JD O’Connor – News24-680.com

Hermes Never Had Days Like This

The fleet-footed Greek carried some messages in his day, but we’d wager yesterday would have taxed even his godly abilities. In our trade, honed over decades of labor in police stations and smoke-infused pool rooms, yesterday would go down as a “Code 3 Day” – Lights and Sirens all the way. The grim crop reaped…

The Monday Missive

Keeping up with the cabal of insomniacs, news junkies, night-hawking videographers and other well-meaning ne’er do wells who seem to follow this blather sheet over its irregular appearances is turning into a full-time gig. Your Faithful Scribe, one foot already on the sandy beach of retirement, committed to an occasional delivery of some haphazardly hammered-together…

The Monday Memo: Coffeeshop Withdrawals; Samurai Slasher; And Our Covid Winter

Powering through our communal Covid Winter and about to fire up The News Bunker’s Breville Java dispenser for a much-needed morning bump, listening to our messages and getting a sense of how things are going. If we had to sum up the prevailing mood, we’d go with: Worried and Cautiously Waiting. We know those who…

Shaking Off The Beat – And Listening To People We Meet

Back in the bad old days, the boys and girls with ink in their bloodstreams would depart the newsroom for a night walk around town, currying favor with doormen, nightclub owners, cab drivers, cops and semi-respectable ladies of the evening who knew where the “bodies were buried.” Some referred to them as “buzzer nights” –…

Life In The Age Of The Great Disconnect

Curiouser and Curiouser. It’s really the only way to sum up what’s happening to us as humanity splinters and surges toward bombast or mediocrity and their own reinforced truths. Keeping ourselves safely out of the mosh pit of opinion baiting, race hating, and tail-gating going on out there at the moment we can only say…

Sunday Snippets

Much of this past week was just plain hard to believe. We have tried to open our minds to what so many are calling the “New Normal,” but sometimes the collision of bad behavior, illogical thinking, and the very American habit of ignoring most things and then going absolutely Viking on someone for a seemingly…

The Sunday SitRep

Those of you with time in the military, or who have just watched too many Tom Clancy movies, know that today’s alliterative titling comes from military shorthand for situation report. We use a lot of shorthand here at NEWS24/680, trying to pack a boatload of information into character-limiting lines of text alerts, Tweets and other…

The Sunday Sniffles

Our casually alliterative title this morning comes not from any impending nasal diphtheria – at least we hope not – but rather our reaction to those little, sunlit moments that come along in life every so often and, if you are lucky, several times in a week. Like this week. It has been a rather…

The Sunday Scrimmage

Here we are. Game Day. Another week managing to slide through our fingers. And it was a tough one. If you’ve been with us you know what we’re talking about and if you haven’t, well, you should be. As weeks go, this one had it all: tragedy, comedy, Cat 4-3-2-1 HurriStorms and Flipping Manaforts. A…