Off the I-15

The pizza has been ordered, and the newsroom is digging in for a long night of election coverage. We’ve already lost it over the CNN hologram.

So now what… It’s a lot of waiting on election night. It’s a lot of looking at maps and clicking on the county’s ROV Web site. And for JoAnne, our page designer, a night of needle point.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor

I’ve met several people today who voted for the first time.

Brian Depue had never voted before but showed up his poll. Same with Stephen Rodriguez. Even though his friends didn’t agree, he felt that his vote today was important.

Several friends and I stay connected through each other using the Web service twitter. It allows you to post 140 character updates to the Web from computers and mobile phones. She posted about her first time voting today. She was surprised at how easy it was to vote.

“It made me feel like anyone could go in there and give my name and address and vote for me,” she said after voting.

She said when she asked her friends — many of whom could have voted for their first time — if they voted, and she got more “no” than “yes” responses. She did not know why so many of her friends missed the opportunity to vote in what she called historical.

“I’m glad I got to be a part of it. …It’s definitely going down in the books.”

Aaron Aupperlee | City editor

Any interesting voting stories out there right now?

We’ve entered the strange Election Day lull where we are just waiting for the results to come in.

Call me, 760-646-6025, if anything is happening at a polling location near you.

Aaron Aupperlee | City Editor

blogging from the field

I’ve been asking voters all day if they think today is an historic election. Many say yes. Either the first black president or first woman vice president.

Sard Kamel had a different reason. He immigrated to Barstow 22 years ago and connected with Obama becuase Obama’s father was also an immigrant. For Kamel, he got to vote for someone he identified with for the first time.

How’s that for history.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor.

The fact that the Pittsburgh Steelers won last night might have been a good omen for the Barack Obama camp, but today’s windy weather could even the score.

Historically, the Washington Redskins final game before the election determines the outcome of the election. According to www.nbcsports.com, if the Redskins win, the incumbent wins the election. If the Redskins lose, the challenger wins.

So Obama was most likely a Steelers fan on Monday night and was happy to see them pull out a 23-6 win.

However, weather also plays a factor in elections. According to www.accuweather.com, long lines are still forming in areas where rain is falling on election day. Bad weather has spelled doom for the Democrats and glee for the Republicans.

A team of political scientists studied the effect of weather on the voting and published their findings in a 2007 issue of The Journal of Politics. The study, The Republicans Should Pray for Rain: Weather, Turnout, and Voting in U.S. Presidential Election, found that Democrats are more likely to stay home if there is bad weather on Election Day.

There’s wind in Barstow and rain elsewhere in the country but that does seem to be detering voters this year. The Desert Dispatch reported that turnout was higher than ever early in the day. And www.cnn.com said there are long lines everywhere.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor

My cell phone rang while I was out getting the police logs today. The man on the other end of the line had a heavy accent and seemed agitated. He wanted to know why I had never responded to a letter and an email he sent me “regarding my relationship with my brother.” I get a lot of emails from people about a lot of different things, including people’s relationships with their family members, but this one didn’t ring a bell at all. We went back and forth for several minutes, while I was trying to figure out what he was talking about, and he was clearly convinced that I was beating around the bush.

“I don’t quite understand what it is you’re looking for,” I told him. “Is this a letter to the editor, or something you think I should write a story about?”

“I want you to print my letter in the paper!” he said.

“Okay,” I said, thinking I understood. “If it’s a letter to the editor, you actually need to send it to Scott Shackford. He’s our editor.”

“I want you to print my letter in Dear Abby!” he replied, growing more and more excited.

Suddenly it all became clear. It’s not the first time someone has been under the impression that I am the Abby who pens the regular Dear Abby advice column in the paper. For the record, I am not. Dear Abby is a widely syndicated column written by Jeanne Phillips under the pen name Abigail van Buren. It was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips, some time in the 1950s, I believe.

Apparently this guy had sent his letter to the contact address listed with the column, and after becoming frustrated with waiting for it to appear, called the newspaper to complain to Abby and got transferred to my extension.

So, just to set the record straight, I’m not Dear Abby — just a lowly reporter. You can write to me for advice if you really want to, but it won’t end up in the paper.

While filming in Mr. Bonvillain’s 6th period class this week, a student pulled me aside.

“Are you with the local paper?” he asked.

I had a notebook in my back pocket, a camera around my neck, a pen behind my ear and video camera in my hand. As young as I look, I hope I can’t still pass for a high schooler. My cover was blown.

“Yeah.”

The student wrote for the Aztec Warrior, the high school paper, and wanted to know if journalism was still worth going into. Without even thinking, I responded.

“Definitely.”

He asked why, and here was my response. I pointed to the newspaper he was reading (he was looking at stock prices) and said even if we aren’t writing for these things, tapping my pen against the paper, we will still be writing. Journalism is changing, evident by the video camera I now carry in my bag. I told him some of the things going on in the Desert Dispatch newsroom with video, online and multimedia are changing the way we tell stories.

“It’s exiting,” I said. “And fun.”

Then I said that even all that information he gets “for free” on the Internet probably comes from journalists in some way. CNN.com, the New York Times Web site and even your favorite celebrity or music blog does not write itself. Somewhere, maybe hidden in their parents’ basement or at an uneven table at the local Starbucks, there is a person typing away.

But the real reason to still go into journalism, and this reason escaped me at the time, is that without journalists, without the local newspaper (regardless of how you regard us) there would be no one else to tell the community what was going on in that classroom, or what was said at the candidate forum at the high school tonight, or how the volleyball team does on Friday.

I invited the student to drop by the Desert Dispatch office to see what goes on in our newsroom. I open the invitation to any prospective journalist. Give me a call and I can show where journalism is heading at the Desert Dispatch.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor

School board consent agenda items are usually bland — approval of conferences, acceptances of donations, consultant agreements — they are supposed to be; they are items that would probably receive the full consent of the board and not require discuss. However, sometimes something interesting pops up.

At Tuesday’s Barstow Unified School District board meeting, there was an item to approve a Barstow teacher as a long-term substitute teacher in her own class. The item was part of a list of several substitute teachers needing approval for the year, but one board member how this teacher could be a sub for her own class.

Susan Levine, the interim superintendent with the district, said it was an unusual occurrence. The teacher had apparently not kept up her teaching credential. As such, the district could not employ her as a full-fledged teacher but as a sub. So, they allowed her to sub in her classroom, for a max of 30 days due to the state education code, until she got her credential up to speed.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to update her credential in the 30-day window. A new substitute teacher took her place, and she will continue to work in the district as a sub in other classes.

The board then voted to approve this particular teacher’s substitute time, which began at the beginning at the school year, and the entire list of other substitutes.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor

A man named Tim called me the other day to pitch a story.

He is an actor, An actor from Houston who has spent most of his time doing community theater but who dreams of the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. He is an actor on mission, a mission to get from Houston to Hollywood with virtually no money and a lawnmower.

Tim told me he set out from Houston back in April or May and has been mowing his way across the country. When the gas money runs out, Tim stops and offers to mow lawns until he makes enough to press onto the next city. After around six months of driving, mowing and sleeping in his truck, Tim made it to Barstow and called me.

He wanted the paper to write a story about him in hopes of drumming up some business. He told me that when he first drove into town, he did not see a lot of lawns but thought green grass was out there somewhere.

As we debated whether to write about Tim or not, Tim did some more exploration. He didn’t last long in Barstow. When I called him two days later to see if he was still in town, he had left.

Apparently, he felt there were greener pastures elsewhere.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor

It confuses me, but I’ve learned a lot about from two podcasts produced by National Public Radio.

Ira Glass, the host of This American Life, teamed up with some smart money guys from NPR to break down the financial crisis. You can listen to the podcasts by clicking on the links below or download them to your mp3 players if you are tech savvy like that.

The Giant Pool of Money

A special program about the housing crisis produced in a special collaboration with NPR News. We explain it all to you. What does the housing crisis have to do with the turmoil on Wall Street? Why did banks make half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income? And why is everyone talking so much about the 1930s? It all comes back to the Giant Pool of Money.

Another Frightening Show About the Economy

Alex Blumberg and NPR’s Adam Davidson—the two guys who reported our Giant Pool of Money episode—are back, in collaboration with the Planet Money podcast. They’ll explain what happened this week, including what regulators could’ve done to prevent this financial crisis from happening in the first place.

I also subscribe to the Planet Money podcast, linked above, and listen to it on my drive home from work.

If any of you have found good guides or easy ways to understand what is happening with our money, or maybe what is not happening, let me know. I’ll share.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor