has a scraggly goatee and a body that's almost scrawny. He looks much the worse for wear after his split with Uma.

Delpy has aged more gracefully, though she is also thinner than she once was, and her face has lost some (though not all ) of its youthful fullneess. However, by the middle of the film, she seems to have recovered all of her vibrancy. Remember "Europa Europa" and the so-called "Three Colors Trilogy: Rouge, Blanc and Bleu"? She was devastating in them.

The first movie ends with the pair promising to meet six months later at the same train station where they met just 24 hours before. Like COMPLETE BONEHEADS, they deign to swap contact info, even full names, trusting that they will meet in the flesh soon.

The second movie begins nine years later - he in the famous Shakespeare bookshop in Paris as an author who just wrote a novel about his long-ago encounter with Celine - and Celine herself watching from the back of the bookstore.

I won't say more, but I found it very engaging and not treacly at all. However, my SO is much more sentimental than I and wouldn't have minded if it were more Disney-fied.

Men. I tell ya.

Cyclo ride through Saigon streets

Smiling gamely as my wiry cyclo driver karooms down city boulevards 

Yes, another photo to break up all of the monotonous text. C'est moi in another pic of our February Vietnam trip. Two cyclo drivers followed us all morning as we meandered through Saigon's posh District 1, then lay in wait as we ate a leisurely lunch, seeing us for the gullible tourists we were.

But not that gullible! We let them sweat it out for a few hours until we decided to part with a thick wad of Vietnamese dong for a 1-hour ride. I bet that showed 'em.

Memo to Clinton: You need re-write!

Bill Clinton's long-awaited memoir was released today to a voracious reading public who may become less enthusiastic as they slog through "My Life," according to folks who have actually read it.

At 957 pages, Clinton's memoir could probably stone an ox. I want to read this book, but am put off by reviews of it as being dry, flavorless, and overly long. Susan Feeney, a producer at NPR (and a very nice woman), said in an online extra that the book is "as accessible as Clinton's worst, wonkiest speech."

Ouch.

That's too bad, as Clinton can be very compelling, inspiring and folksy. It's unfortunate that that didn't seem to translate into a good read.

In my life: I'm taking a one-week online business journalism class that's supposed to last 1 1/2-2 hours a day, but I find myself spending much more time on it than that. Call me slow, but deciphering the 40 pages of 7-point text in legal and financial jargon of a company's schedule 14A without prior in-depth knowledge of the financial world is #%$!*@ difficult. But I'm slowly learning.

One thing I'm figuring out is the total retirement package of a CEO of a certain company, and boy, do the bean-counters make it difficult for the average reader. One thing is very clear: Company chiefs make an obscene amount of money. OBSCENE. The average CEO's annual compensation package is enough to power a small African country with change left over. I know that's not a newsflash, but it's particularly galling once you see it in black and white for yourself.

One last thing: My (albeit peripatetic and feeble) attempts to become a vegetarian are all for naught. I ate a medium-rare juicy hamburger today and savored every bite. And I'm looking forward to the next one.

He didn't drink the Kool-Aid either

William Greider, a former assistant managing editor for national news at the Washington Post and now an editor at The Nation, wrote a letter in today's Post about the newspaper's coverage of Reagan's demise. His comments are scathing.

Mr. Greider rightly criticizes how the Post and other mainstream media gave a very lop-sided view of Reagan's record and how they deified him once the former president was dead. A good read (you have to register but it's free) from someone who kept a close eye on Ronnie back in the day.

Guilty pleasures

1) Eating vanilla ice cream with chocolate sprinkles while watching "Las Vegas" on TV in my pajamas on a Friday night.
2) Ignoring phone calls from friends and SO as "Las Vegas" is strangely riveting.
3) Reading for pleasure for three hours straight. (You can do that if you're at home with a nasty head cold, like me.)
4 Looking around the Web and reading different blogs. For hours. Again, something you can do if you're home alone on a work day. Discovery: There are A TON of boring and badly-written blogs out there. They're either too geeky (speak English! Not HTML!), self-indulgent with no redeeming qualities whatever, or just plain stupid. Happily, there are also some (but far fewer) thoughtful and provocative web logs. I've included a handful on the left.

I finished reading 24/7: Living it Up and Doubling Down in the New Las Vegas today. Very entertaining and well-written, for the most part. It's about how one former Wall Street Journal reporter takes $50,000 and gambles for one month straight in Vegas in the late 1990's, when Sin City was in the midst of a new building surge (Bellagio, Venetian, Paris casinos). Then again, when is this city not simultaneously tearing down and reinventing itself?

The book really gives you a feel for the city beyond its ersatz glitz, providing snapshots of several Vegas gamblers, comparing how his erratic poker, craps, baccarat, and blackjack play fares to that in Dostoevky's The Gambler, and speaking on how corporate, for better and worse, Vegas has become.

I did a Nexis search on the author, Andres Martinez, and it seems he's now on the editorial board of the New York Times. He's also a finalist for a Loeb Award for commentary. The Gerald Loeb Awards for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism are the Oscars of business reporting. The 2004 winners will be announced on June 28. Go Andres!

Justice? American-style.

Maryland executed three-time killer Steven Oken last night. It was the fourth execution in the state since 1998. Former gov. Parris Glendening imposed a moratorium on the death penalty for two years, but when Robert Ehrlich, a Republican, took office last year, he lifted it.

Yesterday, Oken issued his second-to-last appeal for life to Gov. Ehrlich, who faxed back a terse, three-paragraph statement at 5:08 p.m. denying his request. Oken's last-ditch attempt to live, an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals, failed at 8:41 p.m. He died 28 minutes later.

"I feel good. I feel really good right now," said Fred Romano, Sr., the father of one of the women Oken murdered, minutes after the convict died by lethal injection.

"The system has failed," said Fred Bennett, Oken's long-time attorney.

Maybe I'll write sometime about how I covered the execution of a two-time killer in the late 1990's, when I was a metro reporter at a Virginia newspaper. The state, whose advertising tagline is, "Virginia is for Lovers," is second only to Texas in the number of men put to death in the name of justice each year. In 1999 alone, 14 Virginians died by lethal injection.

Cue the violins: I hate being sick. I was up until 3:30 last night coughing, sneezing, and getting up intermittently to throw a wad of used Kleenex in the trash. Yuck. Good thing the SO is in Manhattan for a journalism conference, or else he'd be completely grossed out.

It's also hot as Hades and as humid as a South American tropical rainforest here, but I am an avowed energy-saver, so the thermostat is always set at 78 degrees. That doesn't help when one is emanating waves of feverish heat.

Make that almost always. At 2:30 last night, I buckled and lowered the temperature to 71 degrees. Ahh, much better. Then I took some Sudafed, nibbled on a See's chocolate truffle, and started reading 24/7 (see "On My Nightstand" at left).

I finally conked out 45 minutes later, and slept blissfully until 9:30 this morning. Still feeling logy and foggy-headed, but one more day at home should do the trick.

Random Travel Photo ...

Boating down the Mekong River. February 2004. 

to break up all of the text. This boat ride was one of the few peaceful times we had in Vietnam. A nice respite from the cacophony of Saigon.

Summer memory

The one day this week the thunderclouds are nowhere to be seen is also the rare day that I am sick: coughing, can't swallow, body aches and pains. I try to shield my pleurisied eyes from the sun streaming through the window. Oh, the irony.

Anyway. I just started a writing class in crafting the short essay. Yeah, I know I write for a living, but almost never in first person. So it's kind of fun. We took part in a 10-15 minute writing exercise about a childhood summer memory or food. Here's what I wrote:

In those long, lazy summer days, while the other kids went to the beach, rode their bikes in aimless circles around the neighborhood, or played baseball in the park, I sat in front of a baby grand piano in a darkened living room, and practiced scales:

A major in gliding quarter notes.
A minor in brisk eighth notes.
B major in tripping sixteenth notes.
B minor in a mad dash of thirty-second notes up the keyboard and down again.

The small black metronome ticked a measured cadence, counterpoint to the next-door neighbors' kids in their cerulean-blue, over-chlorinated pool screaming: "MARCO! POLO! FISH OUT OF WATER!"

Then a series of splashes and giggles.

Sometimes they'd overhear me laboring over the keyboard and imitate me, singing: "La la la la la la la la la."

They'd call me, laughing, and tell me to come swimming with them. Three times out of four, I'd ignore them, grit my teeth, and soldier on.

But every once in a while, I'd throw on my swimsuit, brimming with freedom, and slam down the piano lid with a satisfying "whummp" on my way out the front door.

Your turn: What's one of your childhood summer memories?

At least our lawns are green

May and June in Washington used to be, if not glorious weather-wise (San Diego, I miss you), at least sunny, sometimes breezy, and only moderately hot and oppressive. But in the past two years, it's meant skies that constantly threaten rain, angry and intermittent afternoon thunderstorms, a scorching sun, and humidity out the wazoo. The air is so humid it's almost palpable. It takes more energy than usual to draw breath, as if you're trying to breathe through a handful of wet cotton balls.

All of this tropical weather has meant the grass in our backyard has grown calf-high. Time to mow it. We almost bought one of those cute retro push-lawn mowers, but our lawn is so small - about 7 feet by 9 feet - it almost doesn't warrant it. So instead we bought a gigantic set of shears. I use it to "cut our lawn's hair."

My SO has photos of me doing it, looking all serious and green-thumbish. Afterwards, I sit on the deck, nurse a Diet Coke, and survey my handiwork. What does it look like? Usually as if my lawn went to the horticultural equivalent of the Hair Cuttery or one of those other cheap strip-mallish places where they shear you like a sheep, then kick you out the door.

But I find it satisfying nonetheless.

Up close and (im)Personal with Bill Clinton

On the front page of today's Washington Post is a story about how former president Bill Clinton is about to release his autobiography, which will no doubt trigger a wave of "reminiscence and argument" about the charismatic Democratic president.

On that note, here are two memories I have of The Comeback Kid:

Memory 1: When Clinton ran for the last time as Arkansas governor in the early 1990's,he took a whistlestop campaign tour of the state. I was in college and wrote for the campus newspaper, and when he rolled through Fayetteville, I had to cover him. I remember not being terribly excited about this story, thinking it was a bit pedestrian - a regular photo opp and grip and grin event.

It was a sunny day, and a small group of local media and city folk met him at the picturesque train station on Dickson Street, a block from the university. I sidled in close and took photos of him as he stood on the platform of the train car and gave his stump speech. He seemed young and full of energy, confidence and goodwill. I asked him a question or two - I can't remember what they were - and he seemed gracious and thoughtful.

Then the train whistled, his cue to move on, and he smiled and waved as the smallish crowd clapped sporadically and waved back. The train chugged slowly away, but he kept waving until the train rounded the bend and vanished from sight.

I went back to the newsroom and wrote my story. We used one of the photos I took in the paper. Of course being the world-weary punk that I was, I threw the photos away, and didn't keep a hard copy of my story. Damn.

Memory 2: Fast-forward to a crisp fall day in 1995. I had just moved to Washington to become a media relations intern for a health care advocacy group. There were about five interns at this organization, which is headquartered in downtown Washington. That day we were walking back to the office after lunch when traffic suddenly stopped.

We stood at the corner of New York Avenue and 14th St., NW, only two blocks from the White House, as a small motorcade with lights flashing and big black Town car slowly passed in front of us. We looked inside the car and there was Pres. Clinton, waving and grinning. All of us but one gasped and smiled and waved back, pointing, and exclaiming, "That's the president!"

Now, why I was star-struck then and was not as a cub reporter shows you how the press, even those wet behind the ears, can look at subjects with a gimlet eye. Not that we don't have good reason to.

The one intern who didn't jump up and down like a giggly schoolgirl, a native Washingtonian who grew up in Georgetown, smiled a faint, tolerant smile and said, "The first time you see him, it's kind of cool. But you'll see him many, many times when you live here."

Note: Just a couple of months later, Clinton began his liaison with another intern, Monica Lewinsky. That bitch.

Photo of the week

Newbie here taking another shaky baby step into the world of blogging: Here's a photo my SO took in February of two holy men at the Cao Dai temple, about an hour from Saigon, near the border of Thailand. I enjoyed our weeklong trip to southern Vietnam so much that I plan to visit this beautiful and mercurial country again soon. Next time I'll travel to the capitol, Hanoi, as well as Ha Long Bay and the rest of the northern, austere and Communist north.


Holy men at Vietnam's Cao Dai temple 

World leaders here in D.C. to remember Reagan

Well, many of them were here in Washington for a last goodbye to Reagan: Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, her magnificent voice weakened by age and ill health, and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev among them. The skies were rainy and overcast and the temperature cool enough for a sweater, surprising for a mid-June Friday morning, as the funeral procession traveled up Wisconsin Ave., NW to the Washington Cathedral.

I remember watching Gorbachev give a speech on a sunny May morning in Columbia, Mo., back in the early 1990's. Even from where I sat, I could see the birthmark on his face. Interestingly enough, it made him seem more approachable, more human.

What I've been up to: I was in Harrisburg, Pa., yesterday for an all-day seminar on how reporters and editors can better cover the world of business, which, as you know, has been plagued with scandal and greed. It was a boring, 2 1/2 hour haul to Harrisburg, but the drive was worthwhile: There were about 30 or so of us in attendance, and we heard from several journalists/media professors on how to dig deep for good dirt and news angles on the companies we cover, as well as received a primer on intermediate financials.

One thing has always perplexed me when I see a bunch of print reporters together: Why do we - as a whole - always dress so crummily? I mean, would it kill the women to buy clothes that actually flatter them, instead of the serviceable but shapeless togs they wear? And why don't the men ever get a decent haircut?! Okay, so I'm exaggerating. But not by much.

Oh, please.

All of the glowing, gushing and adulatory comments on the late Ronald Reagan is making me sick. Why is the press making it seem as if every word and gesture the Gipper made was wrought out of pure gold?

Do we - and all other Americans - not remember how he: raised taxes on the working class, drowned the national budget in red ink, ordered the ill-fated invasion of Grenada, helped bring about the massacre in Lebanon of 241 U.S. Marines, participated in the Iran-Contra debacle, which killed tens of thousands of Nicaraguans, then tried to distance himself from it, claiming that he did "not rememember"?

Apparently not. The cult of personality has won in the political arena.

The Washington Post's Howie Kurtz wrote an interesting column today about how the so-called "liberal media," which once had a more critical and contentious relationship with the late president, now fawns over him.

I remember back in high school a sticker I saw in record shops: It had a black and white image of Reagan grimacing and pointing his finger at you, and the words, "Reagan Hates Me" on it.

Repeat after me: Reagan is not a God. Reagan is not a God. Reagan is not a God.

Hello, America!

It's a cool early June night and in the quiet I can hear the muted rumble of the freight train hurtling south. It's a few minutes after midnight, and I'm procrastinating going to bed.

I've been rummaging around the 'Net for years, but only now decided to add my thoughts to those of the millions of other online scribblers. Whether anyone's reading us is anybody's guess, but hey, this is a fun experiment.

News from this past weekend: Former pres. Ronald Reagan died. Smarty Jones did not win the Belmont, and world leaders, including Dubya and French president Jacque Chirac, gathered on the beaches of Normandy to celebrate the 60th anniversary of D-Day.

A few facts about me: I live in the nation's capital, where I work as a journalist. I'm a Gen X Southern California transplant and I miss the sun, wide open vistas, and fish tacos sans peer of my home state. I do not miss the smog, nor the traffic, nor its state legislature ruled by a former Austrian body-builder/accused sex offender with delusions of grandeur.

I'll say good night for now, but coming soon will be musings about news of the day, plans on my upcoming kitsch trip to Vegas, and the baby boomlet among my XX-chromosomed pals.