Moving the old post office

Hannah Hill owns the old Ester post-office-turned-espresso-stand, and operated it for a year as The First Cup, a very good espresso shop indeed. But she's decided to get out of the espresso business, and will be renting it to me for an office space. (I've been slowly filling up my husband's tool shed with back issues of the Republic and the Local Et Cetera....) I'm moving it back to Ester (with lots of help), where it will reside on the village square, across from the Golden Eagle and next to PhotoSynthesis (per HIllary, who decided that she didn't want it on the other side since that's prime parking space). Moving the building first requires digging it out via pickaxe and shovel so it is free of the frozen gravel it's resting on. Hans is talking a jackhammer, which seems rather drastic, but it depends on whether we have to move it this weekend or next. We were out there digging away (not getting very deep--it's still frozen solid) yesterday, and Hans did a bunch the day before. Slow work, but it's getting there.

Finally, Hans will get his tool shed back!

Insurgents and press people

Well! We're back from the Alaska Press Club conference and a mini-vacation in Anchorage. We stayed with Aaron Selbig and Nova Stubbs of Insurgent49, who graciously lent us their very comfortable couch and hosted us while we were there. We had an excellent time. It was so GOOD to be hanging out with fellow alternative press people. Aaron came up here in December for the Grassroots Gathering and stayed on our couch for the duration, so he returned the favor.

We only ended up going to one workshop, on reporting on gays & politics, which was very good but had only a few people attending. There was another workshop simultaneous with it that drew a lot of people, but I was still surprised by how few reporters were in this session. Actually, the whole conference was fairly small this year in comparison with the previous years I've attended. I think that pre-announcing some of the categories was responsible for this--it might be better if they saved the first place announcements in all categories for the banquet, and 2nd & 3rd place for pre-announcing.

I feel wonderfully detached from all the vexing things I left behind here in Ester; I am refreshed, and ready to do more.

Ignorance and publishing

As I become more experienced in publishing, and in particular journalism, I become painfully more aware of how little I know about the subjects I report on or editorialize about. Twenty-four pages is just not very much space for all the stories out there, or for a thorough treatment of the ones that make it into the paper. And I never seem to have enough time to familiarize myself sufficiently with the subjects I want to write about. I do research, but it never seems quite thorough enough. It's a bit depressing at times.

So on that note, we're off tomorrow for a little professional development at the Alaska Press Club Conference, in Anchorage (again, still, always), which means lots of rearrangement of schedules and driving and gasoline and whatnot. Or at least, I think we're off. We'll be late (the workshops start on Friday), but I really don't want to miss this. It's just too much fun and reminds me every year of part of why I'm publishing a newspaper.

AK Press Club award for cartoons--again!

The Ester Republic has once again won an award for Best Editorial Cartoon: Jamie Smith won third place this year for "oops", "walking on water", and "animals". Dan Darrow, alas, did not place. We still have to wait to find out if any other awards were dished out to the paper. But you should check out the other award winners!