Virginia Jones is a a former teacher, frustrated painter, Birmingham Museum of Art ambassador, lover of all things French, community volunteer, and photographer. Seeing Birmingham as a beautiful, friendly, and interesting place to live she brings us daily photos of our home to remind us of just how special Birmingham can be. See more on her Birmingham Alabama Daily Photo and at virginiajonesphotography.com

Wizard of Oz

BJCC

March 8-14th 8pm

The greatest family musical of all time, THE WIZARD OF OZ, is touching down in Birmingham as NETworks Presentations brings this national treasure to the BJCC Concert Hall March 9-14, 2010 for eight performances only.

Tickets for THE WIZARD OF OZ start at only $22.00. Tickets are available for purchase online at www.ticketmaster.com, charge by phone at (800) 982-2787, the Central Ticket Office at the BJCC, and at all Ticketmaster ticket centers located in select Publix Supermarkets and f.y.e record stores.

I really did not know very much about newspapers. I just knew I wanted to write so I took the job gratefully and stayed a year or two. The general manager told me once that I was the only Yankee Irish Catholic he had ever hired, or was ever likely to hire. Someone sent me a clipping the other day of the obituary of the city editor of that paper, Billy Joe Cooley. He was 78. The perspective of youth is a funny thing. I thought he was practically that old back then, nearly 30 years ago.
He sat at a horseshoe desk and the reporters would walk over and lay typewritten copy in his in-box. Yes, in 1982, we were still using manual typewriters with a box of yellow paper flowing out of a cardboard box on the floor and threaded into the typewriter. When you finished a story you would rip it off and turn it on. Seems barbaric, but it was perfect for Billy Joe.
He’d read my copy and yell over to my desk. “Hey, O’Connell or McDonald or whatever your name is, get over here.”
“Son, you ever read a newspaper?”
We’d sit there in the evening, playing backgammon and listening to the police scanner. If something sounded promising, Billy Joe would hold up his hand like an OId Testament prophet to listen, then shake his head and say, “your move.”
You could smoke in the office in those days and he would flick his ash and butts right into the wastebasket full of paper, which is also where he would blow his nose—holding one nostril closed and being his extraordinarily colorful self.

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