Oh, it's morning all right

Once a week, most Bulletin reporters get the pleasure of working a shift that starts at 6 a.m. And, for the first two hours or so, it's just you, the fluorescent lights, the distant hum of a far-off ventilation system and the crackle of the police scanner.

Now, scanners are on all the time in newsrooms. When I worked for a paper in Burlington, Vt., a scanner call was how one editor learned that firetrucks were on their way to extinguish a blaze started by her daughter's desk lamp. At the Bulletin, we hear an assortment of calls throughout the day — police reporting in with their canine partners barking in the background, people stuck in elevators in one casino or the other and whatnot.

The calls are also an interesting peek into what's important to eastern Connecticut at the moment, how people are really living. A woman whose car broke down on Interstate 395 got a ride to her job at Lowe's in a cruiser. Police issued a lookout for an Illinois car driven by a woman who talked of Newport, R.I., bridges and taking her own life. And somewhere in Colchester, a stray cow had found its way onto the front lawn of a house along Old Colchester Road.

Sure newsrooms live and die by excitement, breaking stories and such, but quiet is nice, too, sometimes if only for the chance to sit and listen to the pulse of the people we cover.