Behind the Headlines

By Danielle Portteus

I’ve been to two evening meetings this week and both had the same thing: Let’s see how much we can talk about everything else but what’s on the agenda.
I understand, in most cases, these people know each other pretty well. But this is not a social hour – or hours- there is business that needs to be conducted.
I am not the most patient person in the world, but I try really hard when I am at these evening meetings, which sometimes can last for four hours.
I cannot understand why it takes more than an hour to discuss the first two items on an agenda when, in retrospect, they aren’t that significant.
Or, when pretty important topics are on the agenda and they are just breezed over with a… “I don’t really have much to say on this.”
So please, for the sake of all reporters out there, can we stay on topic and at least give a little glimpse into the agenda items.

By Danielle Portteus

I’m pretty much a newsy and read three or four different print publications daily, listen to NPR regularly and visit other media Web sites when I have the chance. I keep hearing about people being “too scared to spend” money.
Now, I’ve always been rather frugal with my money trying to save as much as I possibly can. When I bought my first car, I paid for it myself. The same with my second and third. The first two were not very expensive.
Last year I paid for two weekend trips to New York City. That was the first time I visited a place outside of Michigan and Ohio in a very, very long time.
And I love to shop. A lot. Clothing, shoes, purses. I don’t spend a ton of money on them, but I’ll admit, I spend more than I should.
In the last few months, I haven’t been spending money on anything but gas, bills (including my rather large student loans) and once in a very blue moon, lunch. I usually bring my own every day to save a few extra bucks a week.
I’ve been in the market for a laptop for about a year and a half now. When I bought my first one, it was $1,800 and I was getting ready to start college. I considered it a necessary expense.
Now that same laptop takes about 30 minutes to start up, 15 minutes to place two sentences in a Word document and about an hour to shut down. Not exactly the best thing to take to a public hearing that lasts about an hour, like the Bedford Township Planning Commission meeting I attended last night.
So, I need to get off my wallet and buy a laptop right? Wrong. I can’t even seem to bring myself to buy a similar model that’s like $500 nowadays.
I guess I’m a victim of the times.
Just don’t judge me too badly if my Tweets- posts on the Web site Twitter– take hours to show up.
I’ll just blame it on the economy.

The National Weather Service in Detroit has issued a winter storm warning for Feb. 21.

– Paula Wethington

By Paula Wethington

I snapped some of these photos of the ice jams on the River Raisin on my cell phone about 12:45 p.m. today near the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pedestrian bridge and the River Walk entrance, in the public parking lot on the south side of the river near Monroe Street.

Bryan Bosch from The Monroe Evening News is shooting pictures for the newspaper, but I thought I’d post something quick and you can look at monroenews.com later for some better images with a professional camera. (Update: Here’s the video link!)

The National Weather Service in Detroit has posted high wind warning and flood warning in Monroe County, Mich., for Feb. 11.

– Paula Wethington

By Charles Slat
We got an early tip-off that Gov. Granholm was going to mention a new Monroe company related to the wind power industry during her state of the state address.
I wrote the article that ran Tuesday about Great Lakes Tower. Then I went home and listened to her speech. You can imagine my consternation when she said that “Great Lakes Turbines” was going to start operating in Monroe.
That’s not the way it was described to me. Early Wednesday, I checked with my sources and then noticed that the state issued a press release based on job creation mentioned in the governor’s speech. Great Lakes Towers was the name of the company that had just gotten some state tax incentives earlier Tuesday. Apparently the news was so fresh, the mention of it was added to a draft of the state of the state address at the 11th hour and no one double-checked the name.
Hey, that happens in newspapers too.
For the record, the new Monroe company plans on making towers for wind turbines, not the turbines themselves.
But when it comes to new jobs in the community, it’s kind of a fine point.