Odds and Ends on a Cold Thursday Afternoon

Yes it is a cold day in Memphis but things are heating up a bit regarding the city’s mayor.  It’s been the popular topic just about everywhere I’ve been.  I was even asked my opinion Wednesday morning in a man-on-the-street interview. Actually it wasn’t on the street that I ran into Earl Ferrell , now working as the man-about-town for Fox 13 News’ Morning show.  He asked me if I thought “hizzonner”  would still be in office a year from now and I shared my thoughts.  (As I have said for years, my opinion and 86 cents might get you a cup of java at McDonalds).   This Thursday morning my wife was chatting with one of her clients who wanted to know if I enjoyed being on TV again.  (She saw the clip) Actually I didn’t catch the interview this morning so I don’t know how it looked.  Perhaps I should remember that it is better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you’re a fool than open it and remove all doubt.  I guess that was my 15-seconds of fame instead of 15 minutes.  Moving on.

I saw the big splash across the top of the fold of the Commercial Appeal on the undercover cop who posed as a high school student in Millington and helped bust real students selling drugs.   The story was interesting but what really caught my attention  was the final couple of paragraphs that fell under the sub-headline of Insightful Advice.  The undercover officer basically suggested that parents keep a closer watch on their “lil darlins”.  The officer suggested that parents read their teenager’s text messages and monitor their MySpace and Facebook pages.  She also suggested uniforms be required to keep  students from being able to hide stuff on their persons.

This undercover effort reminds me of something that a TV station in Lexington, KY did about 30 years ago and I’m sure other stations who wanted to put forth the effort for some serious investigative pieces have done.  This station hired a young black female reporter but did not let her go on the air.  Instead, she enrolled in a local high school and I think it was done WITHOUT the knowledge of anyone at the school.  Remember, this was done before lipstick cams and other hidden cameras that were cheap enough and small enough for most medium to small market stations.  To show that she was actually in the school, news crews would go out to the school to interview the principal or some teacher on some story and the undercover reporter/student would appear in the background so the station would have proof that she was there.   When the student finally “came out” she put together a series of reports that left the school administration in a high state of pissivity and it seems to me that there was a big crackdown on the bad things that were going on in the schools.  I’m not sure what the legality of such a thing would be these days but can you imagine the planning that would take place to tackle such an endeavor these days.  And that’s if anyone had the intestinal fortitude to do it.  Moving on…

I want to thank everyone who has responded to my query on whether I should continue to blog.  Mr. Goss, I was quite pleased to hear from you as well.  I also want to share a question that was posed to me by way of email.  I didn’t see this particular incident on WREG and perhaps someone out there can share some insight as to what, if anything is going on with this.  Here is the email:

Hey Joe…

My great aunt called me all upset tonight.  She was watching the news (channel 3) and said Richard Ransom and Jim Jaggers got in a fight of words and then Claudia Barr was the only one on the news.  She wondered what happened?  We did notice they were back on the air tonight.

Do we need to be looking for a nice nursing home for Auntie or did something really happen?

So, if anyone can shed some light on this, please let me know.  If you don’t want to post a reponse on this blog, email me at joelarkins1@yahoo.com.

Finally I had some folks asking me about the health of Penny Piper (my wife’s name for our beloved Piper Warrior aircraft).  I stopped by earlier this week to pick up the engine which is undergoing a major overhaul after one of the cylinders started to come off in flight during a trip to Nashville.  I’m sharing a photograph.  Please keep thinking good thoughts about Penny.  The powers that be say she may be up and running as good as new in about a month or so.  We’ll see.

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