The Blogging Journalist

The Past Two Weeks

CHICAGO, USA -- I hadn't intended to go this long without posting. What's my excuse?  I got enthralled with studying Movable Type 4, San Francisco-USA-based Six Apart's flag ship blogging software that is going open source. It also allows one to build communities around the blogging experience. I like it. However, I had to forget some of what I had learned in using past iterations of the software. MT 4 is more modular, with component such as the blog header, sidebars, comments, etc having their own modules rather than being a part of the main index. Includes are used to bring the various parts together.

My blog, The Music Scene Gazette (TMSG) is powered by MT 4, which has gotten fairly good reviews.

I also spent a lot of time blogging at TMSG and writing business plans and contracts for Darkest Shade Music, Inc, a corporation formed in 1998 by my stepson and two of his songwriting partners. They are good musicians and songwriters but they, like most entertainers, need a lot of help when it comes to business.

Yesterday and today was spent packing for our third move in 10-years. Our new place is finally ready. We are only moving a block away. I'm off for the next seven business days so we can get everything squared away by October 2nd.

My biggest dread is taking my network apart and putting it back together. I may just pay a friend of mine that specializes in networking to take care of it. Yes, I think that's what I'll do.

Technorati tags: Movable Type 4, The Music Scene Gazette, Darkest Shade Music

The Death of a Neighbor in the Early Morning Hours

Kirk, one of my next door neighbors was murdered, committed suicide or accidentally fell to his death sometimes this morning from the 10th floor of our 14-story highrise in the Hyde Park section of Chicago. I had no clue he was dead when I opened my apartment door around 6:45 a.m to get the Chicago Tribune. However,  I knew something was wrong when I saw several policemen standing in the hallway talking to another neighbor and waiting to get into Kirk's apartment. A cop told me that Kirk, who was 46,  had been found on the ground outside the building around 6:00 a.m.  See "Body found outside Hyde Park high-rise.

After taking my name, the cop asked me if I had heard anything. I hadn't although I had been up until about 4:00 a.m. A neighbor was quoted in the Tribune saying she heard a door slam around 3:30 a.m. She  got up, looked through her peephole, but didn't see anyone. I didn't hear a door slam.

When I left for work, cops and crime scene tape were around the front of the building. As might be expected, gapers were rubbernecking and trying to see what had happened. If they had looked up to the tenth floor they would have seen a big hole in Kurt's window. Blood stains were clearly visible and his half naked body lay below.

According to my wife, who is retired, detectives and crime scene technicians spent the morning gathering evidence. I called her three times from work to see if she was ok. She was a little shook up because of the death. We also didn't know if a murderer was in the building. We had barely gotten over the death of another neighbor who was murdered about a year ago by a Cable installer. This neighbor lived a block away. It turned out that her killer had murdered another woman on the Northside of Chicago. We live on the Southside near the University of Chicago. We are a 10-minute walk from Lake Michigan and a 20-minute bus ride from Downtown Chicago.

All through the day I kept checking the Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times and local television stations' web sites looking for information. I was anxious to know if Kirk had been murdered. The cops have ruled it a death investigation pending an autopsy, which is scheduled for July 31.

Finally, when I got off the elevator this evening, I got off directly in front of Kirk's studio. An sad, eerie feeling came over me as I looked at the seal on his door. It's not easy to absorb an unexplained death across the hall and two doors down from your door. 

UPDATE: The Cook County, Illinois  Medical Examiner ruled Kirk's death a suicide.

Technorati tags: A Neighbor's Death