Little Massacre on Sixth Street

More folks were let go at another of my alma maters, the Daytona Beach News Journal. The Little Miracle on Sixth Street was once considered miraculous in that its paper hit the streets every morning in all its glory. The miracle now is that it's still around.

The story of its arrival at this stage in its history is beyond surreal, starting with the profligacy of the Davidson family, who spent the paper's proceeds on a pet project involving attaching the newspaper name to a new arts center in the city; they became embroiled with Cox, the newspaper chain with partial ownership, which resulted in a forced sale at judicial gunpoint at a cost of several hundred million that the Davidsons could not raise. That ended ultimately with sale of the paper to the new ownership at a fraction of the asking price. The place was shedding jobs all along the way.

My sympathy to those who have gone before and those who most recently received their slips. It's a brave new world you're entering. I've just received a list of editorial folks who've been booted and it includes some familiar names. Here's a link to a DB blog with all the names; read all the way to the bottom. The new owner, a joint venture, named the Leesburg, FL publisher to run the joint.

Locals on the Road: Wymondham and the Green Dragon

The Drover this edition highlights not a true "local," but a local to some other local instead. The Green Dragon, at left, is located on Church Lane, Wymondham, a small ville about an hour from here in Norfolk County. It's just shy of Norwich on the A11.

The Green Dragon was built in the 1300s. It has a simple, roomy interior with a front room that was chock full of diners on Palm Sunday, and a small tap room. Like other period construction, you sort of bend over, duck your head further and angle sideways through the puny opening that serves as a door. The interior is timbered in the same pattern you see from the street. I slaked my considerable thirst with a pint of Wherry after a brisk 5-miler around the town and its environs.

I visited Wymondham on Sunday as part of my "50 Walks in Norfolk" tour and happened past the pub early on. It's just a stone's throw from the abbey ruins that are part of the St. Mary and St. Thomas of Canterbury church (so nice, they named it twice). The tower to the right is actually a ruin. It's part of the church but is inaccessible due to a wall between the two. Story goes, according to the guide book, that the townsfolk and the Benedictine monks who shared the church couldn't stand one another. The monks built the right tower, not intending the townsfolk to share it. So the townies built their own tower, on the left, to spite the gowns. Centuries later, along comes Henry VIII, who called Dissolution on the Catholic church, whereby the monk's abbey was torn down. All that remains is the ruined tower. The church was allowed to stand.

Behold the ruined tower at left.

The horse above was grazing in a pasture north of town called the Lizard, which is apparently some old English or Anglo-Saxon word for open fields, or a place left to seed. Sometimes our yard is a lizard.

Pistol-packer

The wife, still serving in Afghanistan, writes that she works from before dawn to past dusk, but that living conditions have improved somewhat. She has more privacy. She gets packages. She's settled into a routine of sorts.

She writes about her co-workers, including one guy who is by turns utterly polite and professional, and then equally as profane. He stays awake for days and then sleeps at his desk. It's like something out of MASH or Catch-22.

Twice now she's ventured outside the wire on missions. She commented on the near absence of women anywhere in the local area, and those that do appear are head-to-toe burqa'd. Phone calls and e-mails from the front have tapered to a few short bursts. Her workload is ramping up and she's consumed by meetings until after dark. Here's a recent photo, however. She's standing outside the door to her quarters in a qalat.

House Cat Safari

I'll conclude this post with a new feature I'll call "Bug Hunt: The Electrifying Search for Neighborhood Felines." Each week we'll bring you a captivating, real life photograph of a local feline captured digitally in its natural habitat. Bug is (my own) household slang for house cat. Brits call them moggies.

Our first subject is a black-and-white neighbor cat whom I suspect leaves its scat in our front yard. She was in the hedge across the street this morning when I snapped this photograph.

Here's a closer look:

Til next time, guard well your scratching post.