I spend much of my time rooting through the EZ Reader carrousel at the Ellensburg Public Library. I recently stumbled upon the Elephant Gerald and Piggie series by Mo Willems. It is fantastic. I don’t remember it being around when Aidan was little, but I may have just missed it. If you have a preschooler [...]

Maybe it’s just me There are things that annoy journalists more than they do the general public, sometimes that gets reflected in story content. Although there may be an element of that at play here, I think everyone should be interested in whether the Kittitas County Prosecutor’s Office files charges in regard to the mishandling [...]

November is quite possibly the worst month for school, topping even December. Starting Wednesday, the Ellensburg School District goes on its early release schedule for parent-teacher conferences. This leads up to the Thanksgiving holiday. Earlier this month there was Veterans Day. But the Monday prior to Veterans Day there was an early release day. The [...]

Here’s a popular feature I’ve seen on other blogs. Come up with song titles that reflect a certain story or issue. Our first attempt will be to come up with songs that reflect the current document-gate scandal with Kittitas County (see Mary Swift’s excellent story in Saturday’s Daily Record). Here it goes 1. “Breaking the [...]

One of the neat things about my job is I proof the comics page the day before publication (my main task is to make sure the cat in “Get Fuzzy” doesn’t give anyone the finger). What this means is I know what happens to Blondie the day before anyone else in town. It’s pretty awesome. [...]

Read a good book lately? Well, this forum can be a place to share those books with others. I’m currently reading “Nemesis” by Jo Nesbo, a Norwegian writer. It’s a Norwegian detective novel. I enjoy a good foreign detective novel, a genre that features Arkady Renko, the Russian detective created by Martin Cruz Smith, and [...]

Saw this poll on the Seattle Times Web site (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/sports/) when I went to check out the dismal Husky score. You can vote for Central as the best football team in the state. Seems the obvious choice.

Coffee club One idea I had for this blog was a coffee club feature similar to what Jim Romenesko does for Starburks (http://www.starbucksgossip.com/), except it would be localized to D&M for Ellensburg and maybe Pioneer for Cle Elum. The Starbucks site allows people to share stories about their experiences at their local outlet. Romenesko also [...]

Aesthetics of deprivation Over the course of my Catholic upbringing, I always admired nuns. It’s not that I disliked priests I just wasn’t as comfortable with them. This doesn’t have anything to do with priest sex scandals. A priest never made a pass at me. On the other hand, you can’t talk about priests and [...]

Of course, I did promise I wouldn’t turn this blog into a version of Nation of Mike, but I did mention I would reference it. For those of you unfamiliar with the column, you had to scroll by it to get to this entry. Anyway, you should read it, if only to come back and [...]