Shorts Wk 6

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WRITE!

Here are notes you’ve taken for stories. Organize them into inverted pyramid style, starting with a summary lead, and write complete stories for a new audience conforming to AP style (assume the events were last night, so refer to the day...).

DUE THURSDAY 10/12!

Fire
Fire in a house. Address: 176 West 500 North, Logan, Utah, North America, Earth
10 p.m. . Two fire trucks from LFD, 12 firefighters, including two both named “Jared.” One of the firetrucks was green. Go figger. House owned by Mary and Frederick Andersen. Mary date of birth (dob) 6/25/57. Fred dob is 11/12/56. Fred is a businessman. He has nice clothes. He owns the dry cleaner shop near Albertson's. Wait. He used to own it, until one of his employees sued him. Remember that? Wow. Mary is a French Professor on tenure track with a state language grant at USU. Your Source: Steve Howard. He’s Assistant Fire Chief. His mother never wanted him in this kind of work. “The house is a total loss.” Apparent cause is electrical. Gutted the 3-bdrm house. Just two blocks off Main Street. Near the Old Folks home. The wife was on the street afterwards, crying in French: “Tout ma vie! Mes trésors, mes étudiants—tous leurs choses!! Et Charlemagne! Mon pauvre chat, le cheri, il est perdu!” (“My whole life! My treasures, my students—all their things!! And Charlemange! My poor cat, the sweet thing, he is lost!”) Turns out the main thing is that the cat died. And all the final exams of her 215 students. Burned up. So she'll have to give them the test again. Dommage!
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2 City Council mtg
Smithfield City Council met from 7-10:30 p.m. Monday night. Of the 12 agenda items, 3 were tabled until next week. Council discussed a proposal to strengthen dog leash law. Council member Joy Ferguson wants dogs euthanized if caught off leashes off owner’s property. Says “Packs of wild dogs are running rampant in town, terrorizing people and putting children at risk.” Lee Austin is Cache Valley Humane Society President. He addressed the council, along with County Animal Control Officer Rex Toothsome. Austin said there are actually fewer dogs countywide and in Smithfield than at this time last year. Toothsome agreed, and offered a chart with numbers for the County and several cities. He said that the County has issued 12,598 dog licenses in 2006. 782 of those were in Smithfield, compared to 14,115 last year (county) and 861 in Smithfield. He also said there were only half as many strays picked up in Smithfield this year (38, compared to about 70 last year). The dog debate lasted more than an hour. Smithfield mayor Clyde Spineless finally called for a vote on Ferguson’s proposal. It was defeated by a vote of four to one. After the meeting, Spineless said he was pleased. “Smithfield is still a pet-friendly town.”

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Crash (all info from “police spokesman”)
Car crash in south Logan on morning. S. Main & 300 South at traffic light. Blue 1999 Toyota driven by Floyd Finger, dob 3/12/77, 1515 W. 1000 N., Apt. 21, collided with Brown 1972 Chevy pickup driven by Marcie Mommish, dob 8/18/87, 253 Aggie Village #12. Mommish vehicle was making righthand turn at the light when struck by Toyota in the driver-side door. Mommish had green light. EMTs treated driver of the pickup at the scene, and she was transported to LRH with head trauma. Finger was cited for running the red light and arrested for DUI after officers detected the smell of alcohol. Several empty beer cans were found in the Toyota. Mommish is a practicing wiccan. Finger is Presbyterian but never goes to church. He has six fingers on his left hand. Mommish likes her new chainsaw.

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Barbershop (note: you may want to do something other than a straight summary lead here…)
There are already 17 barbershops and hairdressers in town. Today there’s one more. Good thing, because Professor Pease really needs a haircut. The new shop opens today. It’s called Keep Yer Head Down. The owner is 55. She's divorced. She moved to town from Las Vegas, NV. Her name is Franceen Follicle. He left leg is slightly longer than her right. She has hired four stylists who wear go-go boots and dance to strobe lights and disco music while they cut hair. Franceen is a funny name. She used to be a Vegas show dancer who performed at the Mirage, Harrah’s and other major casinos. The shop has a green door. It is located at the corner of Center St. and 300 East, at 301 East Center Street. A good location. “It’s a fun ‘do’ to do,” Franceen says. “We offer cutting-edge style-a-go-go. Everything from perms to colors to pedicures and nails. Grooming is more beautiful to a beat.”

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Speaker (info from CVLS press release)
The Cache Valley League of Scrapbookers (CVLS) is pleased to announce a wonderful speaker from Detroit for its meeting. The speaker will be Clarice Clipper, a scrapbooking author and expert who is president of the International Scrapbooking Society (ISS). Ms. Clipper, 31, will speak on “Clipping with Clipper—Cutting out boredom while preserving precious memories.” Ms. Clipper has been making a wide variety of scrapbooks and memory volumes since 1992, when, as a young mother of 8 beautiful children, she started trying to organize her family memories. “They were driving me nuts,” she says, with a twinkle in her eye. “One day I realized that I couldn’t tell them apart. I could remember if it was Jeremy or Fanny who had the cleft palate. And who was the soccer star—Bobbie or Keith? And why did we name that one 'Elvis'? So scrapbooking started for me as self-protection, really, so I could keep track of them all!” Ms. Clipper has become an international spokeswoman for the Art of Scrapbooking as a means of bringing mothers of all races and creeds together in peace, to share memories and to bridge different cultures. Last year, she was honored with a special United Nations award for her work with women worldwide. Her talk will be on the third Wednesday of the month in the Logan City All-Purpose Room at 255 North Main Street. It starts at 7 p.m. and will be followed by a reception with punch and cookies. The public is welcome to come and enjoy “Clipping with Clipper.”

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So write the stories, already.
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