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Thursday, November 1, 2007

Times Change Someday

By John Brennan
Mountain View Telegraph
    I've got three calendars in my office here at the Telegraph. Don't ask me why, I just do. Maybe I need to know the date, immediately and often, and I'm too lazy to move— or even move my head— to find out that vital information.
    Two of the calendars hang on different walls, and one is a desktop blotter type— which is almost always completely covered in clutter. But I depend on the calendars and have always been able to rely on them— until now.
    Now my three calendars are telling me three different things.
    One of them says that on Oct. 28— that was last Sunday— "Standard Time Begins."
    Another, on the same date for last Sunday, says "Daylight Saving Time Ends."
    Two different ways of saying the same thing. And both wrong.
    Naturally, it was my third calendar— the one sitting on my desk and totally obscured by who knows what— that had the correct information. It also says "Daylight Saving Time Ends," but it says it on next Sunday, Nov. 4.
    This calendar chaos surely resulted from a new policy regarding when to "spring forward" and when to "fall back"— a time change change, you might say. Daylight time was extended about a month this year, by starting it earlier and ending it later than in the past.
    But at least a couple of calendar-makers didn't get the memo.
    So as far as I can tell, the time change will happen this coming weekend, and you'll get an extra hour of sleep on Saturday night. But if you somehow end up early for church on Sunday, or for the first NFL game at the sports bar, don't blame me.
    It's the calendars that have gone haywire.
   
Telegraph wins awards
    We generally don't like to toot our own horn here at the Telegraph, but we hope you'll indulge us just this once.
    The 99th annual convention of the New Mexico Press Association was held Saturday at the Embassy Suites hotel in Albuquerque, and your favorite hometown newspaper came home with no fewer than 10 awards in the association's annual Better Newspaper Contest.
    From news to sports to commentary to pictures, we picked up a hefty share of plaques in the Class I Weeklies division.
    The entire Telegraph editorial staff earned a first-place award in the breaking news category for our coverage of last winter's paralyzing snowstorms. The judges— New Mexico's entries were judged this year by the South Dakota newspaper association— gave us 100 out of a possible 100 points for our package, which they said contained "lots of personal elements" and "gave a sense of the scope of the problem."
    Sports reporter Harold Smith picked up two second-place awards, for sports writing and sports columns, and I was lucky enough to get the top award for columns.
    And former staffer Beth Hahn garnered honorable mention in the category of series or sustained coverage for her numerous stories about the saga of the Moriarty school district's budget woes and the possible closure of Edgewood Elementary School.
    Our photographs also won numerous accolades, including first place for sports photo, second place for general news photo, second place and honorable mention for feature photo and honorable mention for photo series.
    All in all, quite a haul, and one of which we're proud.
    John Brennan can be reached by phone at 823-7106 or by e-mail at jbrennan@mvtelegraph.com.