Short Stories, Long Odds

Me in the Press Room, originally uploaded by jberthume.

Diana wanted me to get someone to take my picture at the debate, and I remembered a whole one times. Picture by Texas Blue publisher Karl Lynch.

In The Waiting Line, originally uploaded by jberthume.

I covered the debate from Austin for the Texas Blue and I’m proud of the work we did down there. My life has taken another one of those bizarre turns in the last few days, and I fear that I’ve been bitten by the campaign coverage bug once again. This picture, in case you were wondering, is of part of the line to get in to see Senator Barack Obama at Reunion Arena on February 20, when 20,000 of his friends and neighbors appeared to wish him well. They did so very loudly.

If you live in the northeastern US, winter has been a visceral reality for months, so much so that some cities are running out of salt. If you live in Texas, winter has been a cruel joke, a balmy voyage through bad craziness where we wear shorts in February and have all the windows open and bugs live forever and tempers flare.

But the sky in Texas now looks cast from iron, and the low ceiling of a heavy season seems here to stay, at least for a few days.