The More You Know!

Ian Chant, Your Friendly Neighborhood Communications Intern here with our long overdue 2009-2010 Seattle Rep Interns Inaugural Blog Post.

Like most of the interns, I've been here for a couple of months, and I've learned one heck of a lot, and not just about writing press releases. Writing copy for our lobby signage and articles for Deeper Look gives me an excuse to spend a lot of my days doing research, which is a lot like homework if homework was a lot of fun (all together now: NEEERRRRRDDDD!). As tends to be the case in research, the most interesting parts of have been the bits of information you pick up in the periphery.

For instance, writing about The 39 Steps, I started out researching author John Buchan, who wrote the original novel. From there, I learned about the Governors General of Canada, holdovers from Canada's days as a British colony who carry out the ceremonial duties of British royalty in Canada. Then I spent a while giggling at Canada, because they still have these Governors General. I also came to the realization that if I am ever granted a title as awesome as His Excellency The Right Honourable Lord Tweedsmuir, I can probably die a happy man.

With Equivocation coming up later this month, I've spent this week knee deep in Jesuit history. I got to interview Fr. Jack Bentz, a Jesuit priest, theatre veteran, and really awesome guy. Then I started doing my homework, and the hits just kept on coming. I learned about James I of England, and by extension the King James Bible, the profoundly scary King James Only evangelical movement, witch hunting guidebooks like James' own Daemonologie, and, by an accidental click through, LeBron James. I learned about the history of the Catholic Church and the sordid world of the popes - a pope who kept his own private zoo, a pope who was murdered by the husband of the woman he was sleeping with, and my favorite, Pope Stephen, who had the pope prior to him exhumed, put his corpse on trial, posthumously excommunicated him, and then had the body thrown into a river. And that's not even touching on the anti-popes, which is also a title I would like to have at some point.

The point of all this being- learning is fun. Learning weird, unexpected things is especially fun. And I'm getting to do a lot of that here. I hope everyone else is having as much fun as I am - check in next week and you can find out. For now, I'm going to go put that Eagles Greatest Hits CD back on, because that's just how we roll here in marketing.