Yesterday’s mystery: that’s Lhoist, a lime plant. You can see why they chose this spot.
My friend Wade Kwon started a conversation on Twitter about ethics of using that particular tool to report on a suicide. This was prompted by Josh Trujillo, a Seattle reporter who found himself in just that situation this week. Trujillo, who is no cub reporter, called 911, published to Twitter about the circumstance and, as he says, began receiving plenty of questions from local residents, local media and Twitter followers about what was happening. To Trujillo, the story becomes one about the behavior of the motorists who become peripheral and direct players in the dramatic scene.
Wade asked a worthy and basic question: Should you live-tweet a possible suicide attempt? My first answer fell back to the newsroom training. We just don’t cover suicides, for obvious reasons. Trujillo finds the need for a conversation about the behavior of others in a grim situation, and that makes sense. In the news sense, Trujillo finds the need for a second deck story, but there still seems to be little utility in the actual breaking news.
It is sometimes ironic, of course, to discuss merit when it comes to an individual tweet, but what does sharing such information add to a conversation? Unless there is: A.) A counselor B.) Help C.) Local D.) On Twitter E.) Paying attention F.) All of the above at that precise moment, what is the point? Trujillo says he called 911, which is the place that has the best chance at providing all the things the circumstance demands.
Ultimately Twitter shouldn’t be the place one turns in a potential life and death situation. Good conversation, though.
So we head out to continue our Pie Day search. We tried a place called Byron’s tonight, which was well recommended online. One of the first reviews we read was written by a guy I went to college with, in fact. It is his barbecue of choice, and we figured we’d know who to blame him if it was bad.
So we pull into the place and it is virtually empty. Not sure how to interrupt that. Byron’s is in an old Dairy Queen, and they’ve preserved the order-at-the-counter model. They asked for our name, odd considering there were three people in the joint. We fix our drinks. I ask “Where should we sit?”
The Yankee says “Let’s sit in the romantic corner. The Punt Bama Punt corner.”
That’s my girl, y’all.
Our name is called. I fetch the food, bringing back the tray with Styrofoam plates. You know, it is a rarity to find a place with good barbecue that has a sit-down-for-dinner feel. Jim ‘N’ Nicks was rare in that sense. The best barbecue always comes from little places like this. The perfect barbecue comes from a roadside stand, or a backyard operation, or a converted gas station.
Now the barbecue at Byron’s is good. The baked beans are delicious. The fried potatoes are terrific. They only had a scary looking pecan pie, though. So we decided on a two-stage version of Pie Day. We visited a bakery, which did not have pie. We cruised a few more places and finally went to Publix.
We’re thinking about going out for barbecue and then turning to homemade pies.
We hit the pool, a good bookend to the morning trip to the gym. Lightning ran us off, but the water was so nice we might have to go back tomorrow. Elsewhere, just scanned and scanned until the last scanner project of the summer was concluded. That’ll give me something else to upload this fall. Did a little online shopping and, then, this:
One of my books for this semester, picked up from the library. It’s going to be a real page turner.
