Last May, I was a bag of nerves – but quite excited – to start an internship at The Dallas Morning News.

A year later, much has changed.

I transitioned from being a breaking news intern at the DMN to a multimedia reporter at The Pensacola News Journal. After a few months, I became the night cops reporter.

But the changes keep coming.

In a whirlwind of events, I’m now packing my bags and headed home.

That’s right folks, I’m moving back to sweet home Carolina—Charlotte, to be exact, which is one of my favorite cities and the location of my favorite newspaper, The Charlotte Observer.

I am OFF THE CHARTS excited for the opportunity to do local coverage for my hometown, which will be hosting the Democratic National Convention this summer. A reporter’s dream. Well, one of them anyway.

But I’ve had quite the slice of life here in Pensacola. It’s been a great experience, and living in an unfamiliar part of the country is full of invaluable life lessons.

In this Gulf Coast town, I learned that Mardi Gras is a season—not just a day, that you can have a festival for just about any occasion and that there’s no such thing as an “ex-Marine.”

I’ve learned that this is a small town with a big heart that’s slowly but surely developing into a place of community involvement and growth.

It’s been a noisy town too. Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, I could hear the roar of the Blue Angels’ jets practicing over the Naval Air Station, and just about any time of the day or night I could hear train conductors yanking train whistles all the way through town. And at the beautiful sandy white beach, there’s nothing better than the sound of the shore and the occasional gull.

At the News Journal, I learned the ropes of shooting and editing video, and I later mastered understanding that cryptic police scanner. Between all that, I’ve had the opportunity to cover some great stories, from a man who really is Santa Claus to a mysterious double-murder to a mom and daughter who spent tens of thousands of dollars over the course of a year to find their missing dog George.

Since I graduated from college, I really have been blessed with some fantastic journalistic opportunities in Dallas, Pensacola and now Charlotte.

And so June 1, the next chapter begins. Pensacola has been a great ride, and I’m ready for the next adventure.

Bring it on, QC!

You might remember a few weeks ago I wrote about the horror of abuse and the story I covered about a 21-year-old mentally disabled woman who was found bleeding from the mouth, handcuffed and strapped with sandwich-style plywood signs chained around her neck.

I did a bit of digging and found a bit more background info on this girl’s story, which you can read here. But what got cut from the story were my findings for options of reporting abuse. I think this is something everyone should know, and until I covered this story, I didn’t even know what options were available beyond calling the cops.

So here’s my little PSA of the day in a condensed form of the second half of my story. It explores how to recognize and report abuse:

• Possible signs that a disabled person is being abused include the person having uncontrollable anger, crying, hitting themselves in the head or self-inflicting injuries or becoming withdrawn.

• Call 911 if you think immediate abuse is happening. It’s also best to agree to follow up with law enforcement so they can gather more information for the case and start a written record of the problem.
  

• If you’re worried about the repercussions of calling the cops, call your state abuse hotline. The one in Florida is 1-866-96-ABUSE. “Any time that anyone — and I want to stress anyone — has reason to suspect that someone may be abused, neglected or exploited, they should call the hotline,” said Nicole Stookey of the Florida Department of Children and Families. “A caller can remain anonymous if he or she wishes, and the reporter’s name is private and will never be given to anyone.”

• Call a church, a human resources department at work or an Employee Assistance Program for help.

• If you don’t know where to call, and you don’t want to call 911, call the local information line at 211. They will direct you to the right place.
  

The three abuse suspects were arraigned Friday. Here’s the story on their charges. The charges speak for themselves.

I live on the Gulf Coast, and let’s face it — it’s pretty different from life on the East Coast.

So when my friend, Laura, came to visit this weekend, we decided to take a bite out of Cajun culture and go to the Crawfish Festival in downtown Pensacola.

Neither of us had ever been to a crawfish boil. I didn’t even really know what a crawfish looked like.

So when we ordered a 3-pound box of the mudbugs, we weren’t exactly sure what to expect.

When I peeked inside, my heart dropped. Holy little red creepy-crawlies, Batman!

The food box was stuffed with crawfish, which I guess shouldn’t have been surprising, but they basically looked like mini-lobsters. They had the red whisker things, pincers and little black eyeballs.

As I carried the box to a table, I could’ve sworn I felt something moving inside and had a minor panic attack.

After we bought the crawfish, I kept looking for utensils, but there were no forks, no knives — nor even sporks — to be found.

That’s because you don’t use utensils to eat a crawfish.

We soon found that out after we sat down at a table and stared at the buggers for a minute or so and they stared back at us. 

Laura and I were clueless. Just as we were about to Google how you’re supposed to eat a crawfish, another family sat down at the table, and I asked the mother how exactly to eat the mountain of red crustaceans sitting in front of me.

It took her a while to stop laughing at us, but she showed us how to peel off part of the top shell, break off the tail and get the tail meat out.

But it’s not as easy as it looks. You’ve got to put in a whole lot of labor for a little piece of meat that’s smaller than a baby shrimp.

So a few things I learned from the whole crawfish experience:

You can’t feel bad for them as you rip their bodies apart. Or get grossed out.

Copious amounts of napkins are necessary while eating them.

The inner, mustard-colored guts of a crawfish are rather disgusting.

The amount of work that goes into eating a crawfish doesn’t balance out with the amount of meat you end up with. They were tasty, but next time — if there is a next time — I’m getting mine shelled, deveined and ready to eat.

Bon appetit!

Last summer, I lived in a relatively nice, normal apartment complex in Dallas. It was on the bottom floor, and a Mexican couple with a small child lived above me.

I had limited interaction with the family.

On a few occasions, I’d wake up in the middle of the night to hear the couple screaming at each other in rapid-fire Spanish. I’d hear doors slam and banging noises and then the baby would start to cry from the yelling.

I’d lay a floor below, wide-awake and worried. I didn’t know what they were fighting about, and I didn’t know if it was mere hot-headed, passionate (and verbal) anger, or if someone was getting physically hurt. After these fiery shouting matches, I’d often hear the squeak of the bed back and forth, and I’d wonder if I was hearing an assault happen or if it was a passionate make-up. There were several times I considered calling the cops.

But I didn’t.

That’s a choice I regret. I chose not to call authorities because I feared my neighbors would know I had called, and I wasn’t too keen on the prospect of the man pounding angrily on my door.

I made the choice not to act, and as a cops reporter, that’s something I’m seeing in others too often, and many times too late.

Saturday, I covered the arrest of three people, including the adoptive mother, for the horrific abuse a 21-year-old mentally disabled woman. She was said to have the mind of a child.

I talked to neighbors, who knew the abuse was going on. And they knew it’s been going on for some time.

They could hear the screams, the moans, the crying. Some could even see the girl getting knocked to the ground, get kicked while on all fours or made to sit on a barstool on top of a table for days.

The young woman was found in the backyard Saturday bleeding from the mouth, covered in dirt, soaked from rain and chained around the neck with two heavy plywood signs. She also had a two-day old gash in her head from getting hit in the head with a bucket. Her adoptive mother, a licensed practical nurse, had first tried to superglue the wound together, and when that didn’t work, she sewed it together with a needle and thread.

And that’s just scratching the surface.

What really bothers me, though, is that the neighbor who called the police (apparently a few times, which didn’t seem to yield results and is a separate issue) about what he and his wife witnessed lived across the street.

From waaaay across the street, they could hear the torment going on in this backyard.

That means a whole lot of other people had to have heard the abuse.

I don’t know how many times police had responded to the house before Saturday (that info wasn’t available Saturday night), but by the sounds of it, this lone household across the street seems to have been the only one brave enough to call authorities.

What. The. Heck.

What is this block we all seem to have that prevents us from getting beyond ourselves and potentially helping someone in danger?

One neighbor seemed to think it was a big deal when she told me that a few days ago, she had told one of the abusers that what he was doing was wrong.

Now what’s wrong with this picture?!

I’m guilty of keeping mum in Dallas too, but for Pete’s sake, WHY is it so difficult to stand up for other people? Do people just not care, or are we afraid? Afraid of the truth or afraid for ourselves? And is it about reputation or is it for reasons of selfish safety? And would safety really be a problem if people got locked up?

In February I covered a double-homicide.  A man and a woman were found shot dead two houses apart. The murders were deemed drug-related, but the Sheriff’s Office has said it can’t make further headway on the case until people in the neighborhood spill the beans about what really happened. The sheriff, along with the police chief, held a town hall meeting near the shootings to try and persuade the neighborhood that telling them information is good.

No one was swayed.

The cases are still cold.

People on Saturday were talking about the option of calling an abuse hotline if calling police seemed iffy. An abuse hotline never crossed my mind when I was in Dallas, and maybe the people in this abused woman’s neighborhood didn’t know it was available.

Either way, I intend on doing a follow-up story tomorrow (when I get back to work), and I plan on reporting which outlets people can call for help.

Because the abuse, the murders, the inhumanity—they need to stop.

Sara Ganim is a cops reporter. She’s 24 and she works at a small paper in Pennsylvania.

And she just won a Pulitzer Prize.

Ganim won the journalism award of all awards for her extensive reporting on the Penn State sex abuse scandal.

I’m a cops reporter.

I’m 23 and I work at a small paper (relatively speaking) in Pensacola.

Nope. Nowhere near that Pulitzer.

The last time I wrote here, which was just about eons ago, I was working as a multimedia reporter.

A lot has changed since then, and I’m on the night cops beat, which I asked to do. It’s something I had sworn off after Dallas, but that’s mostly because (a lot of) people are crazy in (South) Dallas. Like shooting-each-other-all-the-time crazy. I was so turned off by all the death and sadness and ugly underbelly of humanity I saw in just one summer.

But here I find myself, sitting at my desk in Pensacola listening to deputies do 10-4 checks and get 10-97 to the scene of a signal 20.

Sounds jazzy. It’s not.

Pensacola isn’t Dallas.

And as I’m finally settling into my new position after a couple of months, I’ve realized that I need to come up with in-depth projects for this beat. I know that sounds like a “duh” moment, but in Dallas, so much more breaking news happened that I didn’t need to dig that deep to get a story. And I was also an intern.

Being a full-time employee — I’ve come to realize in my early-20s wisdom — is much different than being an intern. Newspaper interns are absorbed with getting awesome clips. Employees are well, employees, and while you always want to get a great story, it’s different. You cover your beat and whatever odds and ends are needed by editors to get the paper out the next day.

I’m also realizing I have the power to make my beat what it is. I’m often jealous of beats like education, local government and sports because they’ve got a set of sources, a set of regular events and therefore a regular flow of stories.

But if nothing’s happening on the scanner, there’s not much to write. Which has been happening a lot. This has been unsettling to me, enough to make me start dreaming about it. In one, the Sheriff’s Office public information officer called me up to say there was a homicide, but I couldn’t get to the murder scene to report it. The television news station (virtually our only competitor) was already reporting the full story on it. In another dream, I quoted someone who wanted to be anonymous and spelled another’s name wrong.

Talk about a reporter’s nightmare.

So anyway, I’ve been giving this whole cops thing a lot of thought, and I’m done waiting for the crazy stuff, because it ain’t gonna happen. At least not often.

And just as I’ve been compiling project ideas and starting to get them in the works, I’ve got one more motivator in Sara Ganim to take my beat and run with it.

Stay tuned for my upcoming cops adventures, including ride-alongs with deputies and delving into a new kind of re-entry court for ex-convicts. Over and out.

If my family had to pick a mascot, it might be the Cheese Heads. Or maybe the Hokies.

Because after going to my grandpa’s 90^th surprise birthday party this weekend, I can say with confidence that I probably have the cheesiest, hokiest family around.

But I love them for it.

Before I get to all things corny, I actually had to get to the party, which was its own heart-stopping adventure.

Driving from Philly on Saturday morning, my boyfriend Kane and I hit the road for northern New Jersey, and a nor’easter just happened to deluge us with snow. We were doing fine until we got off the highway and onto twisty, narrow roads.

About a mile from my relatives’ house, I started fearing for my life. After weaving around some fallen trees, we came to a roadblock.

We had to go up a hill, but a truck was stuck on it. There were two cars ahead of us waiting to ascend. And there was a utility truck sitting across from us. And a bunch of cars lining up behind. And vehicles careening down the hill from the other side of the road. And no space to turn around.

It was a nightmare.

But after several heart palpitations and some pep-talks from Uncle Randy on the phone (Keep it in first gear! Just keep inching! Don’t let those dummies get in your way! Not bad driving for a Carolina boy!), we somehow made it in one piece to our destination.

Then came the cheese—and a baptism of fire for poor Kane, who had never been to a large-scale family event. Here are some of the cheddary highlights:

·      We had matching t-shirts. And depending on your place in the family, you got a t-shirt that said “Happy birthday Grandpa!” or “Dad!” or “Hubby!”

·      We held life-size cutouts of my grandpa’s face (on paint sticks) in front of our own faces when he walked in for the big surprise reveal. Obviously we had several rehearsals beforehand on the correct way to pull the mask down, stick it under the left arm, yell “happy birthday!” and clap. In that order.

·      Grandpa’s five children, including my mom, put on skits a-la-Saturday-Night-Live of funny family memories. They ended the show by singing the song he always sings, “Torna a Surriento,” while wearing rose-colored glasses (plastic sunglasses with pink cellophane for the lenses). The words might’ve been slightly mangled, but it’s the thought that counts.

·      Let’s not forget the viewing of a video of family photos set to songs.

And in the midst of all this sentimentality — which I don’t mean to scorn because I loved it as much as everyone else — it was still blizzarding out and we lost power pretty early on. While a generator kept a couple of lights on and we were somehow able to watch the video, the men had to keep siphoning gasoline out of the lawnmower and anything else with a motor to keep the heat going.

Because no one was going anywhere fast, the daytime surprise party turned into a Chestone-family slumber party. By the end of the night, there were people sleeping on beds, couches and the floor.

All in all, it was wonderful to see my family, hokiness and all, and it’s a fair bet it was a birthday party that Grandpa — and just about everyone else who was there — won’t be forgetting any time soon.

I haven’t felt like talking much lately.

This lack of loquacity is a bit uncharacteristic for me. I can recall – in the different places I lived and frequented at Carolina – talking for hours upon hours with good friends. But it wasn’t just talking: It was venting, it was laughing, it was telling, it was consoling, it was planning. It was sharing and dreaming and just being in good company.

Talking, it seems, held a certain importance that I took for granted.

For the past few weeks, I haven’t felt like saying too much of anything at all, which is why this Comment is coming so delayed.

I know a lot of you are wondering how my new job is going. I’m happy to talk about that. It’s going great. I’m so blessed to be employed in the field that I’ve always wanted to work in, particularly when that field has an unclear future.

I’m a bit of a jack-of-all-trades in the newsroom, and I’m pretty sure I’ve done work for all of the different editors there (sans the sports desk). I write stories and do video, and some highlights so far have been interviewing a woman who turned 111 years old (with her 75-year-old daughter), watching the unveiling of President Nixon’s Marine One helicopter at the Naval Air Station museum and helping cover a huge music festival for a weekend on Pensacola Beach. It’s fair to say I have a pretty sweet job.

And while I’m so thankful for my job, I have to confess that I was rather miserable for my first few weeks here in Pensacola. That’s when the silence came.

The silence came after my mom and I moved in all my stuff and I dropped her off at the Pensacola Regional Airport, where she flew back home to North Carolina. The silence came as I began to miss my friends, my boyfriend, my parents, hushpuppies with barbeque and people who love Roy Williams. It creeped up on me as I settled into a town where there aren’t oodles of young people or automatic intern friends.

The reality of post-grad life, which was delayed by a great internship in Dallas, became clear as I realized the days of living with all of my best friends – where the joys of talking and being together were more routine than brushing your teeth – are over. As melodramatic as that sounds, it’s a tough adjustment from college to the real world. I can’t complain about my job, but it’s not an easy task meeting new friends and finding that sense of belonging in a new town.

After a few weeks of intermittent meltdowns on the phone and hating weekends, I’ve pulled myself up by my bootstraps. I’m determined to make this work and I’m determined not to be a Negative Nancy. I’ve been going out more with different people I’ve met, and while I still have a long way to go, it’s all about keeping the patience and not giving up.

So, slowly but surely, I’m getting my voice back. It feels good to be talking again, and I’m going to try to get back to posting Comments weekly—because goodness knows the life of a reporter is never boring, and I’ll have plenty of stories to share.

I look forward to talking with y’all again soon.

It started with white knuckles and ended with even whiter knuckles.

But in between, I had one fabulous tour of the South.

For starters, one of my stops yielded a JOB, which I’m ecstatic about. But more on that in a bit.

Here are some highlights of my grand tour:

-       Leaving Dallas, I gripped the steering wheel hard on that crazy I-30 along with those crazy Texas drivers, but much of the drive turned out to be quite pleasant with everyone following the Left Lane for Passing Only rule. If only all highways operated that way. Sigh.

-       I forgot how quirky Little Rock is. Quirky as in full of these smoke-filled biker-hipster bars, an old-South mentality and, well, weird stuff like this. But it was great staying at the Dawson’s house, catching up with friends from last summer and visiting the Democrat-Gazette newsroom.

-       I discovered that I don’t like making pit stops while driving. Oddly enough, I prefer to power through if I don’t have to stop for gas.

-       I had a wonderful time with my old roommate and dear friend Laura in beautiful Birmingham. Going out in Birmingham was an experience – it’s like someone rounded up the nation’s most intense fratstars and loosed them in the city. I’ve never seen so many Titleist visors, white-boy dance moves, short-shorts and such an array of pastels in public. And blondes. There were a gazillion blondes. But the southern charm and hospitality were unbeatable.

-       There were only three instances where I found myself stuck on the left side of a tractor trailer while it put its left blinker on, followed by my screaming, “Don’t kill me!” and honking the horn and flooring the gas.

-       Visiting my great-aunt and uncle was a treat too. Aunt Eleanor is always on the cutting edge with high-tech stuff—she was one of the first in the family back in the ’90s to get an e-mail address, and her current cell phone is a Droid. Her children got her an iPad for her 80^th birthday this May, and she’s been using it extensively. She even used it to record a bit of my rusty piano playing. Perhaps the best lesson I learned while visiting them is that age is a state of mind. They were telling me that Uncle Russ throws the newspaper in their neighbor’s front yard every morning. “She’s an older lady,” Aunt Eleanor explained. Then she kind of laughed, pursed her lips and said, “Well, older than us.”

-       And oh yeah, I got a job! I’ll be working at the Pensacola News Journal as a multimedia reporter. I’m truly blessed to be employed during this tough time, especially in the journalism industry. I’m pumped for this new job – and new adventure – and after the decision was finalized I almost pulled a Psycho-T (sans the music).

My final stretch of the tour was a little less celebratory. Driving home to Charlotte up I-77, I felt like I was approaching Mordor with black skies looming ahead. By the time I merged onto I-485, the rain was coming down so thickly I could hardly see the white tractor-trailer in front of me. By the time I got onto 485, I couldn’t see too much of anything out of my windshield. Cars had already claimed spots under the overpasses and I was too afraid to pull over for fear I’d get hit (or that I’d hit someone), so I put on my hazards and went about 25 down the highway, watching spectacular forks of lighting like I’d never seen, gripping the steering wheel like my life depended on it and muttering my Our Fathers and Hail Marys and Angel of Gods and in final desperation a steady stream of “Ooooh, Jesus help me.”

By some miracle I made it off the highway, and Pineville-Matthews Road was nearly flooded. But after snailing my way along, I finally made it home sweet home.

It’s good to be home from my grand tour of the South, but it’s a stay none too restful. I’ve had to unpack and re-pack and find a place to live and figure out all that fun stuff, and this coming Tuesday I’ll be driving with my mom to move down to Pensacola.

So folks, that was the grand tour. Onward to Pensacola!

My dad has always said that the 20s are the toughest years.

When I was in middle school, I begged to differ. But now that I’m 22 going on 23 in a few months, I have to admit that father knows best. The 20s are tough.

After graduating from college, you’ve got to face the real world and find where you belong in it. That’s no easy task.

While all my friends and family who live along the eastern seaboard were shaken by an earthquake today, my world was rocked as I finished my last day as an intern at The Dallas Morning News. I’m not an intern anymore, and now there’s no putting off the reality of finding a permanent job and starting the first chapter in my life as an independent adult.

And I’m kicking off this new beginning by literally going on a journey: I’m taking a grand tour of the South on my drive home to Charlotte, and I couldn’t be more excited for it.

The route more or less goes as follows: Dallas > Little Rock > Birmingham > through the Florida panhandle > Charleston > the Queen City (that’s Charlotte for all you non-North Carolinians).

I’ll be visiting some dear friends – one night I’ll even being staying with Great Aunt Eleanor and Uncle Russ.

I’ll try to update posts here during the grand tour – I’m sure I’ll have some entertaining encounters – and for sure I’ll be tweeting (@lruebens).

Until then, I’ll be packing and cleaning the apartment and most likely listening to a Pandora station based off of “Backstreet’s Back.” (See? Middle school was good for something after all.)

I loved my time at The Dallas Morning News—here in the Big D it’s been real, it’s been fun, but what’s going to be real fun is this upcoming trip.

I’ll keep y’all posted.

The old woman who was patched over to my desk said she would be brief on the phone. I do love brevity.

Except she was everything but. She said every word with great care and hesitation, plucking the most eloquent words from her mind as she envisioned me feverishly taking down every pearl she spoke.

This woman was a serial offender: She’s been e-mailing and calling every reporter whose byline has graced The Dallas Morning News with a story about the heat wave.

You’re just killing them faster by telling people to drink lots of water and wear loose clothing, she told me.

The woman was simply appalled – which seemed to be one of her favorite words, appalled – that we had not yet instructed readers to wet their clothing.

Water is free and accessible to most everybody, she reasoned, and lives will be saved if they just knew to wet their clothing. Or for heaven’s sakes, even just sitting in a tub of water would save people.

Am I mentally insane, she asked me, for being so passionate about telling people to wet their clothes? I didn’t want to answer that one and took it to be rhetorical.

When she’d let me have a word in edgewise, I told her upfront that no editor is going to run a story in the paper telling people to wet their clothing. Her best bet was to write a letter to the editor.

That wasn’t the response she was looking for.

She continued to jabber at me for several minutes more as I sat on the other line in silence, waiting for her to finish one of her lengthy run-on sentences so I could again tell her to write a letter to the editor, good-bye and good luck.

Obviously I would move to Dallas just to live there during one of its most scorching summers in history.

It didn’t fully dawn on me how hot it was until Pressley showed me our utilities bill for July.

After picking up my jaw off the floor, I realized the culprit had to be the AC, which seems to have been working double-time to keep our place cool.

It’s hot here.

So hot that we’re in the 37^th day of a 100+ consecutive-day heat wave, which is inching closer and closer to the record heat wave of 42 days in 1980.

I know all of this because I’ve written several heat stories telling readers that it’s hot outside for more than a month now. It’s the same thing almost every morning when I see my editor and ask what’s going on.

“It’s still hot.”

Yep, it sure is.

Now I’m no stranger to the heat—I do, after all, hail from North Carolina. The difference here in Dallas is that there’s less humidity and it’s simply hotter. When you walk outside on an August day in North Carolina, you feel like you’ve walked into a sauna. Here, it’s like walking into a furnace.

I’ve started to avoid going outside at all costs. I even dread having to walk up the stairs and across the parking lot to take out the trash.

We’ve all been urged to conserve energy because the power grid (yep, Texas has its own) is running dangerously low. The people from the power plant keep threatening rolling blackouts if we don’t conserve more.

In response, the newsroom raised the thermostat a few degrees and sent out a memo saying it’s okay to wear shorts to work.

You know it’s bad when the paper sends someone out with an infrared heat gun to find the hottest places in the city and makes a time-lapse video of a downtown skyline ice sculpture melting.

So yes, to say it’s hot is a bit of an understatement. We’re making hell look good. So everybody drink lots of water, stay indoors… and I guess if you’re in really dire straits, have a wet t-shirt contest.

Stay cool, my friends.