Good
evening, 919 Gang. Thanks to all who requested the new 919 Gang Directory today.
It will probably go out tomorrow. I have already sent two large emails today.
Meanwhile, we have a new member.
WAYNE CARLSON WRITES:
Jack: I've recruited a grrrrrreat new
member to the Reber blog--Jeff Savage.
REBER: Thanks, Wayne. Let us hear from you Jeff.
If my memory is correct (it isn't always) you left the sports department to
write children's books.
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MICHELE BREIER writes:
Here is my response to an item in
today's 919 about the North County Times.
I truly hope that Cecil Scaglione's
comment "That's a pretty good start," at the end of his North County
Times "update," was not meant to be as disparaging as it sounded. I
would be terribly disappointed to find out that the 919 Gang includes newspaper
alumni who would dance on the grave of the NCT. These are people's lives we're
talking about, and it's yet another death of a newspaper.
I have remained silent on this issue
because of my family situation. But "That's a pretty good start"
following statements about the departure of Peter York and Kent Davy has driven
me to speak up. Peter York and Kent Davy are good people who always looked out
for their employees. The NCT has been an extremely important part of my
family's life since its inception in 1995. My husband has worked there the
entire life of the paper. I worked there for a year and a half right after the
NCT was formed from the merger of the T-A and Blade-Citizen. My husband and I
met some of our closest friends there. Is/was the NCT the perfect newspaper or
perfect workplace? Of course not. No newspaper is. But what I hope everyone is
thinking about is the hell of a roller coaster that the 150 or so employees of
the NCT (and their families) have been through the past three weeks.
Also, a correction is needed for
Cecil's update. Jim Trageser left on his own for a new job.
TILT
MEYER writes:
Jim Trageser gave notice two weeks ago
at NCT. Friday was his last day. Oct. 1 he begins work at his new job with Boy
Scouts of America.
DAVID
OGUL writes:
Initially, our good friends in HR told
us we were going to be fine after the sale of the North County Times to the U-T
was complete. That changed. Once the deal is consummated, probably Monday, we
will be called in for individual meetings to learn our professional fate. While
there is much we don't know, we have been told by U-T folks that there will be
layoffs, and the impression I get is that it will be more than a handful. As
for me, I'll go where God takes me. That said, we had a nice send-off Friday
afternoon at work, which was followed up with another celebration at an
Escondido bar. While I've been at the North County Times but for six months,
it's been a great experience. The folks I've worked with in Oceanside and
Escondido are as good as they come. Funny, my daily newspaper experience began
30 years ago in Escondido with the Times-Advocate, and now it looks like it
could end in Escondido with the North County Times, a T-A descendant.
----------------------------------------------
KEN STONE writes:
U-T is looking to hire three business
multimedia journalists:
Salary? About 40K.
Experience? Two years.
Good luck with that.
------------------------------------------------
MICHAEL GRANT writes:
My
son Tyler has a band, Grant Farm, based in Lyons Colo. They play gigs coast to
coast and many times, small newspapers won't do interviews, but send
questionnaires. Tyler dutifully completes them, sends them back. Here's one
such completed questionnaire. Believe me, it's worth the read.
Summit Daily News
Band Q & A
[please attach photo]
Band
name: Grant Farm
Where
does the name come from? It's a pun on Tyler Grant's last name. Rhymes with
"Ant Farm"
Your
home base: Boulder County, CO
Date
playing in Summit County: Saturday, 3/31. Doors at 9, show at 9:30
Location
playing in Summit County: Three20South in Breckenridge
Type
of music you play? Roots, Rock and Cris-Co!
If
your band were a dog, what breed would it be, and why? A Mutt, because we draw
from a variety of influences, we're smart and tough and will live longer than
pure-bred dogs.
If
you had to compare yourself to another band, who would it be? This answer might
change day-to-day, but for today I will say The Grateful Dead. Tomorrow I might
say Derek and the Dominoes…
What
sets your band apart? We don't have a mandolin.
What’s
been your craziest experience on the road? Driving East from Tonopah, NV we saw
a dim speck of light to the North, near Polaris. It was about 2AM and Buck Owens'
"Close Up the Honkytonks" was playing on the radio. It was a new moon
and the stars were bright and many out there in the middle of the desert. We
were feeling fine. Nobody was sleeping. The light slowly grew larger and began
to change colors. We thought nothing of it at first, but before the song was
over it became apparent that this bright and colorful object was flying toward
us at high velocity. When, to our perspective, it grew to about the size of a
basketball out the driver's window, Sean (who was riding shotgun, Chris was
driving) noticed an arc of electricity, like from a Tesla coil, creep out of
the van's antenna and telescope toward the flying object. This arc grew in
intensity and when it reached the flying object (which by now looked like a
multicolored Sun out the left window) the van was instantly engulfed in a
bright blue sheen of electricity. All the power lines along the highway lit up
and we could see arcs of electricity connecting the lines to us and the flying
object. Chris drove on and the bright object flew alongside. Flashes of
electricity were everywhere. The power lines were bright with blue light off to
every horizon as far as the eye could see. No other vehicles were on the road.
The song on the radio suddenly stopped and in a moment continued at incredibly
high volume outside of the van. Even with the windows rolled up we could hear
Tom Brumley's pedal steel solo blasting at an alarming volume out across the
barren desert. By the time Buck and Don came back in singing the last chorus
all we could see was bright blue light. The flying object was completely
obscured. Not knowing what to do in this situation, Chris drove on like a
hardened road warrior. The light was blinding and we suddenly felt the van lift
off the ground. At that point matter, energy, light, sound and sensation all
became one. Among the four of us Adrian seems to remember the most, though we
cannot get him to talk about it. It was as if the van and the four of us in it
had entered a place where all being was pure energy. The boundaries of space,
time and communication fell down and we could see into the center of the
universe. None of us are sure how long we were in this place, but we all agree
that it seemed as if we were moving the whole time. Flying, perhaps, or
traveling in a way that cannot be explained in the format of this interview.
Then, suddenly, we found ourselves stopped at a stoplight in Ely. The flying
object was gone and the sky was dark once again. The van and our gear were
intact and everyone seemed to be okay, but for about five minutes Sean eagerly
told us a story in a language we could not understand. The concept of spoken
"language" notwithstanding, I have never before or since heard a
human voice make those kinds of noises. We sat at the stoplight (flashing
yellow but it did not matter; no cars were coming) and listened to his story,
amazed at the sounds coming from his mouth. The otherworldly monologue ended
with a long, drawn out syllable that started at an almost sub-sonic frequency
and ascended to a near-deafening high pitched squeal that rattled the windows
and caused the frame of the van to creak. We sat, Adrian and I in the back
benches and Chris in the driver's seat, fingers in our ears, and stared at
Sean. He looked at us, straight faced, and began to blink furiously. When the
blinking episode ended he stared at us, straight faced, as if nothing happened.
The radio turned back on and now played George Jones' "Seasons of My
Heart." Chris pulled the van into an all-night casino diner. We did not
say a word until an old, frail waiter took our order. When he returned with the
coffee he was humming "Close Up the Honkytonks." We finished our
coffee quick, lost a twenty on the roulette table, and did not say a word the
rest of the drive to Denver. It was a bonding experience and made us closer as
a band.
Is
your music geared toward mosh pits or foot tapping? Depends on the crowd.
REBER:
Ordinarily, I hate Q&As, but I gotta say, this Grant inherited some writing
skills.
-------------------------------------------------------
DAVID FARMER writes:
I learned two lessons at my
neighborhood hardware store today. One was in what I call verbification, the
other in just how senior I'm getting to be. Remain patient, and this may begin
to make sense.
I was buying a quart of paint, and
noticed that the color chart listed a shade called "flower power." I
asked the sales clerk, a lad of about 20, if he knew what flower power was. He
didn't.
I undertook to explain it to him,
describing hippies, peace, love, the end of wars, communes, etc. He found this
interesting, but not quite as interesting as the formula for gray paint.
I tried to capture his attention by
mentioning Scott McKenzie's 1967 hit that went, "If you're going to San
Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair." The song added that
"summertime will be a love-in there." He hadn't heard of Scott McKenzie
or love-ins, either. When did they start employing children in responsible
jobs?
That was one of my almost-daily
lessons in how the younger set neither knows nor cares what was important to me
when I was their age.
As for verbification, a word I coined
myself, it refers to nouns used as verbs, such as "to Xerox,"
"to Google," "to Scotch Tape." In today's example, the
hardware kid assured me that he would "YouTube" my song to see what I
was talking about. He won't.
----------------------------------------------------------
JIMMY
THORNTON writes:
The subject was travel experiences.
Over the years, flew a few thousand miles to and from Christchurch. Before the
direct flights, you stopped at islands along the route. Once, it may have been
in that quaint island of Honolulu, we stopped over at an airport and waited for
a connecting flight. I heard guitar music and the grand voice of a Hawaiian
fellow singing. When I looked at him, I was curious to see his guitar had
sprung a leak. Water was dripping from it. I was puzzled until I realized what
I saw was the sweat running down his guitar from his fat arms as he strummed
the beautiful music. My most memorable experience from a Hawaii stopover,
however, came when I was a young man, returning from Christchurch alone. At the
airport, a young woman dressed in a colorful flowing dress with several leis
draped around her neck and shoulders followed me onto the airliner and, as fate
would have it, she sat beside me. She looked a little frightened, perhaps
leaving the islands for the first time. Soon she became sleepy as the plane
droned toward LAX. Suddenly, I felt a soft warmness on my shoulder. She had
fallen asleep and I became her pillow. I have never sat so still in my life. It
was with relief that when we arrived at the airport, the young woman, looking
lost, searched the faces in the crowd. Suddenly, a group of Hawaiians
approached her and took her into their arms. No doubt, a new dancer would be
performing in LA that night. Later, I poured a bit of whiskey and sat alone in
my empty house, gazed at the serenity of Mission Bay, and wondered what my wife
and three kids were doing in Christchurch. Soon, they would be on a jet plane
to rejoin me. I missed them.
----------------------------------------------------
ELSON
IRWIN writes:
I am saddened at the death of Andy
Williams. I had a lot of fun escorting him and his entourage around Tokyo for
two weeks in the late sixties (1969 if my memory serves me right). He was a
pleasant person to be around and to talk to. While he was not the megastar as
some of great performers during that period, I liked him for his
down-to-earthness. We spoke about a lot of things unrelated to show business.
He was very open. He was a professional from the word "go." He was my
age, 84, when he died.
 |
| Elson Irwin, left, and Andy Williams |
----------------------------------------------------
LOGAN
McKECHNIE writes:
I'm celebrating my 70th birthday
tonight by reading a newspaper mystery by Michael Connelly called The
Scarecrow. It made me realize how much times have changed since I considered
myself a reporter and how impossible it is to get the ink out of the blood.
According to several items on the 919 Blog and Connelly's book the new era
reporter will never be addicted to ink as their work will be in some "cloud"
somewhere in cyberspace. It's turned out to be a good read.
-------------------------------------------------
JERRY SCHULTZ writes:
When Senor Sinor began writing his
column, his "office" was at the end of the rewrite bank in the midst
of all the sounds and distractions of the Trib city room at 919 2nd Ave.
He must have considered himself blessed when he found the solitude of
Thunder Thornton's Action Line domain.
----------------------------------------------
MICHAEL GRANT writes:
Henry Joseph yesterday remembering
Robert Benchley becoming a cod took me back to the afternoon I, a columnist,
learned that secret. I had struggled all day and had 11 inches on paper with 19
to go, and nothing would come. I had 30 minutes until deadline, closest I ever
came. I had a process in which I put the subject in the middle, and then
orbited around it until I found the right angle. This day, with 30 minutes
remaining, I was in full sprint around the subject until I suddenly wondered:
what would happen if I swapped places with the subject? It worked, and I filed
30 minutes later.
I started my three-a-week column for
the old Currents section in 1978. Mostly it was either hard or terrifying, but
once in a while a column would arrive with the ease of falling out of the sky
onto the paper, complete to the last period. Mainly what I remember about the
experience was that you didn’t have the luxury of basking in the good ones, or
the pain of lamenting the lame ones, because there was always the next one.
When I started in 1978, the column was
30 inches. Space continued to literally shrink, until by the last column in
1992, it was down to 16. You had to get in, fiddle a tiny bit, and get out.
Damned instructive.
--------------------------------------------
MICHELE DAVIS writes:
Re backing up files. I keep everything
on flash drives. You can purchase them inexpensively at Staples and/or Office
Depot. I have separate ones for photos, one for documents, etc. It is shocking
that I can purchase a flash that has three times the memory of my desktop for
less than $I0. I always watch for the sales for these items. I am in the
process of cleaning out my desktop computer. With my laptop, I have always
moved everything to the flash. The only programs on the laptop are Microsoft
programs and the startup programs. Everything is saved to a flash and the flash
is removed when I shut down the computer. I have recovery disks for the startup
for both computers and disks for Microsoft as well as Windows 7. Hopefully by
the end of this weekend the desktop will be as clean.
REBER: Besides the low cost, flash drives make sense because of their
portability. If fire (always a concern here) forced me to evacuate, slipping a
flash drive in my pocket would be easy.
MARK
MONDAY writes:
Reber wrote:
"Meanwhile, I have two external hard drives on which I back up my data
files. Why two? I don't know."
The SEALs have a saying that "one
is none and two is one." See, you have adopted the SEAL philosophy, and
they are pretty successful at what they do.
--------------------------------------------
REBER: Let's all sing Happy Birthday (Sept. 30)
to Ann Jarmusch.
-----------------------------------------------
REBER:
Two good links tonight. The first one is amazing.
TIM WILSON forwards:
As
luck would have it:
TIM WILSON forwards:
Excellent
TED talk by Andrew McAfee who asks the question: Are droids are taking our jobs?
P.O.
Box 2239
Ramona,
CA 92065
U.S.A.
