Sorry so underblogged of late.

Today has been a mixed bag. On the negative side I think I've figured out why I have such a terrible itch. I had decided that it was a recurrence of eczema, a condition I only had once and that was during a time when I needed to say, "we should just be friends," and instead of saying it, I had inflamed, itchy skin.

Last night I itched so badly, I left my bed and went to sleep on the futon in the office...no itching.

A while back I came across a mention somewhere in the news of the resurgence of bed bugs in the U.S. which, it turns out, are a real thing. They hang out in your bed linen and suck your blood. In the dark. The swollen welts on my thighs and calves seem to bear this out as does the only-happens-in-my-bed piece of the story.

So I've started in on the laundry which should be fun and I've bought some very formidable looking insecticide foggers to detonate tomorrow. However I was up itching for lots of last night and so I'm tired now (it's a few minutes to midnight) and yet not sleepy. Just cross and self pitying about the stupid bed bug infestation and wondering how I got them and wondering how I ensure that I don't get them again. Ick. I started having itching last week, before the arrival of my friend John who would otherwise be a possible culprit. Of course John didn't set foot into my room, much less the bed unless he snuck in there while I was out at work but that doesn't seem his style and, like I say, the itching and apparent bed bug-ness happened before John showed up. So I don't know. It does seem bed-specific and not about my other furniture so that's good.

Okay enough about the fucking bed bugs. I saw the stage production of THE LION KING tonight. Friends of my dad's were going and had an extra ticket at the last minute so I sat on the 10th row for free; cool, no? I have to say this was one of the few times when the advance hype didn't ruin it for me, it was super cool. I tried wrapping my mind around the logistics of the show...so how the hell do they launder some of those costumes? How long does it take to learn how to walk on stilts, in the dark, with a big-ass giraffe head on top of your head? How long must the tech rehearsals be for the show (ouch)?

Okay, that's enough for now. I went on the Nitty Gritty Bus Tour last Saturday and intended to blog all kinds of stuff about it but here it is Thursday already and I have midterms this week. The tour was sponsored by the horribly named Chicago Headline Club. The Headline Club is the oldest chapter of The Society of Professional Journalists and this is the second year they have sponsored this tour. Hosted by Ron Grossman (who, I am pleased to announce, looks exactly like his picture) the tour went through some of Chicago's neighborhoods off the beaten path.

"Absolutely NO ALCOHOL on the bus!!!" warned the registration sign-up. I've been reading THE BOYS ON THE BUS, an account of the press coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign and I was excited about getting on this bus; they have to warn us not to drink?!? Awesome!

Alas, I knew it was not to be when I got to the rendezvous point in front of Tribune Tower. The beautiful clothes and enormous, early-morning smiles let me know I was in the presence of broadcast journalists. Print journalists and broadcast journalists aren't terribly fond of each other. In my classes, the broadcast majors are openly disdainful of having to write anything, at all, ever. Based on my tiny sample, it seems like those who yearn to be on-camera news reporters are mostly interested in the on-camera part and journalism offers a way of being on television without having to hang out with a bunch of creepy actor types. In class it's the broadcast majors who are most surprised by the most rudimentary elements of civics; who is the governor and how does his job differ from that of a senator? for instance.

The folks from ABC Channel 7 stood around in the chilly morning (the bus left at 9:30 and was scheduled to return to the Trib at 5:30 p.m., an all day affair) discussing the advantages and disadvantages of different camera angles available at that location. The rest of us stood around eating corn muffins, drinking coffee and eyeing one another warily. Journalists are introverted egomaniacs, notes the author of THE BOYS ON THE BUS and that sounds about right. This leads to another point of conflict between broadcast and print; the broadcast folks are extroverted and therefore much more upfront about their need for attention which seems unseemly to us, shuffling around in our weird clothes, notebooks in hand and cynicism in our hearts. It's not that the print folks don't warm up; I shared my table at lunch with the new Chicago bureau chief for The Christian Science Monitor who was perfectly friendly after we had hung out in each other's orbit for a few hours.

One of the things that makes journalism so interesting to me is that it forces a writer to become an instant expert on a wide range of topics. Last term I had to write stories on the mayoral campaign, Wi-Fi technology, car-sharing programs, a profile of a gay punk rock musician, an all-women's baseball league from the 1940's and others. I thought about this watching our tour leader, Ron Grossman who didn't tell us his age although he did mention that he had graduated from college in the 1950's so you do the math. Grossman makes a very cool old guy and I think it's being a journalist; remaining constantly curious, always learning. This keeps a person, if not young, then certainly vital.

I was there for 9 hours and I have pages of note but it's late.

However I will say that I learned this...that in most cities ethnic groups will follow one another. For instance, the neighborhood Pilsen in Chicago was settled by Czechs who then moved to the neighborhood Little Village and arriving Mexicans settled in Pilsen. The Czechs became more affluent and they moved to nearby Cicero, the Mexicans moved into Little Village and so on, the Mexicans following the Czechs (Cicero is now way Mexican and I wrote down where the Czechs went next but it's late and I don't wanna bother.) That's Chicago. However, throughout the U.S. blacks have always followed Jews. Chances are, according to my guide, if there is a neighborhood in an American city that is predominately black, chances are if you go back far enough, you'll find the time when it was primarily Jewish.

The other major lesson of the day was that if you want to get a bunch of journalists excited you should give them a bag full of stuff. It doesn't have to be wonderful stuff, we don't care. It's the thought that counts. One of the community activists on the tour understood this and gave each of us a bag with Xeroxes about her community along with a mango (lots of Indian and Pakistani residents in this neighborhood). We lined up as if none of us could possibly afford a mango. Other community organizers didn't give us diddly squat and one community organizer, this one located at a housing project, spoke really softly even though we kept asking him to speak up and he insisted he was speaking as loudly as he could even though he wasn't loud enough to hear from 4 feet away (ironically, his topic was that the city was ignoring his group. DUDE, MAYBE THEY JUST CAN'T FUCKING HEAR YOU.)

Not speaking up loudly is a good way to piss off a group of journalists.

To recap: Bags with free stuff, no matter how petty? Good. Failing to make interesting, or even audible quotes? Bad.