Good evening, 919 Gang. Only two
messages tonight, but both are winners.
MARCUS STERN
writes:
Many of the 919 folks know the Copley empire included a
sometimes-feisty little paper in Torrance named the Daily Breeze. You can make
fun of the name all you want, but two of its reporters and an editor picked up
Pulitzer Prizes Thursday at Columbia University for their series of stories
revealing appalling corruption in a small, local school district. The
superintendent was making $663,000 and enjoyed perks like a $910,000 home
mortgage at 2 percent interest and $750,000 in life insurance. The editor on
the project was Frank Suraci, a journeyman who has been doing a pretty good Lou
Grant imitation at the Breeze for the better part of four decades. Reporters
were Rob Kuznia and Rebecca Kimitch. The L.A. Times had a pretty nice piece on the
unlikely Pulitzer Prize, including Suraci’s skeptical, hard-bitten response
when he was told they’d won the citation for local reporting: "Oh, my God!
Oh, my God! Are you kidding me?" I say unlikely, because, as the Times
described it, Suraci’s desk is surrounded by a sea of vacant desks due to
layoffs over the years. Even Kuznia’s desk was vacant because he had left
journalism to take a PR job. In interviews after the award was announced in
April, Kuznia said reporters at the Breeze had salaries in the mid-40s. It must
be especially gratifying if you’re a scribbler making $45,000 to take down a
local public schools official making $663,000. Of course the corruption went
well beyond the superintendent’s salary. You can read the stories and see the
citation on the Pulitzer website here. In the
picture below, taken at the awards luncheon, Suraci is on the far right with
Kuznia and Kimitch to his left. I’m sorry to say I don’t know the name of the
person on the far left.
Frank Suraci would love to join the 919 Gang if it’s
possible. (Maybe he could tell us who the person is on the far left of the
picture.)
REBER: Welcome to the group, Frank.
Please let us hear from you.
------------------------------------------------
BOB
HAWKINS writes:
Some
persistent internal bleeding over the Memorial Day weekend forced me to take
the last Tropic Air puddlehopper out of San Pedro on Sunday to check into the
national hospital in Belize City. It is called the Karl Heusner Memorial
Hospital, a.k.a. KHMH or, as a cabbie once told me, "Kill Him now or
Murder Him later." He laughed. I didn't.
It
does not have a great reputation. But in a tiny Caribbean nation on a holiday
weekend (it is called Founders' Day here) the options are limited.
On
the exterior, KHMH lives up to its reputation. The building is big, ugly and
old, overused and in need of much repair. Just like me. Same on the interior
(again, just like me). So, what the hell, I thought as I walked in past the
barbed wired security fencing and steady if disinterested gaze of the guards.
My
first pleasant surprise was that I was eligible for a 25 percent "golden
citizen" discount on the emergency room fee. So I happily paid the $7.50
BZE /$3.75 USD. It was a couple of hours before I was actually admitted but
once inside the medical staff was first rate -- and probably relieved to have
something other than gunshot and machete wounds to deal with on a holiday.
I
ended up in the hospital from Sunday evening to Wednesday evening -- receiving
treatment to staunch the bleeding as well as medications, consultations with a urologist,
a sonogram, x-ray and EKG. The three meals a day and hospital bed were
absolutely the worst I have ever experienced in my life. The medical care and
kindnesses of the staff were among the best.
By
late Tuesday the bleeding had stopped, although we were no closer to an answer,
and by Wednesday they were ready to release me pending further tests next week
on equipment the urologist plans to "borrow" from another clinic. It
is an "off the books" test. I just don't want to ask too many
questions about his arrangement with a competing private facility that the
hospital apparently frowns upon. But this is Belize; you do what you have to
do.
I
told the staff that if we all pulled together, I could get out in time to catch
the 5:30 p.m. water taxi back to Ambergris Caye -- last boat of the day. They
all agreed that this was possible, which meant that at 4:50 p.m. they were
still pulling tubes off my body and handing me medications.
I
was in Plan B mode -- where can I stay in the city when I miss my boat?
As
it turned out, the dock was a mere 9 minutes from the hospital in a taxi with a
front screen so spiderwebbed the driver kept his eyes just above the steering
wheel and to the left, so he could see the road. I think he was interested in
seeing the road.
The
hospital staff handed me an invoice on the way out and said to not bother
paying right now if it means missing the water taxi. Which I readily agreed to
do. On the 90-minute ride back to the island, I used the waning light of the
setting sun to go over the invoices. There were two. The total cost for all
medical procedures including food, bed, medications, urologist consultations,
for three days was $230 BZE.
Of
the six beds in my room, three were filled with young men in various stages of
recovery from pretty bad motorcycle accidents. One held a young stoically
hard-looking guy who had been stabbed outside a nightclub on Saturday and was
just out of critical care. The police spent a good couple of hours interviewing
him on Tuesday. The final bed held Franklin Grant, a 40-year-old rasta dude who
lost both his legs to diabetes 18 months ago.
Mr. Grant is a staff favorite. The first to be greeted and
the one everyone worries over the most. Understandable. He has a big heart and
generous soul. When my drip bag ran dry, I was content to wait for the nurse to
make her rounds (no call buttons here). Mr. Grant sprang from his bed to
wheelchair and pushed himself down the hall to the nurse's station to let them
know. He even got me a wet wipe after a meal of stewed chicken and beans that
came with no napkins. (Napkins and cutlery, other than a plastic spoon, are
nonexistent). I returned the favor by charging his cell phone with my Kindle
plug.
Tuesday
is Come to Jesus Day at the hospital. Ministers of all faiths filled the room
with bibles and blessings to all interested parties. And in a deeply religious
country, all were interested. Again, everyone knows Mr. Grant, and they were
lined up at his bed to bear witness to Jesus, even though he is already a
deeply religious soul.
The
Catholic priest, who also serves part time on our island, is a Canadian and
former pro hockey player. I was able to hook him up with the local Thursday
night street game that is played on the south end of town. He's trying to build
a chapel in San Mateo, the poorest of poor sections of San Pedro Town, and I
ended up offering to do what I could do to help him. That is right down the
street from us, an area carved out of a lagoon with free parcels to the poor.
Many houses are on stilts with rudimentary bridge walks to dry land.
The
padre was followed shortly by a traffic jam of evangelicals, Mennonites,
Anglicans and free-lance bible-toting lovers of the Word and Jesus. My favorite
was a joyful couple, Angel and Sheena, who were just so damned much fun to talk
with that we all ended up holding hands and praying for a better world.
Hey, when you are hooked to tubes, nothing is off limits if
it might help.
Through
it all, I was able to finish the 900-page biography "John Lennon" by
Philip Norman -- both a raw and tragic story of Lennon's life and a
tragically-paeanic apologia to Yoko Ono. Loved it, hated it. But it got me
through the nights.
The
most humbling aspect of doing time in the national hospital was watching the
families as they cared for their sons. A mom who slept on the floor next to her
young and badly damaged son. A young wife who doted on her husband who'd
snapped his right leg in two. Families brought in good food and fresh water for
the guys who were in there long-term. They changed bed pans. One sat and
listened as her son spent time everyday trying to read the Bible aloud, one
toneless syllable at a time.
I
left that room better medically than when I came in, stronger spiritually than
I have been in years and deeply humbled by the love and kindnesses that
Belizeans share, even with a strange expat in their midst.
REBER: Be careful, Hawk. You are one of our favorite people.
--------------------------------------
REBER: Tonight’s birthday greetings go
to Scott Linnett. Happy Birthday, May 29.
P.O. Box 2239
Ramona, CA 92065
U.S.A.
