“It takes a whole lot of money to look this cheap” is one of the classic lines of the equally classic Dolly Parton. (Also love her quip: “People say I’m a dumb blonde. Let me tell you, I’m not dumb … and I’m not a blonde.”)
In that spirit, my corollary is that “it takes a whole of of effort to make something look effortless.” And this week, the planning capabilities of those of us serving on the Sun Gazette Eastern Front get a workout as we move offices.
The goal? Just like with ducks, no matter how furious things are moving below the surface, it looks calm and placid above the waterline.
(A copy editor would tell me that since “calm” and “placid” are synonyms, no need to use both. But this is the news biz; we haven’t had copy editors in the industry since about 2003, alas.)
We’ll see how it goes. Online readers hopefully will see everything the expect to see, including updated stories and the posting of weekly editions later today. From there, we’ll take it one day at a time.
If you gotta move, the last week of the year is probably as good a time as any, as local news tends to be on break.
THE COVID LUNACY IS PERMEATING MY SUBCONSCIOUS: My mother visited from the other side of the astral plane two nights ago in a dream that shows all the 2021 lunacy is impacting my nocturnal slumber.
This dream had the entire McCaffrey nuclear family — Ozzie, Harriet, David and Ricky, for those who get that reference — gathered together somewhere, apparently on vacation.
And then, suddenly, my mother opined we should all go out and get COVID tests, even though nobody was showing any symptoms or even feeling bad.
That led to quite the Scotty-vs.-Elly rows (I miss those — ka-boom!), where I barked at her that there was no upside to doing that, but plenty of downside if any of us had to quarantine for the duration of the vacation.
Like most of our folderols over the years, it finished in a stalemate, as in this case, I woke up before finding out whether we ended up following Dr. Fauci’s somewhat questionable earlier advice that everybody should go out and get tested. (Oh, Dr. Fauci, you’ll get one right eventually, you impish disaster of a public-health professional …..)
For the record, I’m usually awake maybe 17-18 hours a day, and that’s enough time for COVID and its implications to mess with me. Let’s keep it out of my nighttime subconscious, OK?
- Scott McCaffrey