I spent my childhood roaming around a small-town newsroom, listening to the clickety-clack of manual typewriters and the incessant ringing of landlines. My siblings and I scooted out of the way as reporters and photographers dashed in and out to cover meetings and accidents. My first paid work was in that office, cutting apart long strips of copy spooled from typesetting machines, pasting together ads, and using a red marker to cover lines on negatives. The New Glarus Post office smelled like cigarettes, wax, and developer.
Mom dragged us to school board meetings and took notes in shorthand. I doodled in reporters’ notebooks while town officials droned on about zoning. When I was old enough to operate a Pentax camera, I stood under the basket in the high school gym, dodging basketballs to capture sports shots.
My parents were, as journalists like to say, ink-stained wretches,
