CNN appearance

Some of you may remember my one-woman battle two months ago when I showed up in front of the Madison County School Board to plead for them to start school later than Aug. 2. I had just written an editorial in the Jackson Sun about this. Most of them just stared at me; at which point I began to wonder if there was a way to make these folks listen. I came up with an idea and two months later, my blog on early August Tennessee schools is gracing "Schools of Thought," CNN's education blog. It went up at 5 a.m. April 12 (yesterday) and pretty soon it was getting all sorts of comments, ranging from the nasty ("Why don't you move back to Oregon?") to people who said I was dead right. Veeka was thrilled, of course, to see her photo everywhere plus my column got featured under an "editor's picks" column. Can't say I've heard back from anyone at the school board. As of this writing, it has 290 comments; not quite the take (6,500+ comments) that my piece on serpent handling got last June, but respectable.So, yes, I'm still in the freelance mode. National Geographic Channel is airing a special on the 1980s and yours truly is featured in episode 4 talking about Jimmy Swaggart. I believe that airs April 15, one day before Veeka turns 8. I taped my tiny episode last fall in Washington. The producers flew in from London, so I gathered all my Jimmy Swaggart clips from the Houston Chronicle and showed up at the hotel where they were doing the filming.  And then, my 4,000-word article in for the May issue of More magazine should be coming out soon. So this is definitely a media month for me.