A repurposed blog to capture this, that and the other

This site had a different title when first launched two years ago when I still had designs on continuing my communications consulting here in Sacramento after 19 satisfying years working in the field in Honolulu. Having been a public utility spokesman, a newspaper  and TV reporter, a critic (see the Your Chore blog), an author and evangelist for good grammar (see the Killing English blog) and a few other things, "I was somebody" then -- i.e., I had a recognizable name. I called people, and they became clients. Other people called unbidden, and they also signed up. So if I moved to Sacramento the consulting biz would keep on a-rolling........right?

Well, not right as it turned out. To be a consultant in Sacramento, you need to know people and they need to know you -- or so I concluded after a year of pushing the rope (joining the Chamber, attending meet-up lunches, etc.) without either side of that equation fleshing out more than a smidgen.

So I applied for a job and got it -- at the Department of Water Resources. It only seemed natural that I would wind up there in the second year of what so far is a four-year drought, the worst in a generation here in the Golden State, which now looks mostly brown. As my LinkedIn Profile asks: "Do we create the recurring themes in our professional lives, or do themes find us? However it's happened, I've been communicating about big issues and emergencies for decades, starting with the 1971 Sylmar earthquake in Southern California while I was with all-news KFWB in LA...." And so it has gone, from crisis to crisis, headline to headline.

So much for explaining this repurposed blog. It's now going to be my miscellaneous site -- a repository of whatever I want to post here, from current events to long-ago journalism, a place that can be linked from Facebook and Twitter (@DougNorCal) when the spirit moves. Accidental visitors may land here, but I don't expect there will be many. If both this blog and I hang around for a while, maybe it'll be the grandkids who'll get a kick out of it.