Random Access

Despite appearances, I have not abandoned you.
Due to some changes in the newsroom, which find me in a (temporary) new job which is totally bewildering at the moment, blogging has dropped on the priority list.
Once I figure out what an interim assignment editor does, I plan to be back with you regularly. In the meantime, please be patient.
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Do have some Rambo news, however.
City council today approved weekly visits by Gabriela Nowakowska to see her not-wannabe pit bull. That pretty well eliminates the need for doggy bail.
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Speaking of bewildering, one of the things you learn quickly by sifting through the innumerable e-mails and story requests that come into The News, is the impossibility of covering everything that goes on in this huge city.
Take Earth Day, for example, which just happens to coincide with Education Weeks.
Every school makes a special effort to showcase its student talents in the same two-week period and there are a million story possibilities and two million photo opportunities, most of which are better than what is available the rest of the year.
Take, for instance, the one that popped up in this morning. Got a call from Ian Santiago of Credit Valley Public School.
The 28-year-old graduate of Corpus Christi and Father Goetz is doing a stint at Credit Valley as a "placement teacher" as part of his studies with the Medaille Teachers' College in Buffalo.
An initiative of his that started out as a variation of the Earth Day Grocers' Project for the Grade 1 class has burgeoned into something that involves the whole school, a local business which has become an enthusiastic partner and — come this Saturday — the broader community.
The school asked the Loblaw store not far away at Glen Erin Dr. and Eglinton Ave. for some outdoor yard-waste collection bags they could decorate for Earth Week and then sell to raise funds.
Rich Morel of Loblaw came through with, not only higher-quality bags, but with some 600 of them so that every student in the school could decorate a bag with a drawing and Earth day message.
The colourful bag banners are now hanging over the railings on the second floor of the Loblaw store so customers waiting in line to pay for their groceries have a mini-art gallery to enjoy.
Come 11 a.m. Saturday, Santiago and several teachers and 20 students will be selling the bags in the front lobby of Loblaw. Half the money goes to the school and half to the President's Choice Children's Charity.
Santiago says there are all kinds of cross-curricular currents going on here: students walking over to the Loblaws (phys. ed), educational reach-out from the school to the community, art, literacy and dare we say it, the thrill for the students of seeing their work on public display.
"It helps to empower the students to realize that, hey, listen your voice matters and you can raise community awareness," says Santiago.
The naked city is full of a million little green stories this spring and this was only one.