Going Away

I might have given up on freelancing too soon. A couple of weeks ago a video production company near me had called about a two-month assignment producing and reporting stories from the Gulf Coast for something called the Recovery Channel. It's a government sponsored channel designed to keep evacuees abreast of the rebuilding progress in Katrina-ravaged areas.

Because it's a government project, it had to ooze its way through untold layers of bureaucracy before we got the green light. It sounded so disorganized and -- frankly, because of the pay rate, too good to be true -- that I had taken the tact that I'd believe it when I saw the sign welcoming me to Mississippi.

We should pass it sometime late tomorrow. I got the call today that we were on.

I don't know exactly what I'm getting into. The only sure thing I know is that we have to produce ten minutes of material a day. That's a tremendous amount for a two-person crew to generate. In TV news, such a crew would be responsible for two minutes a day. That's a worry.

There's a lot else I don't know. Where we're going to sleep, for one. Far down the list of uncertainties is whether I'm going to have any access to the Internet or, considering the intensity of the assignment, any time left for blogging.

If you don't hear from me for six weeks, that's why. Otherwise, I might set up a separate blog to detail my Gulf odyssey.