For years, NPR has been soliciting ideas and stories from its member stations, and WXXI has responded.  Today, Bud Lowell will be filing a story about layoffs at Corning; a couple of weeks ago, he submitted a piece about the Rochester City School District and its efforts to keep kids from missing class on cold days - by picking them up at their doorsteps.  My most recent submission was about Sentry Safe.

PBS, on the other hand, rarely uses local reports in national programming.  To begin with, it is not as easy to transfer video quickly - and it can be expensive.  But, under the direction of PBS President Paula Kerger, there is a growing effort to develop the news staffs at member stations.

And WXXI is on the ground floor of this effort.

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I am tucking the front page of today's Democrat & Chronicle into that box in the back of my closet - the one with clippings of birth announcements, kindergarten art work, and dance recital programs.  The box that will one day be handed down to my children, and then their children.  The box that will remind them how far they have come, and what they have left behind.

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Finally, my garden is settling down, but now I'm facing an abundance of a different sort.

When I got started in this business, about two decades ago, July and August were "slow" months in the newsroom. It was hard to get any officials on the phone, election campaigns were still in startup mode, and people were thinking more about vacation than important issues of the day.

Reporters typically welcomed these two months. It gave us a chance to pursue some stories we had on the back burner - stories that took investigation, or lots of sound or video, or a little bit of travel to find just the right person to interview. It was a time to think about the big picture, and the best ways to bring it home to our audience. It was a much needed change in pace from breaking news and pressing deadlines.

But yesterday, we found ourselves in full court press.

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At this moment in time, two-thirds of the space in my refrigerator is occupied by zucchini.

So I probably won't be able to resist asking "Chef Carlo" what he would do in my situation. Carlo Simon Peretti spends a lot of time in the kitchen with local produce. The London native is the new Executive Chef at the New York Wine & Culinary Center. I'll interview him this week for our special summer edition of Need to Know.

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Driving to work this morning, I saw a tractor trailer crushed under a low railroad bridge across St. Paul Boulevard. Perhaps it was a sign of things to come...

According to the NYS Department of Transportation, railroads can move a ton of freight an average of 436 miles with each gallon of fuel. A single intermodal freight train (those trains with containers placed on flat cars) can take nearly three-hundred trucks off the Thruway.

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