Playing catch-up

Seems we have a lot to catch up on this week. Let’s see. One feature that didn’t run with last week’s 10-year anniversary package (space considerations) was a where-are-are-they-now story, in which I caught up with a bunch of the RN&R folks we hadn’t heard from in a while. One was former arts editor Adrienne Rice, who married Gabe Doss (another RN&Rer) before she left town. Well, the two are doing quite well, working at Medical Resource USA in San Antonio, Texas. Anyway, that’s all good, but here’s the real news: The couple just discovered they’re expecting their first child in October.

Next, I went to the 10-year anniversary party on Saturday night. I just wanted to thank everyone who turned out and had a good time—everyone else, too.

Moving right along, I wrote an editor’s note a week or two ago about my second-grader who was doing hours of homework every night. I was actually taken aback by the number of calls and e-mails I received on the topic. One thing that interested me was the immediate tendency to blame the teacher. First, yes, we’d spoken to the teacher, and she had given us an opportunity to draw a line on the homework when we felt he’d reached the limit. But that put us in a situation where we felt he wouldn’t be keeping up with the rest of the students. You can see the conflict.

At any rate, it seems quite a few parents, and even some teachers, have similar concerns. Over the next few weeks, if you have information you’d like to pass along about this issue, you know where to find me.

Finally, check out the second pick of the This Week section. Letty Strickland was nice enough to send me a photo from our anniversary party. Strikes me as a fun new way to communicate with the paper. So, if you happen to own a cell phone with a digital camera, and you happen to capture something worthy of note, e-mail me a picture, and we’ll try and get it into the paper.