ON THE MENU: REPORTER'S SCOOP, SERVED WITH A MEGAPHONE

I was fed up with people who indiscriminately and loudly broadcast all
kinds of details about their most private lives in very public places.

Discretion had gone the way of the rotary telephone.

Cell phones are the biggest culprits.

In grocery stores, restaurants and over walls of dressing rooms and
bathroom stalls I've overheard strangers' personal conversations about
everything from dating and divorces and sex to childbirth.

I don't like feeling like an accidental eavesdropper. I don't like
overhearing stuff that's none of my beeswax.

I do love hitting pay dirt.

It happened July 11 in a very nice, very classy Redding restaurant. I
was there for a special birthday celebration, joined by my husband, my
twin and her husband.

Our booth was in the back, kitty-corner from a handful of men and
women who talked loudly as they ate.

It took about 15 seconds to size up the situation: Those people worked
for a government agency that would orchestrate the next day's press
conference. The topic: Operation Alesia, a multi-agency marijuana
eradication initiative.

Participating agency names and acronyms bounced around the dining
room: Shasta County Sheriff's Department, U.S. Forest Service,
California National Guard, National Park Service and the Bureau of
Land Management.

Happy birthday to me. This was a reporter's dream.

We clearly overhead talk about the next day's schedule, talking points
and press packets.

We clearly heard how many questions they'd allow audience members.
(Just one, and quickly.)

We clearly heard about anticipated challenges, such as how to handle
it if a media person tried to roll three questions into one? (Answer
the one you want, then tell them you'll get back to them later about
the others. Ha, ha, ha.)

The Record Searchlight's name came up when someone in the group asked
if anyone had read the paper's editorial about Sheriff Tom Bosenko,
because it was so funny.

But mainly, they talked about how to arrange and stage this event
attended by the national drug czar, for goodness sake. They discussed
the program, the procession, which VIPs were expected and where they'd
sit.

This was Princess Di's wedding on steroids.

Although I was in journalist's heaven, my husband, brother-in-law and
sister did not share my inquiring mind's enthusiasm for this
bureaucratic press conference preview.

And I'm guessing the couple who sat directly across from this
governmental gathering weren't wild about it, either.

The thing is, the Operation Alesia session was impossible to ignore,
what with such fascinating tidbits as human fecal matter in the
waterways (messy marijuana growers).

No pate appetizer for me, thank you.

Besides, the main talking guy had one of those impressively
projecting, megaphone voices. You couldn't tune him out if you tried.

I have no beef with business meetings in restaurants. I do have a beef
when they're so loud and elaborate that they leave everyone within 20
feet with the sensation they're part of the meeting.

And I would have had an even bigger beef with that meeting if our tax
dollars paid for that expensive dinner at one of Redding's fanciest
restaurants.

Michael Odle, public affairs officer for the Shasta-Trinity National
Forest, cleared up the issue of who popped for the bill when I called
him Friday.

Yes, Odle confirmed he was one of the people at that verbose
restaurant planning meeting.

But Odle assured me that he and his fellow local Shasta-Trinity
National Forest colleagues each paid for their own dinners, with the
exception of one out-of-town colleague, whose dinner was covered by
his per diem.

Odle also wanted it made clear that no operational security issues
were discussed during that meeting.

True enough. I know because I heard the whole meeting.

But maybe next time they could discuss it elsewhere, such as in an
e-mail, or their office conference room, or even over a bathroom stall
wall.