PaulsModestMusings: Picture This

That is Karlyn Tilley up there, fellow Norwegian, and reporter/anchor at the CBS Owned and Operated TV station in town. Or at least this is my watercolor vision of Karlyn.

We used to work in the same newsroom.

Any of us who've spent any time in broadcast media have some pretty wonderful stories to share with almost any audience.

My favorite Karlyn story is her brief stint doing weather in Boise, Idaho. These are the kinds of things you can only get away with in small markets.

Karlyn convinced her superiors it would be okay if she did her weathercast sky diving. She would jump out of the plane and wing it, so to speak.

It turned out to be one of those wonderful TV moments where everything went like clock work...with her landing on terra ferma just as she is wrapping up the local five day forecast.

She tells me that tape got her her next job at a little bigger market. But she also had to sign an agreement that she would NEVER do that again.

That's Gary Barkley up there. He's a photojournalist. When I retired in 2002 Gary was the only person left in the newsroom older than me, and he is still there cranking out pretty pictures and stories.

Of course he wouldn't like me referring to his work as PRETTY.

Gary is the most beloved cynic on the planet. You never have to wonder what Gary is thinking. He'll tell you. But he'll tell you while he is getting not only his job done, but a few other people's jobs as well.

Small world? I think we'd probably worked together for a decade before we realized my sister's mother-in-law in California, was Gary's private art teacher.

But while we're talking about small world.

This is photographer Jim Weis. Jim got assigned to me a lot when I first started reporting. And then over the years we worked together so much we'd get teased about being married (to each other).

And I have to tell you there were days...when the parallels were eerie. We would spend these horribly long complicated days covering the building of Denver International Airport.

We'd both get a little cranky. And then at the end of the day we'd stop off at the Tower Bar and Grill, order two Long Neck Buds a piece at happy hour. And then JUST like a happily married couple, we'd just sit there and stare at the wall without saying a word to each other.

Small world? Jim is a decade younger than I am, but it turns out he was born 2 miles from where I was born just Southeast of downtown LA.

When he is about ten, Jim's family moves to Seal Beach, which is where I moved right out of college. So we were probably both there at the same time...just hanging out with different gangs.

Turned out at the time this was all revealed, Jim's brother was living in a Seal Beach apartment less than two blocks away from where I lived for four years.

Jim was a wildlife photographer before getting into TV. I can't tell you how many times he'd stop in the middle of a field, put all of his gear down, so he could run down a snake. I don't know if he still does that kind of thing.

So I was just noticing that I've got over 12 thousand images stored here since going digital.