Good evening, 919 Gang. Mary said, “It’s supposed to rain
tonight. Did you roll up the windows on your truck?” I replied, “According to the
Weather Channel there is a 50 percent chance of rain, so I rolled the windows
up half way.”
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PRESTON TUREGANO
writes:
My thanks to the Farmergram correction of the spelling of
bigwigs. Loved the Bourbon humor, too. And thanks to John Kern, for pointing
out that the late Gaylord Parkinson may not have been state GOP chairman when
he got arrested at the Mission Valley May Co. in 1974. I checked the official
state GOP web site today (and even Wikipedia) and see that Parky served as
chairman between 1964 and '67. Still, he is credited with the GOP 11th
commandment. None of the stories about him in U-T archives, since 1983, cited the
dates of Parky's GOP service. Lastly, I meant to extend kudos and a hug to
Bonnie Rogers for her recent 919 posting about her first love, a tree. That was
really a refreshing and memorable contribution to this daily blog.
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BONNIE ROGERS writes:
Sometimes I have incorporated items I
have already posted for the 919 Gang in my Facebook pieces. Some of this is
new, some you've probably read before. I worked on the El Cajon Valley News/Daily Californian
for three and a half years. I could never have had the diverse opportunities on
The San Diego Union
as a woman in the 1960s. I worked there for six and a half years in the 1950s
and there were zero options for women then. I recall standing in the city room
at the age of 17 and realizing that "people who know how to change
typewriter ribbons, did it." Since I did not want to be a secretary, I
never learned. When my copy got too faint to read, Don Freeman changed the
ribbons for me. (I didn't have any problem learning to change the ribbons on
the wire machines. AP guy Ted McKenna taught me.)
THROWBACK THURSDAY:
Being
a newspaper reporter was one of the most satisfying jobs I ever had. I really
felt like Brenda Starr working on a small town daily with a circulation of less
than 10,000. Because we were so small, the reporters were jacks-of-all-trades,
doing everything from auto accidents to the bridge scores.
I
was one of four reporters working on the El Cajon Valley News in the early
1960s. We covered two incorporated cities (El Cajon and La Mesa) and a large
unincorporated section of San Diego County. My beat was La Mesa, specifically
the police department, city hall, the La Mesa-Spring Valley School District and
Grossmont Hospital (which is a district hospital funded by local taxpayers, not
a private one).
Every
morning on the way to work I went by the La Mesa PD and went through the
"overnights," the arrest sheets from the previous evening. Then to
City Hall where I smoozed with various civil servants of the mayor and city
councilmen. (One day I got a tip from a whistle blower to pick up some secret
documents linking the La Mesa Bowl, the San Diego Chargers and the Detroit arm
of the Mafia. Heavy stuff!) The school and hospital districts were covered
largely at their respective board meetings and with feature stories.
The
school district was particularly good fodder for news. They had three or four
school board recall elections, had parents marching in the streets with
placards demanding prayers be allowed in the classroom. It was (is) a
Constitutional issue and garnered national coverage. Passions ran high. At one
school board meeting when an anti-prayer board member had only one copy of his
somewhat incendiary statement, the rush from the press table was so fierce the
Evening Tribune reporter literally kicked my feet out from under me in the
scramble to get it. The board member saw what happened and held the document
for me, so I could go copy it and pass it out to all the press.
Grossmont
Hospital posed a special kind of challenge. There had been a few deaths in the
hospital's emergency room because there were no resident doctors on site. I did
a series of 13 articles on the situation and my paper ran an editorial
proposing a solution. We proposed that physicians using the facility to treat
their private patients "volunteer" three 24-hour shifts a year to
emergency room duty so that a doctor was always present. The hospital board
changed the rules and the problem was solved. My newspaper (and I) won the California
Newspaper Publishers Association's top award (over papers like the Los Angeles
Times, Sacramento Bee, etc.) for that one.
I
wasn't always on beat, though. The photo shows me receiving the Best Sports
Story award at Stanford from the Associated Press. That was in 1965 when no
woman had ever won it. (I had been called in on my day off to cover a track
meet. I had never attended one before so I certainly had a fresh eye.)
At
one point I received an anonymous tip that a right-wing white supremacist group
had a "hit" list and my name was number two on the list. (Si Cassidy,
who owned the El Cajon newspaper I worked for and whose politics were something
left of the Democrats, was number one.)
I
wasn't sure there was anything to it, but the next morning on my way to work I
took one of La Mesa's police lieutenants aside and asked him to check it out
for me. He got back to me a couple of days later. Said, "Boy, did you get
me in trouble!" Seems there was such a group with such a list, but the FBI
had already infiltrated and my police friend had almost blown his cover. My
friend told me that he had arranged with the FBI mole to let him know if the
word went out to start knocking off those on the list. He said he would let me
know in that case and take me under cover. I figured it was time for me to
either trust the "system" or quit my job. I decided to trust.
DON BAUDER
writes:
In
re Engelbert Humperdinck, via Bonnie Rogers. I was with Business Week in
Cleveland when my secretary asked, "What do you think of Engelbert
Humperdinck?" I looked at her incredulously. How did she know of an opera
composer? Then I learned he was a singer of popular music who had taken
Humperdinck's name. Yes, his opera Hansel und Gretel is his one hit. He wrote
others, but they didn't catch the public's eye. Far back in San Diego Opera's
history, we performed Hansel und Gretel and Rossini's La Cenerentola
(Cinderella) for children. We didn't attract good audiences and stopped it.
Tito Capobianco was contemptuous of Hansel und Gretel. Some opera lovers sneer
at Hansel und Gretel as a children's opera. Not me. I think it is an excellent
opera for both children and adults. (I recommend the EMI recording featuring
Anne-Sofie von Otter and Barbara Bonney, conducted by Jeffrey Tate. It's old
but great.) Rossini's La Cenerentola is a great opera. We have seen it several
times including in San Diego -- it's Rossini at his best. Incidentally, none
other than Richard Wagner championed Humperdinck. I would like to hear Preston
Turegano's opinion on these two operas. Maybe he thinks I am a fool for loving
them.
-----------------------------------------------------
PRESTON TUREGANO
writes:
Mention of Bill Osborne's departure as U-T
editorial/opinion editor has prompted an assessment of his in-print send-off.
On Sunday Jan. 24, the U-T ran "Adding up 44 years of news,
opinions," an A-2 Question & Answer article about Osborne's impending
departure that occurred last Friday. It was 12 column inches, two columns wide
and with a 3-by-5-inch color photo of Osborne. Two pages later (A-4), U-T Readers'
Representative Adrian Vore wrote eight column inches, also two columns wide,
about Osborne: "Longtime U-T newsman saying farewell." On Jan. 25,
the paper ran an A-1 story "U-T's
Osborne Ready to Turn the Page" by John Wilkins. Jumping to A-11, it was a
total of 38 column inches, one column wide with an A-1 color mug shot of
Osborne. I thought a total of 58 column inches about the same individual and
impending event was wretched excess, especially when newsprint is a dwindling
commodity and really important things are going on in the world. I agree that
Osborne is truly unflappable, as one of the articles about him says. But even
he must have blushed bright red over the overkill. Carl Larsen made reference
to a (57-minute) podcast interview with Osborne on VoiceofSanDiego.org. The
audio is interesting, and some of what Osbo says in the interview is debatable.
My eyebrows raised about former editorial page editor Bob Kittle being fired
for economic reasons. According to a U-T salary list from 2004 (about three
years before Kittle's departure), Bowtie Bob was making $99,464 a year.
(Osborne's pay is not on the list.) Close behind was Robert Caldwell at
$94,491, and No. 3 editorial department editor Bernie Jones at $83,238. I think
Kittle was sacked because he had become a pain in the ass, he had no sense of
fairness or balance when it came to certain issues, and most of the editorial
writer staff could not get along with him.
-----------------------------------------------------
REBER: Tomorrow (Jan. 31)
we will sing Happy Birthday to Nancee Lewis. I will be off-key, as usual, but
Nancee’s too sweet to complain about things like that.
------------------------------------------------
CHUCK BOYD
forwards:
Look how railroads make sure they have clear sailing in the
dead of winter.
Guess it would mess up the view from the observation car
but maybe passenger trains do not do the task of clearing away heavy snowfall.
I think of that old question: "How does the snow
plow operator get to work?"
P.O. Box 2239
Ramona, CA 92065
U.S.A.
