Communications people in passing...

  "They'd found some of them in what were deemed free spaces." 

  "No such thing really." 

  "Like in shacks, near dams and power plants." 

  "Well, that's why the Parks people created programs where people can come on board work their way in and have shelter while they're getting started."  

  "But listen, we have to head back out west.  What's happening out there?" 

  "Oh my God, girl." Mind flips through the proverbial rolodex of who's who because having come up together in a field, feeding the pigs together, as a French couple taught us about being so "open", you have a feel for where fluid stories may get the progress they need or meet a dead-end.  "Can you handle the details?" 

  A little laugh.  "My husband and I share information because he's military background and I, well, long story short..." 

  Some of us developed cross-reference lists, like whose areas of interest were overlapping.  That was helpful because as fluid reconstituted into hardened activity on an "issue" there was inevitably escalation.  Some newspaper and media centers had some of their best assistants working lobbies and front desks so that the Establishment of "news" could travel fast or be put in a freezer.  It's nearly impossible to rely on news streams to be able to put the brakes on fluid. 

  There were ego fights and face jealousies, but there was also a strong grassroots kindness and learning vibe that went a long way to softening "cut throat" so that the whole nation could get news.  

  We simultaneously addressed needing awareness so that as ratings were disrupted and money wasn't always the motivation for story, we beefed up or strengthened the service aspect of reportorial and editorial work.

  What had happened before our nation re-solidified a unity around Old Glory was that we had indeed been infiltrated.  That's a complex situation.  The military needed "private" and private needed a solid military to reclaim the Homeland.  Otherwise, what was happening to a severly imploding Soviet system and how the Chinese were going about "humiliating" foes and deemed "loser" would have kept happening between friends and neighbors in the good old USA.