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Ryan Schwach 
So I had some writer’s block this week.
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Not that it was anything further from a slow news week, it’s not every day (or even every year) that there is a contentious election that is so close we have to wait a full week to get the results.
I wrote a few weeks ago about how much I love election day. I called it “Journalist’s Christmas” to several people last Tuesday, which may have been more annoying than it was quirky, since election day tends to be stressful for most other people.
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I don’t want to write about election week again, so I’ll throw something else out there.
At the beginning, a lot of this column was supposed to include quotes that didn’t make it into the paper, and somewhere since that idea popped into my head I have had less and less quotes I didn’t actually use. I also have been relying more on audio recording interviews recently (I go back and forth) so it’s more like “Stuck in the Audio Recording App” this week more than “Stuck in the Notebook.”
That just sounds terrible though.
This week (and last) I did do some good interviews though. Like with Genesis Ramirez, who read the names at the Flight 587 memorial. She remarked that although she does speak Spanish and English, not every name was easy.
“There were some names that came up that weren’t just Spanish and English names. And I was like, ‘I’m trying my best’,” she said.
Last week, I spoke to Bobby Prokopowicz from the Broad Channel VFW for our story on Veteran’s Day.
Bobby told me about his effort to get visitors back into Veterans Hospitals, which has been difficult with Covid restrictions.
“Right now we’re not allowed to go there because of the COVID restrictions. We keep in contact with their administration and try to get any kind of updates and we really don’t get any updates on everything. It’s just the status quo stays the same,” he said. “Hopefully things will change in the near future.”
I liked the quote and the info, but it just didn’t fit into the story about general Veteran’s Day. I had a fun interview with Rockaway born-rappers, MC Serch, Bobby J about their new track about Rockaway, “Round Here.” It’s a good song, and not necessarily a “quote” per say, but my favorite lyric in the track is Bobby J’s:
Why you think my name is Bobby J From Rockaway?, We’re known for the bars.
He then lists out some Rockaway bars, like Connolly’s. I thought it was clever.
Like Bobby, I grew up in Belle Harbor, and hearing it rapped about over a hip-hop beat is sort of strange, but still a good listen.
Also, if anyone caught the mention of “George Schwach” in last week’s Looking Back, and wondered “How many of those people are there?” The answer is very, very few. However, we tend to work our way into weird situations, and George Schwach, who lost his election attempt many years before I came along, is actually my great-great-great uncle, information I confirmed with my grandfather.
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