Old Pals, etal

I'm finding blogging makes the world a pretty small place. I've heard from the Ings from New Zealand who want to drop by and play some tennis. Step Daughter Rhonda warns me not to visit military displays in Livermore, California on Memorial Day.

Fellow high School grad Steve Snyder sent me his take on our re-union of a couple of years ago.  Liberated sister  Brenda Jumps in from Maine to say its true women don't and shouldn't barbecue. She adds they ought naught mess with cars either.

Deb Lathrop writes from near the Ghost Town she and her sister bought in Southern Colorado to tell me about an art show in the Fall.

 Tom Gleason writes to let me know he can't get on the website for some reason.

My long time friend Becky Martinez writes to let me know she thinks its okay to name cars after animals as long as those animals are mustangs. She agrees that most farmer's markets these days are fakes.

I've heard from the two speech students, Laura and Gabrielle, that I heaped justified praise on. I've also heard directly and indirectly from their proud mothers.

Because of this blog I've been talking a lot to former students, and now good friends, Mindy and Robert in New York City. They were blogging it seems before I was born. They are both awfully good write persons.  

My Tough sister Theda writes to say she's impressed with all the words I know.  When do you think I should tell her I make a lot of them up? And then polish them up with spell check. 

I notice like any novice that you really want feedback when you get started on something like this. But sooner or later it's the contact, not the feedback, that matters. I'll call it  the re-aquaintance of souls. How bout them apples Theda?

Somebody should have told me about this a long time ago. 

I was just thinking how much we all need each other, and how those needs change from time to time. When you are young and at the beach you need each other to rub suntan lotion on each other's backs.

Later on its nice to have somebody like Peggy around to rub sunscreen on my bald spot.

I realize we all need boundaries, but we don't have to like them. I don't like that someone at AOL has determined there are only 16 moods known to man. I would like that person not to invite me to it's cocktail party.

No boundaries here. The door is always open. Drop by.

Packed House

There is something truly passifying about going nowhere on a major holiday weekend. It's as if stepping back to a less manic, less complicated,  time. There is no traffic. There is no waiting in line at restaurants. The cops are in the donuts shops because they REALLY don't have anything to do.

 I once did  a story about things to do on holiday weekends and actually did a standup bowling down a major thoroughfare. (we did go with one take)  Peggy and I once went to dinner in a hotel on Thanksgiving and the chef came out and ate with us. Then he prepared a huge bag of leftovers for us to take home.  But you've probably guessed there is a caveat coming. There are some things you shouldn't do if you've decided to stay home for a holiday.

A couple of decades ago I was working in radio. It was one of those rare occasions when I was actually going to be off on the actual holiday.  All week long I'd been talking on the air about all the fun activities coming up, activities I secretly planned to stay miles away from.

So I rise early on that holiday day, and set out on my daily four mile walk, jog. I stretch, take a last sip of coffee, and actually jog seven blocks to the entrance to the park. Standing in front of the museum I stretch some more before I maneuver through a thick grove of  trees to get on the bike path.

I'd been on the path about 10 seconds when I very nearly lost my sanity. I heard this roar overhead, looked up and see  a helicopter coming right at me. Then from every bush and tree nearby appeared photographers with their lens pointing at ME. As a journalist you go with your trained instinct.  

"I must have  killed someone!" 

Well the only crime I'd committed was not paying attention. I had just jumped into the lead of the elite Marathon race. I'd been talking about this race on the air for at least a week. You can't do something like this and then tell your kids in later years, "you should have known better!"   

Since I wasn't wearing a number bib, my shot at fame lasted a lot less than 15 minutes. It took me a lot longer than that to get my heart rate back to normal. I did learn a lesson. It's probably not the right one. I just don't jog on holidays.

I'm not through learning life lessons. This weekend I had another face off with reality and lost. With the streets so quiet on Memorial day weekend, with families out camping and socializing in backyards, with all the cops in the donut shops, what a wonderful time it must be to visit the cinema. DON'T DO IT!

Sure the parking lot was full save the one last spot we grabbed in front of some person who'd been waiting ten minutes to get into. But the mind does funny things to you on holidays.

 "They must be having some sort of family get together across the street. That's who owned all the cars."

On the way to the front door the denial continues. The people coming our way shaking their heads are just coming out of movies they didn't like, and making lots of room for us. Just at the door we hear someone say, "sold out."

Well that couldn't be the movie we want to see. Then we arrive in what is a very reasonable lengthed line. ( I think I just made up that word form. I kind of like it.) 

"See nothing to worry about."

Then we saw it, a handscribed posterboard indicating which movies  were sold out for the evening.

"You know that must be why all those cars are in the parking lot?"

The list included all but one, and that movie had already started.

"So we miss a few minutes off the top. We'll take two of those. Here's the money."

As the cashier's hands are moving around in the cash register looking for fives and ones,  he mutters something.

"I'm sorry. Did you say something?"

"Oh, yeah, it's pretty crowded  in there."

"How crowded?"

"Well, I think there is one seat in the very back, two scattered someone in the middle, not together, and then one in the very front row. You won't be sitting together."

"We'd like our money back please."

"Really!"  He actually said that.

This must be where people who can't come down from stress on holidays go for a fix. DON'T DO IT!

I think the same movie was on pay per view.

I'm sure most of you are way ahead of me on this holiday movie awareness thing. There is one other place I discovered a few years ago you don't want to go on a holiday? If it's open? Don't go to "The Mall!"  DON'T DO IT!

If you've known about these "no no's" all along, in the spirit of the holiday I'm going to try and forgive you for not getting me up to speed.

Happy Memorial Day

Turnip Truck

I remember at another time in my musing history I became concerned about using the names of wild animals to name models of cars.  My concern was that poor urban youth, who'd never been to a zoo, would become terribly misled and conflicted." What's a cougar, a mustang or an impala?"

 "Well it's a car stupid."

 It would have been helpful if the vehicles at least had some characteristics in common with their namesakes. It also would have been pretty scary if they did. Later we saw the spider, the rabbit, the cobra. Who wants a car that stops, coils up, looks you in the eye, and bites your neck. Sure it was a silly thing to worry about, but I was reminded of it today.  I was reminded when I saw a makeshift sign on the highway declaring there would be a farmer's market in town from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Let's see, it's still May, and what product do you think Farmer Billy Bob has harvested at this point on the calendar. I think we'd be lucky to find so much as a radish out of the ground in Florida now.  But from now until October, in urban and suburban intersection across the country, we're being invited to shop every Sunday at the Farmer's Market.

I just feel compelled to let you of younger years know that absynth, rosemary candles are not raised on farms.  And it's true too that  cats and dogs formed out of scrap metal are not planted and then irrigated so they will grow large enough to take to market. And if you know a farmer? Ask him or her when he or she last baked up some focaccia bread to take to town for trade. Okay, let's get obnoxious. There are hats, serapes, snow cones, salsa, birdhouse kits.  In case you, or you're children were wondering, they don't come from farms.  I did see a vegetable stand displaying things that are commonly produced on farms. But all these veggies had little stickers on them that read made in Nicaragua, or Australia, or New Zealand or some hothouse downtown.  I heard one customer ask, " when are you going to have some of those great tomatoes you guys grow?"

"Mid-August," was the answer. Let's see, my abacus says that's ten trips to the Sunday Farmer's Market, before it is a Farmer's Market.

 I know it's just a marketing ploy, and maybe there are people who really want to buy scrap metal dogs. But why can't we just try a little to keep our language honest. These aren't Farmer's Markets. Until something locally is harvested these are craft fairs, trinket shows, an opportunity for exotic bakers to dump their excess focaccia. The clue should have been when they started bartering with credit cards.

I don't want to scare you or nothing, but there might be a day when your SUV sports a moniker like The Cucumber, your HumV gets renamed The Radish. It's not out of the realm of possibility. We do some pretty goofy things, and calling these little Sunday get togethers Farmer's Markets is one of them. 

Pipe Dream

My dad was a fireman, and a plumber and  electrician on his days off. He did some freelance jobs in Beverly Hills when I was growing up, and we're told he had some pretty good stories. He wasn't very good at sharing those tales with me and my sisters.  We are still finding out some fun stuff about him, and he's been dead a long time. But that's for another blog. I want to talk about plumbing.

In the mechanical walk through on our townhome we're  selling,  an inspector found minor leaks under two sinks, and we decided we could handle those ourselves. I even have something called a plumbers wrench I'd inherited. How tough could it be?

I may have inherited the wrench, but not the skill, inclination, patience, or passion to plumb. There are a few reasons for that. One, my dad would often take me with him on plumbing jobs and give me actual work to do.  These were tasks like digging ditches, and crawling into tight little crawl spaces to check for leaks, things like that.  I didn't get to do any of the 20 dollar an hour (big money in those days) duties. I wasn't imagining myself in a big brick house on five acres with the money I'd made digging ditches.

My other problem came into play today.  I am not afraid of heights. I've worked with a safety rope inside a 200 foot flour elevator. I've flown in just about every category of aircraft you can imagine. I flew tandem with the national glider distance champion. (we very nearly ended up landing in a pig sty.) I was the  first reporter in this town to try out the ride where they put you in a harness, pull you two hundred feet into the air, and then have you pull a cord that launches you out into space.

I Love speed. I've been on the back of a racing motorcycle with one of the top racer, drivers in the country. I've been on a practice run with the National Trans Am champ. I've experienced six "G"s in a Chinese Mig.

But put me on my back in a crawl space, or under a sink with a plumber's wrench, and you've found yourself a claustrophobic, clutzy, violent, irrational mass of human flesh. That's what happened today. Maybe it was all those trips into crawl spaces when I was still young enough to be freaked out by spiders. Maybe it was the musty odor  I kicked up as I crawled on my back in the loose soil. Maybe it was the time Dad took me to the plumbing shop to pick up some pipe during a union strike. This guy came toward us who, from my perspective, looked 8 feet tall, and 900 pounds.  Dad says, "Get down under the dash, stay there, and don't say anything."

You mean say something like, "Holy........?

For some reason Dad was able to convince "Andre the Giant" he was not a scab. He talked his way out of the confrontation, and then several minutes later remembered where he'd stuffed me. That memory is solid. 

So anyway, the few times I've been forced into coping with pipes, I've discovered a whole new language. These were words I didn't even know I knew. Who would have thought that words like "traps," "washers," "leaks," would attract such interesting adjectives.

It's fortunate for me and the community at large that plumbing did not become my career choice. Maybe it would have been different if I could have gone on one of those Beverley Hills jobs. 

So if you've got a leak, and you were thinking about calling your old pal Paul? Think again. By contrast, the 200 dollar an hour bill you're going to get  will be well worth it.

 

(Dis)Connected

Sometimes you just need to aimlessly, carelessly, curiously, bravely, light spiritly, undoggedly, imaginatively roam. This is one of those times. When and where I grew up, if you lived above the drugstore, you were poor. Well now they are building these retro-downtown, pedestrian friendly communities, I think pretty much everywhere. And, the hotspot to live if you can afford it? Above the drugstore. Go figure.

Now with the TVs most of us still have , if you had something shot in a rectangular fashion (Cinemescope), sometimes you have to live with the top and bottom of your screen exposed. That I'm told now applies to some things shot and edited in the HDTV format. So then when we all get our HDTV sets I have to assume that we're going to have to put up with a lot of square shaped movies trying  to get into a rectangular box. The dead spots will now be on the side.   I'd hate to be at a TV station taking the phone calls. I have a defense mechanism for handling angry calls by the way.  I've shared it with a lot of people, so now that I'm telling you, its probably going to lose its effectiveness. But here goes.  When you pick up the receiver, or how ever you answer the phone these days?  Just say, "Custodian." It's a sad reality, but nobody wants to talk to the custodian. Nobody thinks the custodian can handle  their problem. Nobody believes the custodian will be sympathetic. Nobody believes there is an incovenience in their life that would outweigh the burden of being a custodian. They hang up. Try it. But if too many of you try someone's going to catch on and it will lose its punch.

The Taureg is not a Volkswagen. I'm sorry. Everyone my age has to agree. There is nothing about it that says Volkswagen. Nothing about it says "THE practical car for the MASSES" Give the Taureg to Audi.  If you are a mechanic, or just a technician at Grease Monkey, and you want customers to trust what you're doing under the hood? Get your teeth fixed. I'm sure Grease Monkey provides Dental, don't they?

My Photographer friend Jim Weis and I started something we didn't finish just before I retired. We were gathering generic sound bites that would fit almost any story. Here's a few examples.

. "I just can believe it happened here!"

. "He seemed like such a nice person."

. "We did everything we could think of to get ready for this."

. "I don't think he had to do it that way."

If you are a news nut, you'll hear and see these all the time. Well I turned  them into a revealing parlor game for class where one player is the live reporter who introduces his story something like this:.

"Thanks Mary, I'm here in front of the State Capital where the Governor, despondent over the veto over ride of the cat leash law bill, is standing outside his first floor window. He is threatening to jump. We talked to the Governor's wife:" (that's the reporter's toss to any one of the generic soundbites.) "He seemed like such a nice person."  I think that's what my wife might have uttered.  (She says I dried her new clothes on warm and shrunk them, forcing her to go on  diet. I don't make these things up) Have a couple of Soda Pops before you play, and I think you can tell where it will go.

Why can't milk chocolate be good for you, and dark chocolate not. There is no justice in nutrition.

I figured out why we have to live in these new tightly condensed, downtown, pedestrian friendly, above the drug store lofts, with traffic circles?  It's to make sure there is enough land available for these auto cities, where bright lights illuminate every brand and model of locomotion known to man. That includes the Taureg in the wrong lot. You know I don't think we share notes enough? 

"Give me land, lots of land, where they don't build fences." Fat chance.   

We'll do this again sometime. Afterall, "Roam" wasn't built in a day.

Here's How I See It!

It's a good thing we took a break. We are in the middle of selling our rental property, and I'm getting ready to start summer classes the day after Memorial Day. The few of you who've had to deal with similar issues competing for your attention will share a modicum of sympathy. The rest of you I know are saying, "Quit Whining!"  Let me get some of the details out on the table and then I'll quit whining.

I got home late last night to hear a message from campus saying, "if you really want to teach five classes, but get paid for two, the Dean says go ahead."

Honest, it is okay with me because of some complicated circumstances some graduating students are facing. But they offered and I accepted an offer to drop one of the five courses to protect my sanity. Then, thinking I knew which classes were left, I promptly e-mailed the students in another class telling them they could breath easier because their class had re-surfaced. All three of them face an additional sememster if they can't get this class in.

So, anyway, how would you like to be on the other end of my relief email and seconds later you get an email from the department telling you that course had been dropped for good from the schedule. You'd be bored silly should  I go through the process telling you how I temporarily resolved that issue, so let's leave it here.

So in the middle of this my realtor calls. Before going any further you should know we love our realtor. She's been kind, responsive, hard working and got us a contract six weeks out from putting our town home on the market. And got a contract at a price we could live with. Okay that's out of the way.

Why did she call? She called  to tell us they've finished the inspection on the townhome, and found two minor plumbing leaks underneath two sinks. This comes two days after we paid our independent contractor to put in new drain stopper systems in those sinks. Mightened he have noticed?

Well, we have to agree to get that fixed right away or something that simple could kill the deal. We can either drive 30 miles to sign an agreement or she, the realtor, can fax it to our home.  ( I have no idea how to activate the fax system) We would then fax an agreement that we'd fix the leaks back to her so she can let the buyer's agent know it's still a go. Or we could ,if we want, argue about it. Not worth a fight.

Not wanting to drive 30 miles to get the document, drive another 20  miles to get Peggy's signature, and then another 20 back to the realtor, I get the fax number at the local UPS store for our realtor to fax the document.

I pause here to call one of the three students whose academic skins I hope I've saved, to let her know what she must do. I email the same information to the other two.  While they are responding, another phone call comes along. It's the realtor.

The title company wants me to call my mortgage holder to get a payoff statement so the title company can start doing the paper work in time for a closing set two weeks away.  My mortgage holder strangely has a policy of taking a week to get that statement out if the request comes from a title company or realtor. If I call they will turn right around and send it out almost immediately. 

"Can you call them and ask them to prorate the payoff to a week after the set closing date in case it doesn't close on the original date?"

I make the call.

The conversation is going along and I make the required request.

"Well we could do that sir, but your's is an FHA loan and we can't do any prorating past the first of any month."

So I say, " Since I don't know squat about this, can I just have you talk with my realtor so she can interpret for me."

"I'm sorry sir we can only talk to your realtor if you are on the line at the same time. Do you have conference call capacity there at home?"

"No!"

"Well I'll leave a note here that says you'll be calling back when you figure out what to. " That's not quite verbatim, but damn close.

So I call my realtor, and she says she'll have to call the title company to find out what it wants to do.

So I grab my cell phone and head down to the UPS office to get that original fax on the inspection. 

"Do you have a fax for Reinertson."

"Let me look. Hmm, doesn't look like it."

Well since I'm out I decide to go by my optomitrist's office to see if I could get a new glasses case. The one I had literally disintegrated following one minor mishap. Well, they had some of those on order. They would be there in about three weeks.

 Problem is, in case you're thinking I'm being too picky, is I've got a sunglasses attachment that also needs to fit inside the case.

"Wait, I might have something that will work for you."

She disappears, comes back in about five minutes with this sheepish grin on her face. She reveals this bright blue and red metal case with a large embossed printed logo that says, "Kids."

"I'll take it."

So I go back by the UPS office. Surely the inspection report would be there by now. 

"Sorry."

So I get in the car call my realtor on my cell, and she says, "I sent it over an hour ago, and I have a confirmation they received it!"

"And you put my name on it?"

"Yeah, Paul and Peggy. By the way the title company says just have the buyout dated a month and two weeks away."

"Okay and do I have to set up a conference call to get this all done?

"I don't know. Let me know what they say."

Back into the store. "Got anything for Paul and Peggy."

"Well, yeah. That's been here all morning. Here it is?"

"How much?"

"Two Dollars."

"Good. Here's my credit card."

So I get home, call the mortgate holder, and this time they send me to an outsourced operator from what sounded like Mongolia. I know that because she had me spell everything, not just my name. The out sourced operators from India know some English. She thankfully sends me to some one who speaks Texan, which I'm almost fluent in, who takes care of my request in about 30 seconds. Then I warily ask, "Can you fax that to my realtor, and how long will it take?" 

 I'm prepared for the worst.

"Yeah, no problem. She'll have it tommorrow morning. What's the number?"

"Huh?"  These are the same people who wanted a conference call just to say, "hi!"

If you're looking for me there's a chance I might be gone another 36 hours and I'm pretty sure I'll be out of cell phone range. I sure like my new glasses case.

I'm done whining! (for now)

POSTSCRIPT: If you've got some time look up the lyrics to "Doctor My Eyes" and tell me they don't fit.

I Gotta Get Out of Here

I'm going to babble a bit just to stay on track. I've got to do one of these a day, and I've only got 14 minutes left in this day ( by EDS time) to get it in.

So anyway we ran away from home for about 36 hours. Running away from home isn't nearly as exciting when no one is around to worry about you, or call the police.

This was just a stress break. Sometimes you have to pretend to have stress so you can run away from home. It's not the running away that's important, its the impact of the change of scenery. I used to have a distance rule for unburdening my self of all negative emotions, finding those creative juices once more, liking people around me again.

Early on that distance was another country, call it the BIG jurisdiction shift. This really is something that changes with age. By my 30's just traveling across a state border, seeing different colored license plates, a change in flora and fauna did the trick. 

By mid 30's there were up and down economic turns, and traveling to another state, even by bus wasn't practical, even just to blow off a little steam.

I learned a little trick from a distant midwest relative once that proved helpful when your finances were tight, and you still needed to wash out your soul. You didn't need to leave the state, just your state of mind.  And for that a little liquid lightning was helpful. And he added a general rule of thumb for this technique. Never imbibe in your own town, especially on a Saturday night. Do it in the next town, and then you can show up in church on Sunday in your own town with  no one in those pews any the wiser. At least that's what you tell yourself. Many of the solemn faces around you bear some resemblence to those you'd been winking at the night before.

I won't go through the various stages of man to give this treatise substance. Some days substance just isn't any fun. Just let me say there are times when the burden becomes so overwhelming, just getting to another room is a relief. And so before this gets too macabre I'll be leaving this room and will soon be arriving in the bedroom where I hope slumber will restore my senses. Ta, Ta. 

ADDENDUM: The mood selections in this format are very limiting. I would be more than willing to be of help expanding the options. "Loopy" is just the closest out of the options I could come to "gobsmacked."

 

Complaints Flood In

Okay, I could legitimately wait one more day, but the odds are not in my favor. I predicted six days ago we'd have flooding in a week.  It's not going to happen. Most of the gut level criteria fell into place. The snowpack was a little low in elevation (meaning high in potential moisture content), the unseasonably warm days did kick in the rapid melt factor, rivers and streams did rapidly rise, some flood watches were issued on the other side of the mountains, but here it comes, hold on tight, I'm going to say it.  I was wrong!  That darned confused Pacific storm just didn't do it's job. But I'm owning up. It (the system) had no obligation to get sucked up here from the Gulf. I just threw a dart and missed the bulls eye. Sorry, forgive me, beg your pardon, I'll try not to do it again. Ever hear a meteorologist apologize like that? You never will either.

What I'm quickly realizing about anything you do in print is you better do your homework. All journalists, and that includes meteorologists, make mistakes. They don't always apologize when they do. When they do, the apologies are given short shrift. Why voluntarily poke holes in your credibility? Just play dumb. In television you might tuck your apology in between commercials between sports and weather. That seems to be when viewers hit the fridge for some beer and nuts, and hopefully they miss the whole thing.

In a newspaper you might get your apology between the personal ads and the "Obit" page. But here's the deal. That TV apology is gone. It's in the ether to be interpreted by Venusians or Saturnians. It's (the apology) out of here.

The one you put in print? It's here for the long haul. It's going to be there to find when ten years from now you decide to run for Dog Catcher, or Governor, or Poet Laureate. Looks to me like I'm screwed. Not only was I wrong back in '05, I admitted it. "Is that the kind of man we want running our dog pound?" 

You know the sage advice you get from attorneys and consumer reporters. "Always get it in writing."

For journalists the ministers of good sense proffer the reverse suggestion. "Don't ever put it in writing." How? You always attribute anything controversial to someone else. It goes right along with "baffle them with B___S___."

Anyway, here I am putting it all on the line. I was wrong. Before I go, I must apologizeto the "Reinertson For Dog Catcher" exploratory committee. We've got no chance now. While I'm headed for apology rehab, I can't promise you I won't try to predict the weather again.And then apologize when I'm wrong again. Sorry guys. No, I really mean it, I'm sorry.  

Hey! Wait a minute. It's raining!

Well Done

"Hey honey, I bought us a steak."

It's almost Memorial Day, it's been warm, the grass on the hill has turned green, the breeze is gentle, the smell of lilac is wafting past our noses, and she bought us a steak. Assuming this lovely creature would stoop to having an agenda, what might that mean? I think I've already made it clear we mostly eat out. What does it mean that  she bought US a steak?

And then I saw it, sitting there in it's black and silver steely profile on the deck.  It's a newer model with cutting board extensions on both sides. I don't know why it took me so long to catch on.

"Oh, you want to barbecue."

"Duh," she says.

I try very hard to stay away from sexist thoughts or remarks. It's just a healthy way to live. But there is one area of the male, female division of labor that hasn't budged in all of human history. When a woman says, "Let's barbecue, she really means "let's have YOU barbecue." I've been around a while and I don't know a woman who barbecues. I don't know a woman who has ever fired one of those suckers up. I don't know a woman who has put on one of those silly apron, hat outfits. I don't know a woman who has tossed the raw meat on to the grate. I know no woman who has taken the doneness orders, sprinkled water on the fire after the dripping grease threatens to set off a conflagration. That's a man's job.

Of course the cleverer gender is not wholly to blame. For some of us it's our last vestige of control, of power, of dominance over the smarter sex. Some, like my friend Perry Drake, claim they just like it. Perry claims to barbecue every single day of the summer. Personally I get tired of the taste of burnt.

But we're just skimming the surface here. I think this male barbecueing issue goes to the very core of our evolutionary development. When I get near the ocean I feel it pulling me in, taking me back to my genesis, back to my amoebic roots. There I feel a sense of oneness with all life. Well sort of, maybe.

 Anyway I think there is a part of our evolutionary development I missed out on.

There we were at Oldavai Gorge, knocking some obsidian around to shape it into nasty weapons. A bunch of the guys get together and decide to go huntin' for some Mastadon.  One of the ladies says, "Me go too." 

"No, you not. Stay here, find wood, breast feed, clean cave. If not, me hit with club, grab hair anddrag to bed."

It was not a proud time in our history men. Sure we came back, fired up the barby and tossed on the Mastadon, and fed the ladies. But it's my contention those ladies decided then and there they were going to get revenge.  I think they're there, don't you?

We can't drag them by the hair anymore, we can't talk mean to them, we hire Merry Maids to help them clean the cave, breastfeeding is optional, but guess what we're still doing? Yep, all the guys get together in the fall to throw spears at meat so we can drag it home to surburban caves, carve it up into little pieces, light the fire, get the doneness orders, and whoa, did they get to us. WE clean up the mess.

I'm tellin' you guys we gotta fight back. If she says, "I bought us a steak?" Well we just smile at her and say, "sorry the barby is on the fritz. We're going out!"

That ought to get em', uh?

Something to Drink?

We eat out a lot. How much? Well we almost never eat in. I work off of the fantasy that the waste of cooking for two makes it just as expensive as eating out. And if you bring half of it home and eat it the next day, what a deal. The truth is I just like to eat out. I like the variety of selections, the different ethnic options, an on-going gustatory adventure, I guess. We just had Indian food, last night and I can still taste the curry.

But come on Paul, get honest. I like the the social aspect of eating out, of knowing we are all part of a larger humanity. I like watching people, and guessing what makes them tick. To my wife's embarrassment, sometimes I ask them what makes them tick. I like watching to see what everybody selects from the menu hoping their choice will match up with my assessment of who they are. 

Rather than be annoyed by them, I have great admiration for the couple who is going out to dinner for the first time since the baby came. They are so brave. The man who brings his invalid mother to dinnner once a week I'm fond of. What an important event it must be for her to get out. Oh, I smile when I see the six teenagers fill up a booth and start acting out, lightly punching each other, trying to top each other with gross stories, or tricks they've learned to do with a fork.

Then there's the group of 9 young boys, plus coach, of the winning baseball team. They are bubbling over with pride, re-living the double play to end the game.  The coach has made it clear they can have only one coke.

Oh, the young couple on their first date. Their hearts are pumping, but their mouths are shut. (except to eat) They want to look at each other, but just can't.

Here come the four young married professional couples chattering about their jobs, the new cars they just bought, the houses they hope they can afford to buy.

They're all a little annoyed by the two couples who just walked in a sat down next to them.  Those couples just got off their motorcycles and they are dressed in leather. One of the men pats his girlfriend on the rear end just as she sits down.  Both of the women are rough talking, but mighty nice looking. And to be more polite than they might describe it, these women were sporting two very magnetic decolletage. The professional hubbies are trying very hard not to stare. For show they are trying very hard to share the indignant back and forth eye signalsof their wives. 

If you just go out to eat to eat, you're going to miss all this.

Here is something I'd be willing to miss. And I may need some feedback on this. I'm going to use a percentage here. I'm thinking 80 percent  of the wait people I encounter have memorized a soliloquy that goes something like this.

"Hi, my name is Charlene, and I'm going to be your server this evening. Can I get you guys something to drink."

At first this is going to sound like I'm nitpicking, but let's face it only the guys fit into the genetic catergory of guy. Typically the one with long curly hair and lipstick is not a guy. I know there are exceptions but let's not go there now.

Here's why it really gets to me. Charlene tells me her name and then shows no interest in mine or my companions. We are just guys. And the two of us, both of whom object, counted a record fifteen references to us as guys in one sitting. But that is not the worst of it. On more than one occassion wait persons have referred to us in a new bizzarre plural form. "Did you guyses want butter with your toast?"

I'm not saying wait people must possess the vocabulary of a William F. Buckley, but guyses? And I'm worried that hospitality schools are teaching them this. We've now run into the "guy" talk in three states and British Columbia.

I've tried to counter the guy talk  with something that irritates Peggy a bit. The minute the wait person says, my name is Charlene, I start using the old insurance salesman, politician trick.  I just keep working Charlene's name into the conversation. " You know Charlene I think we would like some water. Charlene is such a beautiful name. Charlene could we get some soda crackers with that water. I knew a Charlene back in Texas and I think she could have been your sister. Charlene, I'm Paul, and this is Peggy. " Did it open the vault? Did the latent charm come oozing out?

"Nice meeting you guyses. I'll get your water."

There might be a little bit of hyperbole here. But arn't you hearing the same thing? Shouldn't we be concerned? Maybe if all of us wear name tags like they do? That might work. I think I'll try it.

But you know if it doesn't work I'm still going to eat out. We just don't get characters like that at home.

"BURP! Excuse me Charlene it must be the Curry.

Pink Lamp Anybody?

We pass laws against too many things in this country. I think that if you want to ride your bicycle without a helmet with your girlfriend (or boyfriend) sitting on the handle bars in front of you, you ought to be allowed. I think having to have jay walking laws for pedestrians is just pandering to the stupid. As long as you're prepared to die, I think skiing out of bounds is okay.  I think noise level laws, and auto pollution sanctions are just excuses not to talk to each other. (Some of my libertarian friends think I should toss in marijuana here.) We spend all this time legally fretting over the obvious, and then we pass no laws, publish no regulations, threaten no fines, do NOTHING to curtail the neighborhood wide garage sale. For Shame.

Some one of you will bellow, "hey, it's free enterprise. It's the American way." I'll counter that with, "No Way Jose!" But I'm not going to stop at "just cuz."

I'm not against garage sales per se. But I like the ones you're directed to by some barely legible advertising, on a bent piece of cardboard, taped to a stop sign. That's where I'm going to find an old typewriter (a manual machine that allows you to put words on paper), a sasparilla bottle (like a coke can)  or a Jimmy Foxx baseball card ( a guy  who played baseball before the first Barry Bonds). In one of these group jobs those items might be ruled out for being too old. I have a long list of objections to these frenzied mass garage sales, but I'm going to limit myself to three issues.

Who are the guys who run these things? Who wants this stuff? Why do we invite these people into our neighborhood?  I don't know about your garage sale extravaganza, but our's is always run by a realtor. How do I know that? That's because he, for some reason, is allowed to put about two million of his three color, hard plastic, three "D", reflective, 12 by 18 inch signs, attached to metal stakes, on every inch of easment in the development. We'd put campaigning politicians in jail for that. Yeah, it does say something on the signs about a community wide garage sale. But see if you can pass this test. "What words do you suppose stand tallest and boldest on these signs? Did you say the realtor's name, class? That's very good. Okay, now what words do you think stand second tallest? His realty company's name did you say? My you are the bright ones."

Does it seem odd that these events tend to take place right about the time people tend to shop for homes? I heard somebody say, "wow, those signs must have cost him a fortune." Well, those signs probably made him a fortune, and he and his tax accountant will spend the rest of the year just laughing, and laughing, and laughing.  I hope somebody on the committee that approves the event gets a discount point on his realtor's fee?

I know what you're saying, and you're right. It's free enterprise. But he or she is the only entrepeneur. Anyone actually operating out of their own garage is at best working a franchise, playing by the company rules, handing imagination, creativity, and salesmanship over to the man whose name is on the sign. I hang on to hope that's not the American way.

So, anyway, you go cruising around the neighborhood looking for that special unique item that says it's you. You park, you walk up to the garage door and see this pink lamp you just saw at your neighbor's house last month. You coveted it. You were sure it was one of a kind, and you'd never get a shot at owning one like it. But right in front of you is the exact same lamp. "There must be two of them. I'm not even going to bargain. I have to have it."

Heard after you leave, "I didn't think we'd ever get rid of that thing. Is there anyone around here who doesn't have one?" From garage to garage the very same items keep popping up. Even the clothes with the labels from the closest department store are identical. I fear that someone having a baby may buy back the crib they sold when their elder child outgrew it, and buy it back for a dollar more.  I guess my point on this issue is these mass neighorhood sales are not where you're going to get the good stuff. You'd do better at a flea market.

My last point is really the inspiration for going off on this diatribe. I'm coming home from doing a narration job, still babbling to myself about the script, when it dawns on me I've driven into the middle of a "destruction derby" auto race in slow motion. The car in front of me has a tandem crew. Instead of helmets they are wearing these tall hairdos cemented in place with hair spray. They are not looking at the road, they are looking at all the garage sales.  Well some times there are looking at each other. Their lips are moving constantly, talking strategy no doubt.  The car, a buick I think, (sorry Tiger) just drifts from one colorful driveway to another, following no predictable path. On a number of occasions I attempted to pass them, but they thought they were doing bumper cars, or, as I said, "destruction derby."  I honked once, but they had clearly turned their hearing aids down. They just kept pulling in front of me.   More than once they narrowly missed hitting neighborhood children cycling around the block with  helmets on.  

It's clear this "destruction derby" crew wasn't from the neighborhood, or they wouldn't have filled up their back seat with pink lamps. And their kind, with compulsive mass garage sale addictions, are growing in number. They are coming from as far as four or five developments away.  And one of these days one of them is going to accidentally step on the gas and it won't make any difference if your girlfriend (or boyfriend) on the handle bars is wearing a helmet.

Let's lobby our lawmakers. Let's get these things outlawed. Let's get back to cardboard. Pink lamps are out.

All that said, my wife reminds me that I'm always urging her to have a garage sale and get rid of all the junk. And don't look too deeply into the fact that I seem to know a lot about these neighborhood wide garage sales. 

Almost my Hero

There are some more graduations going on this weekend which reminded me there was one ceremony I wouldn't have missed for the world, and this is going to take quite a build up to get to. Fasten your patience belt.

I don't have idols, and however unlikely the odds, I don't ever want to be one. To quote myself, "idolatry kills creativity. If you think somebody is better than you, why try?"

What I do have are role models, unintentional mentors, people whose skills I admire, people who've built their successful careers around copying me (KIDDING).

It would rankle me to hear someone comment, " you write just like, who is it, Faulkner?" "Uh, Uh," would be my retort. You'd think one must feel honored by such a comparison, but not me and hopefully not you. More than one person commented over time saying many of my on-air pieces were just like Jeanne Moos on CNN. "UH,UH. " For the record Faulkner was too instrospective for me, but I really like the work of Jeanne Moos. I also like the work of one of her colleagues, Bruce Burkhardt. He does those environmental stories which I think is a shame. When I worked with him, Bruce was the master of the tongue in cheek feature story. I notice they only let him do those once in a while now. He did a classic three camera shoot story about a squirrel stealing the same brand of candy bar out of a vending machine every day. You had to be there.

What I like about Bruce and Jeanne Moos is what I like about the work of a reporter whose name I can't remember and who may still be working in San Francisco, who did a story about two women who worked ten feet apart from each other and had never spoken to each other. I also put them in a catergory (sorry) with that Canadian guy, "The Nature Nut."  They all have some behaviors in common that it's almost a sin to enumerate. Enumerating them makes their styles sound like they came from a formula. That is not the case. But here goes the enumeration anyway.

ONE, they always do their homework, TWO, they are always orginal, THREE, while their personalities are evident, the stories are never about them, FOUR, they are great story tellers, FIVE, they are rib splitting funny, SIX, they see the irony in our lives, SEVEN, they are comfortably irreverant, and FINALLY, they don't approach every story like it's the prelude to Armageddon. I don't know who influenced them, but I'll bet we have some common unintentional mentors. Let's see, Moliere, Shakespeare, GeorgeBernard Shaw, Mark Twain, Will Rogers, P.G. Wodehouse, Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, Chevy Chase, and Feodor Dostoyevsky (KIDDING AGAIN).

But THIS is no joke. I'll darn near guarantee you they'll all tell you they were in some way influenced by Charles Kuralt. I miss him and wish they would honor him at the level they do Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and Huntley and Brinkley. They all came out of the world of print journalism, but in my way of thinkin' Kuralt was the only one to understand TV. If your too young to remember him, get down to the video store and find some of his "On the Road" tapes.

With all his talent Charles Kuralt was too human to be a hero, and that humanity is what endeared him to millions. After he died we found out just how human he was, and his double life got mixed reviews. But those revelations didn't dampen my enthusiam or admiration. (there's always more to those stories than the tabloid rendition.)

So graduation, right? I did my usual yawning when I'm told I'm going to be covering one back in the 90's(sounds like history). But my mood changed when I glanced at the program and saw that Charles Kuralt was going to be an honored guest. Here's another thing I'd admired about him. He was bright enough not to be the graduation speaker. He was just there to receive an honorary Doctorate.

So here I am Mr. Graduation Ceremony Hater screaming at the photographer (not a good practice by the way)," Let's get going. Come on!" 

Well when we arrive I flash my credentials all over the place trying to line up a one on one interview with Kuralt before the ceremony. I'm thinking I'm going to have to work my way through a sea of advance people, and security. But I should have known better. He's just standing there uncomfortably putting his ritual garb on, acting human. I'll paraprhase the conversation.

"Mr. Kuralt?"

"I'd be more comfortable if you called me Charles."

"You got it. Can we talk to you on tape after the ceremony?"

"Not a problem. I'll meet you here. Am I wearing this thing right? "

He picked the wrong source for that research.

Another thing I really liked about him was all through the ceremony he looked really uncomfortable.

So we hook up after the hoopla as he is tugging in all directions to speed up the academic dis-robing. He get's down to his shirt andtie and says, "Let's get out of here, I need a cigarette." What would you expect, he was from North Carolina. 

Well anyhow we find a nice little piece of shade and he pulls out his filterless Pall Malls. I smoked in those days and grabbed my sissy Merit 100's. We do a little shop talk, and moan about the heat and graduation ceremonies and this woman of likely 65 years on the planet, appears from around a tree. She sees her hero, (its okay for her) and blurts out, "it's you."

"Yes maam,"he replies in that golden voice.

Then the lady adds, "You're smoking. I can't believe it. Charles Kuralt is smoking. You must know its bad for you."

Well worse men would have shrunk from the attack, not Charles. He was once again humanly eloquent.

"Yes maam, I do know it's bad for me. But it's my choice. I am a smoker, and not just a smoker, I am an enthusiastic smoker. I like smoking. I smoke every chance I get."

And he did it all with this warm subduing smile. The lady had nothing more to say. She melted. It was over. All she could get out was something like, " it was nice meeting you."

So anyway I slept through most graduations, but not that one. Like most major market journalists I've had contact with hundreds of people you've heard about, but talking to and having a smoke with Charles Kuralt is the only high profile interveiw I cared about.  Maybe some day somebody will say, "you know Paul, you write like Charles Kuralt."  And you know what? That would be okay.  You can say that.

Yuk!

I've leveled this complaint before, so I ought to be elegant with it by now. But I think my arrogance may get n the way of my elegance. And bear with me because this is another one of those issues where it's going to take me quite a while to get to the point.

You know you hope for yourself, and certainly encourage your students, to go out there and make a difference. The truth of it is when you do (?)  you probably don't even know about it. Somethng you say or do along the way catches somebody's attention and they're different because of it. But every once in while you get to see the end result of your effort and it blows your ego way out of proportion with respect to reality. In my case I even have to share the credit with Gary Barkley, and actually give him  most of the credit.

Gary is a photographer and like me has some gray roots. Gary is one of these guys who is so observant of events around him he sees more than God. I'll suffer the lightning bolt for saying that, buts it's true.

So Gary is driving back and forth to California one summer and he is impressed with the quality of the rest stops in New Mexico. They are neatly trimmed, lots of shade, clean restrooms, running water. ( We later learned they actually have a competition amongst those maintaining the stops. They get a prize of some kind. I think it might be a Georgia O'Keefe print.)

Normally you could put Gary's rest stop observation into the "so what" bin. But on his return trip Gary apparently drinks a little too much of that fresh rest stop water driving through New Mexico. So when he gets to Colorado on I-25, the main north-south highway between Mexico and Canada in this part of the world, he has to pee. Well first of all that first rest stop coming in, and last stop going out, is a good 40 miles north of the border. Gary could give you exact mileage, I just know it's north of Walsenberg. Anyway when those of us with a few gray roots say, "I gotta pee," we mean it. Forty miles might as well be a hundred. 

It's summer, it's hot, and there it is, the sign. "Rest Stop One Mile Ahead." I'm not there but I picture Gary already having his fly unzipped. Then he sees it. This rest stop consists of an old fashioned two-holer sitting right in the middle of the highway. It's sitting right in the middle of the highway where there are no trees, no living blades of grass, and most importantly no running water. I can't remember for sure, but I think Gary endured the indignity, but the next time he sees me he says, " Paul, we gotta go do this story."

Well we do, and everyone should be happy smellovision never really took off. We just sit back with Gary's camera and get these incredible shots of people gingerly opening the door to the "John" (I've got a book about why it's called a John if you ever want to borrow it)  with one hand, the other hand occupied pinching their nasal passages shut. No one, we noticed, stays long. And when they come out they are waving their hands in front of them irrationally believing that will diminish the insult. Then, of course, they realize where those hands have been, and look around in vain desperation for a cleanser. Some settle  for rubbing their hands in the dirt.

I always tell my students you don't have a really good news story unless you can produce some good natural sound and some pithy soundbites. Let's see nat sound like, "ICH," "YUK," "PUKE." And there was the squeaky sound of the potty door, seriously in need of some WD40. Then we get the pithy soundbites like, "that may be the worst experience I've ever had in my life," or "welcome to Colorado," or "I'm not going in there." We get all the nat sound and pithy sound bites and make sure the State Highway Department is watching. Lo and behold a few weeks later our good friend Dan Hopkins, Media Relations Czar for the Department, says they are going to shut that sucker down and build a new MILLION dollar replacement.  I'm pretty sure Gary shares my arrogance. Ladies and Gentlemen, THAT is making a difference. ( of course it's now even further north of the border, so be sure to ration your water intake going through New Mexico)

So, if I can do that, why won't they listen to me when I tell them they are screwing up this multi-billion dollar touch up on the same highway? As is the current trend they are putting up these decorative sound walls along the way. Decorative in this case means scattered bas relief of bison and birds.You can create an illusion of art moving by having it go in the same direction as the traffic. And I think the current theory is the practice aids the flow of traffic. I discussed all this with my good friend Karen Morales who is in charge of media relations for the project.

"You know, Paul, you right about that."

There is nothing wrong with thebison representation, but the beasts are headed the wrong direction.

"Well then Karen, why are all these bison set up for head on collisions? How are they going to expedite the flow of traffic?"

"Hmm. I'll ask about that and get back to you."

 Now it's the same issue with the birds. On one hand the motorist will always take home the prize in that joust. But, virtually thinking, all those feathers will certainly impede visibility.

With the birds I have another issue.  A little birdy (tee hee) tells me they are Swallows, of which in real life there may be NONE along this highway. ( My source tells me swallows tend to hang out around street lights and at some mission in Southern California.)  

"How much trouble would it have been to reshape a beak here, trim some feathers there, and come up with a Lark Bunting, the state bird."

"Yeah, I don't know Paul. I'll check on that and get back to you." 

Karen is one of my favorite media relations people of all time. I know she'll get back to me eventually. The issues must be more complex than I imagine. I'd like to stick around for the answer but I've been drinking coffee all day and I gotta go pee.

Snow Job

I can show you a Striated Linticular cloud. I can spot a Cumulus and differentiate it from a Nimbus. I know the pinkish color that predicts Hail. I can identify a Wall cloud and point out the Out-flow.

But don't ask me to predict the weather. I couldn't begin to describe "Quadruple Atomic Doppler Radar" to you. I couldn't do the math to show you where the jet stream and high and low pressure systems are right now. I could in no way analyse a satellite picture of a weather system to your satisfaction. I say all that but must warn you that a week from now some things are going to be under water around here that aren't supposed to be under water. With less science on my side than the Farmer's Almanac I'm predicting some flooding. I'm basing it on 20 years of chasing storms at the will of the newsroom. So?

Well driving into town I see this white line along the mountain range that from my  eyeball puts the May 18th snowpack at about 9,000 feet. That's a little low for the 18th. This is the first year in seven that most of the mountain reservoirs are close to average depth. The air conditioner in my car is on the fritz so I'm pretty sure of the outside temperature and the knowledge that that spot on the thermometer can turn snow to "wawa." I know we are approaching the weeks of the most rapid snowmelt without any extenuating circumstances. Now, honestly I've seen these conditions before and the result has just been some minor flooding with the only loss of life a few rabbits. But there is something else going on I  seldom see or hear meterologists talk about until after the fact. It always gets interesting when you see them scratch their heads. They do that, just like we all do, when something doesn't behave according to expectations.

Okay, I'm talking about this tropical storm that is in the Pacific? Now that's not that uncommon, but those storms tend to stay in the Pacific Ocean and visit places like Hawaii. This one is swirling our way folks. Okay, its way down south, but it's target seems to be the Western Gulf. My experience is, amateur though it be, we're in for some gully washers. We just need one little ol' low pressure system here in the nation's mid-section and it's going to suck all that moisture northward.  We're going to get tropical for a while. Naturally curly hair is going to be the regional norm.

I don't want to be an "Alarmist," a "Chicken Little," a  "Nostradomus." But I wouldn't feel like I was doing my civic duty if I didn't advise you look around for high ground.  I hope I'm wrong. I'm sorry but the snowpack just shouldn't be that low on May 18th. Tropical storms are supposed to go the other way. And lets face it, the rabbit population is out of control.

 

 

For the Birds

Today was "For the Birds." I decided to pause and do a little research before I tell you what that means in my world. To the best of my knowledge the phrase "For the Birds" has never been used in a positive context, save for some irony here and there. I'd assumed it was another one of those expressions coined by Shakespreare that nobody really understood but pretended to. But the "Phrase Scholars" I could find, can only trace it back to 1962. It was apparently a line from a novel titled, "Chicago Chick." In that context, and contexts to follow it apparently refers to the size of any particular bird's brain. "For the Birds" infers whatever the offering, it's aimed at those of lower intelligence. What pooh, eh?

I, a not very serious birder, can attest to some evidence of low intelligence quotients. I have a big reflective window looking out in the backyard. These birds apparently see their own images in the glass, but don't recognize their own profiles. They routinely fly right into the glass thinking they are about to greet a find feathered friend. I can't tell you how many times I've seen them knock themselves unconscious with this behavior.

"Aaah," I said the first time and administered first aid.

"Stupid bird," I said the hundreth time and just waited for the victim to stagger to its feet in a drunken stupor. I fight a real inclination to laugh. I'm fighting the urge to produce a laundry list of similar "bird brain" activity, because that's not what I'm thinking about.

If the birds are the dumb ones, why do I go out and spend a couple hundred dollars every Spring to make them happy? This year I bought a new "Oiler Feeder." For the uninitiated that's a bird feeder that holds black oil sunflower seeds. Those seeds have more protein in them then what we eat, protein needed to keep one's wings flapping. Let's see forty bucks for the feeder, and nine bucks for the plastic pan that fits underneath it to catch the crumbs.   And this year I updated the wooden house like looking feeder for the Suet, kind of like a greasy hamburger for birds. I did not have to replace the Thistle feeder designed exclusively for Gold Finches and Pine Siskens. But I did have to buy a new fifty pound bag of the tiny thistle seeds. For some unknown reason the gold finches haven't been coming around in their usual numbers.  My bird consultant says the latest remedy for that is to tie a yellow ribbon, yes yellow ribbon, around the feeder. The gold finches see that yellow ribbon as a sunflower? (ah, let's not go there) So one yellow ribbon, one dollar. That I've discovered also involves having to explain to neighbors that, "No, we do not have a family member in Iraq."

If my time and health are worth anything, there are other costs. I spent two hours cleaning out the heated bird bath, because birds for the most part are not house broken.  I'll spare you what I paid for the bird bath.

I also trimmed the mature growth around the yard so that the Juncos and other ground feeders don't become the protein source for local cats.

While they are not quite here yet, Peggy has mixed up her special sugar drink for the Hummingbirds.  I've yet to see a humming bird feeder that didn't drip it's syrupy concoction on to the ground ultimately becoming a dining table for ants. So of course that needs to be cleaned up.

Let me tell you about Robins and bird baths. Fill up that bird bath, the Robin shows up to wash the dust out of its wings, and its like the 900 pound man jumping off the high dive into the swimming pool. Say goodbye to the H20. I hope the water police don't find out how many times I have to fill it during the Spring.

Anyway, when I say "Today was for the Birds," I think you get picture. But probably not the whole picture.

To watch a "Say's Phoebe" hover like a helicopter eating thousands of insects a day, to watch two "Gold Finches" swirl around their feeder at incredible speeds, to watch a "Robin pair" build a nest and ultimately send their fluffy progeny out for a first flight, to watch the exhausting diligence of a Blue Bird couple building a nest in the birdhouse we provided, to hear the rustling and the loud songs of the tiny "Wrens" as they scurry around the ground, to see a crowd of "House Finches" occasionally intimidate a "Grackle," and yes even to watch a "Hawk" swoop down to snatch up one of those "Finches" for lunch, it's worth the time, the energy and the cost.

Today was "For the Birds." I just wish they wouldn't poop in the bird bath. 

Where are we Really, Anyway?

Going by the calendar this will look like I'm showing off with two entries in one day. I'm just trying to keep myself honest with one a day for a year, and I think I needed this one. That's because I occasionally write this at 10 o'clock at night which is the next day somewhere else. Now I've actually been thinking about this subject since yesterday when Peggy and I were talking to one of my students, Stephenie Davis, and her planned trip to Australia.

It reminded both Peggy and me of a ten year long extended argument we live with to this day. When we flew to Sydney ten years ago, I think it was a 12 hour flight from LA. (not really an important detail.) But during the flight we decided to figure out what time and date it would be in Australia when we arrived. It would be the first time we'd gained a day. I mean how do you do that? When we see time travel in Sci Fi movies we scoff. So how to figure it out and explain it.?

Peggy thought that to do it right you had to pretend to fly East instead of West because that's the way the clock was going. That made no sense to me since we were in fact going west. My time metaphor was reduced to a front flip with a half twist since we would be gaining a day, and looking back on the clock moving the other direction. I also thought the half twist to be a clever addition to the concept of moving from the northern to the southern hemisphere. I won't tell you what she thought I was full of.

This is one of those entrys where you are going to have to stay with me. In addition to front flips with half twists it will require some leaps of faith. It's going somewhere, I think.

Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have to worry about these time, date and space questions at all? Well it seems to be we are almost there. Stephenie just looked at her watch or cell phone and said right now it's blah,blah,blah (clock time ) in Melbourne (space) tommorrow (date). No math required. The other day I did one of those Paul's Heimers left my watch at home trick. I'm trying to time a class activity that will allow everybody to keep the rest of their daily promises. So I asked, "anybody got the time?"  I got the strangest looks. Of course they had the time. They had it on their cell phones, on the laptops, time sung to them on their headsets, and unbeknownst to me, so did I. We laugh at future talk where its fantasized they'll just put chips inside us at birth and we'll never have to consider such trivia. I'm conflicted about that idea. On one hand, what a wonderful development. Let's fill in that blank first. I've been in all 50 states. Like most of the male species I pride myself on knowing where I am (let's make it clear, geographically), I love to explore without a map. But when I return to the place of my birth (California), I always, not sometimes, always get reversed. I can arrive by plane, by train, by car, burro and I can't put San Fransciso North, and Los
Angeles south. The ocean is always on the wrong side.  Once I get to Pacific Coast Highway or Highway One, I can get straightened out in an hour, but that's frustrating. So won't it be nice when the chip in your brain hooks up with G-Star and tells you to relax, it knows where we are and where we're going? We're all most there without the chip, arn't we?

Now that's the upside. I told you I was conflicted. Here's the downside. What would Peggy and I have talked about all the way to Australia?  

Dear Graduates

I would give a graduation speech, but you would have to pay me big time. And I would be willing to be paid in inverse proportion to the number of words I used. From what I have seen or heard there has never been a well received, honestly praised, really persuasive, inspirational graduation speech. This may be my own jaded observation, but I think I have some company in this perspective. I want to be the person who reads the very last name of the graduates being honored. The response to that duty is always a resounding, deafening roar of approval. And it should tell us something, I think. But it won't.

I was at an Air Force Academy ceremony when then President Clinton was the speaker. Let's face it this would be the ultimate audience, trained and diciplined to behave appreciatively. But there had been at least an hour of pomp before he got up there. He may have said a lot of good things, but it was hot, and this was not the political environment where Clinton tended to thrive. It was before Monica but after his military record, or lack thereof. Pardon the pun but there was an air of reserve. All these cadets wanted to hear was that last name called and the Thunderbird's Flyover.  The President then ingratiated (sarcasm) the crowd further by wanting to look around a bit. So, for security reasons everyone in Falcon Stadium had to sit around after the ceremony for another half hour.

If you are remembered for your graduation remarks don't expect it  to be a good memory.

The highlights of any graduation ceremony tend to be the "anti-speech" moments. Someone trips over their gown, the singer forgets the words to "The Star Spangled Banner," an exotic name of a popular student gets butchered. That's what will be remembered. And then there are the planned moments of irreverance. In the ceremony I just attended one of my ex-students, Jonathon Kuenne, crosses the stage wearing a huge chicken head. (for anyone interested he says he got it off of ebay. It was actually designed so you could hide it in the sleeve of your gown right up to the last minute.) 

I was in the person's room when, my wife reports, some one does a front hand spring or flip, she wasn't sure. That will be remembered.

When you are giving a speech you are looking for response from your audience to build your enthusiasm and confidence.The students I knew well were grouped together in yesterday's event. And more than one told me they used the occcasion of the keynote speech to reminisce about great times they'd had in class. And in all the graduations I've attended the caps and gowns are the one's sitting up front. Ask any entertainer. It's tough to play to the back of the room.

I saw a CBS affiliate crew at the event, and a photographer and reporter from one of the dailies I knew. Once again I felt comfortable in semi-retirement. I hated covering graduations. And I could see the ennui and frustration in their eyes as they looked for some way to make this graduation seem special. As a journalist you always come up with something, but its arduous and painful, especially if you're expected to come up with a soundbite from a speech.

I accidentally came across the coverage on my way to the crossword puzzle today. There was a quote from the speaker, and a human interest ditty I'd seen in the school paper a week earlier. But the highlight? A still pic about 5 by 5 of three gowned women's studies grads doing a high kick routine on stage. I'm telling you that's what its all about.

I don't know. I missed my College graduation. I was taking some summer classes to finish up, and I was working, and my girl friend lived 30 miles away, and the surf was up. So what I'm saying may sound like sour grapes, but I don't think so. I've been to some so called dramatic ceremonies in some wonderful locations (i.e. my stepdaughter's bachelor's and master's degree events, my nephew's law degree at Navy Pier in Chicago. ( I did enjoy the archetectural boat tour on the Chicago river the next day.) But I can't remember a word from anybody's speech. Sure I get teary eyed and proud just like anybody else when someone I know or just admire from a distance walks across the stage. Like everybody else I run around and take pictures in light  I know will render the photographs nigh unrecognizable. I feel compelled emotionally to go to every graduation at my campus. So somewhere in there I must be getting something out it.  But I have to tell you, if you were one of the graduation speakers? I have no idea what you said, and sorry,  I probably don't remember your name.

Real Homework

Well it's graduation day. It's a beautiful day outside, but graduation will be inside. It makes no sense to me, but then I've not bothered to look into all the machinations that led to using this indoor venue. So what will I say to those students, who I've become close to, heading out to slay dragons. I think the first thing I would say to them is that there are a lot of things on the surface of dragons that don't make sense. So before jumping to conclusions look into all the machinations that led to the design of the dragon. You may be out there swinging your sword at a dragon that spins hay into gold and gives it to you. A couple of graduation speakers ago, it was the Governor, some seemingly simple advice was passed on. We've all heard it a thousand times, but more as an order than as advice. "Do your homework!"  So what turns an order to advice? Life experience is the catalyst that turns order into advice. I could give you a hundred mind wrenching, self flagellating , horrendous conclusion examples of not doing your homework. But you'll come up with your own in time. I'm just going to tell you a semi-sad story that will still allow you to have a good laugh at my expense.

So we had just spent a fortune (by our standards) landscaping the backyard of our new home. We'd worked carefully with the landscape archetect in picking shrubs, trees and perennial flowers that would thrive in this environment.  We knew intellectually it would take time for the planting to mature. But emotionally we wanted a forest now.  So when we see this little beast appear from a hole in the ground and start munching we panic.  Sure it was kind of cute. It looked like a small, elongated chimpmunk. We tolerated it for a while but Peggy began imagining the beast was eating the roots of our investment. Then one of these beasts turned into three. So of course the job of saving the garden fell on my shoulders. All I had to go on was urban legend about how to counteract the destructive behavior of gophers. First I identified all the little tunnel entrances I could find and tried to plug them up. I don't know why that solution lives even in the folklore realm. They just come up somewhere else.  Well despite water restrictions I moved on to step two, flood them out. I sent waves of water into every tunnel I could find, and for a day or two it seemed to have had an impact. But, ah, they came back in force withlittle ones. It was clear what they'd been doing during the layoff.  It was a sad day for me. I'd been ordered to rid the garden of these beasts and so I went deep into my myth bag and went to get a gallon of gasoline. Well you know where I put that gas, and that I lit it, and that it smoked and I became overwhelmed with guilt and grief. But that was nothing compared to what would befall me the next day.

A co-worker friend of mine had a biology degree that might have payed some dividends in my delimma. I told him the whole story, complete with a description of the beasts.

"Hmm? They sound familiar. Did they have a bunch of lines on their backs?"

"Yeah! What are they?"

"Let me get my rodent book and you can look it up."

Well there the little guy was in all his glory. And he had a name, Thirteen Lined Ground Squirrel. Funny I'd never thought to count them. I'd also not thought about looking into his or her natural behavior.  Well let's cut to the chase. Under the behavior heading were these words, and I'll capitalize them for you in case you ever need this information. "THIRTEEN LINED GROUND SQUIRRELS ARE GREAT FOR GARDENS. THEY EAT WEEDS."

I was sure glad I hadn't name the little guys.

Believe it or not there is a happy ending to this life lesson. Two weeks later they were all back. Gasoline doesn't work either.

So now you know what HOMEWORK is really all about. Congratulations.

Victory At Last

I hurt when I see people sell themselves short. That's because I've been there, and I know how tough it is to pull yourself out of that pit without a hand. It takes one to know one, and while its painful to watch, as a teacher its the most satisfying thing in the World to reach down with that helping hand and have somebody take it. That's my attention getter to introducing you to Laura and Gabrielle. (Laura! I told you this was coming) I doubt they know each other, but I'll tell you right now they are soul mates.

I know enough about both of them to tell you they've had some traumas in their young lives. None of us need to know the details. What you do need to know is that somewhere in coping with those stresses someone or something ate in to their self-worth. To look at them it would make no sense to you. They are both petite, very attractive, nice voices, penetrating eyes and at first glance full of confidence. When they employ them, their smiles are crushing. And yet some force beyond them told them they were not worthy of attention, that they should never speak in public. That's when you hate teaching a required speech class.

 Let's start with Laura. She came to me during class to tell me she had tried this before and failed and it was happening again. She was going to drop the course. She just couldn't do it. I've learned from two stints at teaching that somebody who wants to drop your class seldom bothers to pop by and tell you about it. Laura was looking for answers. Instinct kicked in and I did something I'd never done before. I looked her in the eye and said, "Laura let's take a walk."

I left the rest of the class to fend for itself and Laura and I hit the hallway. I grabbed her hand and squeezed. Instead of asking her to reveal her pain I talked about mine. There was a time I used to throw up before having to get in front of anybody. The more I shared my pain the more I could feel her tension subside. The more I talked about overcoming and using that fear, the more she relaxed. I didn't know how all this was going to end, but it was a big moment in my life that she decided not to quit.

Gabrielle had moved West a number of years ago leaving her touchstone extended family behind in New Jersey. If you'd seen her quick wit, her good grades, her outward interest in politics, her easy way with people in one on one conversations you'd never guess there was a problem. But as we approached the time to start that first public speech panic arrived. Like Laura, Gabrielle told me she thought she was going to have to drop the class. In a previous attempt someone made her feel like she was no good. I don't know that person. But I don't like that person. Why? Don't we want people to succeed?  Well I got to talk about throwing up again. I eased some concerns. And thank you Gabrielle for sticking around.

So what happened?

Laura still struggled with that first speech and I let her give it from her seat. Gabrielle did her first one sitting and I sat beside her for support.

Second speech Laura stands up and gives her speech from her seat. She started showing some real command of the situation. She said the fear was still there, but it wasn't showing. Gabrielle stands up and gives her speech in front of the class while I'm sitting close by.

Now we pause for a little drama. After class one day Laura stops by with an invitation to watch her in a class project for another class. Wow! These things don't often happen this fast. It was a play she had participated in writing and where she was playing the lead. And she was good.

Meantime Gabrielle comes to talk to me about her final speech where she needs to persuade people to take action. And then she would need to handle a 15 minute discussioin with the class on that issue. I'm thinking to myself maybe I can guide her into something semi-controversial, but then I looked at the dertermination in her eyes. " I want to do it on sexually transmitted diseases and the need to not rely on abstinence in seeking solutions to the problem."

Okay, let's do it.

They weren't just good in those final speeches, they were great. They were powerful. They had control of their audiences. You could see the glow in their soul. Singular soul, because though the time was a year apart, though one's a blond, and one a brunette,they are soul mates. And I'm glad they let me visit.

You were wondering why anyone would want to teach? Hmm.

To Blog or Not to Blog

This blogging business is cool! (50's expression meaning neato jet which evolved into "real boss" during the 60's)There would have been a time (probably about a month ago) when I would think a BLOG to be one of the more dangerous forms of communication on the planet. No assignment desk? No Editors? No producers? No Excutive producers? No News Directors? No General Managers? No CEO's? No Boards of Directors? And what's this first person thing?

As a journalist you pat yourself on the back for getting both sides of the story, taking an objective stance, telling people what they want or need to know. Why would they care what you thought or felt?  So I was feeling a little guilty when I jumped into this BLOGGING thing. But I'm getting over it.

To get my students on the road to understanding a journalist's role I often paraphrase a scene from the movie Elmer Gantry. The fire and brimstone Gantry is trying to entice a reporter covering his tent meetings to BELIEVE. With a big toothy grin, Burt Lancaster says something like, "I know you want to believe brother, just take that one step, you can believe." That reporter, taking that lonely stance only a journalist can know says, paraphrasing again " I would like to believe but I can't. I just can't." Somebody has to take that cynical spot on both sides of the fence to protect us all. Doesn't someone?

Truth is someone does, but it no longer has to be me. And this sort of lone ranger posture can get a little extreme.  It reminds of a Mort Sahl bit about riding on Air Force One with Nixon.( I thought Mort Sahl was a pretty funny guy before he met Jim Garrison and Oliver Stone.)  Anyway Sahl was making fun of Nixon's habit of referring to himself in the third person. Example: Air Force one hit some turbulent air dropping down bunches of thousands of feet at once. This plane full of junket journalists saw the passengers tossed all over the place. When calmer air arrived, according to Sahl, Nixon appears from his private quarters in a three piece suit with his tie in perfect position and proclaims, paraphrasing again,  " I'm sure we would not want to report this incident in the press tommorrow. We wouldn't want the American people to worry about the safety of our president."

Wouldn't that be him?

It's not that we don't all sneak in some editorial stuff by accident or stealth even when weare being good. But to just blurt out your soul, let your attitude ring,  let your heart sing, how cool is that?  I've noticed there are days when I'm making an effort to be persuasive, to gain ground for some posture I'm promoting. But the days it feels the best is when I'm just lettin' 'er rip. It's all about just getting the corrosion out of your system, racing your engine, blowing out the carburetor. As long as this blogging thing doesn't reduce itself to preaching and pandering, it may become one of the better forms of communication. As long as we accept that most of us are just blowing off steam, what's the harm? Here's my closing thought.  We all get to be Anne Frank and how cool is that?

"One Word, Plastics!"

I've been doing this college instructor thing for three years now, and I've seen a lot of students come and go. Outwardly I can put on my tough guy facade on graduation day and wish them a polite good luck sending them out to slay dragons. But totally leaving school for the first time is something you don't get over. And if you're going to be doing what I'm doing I think at least a little empathy is appropriate. I've got just one more final exam to administer, so I've shaken a lot of hands and gotten in some hugs, and now I just want to crawl into my little corner and cry.

Like many of these students I was leaving academia without a clear path. It was the Vietnam Era, so there was always that possibility, although (this is true) my draft board had been shut down for a year for exceeding its quota. I'd wanted to get into radio, but didn't really know how to get there. I had a touch of altruism in my soul, so I thought about it, and then opted for the Peace Corps. The Corps was in its infancy so they made a few mistakes. One of them was picking me for an agricultural mission to Colombia because I'd said I'd ridden on a combine once. Training was in Nebraska which included physical conditioning from the Big Red coaching staff, and a guy nicknamed "Deadly Dudley," who helped lead the "bay of pigs" invasion. Well for some reasons I don't even want to get into here, it didn't work out.

So I went to work in a warehouse for General Mills, putting in an average of 55 hours a week tossing hundred pound flour sacks. Then it came, my draft notice. I showed up for my physical at this big facility in downtown L.A., and then stripped to my skivies as ordered.  It was clear I wasn't fully prepared for this because most of the guys around me showed up with these inch thick stacks of papers.  I later learned these were letters from their doctors declaring them unfit for military duty because their right leg was 1/100th of an inch shorter than the left. That could be critical in a fire fight.

It elevated my spirits a bit to watch those doctors notes get tossed into some very large trash receptacles. We were asked to sit there in our underwear, about a hundred of us, and answer a questionaire. One of the questions was, and its frozen in my brain, " are you, or have you ever been excessively worried or depressed?" I looked around me, saw 100 whining teenagers standing there in theirunderwear, begging for mercy, and this shouldn't surprise you. I wrote not "yes," but "hell yes."

Let me tell you now in case they ever bring back the draft, this works much better than a stack of papers from your doctor.

"What's this all about son?"

"Oh, I don't know I just left Peace Corp Training, I'm tossing flour sacks around all day, and now I face the possibility of having to spend four years of my life with these guys."

"You're going to have to see our psychiatrist."

I can tell you without reservation that the stereotypical image of the intense, beady eyed, detached, probing, laboratory pshychaitrist was sitting in front of me. He was slightly balding, about 5'5" in stature, probably 135 pounds. His glasses were close to a half inch thick. He looked me up and down and then straight in the eye, and I swear to God this was his first question. "How do you feel about your mother?"  I don't know whether he bought it or not, but my reply was, "She's okay."

There were three or four more probing questions like that, he jots something on a piece of paper and I'm directed to a line that sends me out the door. I'd been temporarily rejected. And you know I didn't mind. It was the nicest rejection I'd ever encountered. Well during this reprieve I go to graduate school and get my teaching credential. The culmination of said academic pursuit was of course a student teaching assignment. Near the end of that assignment the Principal comes in and offers me a job.

"Well, that would be great sir, but my temporary military rejection is up, and I'm prime beef for the draft."

"Oh, let us worry about that," he says.

"Then I'm all yours."

Well I didn't get it at first. The military never did come a-knockin. A year latter I find out that three members of the school board just happened to be three members of the local draft board?  " Hmm?"

In the movie, The Graduate, friends of Dustin Hoffman's family keep whispering "Plastics" to him at his graduation party. Plastics in that fictional world was the hot career path. The equivalent today might be "Micro Chips."

God, Allah, Buddha and all devine spirits, bless my parents. They didn't pick a career for me. It led to a lot of stumbling and fumbling, but in the end I pretty much did everything I set out to do. To those of you about to graduate, feeling the pressure to save the world now, take a deep breath.Nothing is going to go like it was planned for while. That just doesn't happen. That's why I want to go off into a corner and cry. I know what you graduates are feeling. Relax. You've got a long way to go.

Let's face it, you can challenge my credibility as a role model. But what about Dustin Hoffman? He didn't go into Plastics. He lies around in a pool day dreaming, jumps in the sack with Mrs. Robinson, runs off in a defiant fit.  And look where he is today? 

There is hope, and there is also time to mope. Here's to you Mrs. Robinson.

 

Finger Fun

You've heard the expression he or she has his or her head up his or her _____. I wouldn't normally tenderize the expression but in its full force impact, it would have no bearing on what I'm going to write about. I just wanted a comparison because I want to discuss having my head in my fingers. I could sit around all day and not have one thought make its way from my cerebrum to any meaningful human expression. But put my fingers on a keyboard and out something comes. I don't know what that's all about except that I've always loved to write. I have to believe that a kickboxer's head is in his toes, a birdwatchers must be in his cornea, a sumo wrestler's in his belly, etc, etal, ad infinitum. One thing I believe we all have in common is that if the accepted appendage or linkage isn't hooked up to the cortex something like this comes out. The birdwatcher  hallucinates he's riding on the back of a giant Pteradactyl, the sumo wrestler starts dancing swan lake, and my fingers start producing drivel. If this turns into something meaningful it will be a miracle, but these digits will produce no matter what. I remember someone interviewing Charles Osgood about his daily radio posey. "How can you be so creative day in and day out?"  I think his response was something like, " Have you listened closely? Somedays you just get it done. It's not good at all."  On those days the rhyme and meter are there, the alliteration is selective and crisp, the assonance is soft, but the lucidity, the depth of field, the logistical path are all lying dormant. They are at this juncture resting, while in my case the fingers move on. There was a genre of writers , stream of consciousness blokes, who conned us into thinking this disguised verbosity was going somewhere. And we rewarded them with literary praise and prize. But do me a favor here if you are still along for the ride. Just kick yourself back into reality and suffer some level of guilt that you've gone along this far on this bizarre journey. But do come back.  I promise to return to the planet with renewed energy and a sense of purpose, soon. It could be worse. These could be idle hands...and aren't they the tools of the devil or something like that. I'll ask my brain tommorrow. Thanks for stopping by.     (Why Prokofiev? Why not?)

Sound (bite) Machine

There's been a lot of building going on in our area for a long time, residential and commercial. I bring that up because not far from here they're building a new gas station. I bring that up because they are building it catty-corner from the Conoco station where I generally fill up. I bring that up because the man and wife who own and operate the Conoco have become friends. Their names are Gerry and Cheryl Topper. I bring that up because I'm going to tell you a little about one of them and a lot about the other. Gerry is a former "Dead Head." There's a picture of Jerry Garcia above the cash register.  You talk about a conumdrum. Gerry has given up tie-dyeing for the entrepreneurial life. He was one of the first to wire little TV's into pumps so you could watch CNN while you stared at the rising price of your fuel. In recent days he's added a philly-cheese steak deli inside the station. He's from that part of the country (Philly) and really misses what he calls a REAL cheese steak. I think he told me he ships all his ingredients in from Philly. He's super high energy. You can't miss him.

Nor can you miss Cheryl. And here I have to digress. Sorry, I know this is way too big a buildup for a normal BLOG. But you'll agree when I'm done this will be no normal BLOG entry.

If you're in the TV news business you're going to understand this part better than most. In most of the last two decades the effort in most TV newsrooms has been to humanize the news. Don't just put the Governor or Police Spokesperson in your story. Find the people affected. Look for victims, witnesses, people impacted, people who have something to say.  And then of course ask them to say it.  Hang on, I'm getting there.

Well we had one of those gas price crisis stories one day, and Photographer Jim Weis and I were sent out to get to the bottom of it. Well we just happened to be in the vicinity of that Conoco station and we decided to stop in for a bite. I know what you're thinking. They were going for a Philly Cheese Steak. But no! We were looking for a sound bite from somebody affected. We asked Cheryl Topper's permission ( we didn't always do that) to talk to customers. She nodded yes and then added, "you want to know what I think?"  And you know we did? She took a swipe at the oil producers, the refinerys, the middle east cartel, taxes, government regulations, the weather, and every once in a while throwing in, "andthis is all coming from someone who considers herself an environmentalist."  That turned out to be a story that, thanks to Cheryl, told itself.

Well about a week later there was a major power outage in the same area because they were laying fiber optic cable which no one asked for or wanted. (That's a story for another blog)

"Jim, why don't we go ask Cheryl what she thinks about this?"

"Good idea."

Cheryl told us she knew all about it. She'd been talking to some of the workers coming into the station, and she'd been handling complaints from people without power.

This is a guess. I think she said, "I don't think we even need all this fiber optic cable now that we've got satellites."

When most reporters talk about soundbite machines they are talking about a politician who has mastered the art of putting everything in his head into a ten second time frame. These politicians practice the responses and get rid of all the uhms, and ers. But Jim and I discovered those guys are the Saturns of the sound bite world. Cheryl is the Mercedes. And she never needs to practice. 

I suppose I was being more than a little mischievous. I knew I was a year away from retirement, and thought it was time to have some fun. It didn't make any difference what story I'd been assigned. If we were in the area we had to find out what Cheryl thought. As far as thinking and talking Cheryl has never had a down day. Writer's block would not be in her vocabulary.

At first Jim Weis was my sole accomplice, but as time went on most of the photographers were in on it. Cheryl commented on the weather, on a major construction project, on the building of a multi-million dollar wildlife center, driving in the mountains, the prices of housing, interest rates going up, interest rates coming down, growth, light rail, fire danger.

One of my favorites was Cheryl on the exploding rabbit population in the area.

"Well you know its all this construction. We driven the coyotes and all the other natural predators away, and we're not allowed to touch them. Not that I would. They're so cute."

She is the ultimate sound bite machine. You put a dime in her and out a comes a whole slew of soundbites. The odd thing was she is so good at it, nobody caught on. Unless, of course, I told them. I did tell the other reporters in the newsroom, and they told other reporters and photographers at other stations. So it became a guessing game of seeing when Cheryl was going to pop up in a Reinertson story.  One reporter asked if I would will Cheryl to her when I retired.

One way in which we kept producers from catching on was the way we identified her on screen (CG'd or fonted to the hip). She could be Cheryl Topper, Mrs. Topper, Gas Station owner, Environmentalist, Area Resident, Interstate Motorist. 

One day we got behind and couldn't get to our live shot quick enough to get Cheryl on tape, so we politely asked her to walk in front of the camera at the beginning of my liveshot. She did and also did it at the end of the liveshot.  

This is one of my favorite stories. Reporters often are asked to do several stories in one day. Well on this day we were responsible for two packages (different stories), one in the five, and one in the six. Pushing our luck we put Cheryl in both packages. Why run all over town looking for sound bites when you are sitting in front of a machine. She'd have somethng to say about both subjects.  Well the two stories ran, seperated by a little over a half hour, and no one picked up on it. In fact one of the producers walked by while I was logging Cheryl's sound bites and commented, "she's kind of cute." He'd probably seen her 30 times in his show up to that point. She must have been growing on him.

Counting story re-runs, Jim Weis and I feel we got her on the air close to a hundred times in that year. Her friends knew it, her mother has tapes of them all, and a bit tipsy at my retirement party I confessed all. So now everyone knows, even you.

This is a delayed apology to my producer friends who might have been offended by my chicanery. You are incredibly busy and shouldn't have to ride herd on who is saying what.  It's what she said that made the stories, not the number of screen credits she got. And since you read the scripts and approved the edited stories, you at least subliminally agree with me. She's pretty good. And she makes a pretty mean Philly Cheese Steak, too!

So anyway, the next time you see a lot of construction going on in your area, think about Cheryl, will you?