Excuses, excuses. Mine is mostly about fighting "the teen" for access to our our really, really slow internet. Weather turned winter-like in upstate New York. Snow on the ground. This morning temps blow twenty. Finally got around to rotating tires on the car today, because it's so much more fun to wait until there's ice on the roads and the yard is frozen rather than doing the job say a week ago when we still had days in the 40's and 50's. Still no winter employment. I guess there's a recession on. Troubling, vexing. Is anybody really over qualified to work at a mini-mart? You apply for a mini-mart job (or at least I do) because I want the check, and I'd rather take a job taht I won't feel too bad about leaving when I can go back to circus. I am not overqualified for that.
Intended to write a bit more about media and its role in circus marketing. Bleak though the picture may be for many daily papers in local markets, or a national publication like US Today with it's plummeting readership, not all print media has gone the way of the dinosaurs. Weekly papers are still strong in many communities. In very small towns everybody reads the weekly because its the only real source for local news. In mid-sized and larger communities tabloid weeklies pride themselves on real journalism. In many places bigger weeklies seem to have a bit of a liberal bias, but that doesn't diminish their value for paid adverts, and getting past any bias and getting a real story into such papers (before the show actually comes to town) isn't impossible so long as the paper has the lead time, and a route allows a writer to visit the lot several weeks in advance. That's within the realm of possibility when a show concentrates on a particular geographical area, or spends a considerable amount of time in one area.
Hold that thought. There;s a Saint Bernard in my yard and maybe he's carrying a brandy flash attached to his collar. My dogs say, "check it out."
