VALOIS, New York, USA - Eric and Tina Hazlitt's sailboat was launched Wednesday a sure sign that summer is here. The Red Rocket might make a splash this week, if the weather gods permit.
One of last year's boats
And then Saturday there will be the annual Cardboard Boat Race in the Village Marina Harbor. No entry this year from *subject2change media but perhaps next year we will get up the courage to get some cardboard and a half-dozen rolls of duct tape and make a vessel.
But I will be there filming, for sure. And it is always a great time.
After two years of putting it off, I finally build a real deck for the Valois house hot tub. Three years running, I used a combination of plywood, shale and wood chips as the base.
Hot tub atop its new home
The combination was hard to keep level (READ: impossible). Plus, spiders, ants, and a variety of insects of totally indeterminate genus and specie would somehow find their way under the cover and be found doing the backstroke when Adm. Fox and I would uncover the softub for use.
During the day, it was just annoying. At night, it was occasionally a stinging experience.
The deck is made of a pressure treated wood that is supposed to last, well, for a long time. All I know is the tub is a good six inches off the ground and while spiders, ants, and that variety of insects of totally indeterminate genus and specie might still want to see the soothing warm waters of the hot tub, they will have to work a little harder to do so.
Here's a video of last year's cardboard boat races in Watkins Glen.
SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - The countdown clock to the Rally to Restore Sanity Oct. 30 in Washington D.C. is ticking very loudly - more so now that Adm. Fox and I have launched our newest enterprise: *subject2change Media.
*subject2change Media? Whaaaaaaaaat? some people have been asking me.
Well, in a nutshell, we really are going to do all of our writing, editing, publishing and nowvideo under that title/umbrella. It's a way to collect all of our various projects (articles, reviews, planned books, and videos) into one sort-of-comprehensible structure. (Emphasis on sort-of.)
And yes, there will be a web page showing up sometime. Maybe logo wear, too. Woo-hoo!
New business card
Our first foray of course into the multi-media world starts at the Rally to Restore Sanity - which will be the official launch of *subject2change Media, too. LINK - Rally to Restore Sanity
For the rally, I will be writing standard-issue freelance pieces for both the Sacramento (Calif.) News & Review and the Ithaca (New York) Times. In both cases, I am going to be hooking up with local people (from Sacramento and Ithaca) at the rally to get their take on things for the stories.
But besides the copious notes, still photos and eventual print articles that will come out of that, Adm. Fox and I will be shooting video of people and the whole event with the idea of putting together a timely multi-media package for TV and websites.
So as I feverishly work on lists of people to talk with, stay awake drafting a script for what I think a rally video might look like and use the mornings to contact possible publications, TV and websites, I have to ask myself again: Didn't I retire three years ago from all this?
Well, sort of. But this sounds like so much fun.
Cue the cameraman, we're rolling.
While we make up some promo videos for *subject2change Media, here's a video promoting the Rally. It's pretty funny - as you might expect for a rally organized by The Comedy Channel.
Michael J. Fitzgerald has been a journalist for five decades, working as a writer and editor for newspapers, magazines and web publications. In 2014 he published his first novel, "The Fracking War," followed in 2015 with "Fracking Justice." In 2018, he published "The Devil's Pipeline." He has written a weekly column, "Write On" for the daily 'Finger Lakes Times' newspaper in Geneva, NY for 14 years, He contributes stories to the Contra Costa Pulse newspaper in Richmond, CA. He also writes essays on Substack under the title Write On and On.
