I began working for the Messenger when I was just 16. I first worked after school as part of a mentor program kindly arranged by Roy Eaton and my English teacher, James Bell.

By the summer, I was a full-fledged intern. The folks at the Messenger were generous and allowed me to write news and feature stories, in addition to the more typical intern tasks like typing obits, making corrections and photographing giant vegetables.

That’s right. During my summer internships here, I was the official giant vegetable and/or fruit photographer. I took many pictures of giddy gardeners and the fruit of their labor. If anyone grew an abnormally large squash or a gigantic watermelon, they would tote it to the Messenger’s office for a photo-op.

Now I’ll be honest. Taking pictures of giant vegetables was not my favorite thing to do. In fact, I began to loathe it. During my last summer, I received a note to call a gardener on Trinity Street in Decatur who had grown an enormous tomato.

I didn’t call him back right away. I put it off for weeks. Keep in mind, his home was just a few blocks away from the office. It would have only taken 10 minutes to run down the street and snap a picture.

About August, the guilt overwhelmed me and I called the gardener with the enormous tomato. But it was too late. The tomato was gone and the vine was burned and scorched by the sun.

I had shirked my duties, and the county was deprived of seeing one gardener’s pride and joy. Maybe a giant tomato wasn’t important to me, but I’m sure it meant a lot to the gardener that tended its vines and lovingly watered it.

I recently came across a book that reminded me of those days — Backyard Giants by Susan Warren. Warren follows pumpkin growers in “the passionate, heartbreaking and glorious quest to grow the biggest pumpkin ever.”

It’s on my bookshelf at home and as soon as I read it, I’ll report back. I’m thinking these gourds may be a bit bigger than anything I ever saw in Wise County.

The Washington Post is reporting that the H1N1 virus, aka the Swine Flu, has been declared a full-scale pandemic by the World Health Organization.

The virus evaporated pretty quickly from the news headlines soon after it was discovered that swine flu was not as virulent as first believed. As of yesterday Wise County has had 5 confirmed cases (out of 2,050 confirmed cases in Texas) according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

With this news, expect swine flu to be back in the national headlines, but I wouldn’t expect anything like we saw during the first news cycle, unless people equate pandemic with panic. Then it’s anybody’s guess.

Stephen Colbert

Among the several journalism publications I receive regularly is the bi-monthly International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors. The publication always has a journalism-related quote on the front page, and this month’s quote comes from the host of show that is a guilty pleasure of mine: Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report. The phrase was no doubt uttered at some point during his satirical show. Here’s his take on the state of newspapers:

“The impending death of the newspaper industry: where will they print the obituary?”

Ironically, the obituary page might be the last place you will see cuts from newspapers. They are traditionally one of the most read pages in the paper. Newspapers can change up their paper’s format, but they’d better think long and hard about making changes to obits. Even on our Web page, if you look at our most read stories each week, you will normally see at least one or two obituaries.

Here’s a copy of an e-mail I got from a reader last month regarding obituaries: “I wish the Messenger would tell more obituaries earlier. I don’t get my Messenger until one day later and after 3 o’clock in the afternoon — too late for me to know who and more about deaths in our town. The information about funerals and family are too late to attend. Please put the obits earlier in the update.”

We do, of course, list funerals in the Update Monday through Friday. As one familiar face in the Messenger is known to say, “I had to look at the Update to see if I was in there.”

Punctuation is delicious

Is a question mark in the shape of meatloaf forming over your head right now? Read on.

Today is National Punctuation Day. According to the official Web site of the event, National Punctuation Day is “a celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotes, and other proper uses of periods, semicolons, and the ever-mysterious ellipsis.” Or, as the Web site goes on to say, “the holiday that reminds America that a semicolon is not a surgical procedure.”

I found out about this one through one of the hundreds of e-mails I get per day. For all the silliness, the site does have some good information on the correct usage of punctuation - handy information for both journalists and non-journalists alike.

And if you are looking for an early Christmas present for your high school English teacher, click here

By the way, the Web site contains the recipe for that delicious-looking, question mark-shaped meatloaf pictured above.

Today's front page of the Houston Chronicle

We’ve heard quite a bit about the power outages, flooding and incredible damage Hurricane Ike left in its wake. Here is a message center to keep up with how our print journalist family handled the storm. And be sure to check out the Chronicle’s Web site.