The tale of one woman's shattered American dream -- to be free as who she wanted to be: a lesbian mother divorced -- appears on the bottom of the Saint Petersburg Times today. It's well constructed, with a nice chronology that isn't straight forward but I think it's the most readable format for this case. It serves to foreshadow with an ominous tone throughout.

I like that the Times isn't afraid to revisit a crime broken earlier just to add detail and dramatic framing. Here are all the other stories on this, with different angles and different details as they were discovered: Dec. 16, Dec. 18, Dec. 22, April 1, April 2.

The only things I'm wondering about is what will happen to the daughter of Andrea, 4-year-old Annie Rose, and why this ampersand appears here in this otherwise lovely kicker: "She did everything she could to live the American dream," Lloyd Davis said. "But ultimately, she had to be who she was. & It cost her her life."

Typo police

Just throwing a few quirky stories at you: Erratum intolerant people are taking towns to task for their misspellings, bad punctuation and errors of logic on signage and elsewhere. I've seen a few stories like this over the years.

These two self-righteous English admonishers on the front page of the Boston Globe today trek across the country to make a point -- or take one out. "Their weapons: Wite-Out, markers, ink pens, tape, and nerves of steel."

Today the Oregonian says, What's up with this stupid hyphen to denote a bike box, a sign to help make cyclists more visible to motorists? It says "WAIT-HERE." What?

My favorite appeared year from a colleague, Danielle Dreilinger, at the City Weekly section for the Boston Globe. It's a little more my style -- story like.

Also, check out the extraneous quotation mark blog. Let the corrections continue!

Belated Blog Hit

A glimpse into the life of a teenage mom trying to make it through high school appeared in the Boston Globe on Sunday. It was actually a centerpiece, part of an ongoing series, "Last Chance for English High." It is about how the historic icon, "once one of Boston's premier learning institutions," is now struggling with its current status as one of the city's worst schools, and must improve or face closure.

The complication presented in this nice narrative: Jennifer Smith's responsibilities to a 2-year-old son inhibit her attention to responsibilities at school -- specifically, a science project. The resolution, however, is not quite clear: Jennifer Smith accepts responsibility for not completing her school work as she cares for her child but she returns with greater attention to her schoolwork and remains steadfast in maintaining her effort to succeed.

This little bit of dialogue and observation pretty much explains it:

Smith stepped into the classroom.

"Do you have your project?" asked her teacher, Timothy Gay.

"No," Smith said softly and cast her eyes downward. She shifted her feet, ashamed, but offered no explanation. She didn't want to use her son as an excuse.

Flashback! Just a little recap: A new rendition of the Megan Mier story appears in the New Yorker magazine. She lays the story out in a way that's compassionate and fair and circumspect, unlike many of those bloodthirsty hounds that want to pillory adolescent suspects in this cyber tragedy without looking at the underling cause. New Yorker Staff Writer Lauren Collins pins the sins -- or contradictions -- to those who've committed them, and probes at the actual causes behind the suicide, but does not revert to castigation.

This would make for a good read if you've never heard the agonizing story; offers some incite into the MySpace Zeitgeist; and and makes a good lesson for a magazine re-write (structuring, points of view, etc.). Overall, there is not much new information here, except when we get to the last graf:

"One girl who had been involved in the fight on the night of Megan’s suicide wrote to Tina:

" 'Hi . . . you might not know me . . . but [my friend] used to live in missouri and be friends with your wonderful daughter . . . [we] get made fun of too. being called whores etc . . . etc. but we’re doing everything we can to stop bullying . . . because we dont want something this terrible to have to happen to anyone again . . . we’re going to counciling . . . and i think we’re really gunna start to make a difference.' "

At the bottom of the New York Times front page today we have a bit about bullying. A high school student, Billy Wolfe, is beaten on a regular basis.

Dan Barry, a masterful story teller, spins out an more-than-sufficient description in the introduction to the first beat down scene:

"All lank and bone, the boy stands at the corner with his younger sister, waiting for the yellow bus that takes them to their respective schools. He is Billy Wolfe, high school sophomore, struggling.

"Moments earlier he left the sanctuary that is his home, passing those framed photographs of himself as a carefree child, back when he was 5. And now he is at the bus stop, wearing a baseball cap, vulnerable at 15.

"A car the color of a school bus pulls up with a boy who tells his brother beside him that he's going to beat up Billy Wolfe. While one records the assault with a cellphone camera, the other walks up to the oblivious Billy ..."

We will stop there. See how Barry builds up the tension in first person. This is not an article in need of a nut graf to start off with. Barry's column, "This Land," seems to be more about compassion, not boilerplate leads. Of course he does nut it up to allow to realize how widespread the problem is and how these school officials "are so reluctant to punish bullies and report assaults to the police."

It goes on to tell the story from the beginning, chronologically, the history of his bully problems. Take notice of a device Barry uses "Heh-heh." That's part of the writer's voice.

The narrative storytelling becomes kind of static near the end. But the vivid descriptions, attention to nuances oft ignored, discerning eye for metaphor/meaning and sense of structure are Dan Barry lessons we can all learn from.

Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Anna Gorman delivers the vivid day-to-day foraging habits of Juana Rivas, a 48-year-old illegal immigrant and mother of four, detailing her struggle to make ends meat.

It's filed under Life in the Shadows, one in a series of occasional articles from The Times. And rightly so: She starts her routine near 3 a.m. to ravage trash cans and recycling bins to reap redemptions to feed her family.

Rivas is identified as illegal and a drainer of municipal resource, which is true. She snuck over the Mexican border in 1982 with her husband and two oldest children. Plus, she costs the city between $20,000 and $25,000 in recycling revenues each year (she's been doing it for 13 years).

That's the newspeg. But the angle is that she's a hard worker and embodies that celebrated American spirit of grittiness.

With her shopping cart, pink hat and gloves that she bought from the 99-cent store she searches and seizes aluminum cans, glass bottles, plastic containers, and anything she can exchange for money. "She reaches inside and shakes the contents, listening for the telltale clink of a beer bottle or the hollow tap of a milk carton. Nothing."

The article really humanizes this immigrant family. We get a view as to what home is like, where Rivas recuperates and fixes pico de gallo for her family. What really made me sympathize with their situation is when one of her sons, Jose, recalled an instance in which he was embarrassed by her when driving by with friends.

I like that Gorman repeats words, but repeats words naturally. Look out for that.

Since last summer, I've been trying to do a similar article with these hovering Chinese folks that hoard beer cans from Northeastern University's neighboring communities. They subsist off of our excess.

Does anyone know Cantonese?