Down Home Days, part IV

After the frog hop, we wander around for a bit. We investigated the Madison museum of historical treasures (I may be getting the name wrong). The museum was well put together, and contained some old books, clothing and furniture, along with the local junior high school’s yearbooks, which contained the records of schoolchildren from kindergarten to seventh grade. These yearbooks were about the size of a large church bulletin.

After we finish walking around, we decide to take a driving tour of Madison to see Katie’s high school.

Note: the following post is simply a retelling of the way things played out and the lack of tangible facts any locals were able to give us about the subject.

Down Home Days, part III

The Frog Hop

At about 1:20, we go over to the designated frog-jumping area.

I see the so-called “swamp,” which is a 9-square-foot piece of fake grass. The judges, who are Katie’s father, uncle and a biologist at the local community college, are wetting the swamp with a cupful of water.

Andrea asks why the judges are wearing scrubs.

Katie states the obvious: “Because it’s official.”

I notice a 3-foot-tall kid carrying a Styrofoam water cooler.

“Is there a frog in there?” I ask Katie.

“Is the sky blue?” she replies.

Then the voice of the MC, the town veterinarian, comes over the microphone, announcing the beginning of the 18th annual frog hop.

Down Home Days, part II

As Katie pointed out in the last post’s comments, the official name of the festival is “The Four Freedoms Festival,” otherwise known as Down Home Days, no hyphen. These corrections being made, I will proceed.

The festival

We walk downtown from Katie’s house, which takes about three minutes.

As Andrea points out, it looks like River City in “The Music Man.” There is a town square, complete with a gazebo, where the high-school band is playing.

Gazebo, complete with jazz band. (Photo by Andrea Asuaje)

We meet Katie’s Uncle Tim, the county clerk who rides a golf cart in the parade.

This year, he rode the float with his two dogs. Apparently, one of the dogs, Bobby Lee, did not behave and barked at the constituents along the parade route.

“You’re losing votes, Bobby Lee,” Tim said.

Tim encourages us not to miss the frog jump. We assure him that we won’t.

Down-Home Days

Weeks ago, my friend Katie Sanders invited me to a festival in her hometown of Madison, Fla.

Down-Home Days, according to Katie, had it all: small-town atmosphere, food, craft booths and, most importantly, a FROG-JUMPING contest.

Of course, after hearing the words “frog-jumping contest,” I was in.

I was slightly disappointed when I heard that I wouldn’t be able to wear my wide-brimmed straw hat that has never left my closet (“Well, everyone wears Abercrombie & Fitch, so it’s not like you’d fit in.”).

But I recovered from the dashed hope of straw-hat wearing, and Saturday morning, I left with Katie and our friends Andrea and Ashley to make the pilgrimage to Madison.

Tales of frogs, traffic and small towns to come

I have a non-frustrating post coming up on my trip today to Madison, Fla., population circa 3,200 people.

But until then, I’ll leave you with two words: frog hop.

Journalism, a profession suited to small children

One of the stories I’m working on right now was prompted purely by my own curiosity.

I don’t want to give anything away before it’s published, but this story was prompted by something I see every day: handbills being handed out on Turlington Plaza.

I walked away, but five minutes later I started wondering if this was a story.

So I called my friend and former Alligator Editor Lyndsey Lewis.

“Lyndsey,” I said. “I need to ask your semi-professional opinion about something.”

So I told her the situation.

“Hmm,” she said. “Can you get class credit for this?”

I said I probably could.

“Well, if you can get credit for it, do it. Otherwise, you’ll just have to be curious,” she said.

So I thought about it for all of ten seconds and decided I could not settle with being curious.

So I walked back, did the story and called my mom (who is also a journalist).

“That’s the great thing about being a journalist,” she said after I told her the saga. “You always get to satisfy your curiosity.”

Telling this whole story to my friend Katie later on, she added to that last comment: “Much like a small child.”

That’s true. But I’d rather be like a pesky three-year-old than be left wondering.

So close to being done

After four tests and a project, I’m almost done with my semester.

Just a couple stories to finish up, a final to take and I’m done.

I’m really excited about my stories for this semester. They’re all over the place. I’m writing about eating disorders, education, trademark issues and the 2008 Olympics. That’s all in three stories. Hey, at least I don’t get bored.

Now I just wait for sources to call me back, which I think is one of the most hair-pullingly frustrating aspects of journalism since I have no control over it.

I guess I could always follow people to their cars …

Honestly, it’s just a nonessential clause

I was telling this story yesterday to a friend who is also majoring in journalism, which brought the complete frustration of it back to my memory.

I was sitting in my editing class a few months ago minding my own business when my professor asked the class the following question:

“Is there any grammar rule you have trouble with that you want me to go over?”

The overwhelming response was, “Commas!” followed by affirmations of “yes,” “exactly” and nodding heads.

I muttered something under my breath and fought the urge to bang my head on the desk in front of me.

Editing is a class for upper-level journalism majors. Most people in the class are juniors or seniors, and you have to pass several core journalism classes to get to this point.

In every journalism class I’ve taken, we spent at least one lecture on commas. Beginning with the first journalism class in the college, there is a five-point deduction for every comma error. If you don’t know how to use commas, those points add up quickly. We are required in these classes to buy books with instructions on how to use various types of commas. Also, I’m pretty sure no UF student first heard the word “comma” in a UF classroom. We’ve been learning grammar rules since elementary school.

Thus, I feel like by this point people should have figured out how to properly use that little curved punctuation mark in their sentences.

It was all I could do not to raise my hand and say, “Please, I’m begging you. Don’t cover commas again. If they don’t get commas now, they won’t ever get it. Just give up now.”

There are much more difficult skills to master in journalism than the comma.

Using commas according to style and grammar rules makes writing cleaner and less distracting to the reader. Commas are important.

I just wish people would try a little harder to learn the rules the first (or second) time.

Note: I have checked this post several times for comma errors. If you find any, feel free to mock me.

A lot of studying to do, but it’s worth it

This week (i.e. today and tomorrow), I have four tests and a project due, as well as several stories I need to be working on.

I’m actually enjoying studying for my law of mass communication test, though, because a majority of the material focuses on the First Amendment and journalists’ source privilege.

It’s scary to think about the Dark Age of journalism that could be approaching if cutting back on freedom of speech doesn’t produce a public outcry soon.

I guess I just feel that this is practical for me to be learning. So I study with gusto.

I, like newspaper readers, have a short attention span

When I was little, from the ages of about 7 to 12, I used to start random projects of “improving myself.”

These “projects” usually involved some type of cooking, reading books I didn’t really want to read (often poetry or something about Camelot) and starting journals.

I think I started about eight journals during that five-year period. I only kept one of them for more than two weeks.

My pursuit of a blog has been kind of like that.

Consider my most recent blog, Questions of Science.

It was a good idea and a good start. Soon, it dwindled off due to classes, and I was lucky to post once a month.

I honestly don’t have time to go through the plethora of science journalism out there and analyze it. That would be a full-time job, and I’m already a full-time student. I hope to continue commenting on science journalism here, as science journalism is also frustrating, but my thoughts on science journalism weren’t enough to fill a blog daily.

I still want to write a blog, though. My frustrations with and thoughts on journalism are probably enough to fill encyclopedic volumes.

Hopefully, this won’t go the way of my tweenage self-improvement projects.