When Seven Days decided to produce a Québec Issue this year, I was looking forward to heading north to eat a day's worth of meals in Montréal with maybe a brief sidebar list of past favorites. Somehow, one day turned into three after friends of publisher Paula Routly suggested I chat with Marie Comtois, a native Montréaler, who they said knew the city and its restaurant scene intimately.
It's bad to lie in a job interview. It's especially bad to lie during a job interview when the lie is that you meet the basic requirements of the job and, in fact, you do not. But in my defense, I really wanted to intern at Seven Days.
Seven Days' special Dairy Issue was devoted entirely to examining the viability of Vermont's signature agricultural industry. Here the elephant in the room is the "cow in the barn." I was the lead editor on the project. The anchor story, by Kirk Kardashian, provided a historical overview as well as essential info about how the business works. It needed some color, so I inserted a quick anecdote about Fred Tuttle, the folksy dairy farmer who had starred in John O'Brien's 1996 film Man With a Plan, then actually ran for the U.S. Congress in real life as a publicity stunt to promote the movie.