 My post-college newspaper career at the Pioneer in Big Rapids, Michigan began on the Monday after Christmas weekend, when I was given two critical assignments my first day:
1. Buy booze from the party store down the street for the company New Year’s party later that week.  It’s time once again for our annual Just Wright Citrus photos of the year.
I can hear it already. “Photos? What photos? All we saw were pictures of buildings. My 3-year-old could do that.”  This is how the trouble starts.
Going into any weekend, and especially a long holiday weekend, I make sure on Thursday I have an easy-to-execute plan for the first day the following week. The last thing I want is to start planning the Monday (or Tuesday) blog at 8 p.m. the night before.  Many years ago I had a confrontation with a person who shoved the figurative knife into my back and really let loose with some awful language.
When I told a friend about it later, he said: “Be grateful your heart doesn’t beat like that.”  Just Wright Citrus had its inaugural annual meeting/Christmas party the other night and a good time was had by all (me and Deb).
It wasn't all eggnog and ugly sweaters though. I had a printed agenda and fellas, if you want to surprise your wife at a romantic holiday dinner, bring a printed agenda.  Hardly a day goes by (not true) when someone doesn’t ask, “Mike, when is the annual Just Wright Citrus Christmas jam list coming out?”
Well, I admit it fell off the radar. That whole Beverly Hills rat episode unnerved me a bit. And, while we should have done this a week ago, Christmas is still a few days off and that’s plenty of music-listening time.  Ginger West always identified with the starfish story.
The story goes like this: Man walking down the beach sees a young boy picking up something and gently tossing it into the ocean. When the man asks what he’s doing, the boy replies that he’s tossing starfish back into the ocean to catch the high tide so they’ll survive.  The first time I met Tom Davis our conversation went something like this:
Davis: “I don’t like reporters!” Wright: “Me neither!”  Think you have troubles:
A Beverly Hills neighborhood is being inundated with white rats, the result of a dilapidated home being shut down a week ago. Lisa Young, who provided me the photo with today’s blog, said rats have now invaded 10 houses, including some where the elderly or young children live.  There’s a brutal political truth to the Citrus County Animal Shelter project and it is this:
Nothing comes easy. We were all anticipating Tuesday’s consultant report on the animal shelter project in Lecanto. What we weren’t expecting was the low-end estimate of $22 million. |
AuthorMike Wright has written about Citrus County government and politics for 36 years. 
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