Meeting Ernie Crippen

Sixty-eight years ago tomorrow, the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, three days after it dropped one on Hiroshima. The day will go unmentioned, just as the anniversary of Hiroshima generally went unrecognized on Tuesday. It wasn't long ago that the end of war in the Pacific had significance for a country that shared the experience of a world war. But those days are gone and the few people left who lived the history soon will be.

That's why I don't turn down any opportunity to talk to the people who fought the war in whatever capacity; there aren't many left.

So when Ernie Crippen of Buffalo started a sentence in our conversation yesterday with, "when we were being bombed and strafed on Guadalcanal," I was immediately aware that it was the first -- and probably the last -- time someone will ever say that to me, just as I was similarly aware last week when a veteran in Luverne showed me a scar and said, "I got that parachuting into Bastogne."

We get many opportunities in our lives to learn history from those who live it, but we take advantage of precious few of them. And time, as it has forever, is running out. Mr. Crippen has the benefit of his children, Mike and Amy, who have helped him preserve his history.

Crippen, 91, like thousands of other Minnesota kids, saw the military draft coming in 1942 when he was cutting timber in Bemidji. So he joined the Navy for a six-year engagement as a Seabee -- the Navy's construction brigades.

"The fighting was mostly over when we arrived on Guadalcanal," he told me while I leafed through his meticulously-kept scrapbooks yesterday. And by "mostly over," he meant, except for the occasional attacks by Japanese planes trying to kill him. In April 1943, he wrote in an autobiography, he was part of a crew unloading supplies from a ship offshore when an attack came. All the regular crew had gone ashore, so the Seabees took the ship into open water, shooting down one plane in the process. Some of the men shielded themselves from bullets with the only thing they had nearby: canvas.

You don't get a lot of stories like that from kids in Bemidji anymore. Or about the time Bob Hope and Jerry Colonna sat with him at dinner before a USO tour, the bugler who got into trouble for playing "Blues in the Night" instead of Taps or about being told he was to be part of the U.S. invasion force of Japan. "We were told the casualties might number 750,000," he said. "It was sobering."

"What was the last thing your father said to you before you went off to war?" I asked.

"I remember it clearly," he said. "We were sitting at the depot in Bemidji and I said, 'I might not come back.' He said, 'You have to turn that around and think different.'"

The atomic bombs brought Japan's capitulation. A month later, the kid from Bemidji was working the docks in Sasebo, Japan, a bombed-out former Japanese Navy base. And a few months after that, he was walking through what was left of Nagasaki.

"It was amazing to me at the time that something dropped from the sky could turn steel and concrete into nothing but dust," he said.

He couldn't show that picture to anyone until he got home to Bemidji. The military didn't allow anyone to send photos of the destruction home. Technically, servicemen weren't supposed to have cameras, but, as he had during the rest of the war, Crippen kept notes and pictures, knowing that someday he'd be sharing it.

His stops read like a who's who of war in the Pacific: Guadalcanal, Saipan, Tokyo, the rest of the Solomons, New Caledonia, and the Aleutians.

For the veterans of it, World War II was life's biggest paradox. A gruesome habit of nations' instinct to kill another's soldiers provided the opportunities to see parts of the world most people will never see, and a seemingly endless number of friendships that survive through post-war "real life," which for Mr. Crippen included years as an engineer for MnDOT and a wedding photography business with his wife.

But there's no such thing as "endless" in life. As he showed me a scrapbook of his pictures, Crippen noted that most everyone in it is dead now. His construction unit stopped its annual reunions in 2006; There weren't many people left or able to attend.

But next week, there'll be one more. A few weeks ago, the family of an Indiana man found Crippen after a search. The two men had served together. The man from Indiana recently had a stroke and wanted to see Crippen again. Next week, they'll meet halfway -- Iowa -- and turn back time.

Mr. Crippen will bring the scrapbooks and history in the first person with him.

(This post was originally published in Minnesota Public Radio's NewsCut blog)

The sidewalk

The construction crew arrived today to take out the old blacktop driveway that I have been trying to nurse through another season for the last 10 years. But it is finally time for it to go; it will be replaced by a concrete driveway instead.

I looked out a few minutes ago to see how they were doing, and as luck would have it, they were just digging up a small piece of concrete that I poured many years ago to extend the driveway.



It wasn't a particularly good job but that little 2x4 slab of concrete has always meant a lot to me, because my son Sean and I built it.

Sean was pretty young at the time, maybe 7 or so, an age when most kids have the attention span of mice. But like the sidewalk we built out back one year, he was all in on the project. It was hot, hot enough to make smart people head for the AC. And he had every reason to. But he stayed and he dug and he mixed cement and he breathed dust and he got dirty and he built a sidewalk with his dad.

It was the way he subsequently approached every job and task he ever had. He was all in.

The new driveway and sidewalk will be a big improvement over what's there now.

But I'm going to miss that slab.

The need to win

I accept as a casualty of my age that I am more prone to believing that elements of our cultural past have lessons for our cultural present, but there is no way for me to avoid the conclusion as I've read this week's outstanding Star Tribune series on the money in youth sports. Fat cat boosters and parents who want their children to win have transformed the nature of the game. Advocates still tell us that high school sports, in particular, can teach children valuable life lessons. Here's the life lesson we should learn from the series: Don't let adults run youth sports.

Over the course of three days, the series has drilled a constant message from the "haves" and the "have nots." It's unfair, it has said, that some teams have more money -- and thus resources -- than others. The sadness of the series is that few people involved have noted the cultural calamity of our need to win.

There are only three things that people have said to me over these years that I have not forgotten. After I graduated from college and was looking for work in a fleeting period in our history when we weren't fighting other counties' wars, my father said, "If you want job security, join the Army."

An ex-colleague, at a reunion party for a radio network where I once worked, casually remarked, "Man, we were glad to see you go."

And a coach of a summer club hockey team said to me, "because I want to win."

I played high school and college hockey, and that sounds more impressive than it really is. I made my college team because I was the only player who could skate backwards. I beat out 30-40 other schoolmates in high school to be the last guy on the team. I didn't play much and when I did, the game was usually over. In my sophomore year, my team was 0-19-1, having tied the last game of the year. I didn't play much; my undistinguished career featured eight years of organized play, no goals scored.

To my knowledge, the only picture of me in action is this one. I'm number 5. Playing the bench like nobody's business.



In my junior year, I was recruited to play a summer league team. A family acquaintance was the coach. Because the team was mostly made up of my high school team, I, again, didn't play much. Midway through the season, we held a lead against some team I don't recall, it was late in the game, and I wanted to play. This was a summer recreational league.

"Can I play?" I said to the coach.

"Not now," he said.

"Why not?"

"Because I want to win," he said.

I never went back for another game.

I have few recollections of any of the games my teams played now. But I recall with ease, the pick-up games on a pond across the street with my pals in the neighborhood, and my hockey-loving older brother, who died a year ago. A neighborhood hockey rat didn't have shin pads -- "Termite" was his name (we had nicknames for kids back then) -- so he taped comic books to his legs.

Youth sports were the park & rec games in the ballyard behind my house (since turned into a soccer pitch, but that's another story). It's been more than 45 years since I stabbed the vicious line drive shortly before it hit one of the Shaw twins' face. I can still see the expression on his face. They're both dead now; someone said drugs were involved.

But there was a joy to being a kid playing youth sports and we have ruined that joy in the name of teaching kids life's lessons.

The ballparks in my neighborhood now are mostly empty. The kids are playing down at the big sports complex in front of the same sorts of parents I became, who lament that the traveling teams from Edina have better uniforms. After some games, as I recall, the coach -- whose son usually was the starting pitcher -- navigated a sea of parents wanting to know why their kid wasn't playing.

He didn't say "because I want to win," but he didn't have to. Winning was the point. Winning is still the point.

A few weeks ago, the Twins made a big splash out of showing a 20-year-old movie on the scoreboard. The Sandlot embodied the childhood games some of us are lucky to remember. On Twitter, an acquaintance objected to the fuss people were making. "It's not Citizen Kane," he said. And, he's right; it's not. But Citizen Kane never reminded us of the role of childhood games before my generation grew up to ruin them.

No doubt the takeaway from the Star Tribune's series will be that the "have not" teams should get more money. Here's an old man's idea: Give all the teams no money. Point to the field, and tell them "go have some fun on your own."

That's a quote they'll remember forever.

The regret of the 'no-go' decision.

Sometimes, I think I'm too risk-averse to be a pilot.

For the past six weeks, I've been planning a trip to Arizona with my youngest (25) son. We're both big Cleveland Indians fans and wanted to spend a couple of days watching the Tribe. My friend, Darwin Barrie, offered to put the RV-7A up at his airpark and give us his truck for the week to use.

And so began weeks of planning for the trip, which -- for me -- consists of six weeks of worrying, playing "what if?". I pored over the charts and established the best route. I consulted with Darwin on the best approach into Phoenix' airspace. I'd go to sleep at night thinking of the approach and memorizing every mile of the route, the fuel stops, and the time.

Last fall, I met a gentleman who was kayaking from the Northwest Angle of Minnesota to Key West. Daniel Alvarez started in June and hoped to reach Key West on New Year's Eve. He actually reached it last week. But when I talked to him at the time, I was planning a trip to Massachusetts. "I'm a little nervous about it," I admitted to him.

"If you're not a little nervous," he said, "you're not going far enough."

As I prepared for this trip, I heard his words. Constantly. The nervousness was fine, I told myself, because I'm going far enough. It's good.

About two weeks ago, the weather discussions at the National Weather Service regional sites (they reallyare very interesting and informative reads) began to encompass the departure weather -- today -- and more "worrying" as the "what ifs" grew to encompass every section of the route, weatherwise. What are my limits? What are my alternates? How prepared am I to make the no-go decision?

Of course, it's impossible to know for sure that far out what the weather will be, which necessitates more "what ifs."

Although a blizzard came through Minnesota yesterday, I was fairly confident we'd be able to get out of here this morning. (I'd already scrapped a Monday departure last week on the basis of the the weather data I'd been gathering for a week and analyzing every four or five hours). The gusty winds were to die down to about 20 knots this morning, I checked the airport yesterday and they'd done a good and quick job removing the blowing snow, and the sky was supposed to be scattered clouds at 2500 feet. It would be cold, but I was fairly sure we'd survive the three-hour trip in high headwinds to Lexington, Nebraska, our first fuel stop, and be able to get out of there before the winds were forecast to pick up there. The rest of the trip looked weather-good. I started dreaming about being one of those people who posts trip pictures on Van's Air Force.

I'd earlier been concerned about getting Patrick home in time for a shift he had scheduled on Sunday, and a test at school (he's in the nursing program) for Monday. So I bought a $550 refundable one-way ticket on Southwest from Phoenix to Minneapolis for Saturday for him, and figured if need be, I could stay in Phoenix for a few extra days and fly back alone. But at least he'd be back in time.

Otherwise, we'd plan to fly back on Friday, maybe Saturday if the weather was good from there to here.

He was excited for the trip, especially with temperatures here 20-30 degrees below normal for this time of year. All of Minnesota is experiencing seasonal disorder, as is custom, and a couple days of watching baseball was the perfect antidote. It would have been a fabulous flight down and a great experience between father and son to remember forever.
This is why I built an airplane.

I spent yesterday on final preparations for the plane, plugging in the engine heater, organizing what's staying and what's going, and trying to figure out how close to gross weight we'd be. As it turns out, I learned just how quickly two 170-pound pilots and baggage can exceed the 1800-pound limit on an RV-7A with a full load of fuel. It'd be close.

Late last evening, flight plans filed, plane ready, peanut-butter sandwiches and water packed, I made one last weather check before a go-no go decision, only to discover the weather discussions from the National Weather Service sites from the Texas panhandle (Dalhart, TX was a fuel stop) all the way to Minneapolis began mentioning precipitation and clouds for Thursday into the weekend, where they had mentioned none previously.

But it's impossible to know at this early stage what sorts of clouds and what kind of precipitation. Steady rain? Showers? Low clouds? High clouds? Clouds I can snake around or clouds that keep me on the ground? Clouds that might entice me to fly scud? There was no way to know for sure. Then I read that the two main computer models -- one from the U.S. and one from Europe -- disagreed on what might happen. The European model was suggesting the system would stall over the Dakotas through Monday. The U.S. model was suggesting it might not.

Now I had to make a decision: Which one to believe? In previous analysis of weather discussions, I felt the European computer models were more accurate, so I chose to believe them.

Then I thought about trying to fly home, and running into ice, or low clouds and not being able to find a way through. I started to think about Get Home-itis, when the urge to get home forces pilots to make bad decisions. I thought about forcing Patrick to get in a plane on Friday to try to make it home before things (maybe) got bad -- and then getting stranded in Kansas, with him missing his work shift and his test -- rather than waiting a day and putting him safely on an airliner, and I thought about me sitting in Phoenix waiting for springtime weather to be good from Phoenix to Minneapolis, paying for a motel, not getting back to work on time at a place that isn't as excited about what I do as it once seemed to be.

And then I called the trip off.

I called Patrick and told him. "It's OK," he said, although I knew it wasn't. He's already scheduled the days off. He'd already given his car away to his girlfriend to use because hers is on a bad tire. He'd already packed. He was looking forward to the experience, and somewhere along the trip, I was going to teach him the ins and outs of flying.

His goal on the trip was to play catch with his father on the hill beyond the right field at the Indians' park in Goodyear (even though they'd be on the road for the two games we'd watch, but the Reds play at the same park). "Don't forget to pack your glove and ball," he said a few days ago.

The day this morning dawned bright and sunny, though cold and windy. But it's a beautiful day to fly. "All that worry, and for what?" I said to myself as I set one foot out of the bed, and then another. My back was aching from yesterday's snow shoveling. I read the paper then sat in the rocking chair by the front window, bathing in the sun, and found myself thinking, "I'd be landing in Lexington right now."

And that's my punishment for the next few days. I'll watch the Indians game tomorrow and think "I'd be there right now," and even worse, I know my son will be doing that too. I will spend them wondering if I made a bad call.

Although I'm hoping a blizzard comes flying through the Plains on Friday on into Monday, it wouldn't surprise me if the weather turns out to be flyable, which will be an even greater punishment -- the knowledge that we could've done the trip and we missed out on a great experience. Together.

We're taught early in our flight training to use good judgment, and that many pilots have regretted trying to fly when they shouldn't.

But they don't tell you about the other kind of regret. The regret that maybe I was too cautious.

The regret that I missed one more game of catch with my son.

Who roots for the sea?

It's funny how the news can take you back to being 8 years old again.

This is the picture-of-the-day for the storm that's hammered the East Coast today. It's on Plum Island, a long spit of sand that runs along the north shore of Massachusetts, on the New Hampshire border.



The house, as you can imagine, is a goner. The people who own it are at their house in Florida and that'll have to do. Their old house, and the land on which it once lay, belongs to the ocean again. (See some amazing pictures in this Facebook album)

That's the way it works on Plum Island. And yet, people keep building as close to the ocean as they can.

Plum Island, which sits in the town of Newburyport, was a working-person's enclave back in the day. Newburyport was a fishing and shoe-making town until the '60s, when textile companies abandoned New England for the south. Now, it's high-priced real estate for the wealthy.

I know that because when I was a kid, we had the oceanfront lot. We were the '50s and '60s pre-wealthy inhabitants.

Our home, though, wasn't the multi-million dollar structure here or the type that, no doubt, are on either side of this home, awaiting their own fate. It was just an old trailer in which somehow, we fit seven people. When you were a kid on Plum Island back then, it wasn't about your fancy house, it was about exploring what was around you. My parents would turn us loose in the morning and we might come back by dinner.

There was treasure to find that washed ashore overnight, the occasional tuna that was hoisted down at the Keezer boat works when someone got lucky, the bike to ride to Fred's variety to pick up an Archie comic, sea worms to dig and get rich selling, and, occasionally, the spectacle of the drowning victim being hauled ashore from the Coast Guard cutter.

The Simmons family -- he was a milkman -- had the little cottage in front of us until the sea came calling and they moved it back a half mile or so to escape it. The Burkes had a little pink house across the sandy road, until they -- and we -- found it tipped upside down on the beach one spring. It had fallen into the path of an angry ocean and, apparently, nobody had noticed until it came time to open the cottage for the season.

That happened all the time. Like taking attendance at the beginning of class, we'd start each summer by determining what homes were no longer where they once stood.

The town tried everything to stop the ocean. Rocks, bigger jetties, old cars, truckload after truckload of sand, and for a time it seemed to work, but nature can be very patient. Even the sprawling Coast Guard station next door gave up and moved a little farther inland. In the end, you just can't shovel sand against the tide.

We never got much of a chance to find out how our own plot would fare against it, though. A few years after the Simmonses moved their house, something else came calling -- a man with money to make. He had offered my dad money for the land, but my parents wouldn't sell. He loved the place and so did their five kids.

The next winter, someone took an axe to the trailer and, probably not coincidentally, the man called my father asking if he was interested in selling now. He was. And so a prime piece of beachfront property went for $5,000. I was too young to understand what a bitter pill that must've been for the old man.

A few weeks later, the trailer mysteriously burned down -- the guy said he was working on the plumbing with a torch at the time -- and in its place rose a multi-million dollar home, which as far as I know, still stands today.

The same thing happened up and down the beach. The old cottages gave way to the big homes, the working-class was mostly pushed out, leaving a generation of boys -- now old -- feeling only a little bit guilty and not at all proud of occasionally rooting for the sea.

When your childhood hero dies

Rex Trailer died last night, and that probably doesn't mean much to people in Minnesota, but I can tell you this: Every kid had a Rex Trailer.

For me and thousands of others in New England, he was the hero of children's TV programming.

He was a cowboy, a real rootin' tootin' cowboy, with a horse -- Gold Rush -- and a sidekick -- Pablo, until Pablo died -- and he brought us cool things, like cartoons. And he lived in a magical place -- Boomtown -- which we believed existed, because we didn't know anything about dark TV studios that made up stuff.

And we'd get up early on Saturday mornings, sneak quietly downstairs so as not to wake the parents, and turn on the TV and stare at a test pattern (ask your parents) until Boomtown -- that was the name of the show -- came on.

And if your father was a hero, chances are part of what made him larger than life is that when he had the grand opening of his grocery store, Rex Trailer and Gold Rush came. Right! My dad knew Rex Trailer!

And when you went to college many, many years after watching him ride and rope and do a trick or two, who was one of the adjunct professors teaching television? It was Rex Trailer!

And when you were 59 years old and couldn't remember where you put your keys, you could still sing the Boomtown theme song. If the hundreds of people who turn out for his funeral don't rise as one to sing it, well, then there's no such thing as cowboys.



A kid's life couldn't have been more wonderful with such heroes.

You kids today, I feel bad for you. But not as bad as I feel for all of us kids who wanted to grow up to be cowboys.

Flying with the boys

When I first decided to build an airplane 11 years ago, the intention was that I could use it to visit my kids away at college at some godforsaken land. They were young at the time and I just figured that how it would go. It didn't go that way; both stayed in the Twin Cities.

But now that it's done, I'm already seeing an entirely new role for the plane to play -- keeping them in touch and spending more time with them than I otherwise would. A plane makes a mighty nice flying carpet.

My son, Sean, hasn't flown with me since he was a junior in high school, when we had a nice trip to Sleepy Eye for a class project. The flight ended back at Flying Cloud when I messed up an instruction to make left traffic, turned left instead, and approached the departure end of the runway.

But after last week's homecoming, I invited Sean to fly with me up to Madeline Island in Lake Superior, which is a wonderful place, has a little strip, a short walk to the ferry, which takes you over to Bayfield and its many shops.

I calculated the trip would take a little over an hour and it was an hour and 20 minutes (gotta get those leg fairings on). We took the ferry to Bayfield, found a place to eat, played a game of pool and generally relaxed as the storm clouds we knew would roll in, rolled in.

As we ate we talked about flying and Sean said he'd like to fly someday, even though some of his medicines are on the FAA disqualification list. But, I told him, there's always light sport and EAA and AOPA are pushing hard to eliminate the Third Class Medical.

So now I have to find out whether it's possible that a CFI could use my plane to provide flight training. It'd be great to have him work toward at least being able to fly, even if he couldn't fly PIC right now. Either that or I need to get started on the RV-12.

By the way as we were walking from the airport to town, the police showed up. "Did you just land about 20 minutes ago? Are you 614EF?" the officer asked.

"Yeah, what's wrong?" I said.

"The FAA is looking for you, apparently you forgot to check in," he said.

I knew instantly what the problem was. We were receiving flight following from south Saint Paul and somewhat into Wisconsin, he instructed us to another frequency. I thought he had terminated radar service and so we just flew on without checking in. Dumb move. I don't know what the fallout from this will be. We'll see. But we were safe, heading for some good times, and I didn't much care.

On the way back to the airport, I thumbed a ride and a nice couple picked us up and delivered us to the airplane and checked the weather for us on their iPhone. We knew we were in for it a bit.

We stayed in the small terminal building while the rain let up and then made a run for it. There were thunderstorms in our path so we picked open sky between a pair and got the plane washed. A second line near Hayward, Wisconsin still faced us but I knew they'd be there since my flight briefing predicted they'd be.

So we watched some neat rainfall and had a double rainbow off our left wing. I had to go far to the east around a storm, and then punched through some rain showers into the good weather on the south side of the weather front, which was barely moving.

We were home free for a cruise back to the Minneapolis St. Paul area, where we saw a few hot air balloons over the St. Croix River. We touched down in Saint Paul and then checked the weather radar to calculate where and what we'd just been through. I was happy we didn't do anything stupid, and happier still that my son and I had a grand time.

The plane performed magnificently; the only problem seems to be that the transponder isn't reporting altitude or at least the recipients aren't receiving it. The Garmin 327 is showing the correct pressure altitude on its display; I don't know why ATC isn't receiving it, but another plane that was reporting while we were receiving flight following also reported that he "could see them on the box but no altitude." Hmmmm....

But those are things to be worked on another day. This was a day that the plane itself was secondary to what you can do with one.

"Thanks for taking me with you," he said as he headed for the car to head back to his home. "Next time I'll bring my good camera."

There's going to be a next time! Yes! Now I need a place to fly to that's as cool as Madeline Island.

N614EF returns home

On Friday evening, I passed the 40-hour mark of Phase I flight testing in N614EF, the plane I built over an 11-year period. That means it would come home on Saturday. So, bring it home, we did.



Son #2, Patrick, made the video and after he left, I provided rides to a couple of guys who've helped tremendously getting the project finished.

Brad Benson and I flew down to Red Wing because I knew that Joshua Wyatt's RV-9A had its airworthiness inspection on Friday. And when we landed, we saw Tom Berge's airplane. Tom was taking it up for its first flight.

Joshua did a fabulous job.

Oh, by the way, I don't think I'd previously posted the video of N614EF's first flight. So here...

Motorcycles, scrambled eggs, and the ways we live forever

(Written via the "day job" blog)

An intangible benefit of writing the NewsCut blog and some other blogs I pen are the connections blogs can make between unrelated people.

I've already written, for example, about how the connections created by a tornado and the reach of the Internet helped a widow in a tornado-ravaged city in Indiana get a picture of her husband back from a man in a Cincinnati who found it on his lawn (that picture, by the way, was returned to Marta Righthouse Tuesday evening).

Then there's this post from 2009 about the first person killed in the first Gulf War. Every year on the anniversary of his death, it seems, I hear from a member of the family who discover the post via Google. The Internet and its search engines make it hard for people to be forgotten.

Today I was reminded again of the "connections" the Internet can give us.

My brother, Mike, died last week and I was asked to say a few words at his graveside service. So I told the story of Everett Ek (left) of Rochester, whose obituary appeared in the Star Tribune last week (you can also find it in the Rochester Post Bulletin). I'm a big reader of obituaries, especially the ones that capture the personality of the individual, rather than follow the boilerplate copy that renders most obits sounding like the one before.

Everett Ek's wasn't like that:

Everett enjoyed his final days. He shared a visit with Kellen, his great-grandson, on Saturday. “Papa” made scrambled eggs for his granddaughters, Alahn and Korah, Sunday morning after their stay over. Monday, he went cruising on his Harley and cleaned out his man cave, aka the garage. Tuesday morning found him savoring a Grain Belt in his man cave with Bob, a morning coffee klutch buddy. Later, when he went out to work in the yard on that beautiful day, he fell to the ground and was gone. Everett and his dad each lived their lives to the fullest, 72 years and 48 days.

Because I told Mr. Ek's story to a group of people 1,200 miles away, many of them also shared the stories of my brother -- the motorcycle rides he made and his habit of showing up for camping trips with 10 pounds of pork chops and only 10 pounds of pork chops. None of it was headline material; all of it provided a much more valuable snapshot of his life, more than any company he worked at or award he received.

Everett Ek died this week after making scrambled eggs for his granddaughters and because he did, you know that he once was on this earth and mattered. A woman loved purple, another loved her fax machine, and my brother just got his last ride from some other good and decent people.

I posted my remarks on one of my personal blogs. The phone rang in the NewsCut cubicle today. "This is Mrs. Everett Ek," she said, and I knew immediately who she was. A relative had also found the post via Google and called her to say, "you won't believe it."

She said she didn't want the obituary to be like all the others so she told it to a friend who wrote it. Today, I learned that Mr. Ek, who apparently always wanted to ride a motorcycle, finally did so at age 69 at his wife's urging. He was the oldest person in the motorcycle safety class at the community college, a class that called him "Papa."

They had a nice funeral, she told me, especially when they opened the doors of the church to hear the person outside revving up the engine on the motorcycle. It was a Catholic mass with the usual amount of standing, sitting, and kneeling. A faithful family dog attended and sat and stood as custom dictated.

None of these things is "headline material," and yet these are the threads that connect us. Because a man in Rochester made eggs for his granddaughters, a man who loved pork chops died in Massachusetts, and some guy in Saint Paul writes a blog for a living, we are never really forgotten.

How I love you so, Internet.

On Michael Lee Collins, 1948-2012

These are some words I've written for my brother's funeral on Saturday:

I’m a big fan of reading obits in the newspaper. There’s a newspaper out in Sioux Falls that used to publish neat headlines on obits. I remember one that announced a woman’s death and said, “her favorite color was purple.” Another said, “she loved her fax machine.”

In my youth, I thought, “what a shame that at the end of someone’s life, the headline is: she loved a fax machine.

In the paper in Minneapolis this week, I noticed a guy named Everett Ek died. Here’s what his obituary said:

Ek, Everett Enjoyed his final days. He shared a visit with Kellen, his great-grandson, on Saturday. "Papa" made scrambled eggs for his granddaughters, Alahn and Korah, Sunday morning after their stay over. Monday, he went cruising on his Harley and cleaned out his man cave, aka the garage. Tuesday morning found him savoring a Grain Belt in his man cave with Bob, a morning coffee klutch buddy. Later, when he went out to work in the yard on that beautiful day, he fell to the ground and was gone.


I counted 50 obituaries in Thursday’s paper. Many of the people I read about worked for a company for many years, but I can't remember what company. They won several awards, but I can't remember one of them. They had names, but I couldn't tell you what they are. But I'll always remember Everett Ek’s, just as I've remembered the person with the fax machine and the one about the person who loved purple, even though I read those almost 20 years ago.

Most obituaries start with where someone worked, and how long he/she worked there and what honors he/she accumulated.. They’re written by someone else, usually, someone who hasn’t quite realized that the barometers of our lives aren’t the jobs we do or the honor we accumulated. It’s how we value the experiences we have.

There’s a picture of all of us kids when we were young. It’s snowing, and we’re all lined up at the picket fence at our house looking at something. And one of us, I’m pretty sure it’s Mike, has a big smile on his face. And he’s waving. He was waving at the snowplow driver and at that moment, he was in the moment and enjoying an experience for what it was.

There’s another picture – I just put it on Facebook this week – of all of us sitting around my mother who’s lighting the candles on a cake. And in the back is Mike, sitting high to see, the only one with an expression that something great was about to happen, and it wasn’t his birthday.



And another picture of us all sitting by a window for a family picture of the kids. And again, it’s Mike who’s most engaged with what’s about to happen.

My brother had a hard life, and it’s tempting to lament that life and be disappointed that he wasn’t able to accomplish the things that a lot of people do. I never heard him complain about it. Mike had a quiet decency about him and what mattered to him, I think was the moment and not where he was in his life measured by someone else’s yardstick. For him, the right now wasn’t a step on the way to somewhere else.

The other day I was sitting at a stoplight and a guy on touring motorcycle pulled up next to me and I thought, “wouldn’t it be great to live in the moment and just ride and see what’s out there to see purely for the joy of the ride.”

My brother did that a lot. He’d ride across Nebraska, and down through Colorado and New Mexico and Arizona, stop along the way to visit some friends and camp at the Grand Canyon, just because he could. He’d ride out to upstate New York and sit and visit and tell stories in a way that made you want to reach into his throat and pull the ending out, he took so long to tell it.

1982 journal entry

I think Mike lived his life in a way a lot of us wish we could. I think he was comfortable in the here and now. If the here-and-now was a Bruins game, fine. If the here-and-now was a ride, great. If the here and now was getting greasy under a car, all the better. If it was sitting and reading the comics at my grandmother’s trailer because she saved them for him, wonderful. If it was all of us skating up on the pond, swimming up at Helki’s or playing a game of baseball in the park behind our house, that was a better life than you’d ever find in the newspaper’s obituary section, and my brother lived that life.

Everett Ek died this week after making scrambled eggs for his granddaughters and because he did, you know that he once was on this earth and mattered. A woman loved purple, another loved her fax machine, and my brother just got his last ride from some other good and decent people. Their lives were well lived, and I’ll think of Mike whenever the Bruins score a goal, a motorcycle pulls up at the stoplight, or a plow drives past my house.

Update: Here's a neat story about what happened when Mr. Ek's family read this post.

My brother, Mike

My brother, Michael Lee Collins, passed away Friday night. His life was a testament to the luck of birth and something the "I made my own breaks" crowd should consider once in awhile. Born in 1948, he lived in an era where medical technology wasn't as advanced as it is today. In the '60s, he had back surgery that might be done on an outpatient basis now, but, instead, his surgery left him somewhat crippled.

He attended a full year of high school while lying in a bed in our house, communicating only through some fancy -- for those days -- intercom system. He missed out on a lot.

He went to UMass in Amherst for a semester -- he wanted to be an engineer. Then he became a linotype operator at Colonial Press in Clinton. He loved his motorcycles, he always wanted to restore old cars, but wasn't particularly good at it.

In later years, emphysema (he didn't smoke) and diabetes took its toll, but mental illness made him disappear. We'd talk on the phone once a year if he answered it and even then we'd mostly jut talk about the Bruins.

He was a great hockey fan and loved playing it too when he could. The Bobby Orr era of the Boston Bruins will long be associated with my brother. We slept out on the sidewalk of Sears a number of times to be the first in line to get Bruins tickets. During the winter, we played hockey on the pond every afternoon.

He raised chickens as a kid. I raised chicken as a kid. He loved hockey. I loved hockey. He was a Cleveland Indians fan long before I was.

He was a better big brother than I was a little brother.

Here's his obit, written by my sister, Cheryl, who was also the best friend he ever had.

Michael Lee Collins, age 63, of Shirley, Massachusetts passed away after many years of declining health on March 9, 2012 at Leominster Health Alliance Hospital. He was born Dec, 3, 1948 in Goffstown , NH and was the son of Fred and Ruth Eileen(McFarland) Collins of West Fitchburg. He was an avid baseball and hockey player and wanted to play football in junior high had he not developed scoliosis. So he maintained an avid fan interest in Boston Bruins hockey and Patriots football all his life. He enjoyed history,bowling, and could not be beaten at Trivial Pursuit, especially if the category was “old movies”. He was quite the fisherman and loved being at Plum Island

While growing up he was a member of the Rollstone 4-H Club and raised chickens and rabbits .He especially enjoyed the Worcester County 4-H activities. His later passion became motorcycles and he was a lifetime member of the Massachusetts British Iron Association . He wrote their newsletter for many years and always signed his articles with the expression “Ride Safe” Once he rode his BMW all the way to the west coast and back.

His work included many years as a linotype operator at Colonial Press in Clinton, MA and was employed at Lockwood Plastics and also Value Pharmacy in West Boylston. He also was a partner in Paul’s CZ Cycle Sales and went to Hallmark School of Photography.
He was predeceased by his father, Fred and a niece, Jennifer.
Besides his mother, Ruth, of Fitchburg he leaves sisters, Cheryl Collins of Stow, Maine and Wendy Collins of Brattleboro, VT, and brothers, William Collins of Princeton and Robert Collins of Woodbury, Minnesota and their families which include nine nieces and nephews .

The family wishes to thank especially his neighbor, Sandy, and his special nurse and friend, Bernadette Oininen of Nashoba Nursing and all others who made it possible to remain independent for so long.
In lieu of flowers the family requests donations in Mike’s memory to go to either Nashoba Nursing and Hospice, 2 Shaker Rd. Suite D225, Shirley, MA 01464 or Montachusett Home Care, 680 Mechanic Street, Leominster, MA 01453.

Family and friends are encouraged to meet at Bosk Funeral Home ,85 Blossom St. Fitchburg at 10:30 am on Sat, March 17th to follow a motorcycle procession to Forest Hill Cemetery for an 11 am graveside service.

Here are the comments I wrote for his service.

Friday night lights

It is an inspiring revelation, I think, that at the (nearly) 58 year-old-mark, I'm still capable of having the best Friday night ever. Or it indicates I've lost the ability to remember Friday nights past. One of those.

Friday night is Timberwolves basketball night in Flyover Country, a distinction that historically earns the participant the scorn and ridicule of non-believers. And there have been plenty of them since the local NBA squad traded Kevin Garnett to the Boston Celtics years ago.

But I'm a season ticketholder and a follower of bad teams, not necessarily my intent; it's just the way it works out. This team, however, is on the upswing.

San Antonio was in town last night; we beat them earlier this season with a little luck and surprise. But now, the art of surprise lost, the squad had to win on the strength of talent.

But I brought the team's good-luck charm anyway...

It worked.

During the game, Ali Lozoff, the marketing guru at The Current, tweeted me a message asking if we'd like to come over to First Ave (across the street) for The Current's 7th birthday party, a sold-out, two-night affair. Well, sure. You can never have enough elderly people at First Ave., right?

The game over, we walked in, got into the VIP section, saw our pals...

... and watched the concert up close...

Jim McGuinn, The Current's fine program boss, asked me to come on stage for the staff introductions, but, you know, as much recognition I get for doing four minutes of radio once a day with Mary Lucia, doing that would've taken away the spotlight -- if only just a sliver -- from the all-the-time people who do such a great job building America's best radio station. They're tremendously fun and welcoming people...

Now the part my father -- who kept track of his money -- would like.

Cost of Timberwolves tickets: $10
Cost of water and a Klondike Bar: $7
Cost to park: $5
Cost for First Ave entry: $0
Cost for drinks: $0
Total minus $5 Timberwolves food voucher for not bailing during the NBA lockout: $17

Life is good.

The job posting

The more I worked with my oldest son at the company I've worked for for nearly 20 years, the more I understand why my father, against all logic, tried to get me to take over his insurance business. And the more I understand why it probably killed him when I left after less than a year to continue my pursuit of a career in radio. But I didn't just leave, I repudiated the very notion of working in the same office.

It was dumb and it was just the type of thing 20-year-olds do.

My son never did that to me in the time he worked with me and I've never enjoyed walking in the door of work more than the five or so years he was on the other side of the doors.

Watching him work reminded me of the time I went to a band concert of his in the 5th or 6th grade and began to see him as an individual of unique talents that I did not possess. He was good at what he did, he was smart, and he brought the Collins Type A personality and critical self-assessment with him, which is the tragic assault of my DNA.

We'd have coffee almost every morning and during the day sometimes he'd stop by to shoot the breeze. It was great, especially considering all those years when father-and-son related the way fathers and sons often do.

Through absolutely no fault of his own, he's been unable to continue in the job. My company, knowing a valued employee when it sees one, worked hard to give him the time and space he needed, but in the end, he couldn't do the work to his level of satisfaction. The curse of Dad's DNA.

Last week, he informed the company he wouldn't be able to return to work, and last night, the company posted his job, which of course they had to do, but which, nonetheless, hit me like a ton of bricks anyway, even though I knew what was coming.

Windows Systems Administrator #168-12
Location: Saint Paul, MN
Salary Range: $56,177-$84,265
Exempt/Non-Exempt: Exempt
Benefits: yes
Employment Type: Full Time
Description: The Windows Systems Administrator will work in the IT Infrastructure team within the Technology and Operations department of American Public Media | Minnesota Public Radio. The Windows Systems Administrator will provide technical support, upgrades, patch management, and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) administration. The Windows System Administrator will support, upgrade, and maintain media and broadcast related Microsoft servers and applications that are critical to the support of Minnesota Public Radio such as automation and play to air. This position will support Broadcast Media/Operations/Windows servers/applications in all APMG locations. Primary reporting will be to the Manager of IT Infrastructure with secondary reporting to the Manager of Media Productions.

Position Responsibility:

• Develop, install, recommends purchase, implementation, and configuration of Microsoft technologies and infrastructure systems.
• Implementation, administration, maintenance, and disaster recovery planning for multi-site Microsoft Server environment.
• Administration and management of Microsoft Systems Center Configuration Manager (SCCM).
• Distribute application and operating system patches to Windows desktops, laptops and servers.
• Develop, manage and install application and operating system deployments, including Play to Air and Broadcast Media systems, using SCCM.
• Perform Windows systems capacity planning and performance analysis.
• Conduct complex troubleshooting and repair of Active Directory, Windows server 2000/2003/2008, DNS, user authentication and other operational systems as needed.
• Research, evaluate and recommend new technologies in order to meet business requirements and contribute to long-range planning for systems evolution.
• Research, build, administer, implement, and support all current APMG play-to-air and media production computer based systems. These systems include: ENCO, Dalet, Protools, Music Master, Final Cut, other audio/video systems and related media systems.
• Recommend alterations to existing technologies to improve quality and/or reduce costs.
• Document strategies, designs, policies, recommendations, procedures, and status using Microsoft Office, Visio, and/or Project using clear, consistent, and concise language.
• Implement disaster recovery plan for all media production systems when needed, assist with regular test procedures and user training.
• Use scripting tools/languages to automate software installations
• Work with peers to establish security, management and support standards for APMG computer environment.
• Manage Microsoft group policies.
• Complete support assignments on time and within budget.
• Work with vendors for product information and design, pricing, and support escalation.
• Provide cross training to team members who provide secondary support.
• Provide IT departmental budget input as requested.
• Provide On-Call support in a 24/7 environment.
• Assist in special projects as assigned.

Required Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or equivalent experience.
• 3-5 years of experience installing and supporting computer hardware and Microsoft software in an enterprise setting.
• 3-5 years of administration experience with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008.
• 3+ years of experience managing SMS 2003 or SCCM 2007.
• Experience managing operating system deployment systems.
• Experience with enterprise implementations of Microsoft applications (e.g. SQL, AD, WSUS)

Required Skills, Knowledge and Abilities:

• Strong diagnostic skills and demonstrated ability to research problems independently using multiple resources to support computer hardware and software at the enterprise level.
• Thorough understanding of client computers in a business environment.
• Thorough understanding of security risks in the current business computing environment.
• Understanding of Microsoft Active Directory schema.
• Deep knowledge of SMS 2003 or SCCM 2007’s patching capabilities and application distribution functionality.
• Working knowledge of application installation and methodologies for automated installation.
• Scripting knowledge.
• Able to perform work independently or in a team environment.
• Ability to effectively communicate with the appropriate level of technical detail for your audience.
• Ability to establish and maintain positive working relationships in order to achieve common goals.
• Excellent listening and organizational skills.

Preferred Skills and Experience:

• Microsoft certification (such as MCSE, MCITP, MCTS, or MTA).
• Knowledge of Wake-on-LAN desired.
• Experience in a broadcasting or media environment.
• Skill with using scripting languages.

I think about my son almost every minute of every day. A lot of people can forget about their worries by diving into things at work. That doesn't work for me.

If that job sounds like it's right up your alley, you should apply for it. But you'll be filling some big shoes of one hell of a kid.

You'll notice, perhaps, that I've only made three posts on the blog this year. This has been the worst year we've ever had, and at this Thanksgiving, I struggle to be grateful that it wasn't worse.

Jose Cardenal and the bucket list

Today is Jose Cardenal's birthday. He might be the person who made it possible for me to check an item off my "bucket list," but, alas, he's not.

Jose played for the Cleveland Indians for only two years -- 1968 and 1969 -- and he wasn't particularly good for them, but to a young Indians fan, he might as well have been Babe Ruth. Such is the nature of hero worship.

It was September 16, 1969 and my mother took me to the ballgame at Fenway Park when the Indians came to town. Bleacher tickets back then were only $1 and we frequently watched baseball from what was widely thought to be the best deal in baseball.

At some point, possibly before the game started, an old usher stood at the bottom of the row, leaning on the giant cement wall in centerfield and motioned for me to come down to him.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a baseball -- a real Major League Baseball official baseball, which presumably had been swatted into the bleachers during batting practice.

In the third inning, with nobody on and two out, Jose Cardenal launched a Jim Lonborg pitch into the bleachers for his 10th homerun of the year, propelling the Indians to a 5-2 win, a rare occasion for the team in 1969, a season in which they lost 90 games.

At some point in the game, my mother suggested I claim that the ball in my hands was that homerun. And so I did for some years thereafter.

But it wasn't. And I've never come close to checking "catch a ball at a baseball game" off the bucket list again.

Happy birthday, Jose!

It's not the heat, it's the memories

If we are not careful and paying attention, we can let the professional weatherpeople lead us down the path of meteorological despair. "It's 90, but it feels like 106!" they warned today as summer made the apparently unwelcome visit to Minnesota even though we've been longing for it for weeks.

When I let the Blog Dog back in from her morning inspection of the south 40 this morning, she was panting like a two-stroke engine, a reminder to me to keep the windows shut and the air conditioner on. You don't want to go out in this weather because, you know, it's not the heat, it's the humidity that will get you if you're not careful.

That's a phrase that still occupies a disk sector in the hard drive in my head, "it's not the heat, it's the humidity."

It's around 1960, the memory bank reveals, and I'm at my mother's feet while she utters those words to someone. We're in the driveway of our home.

"What's humidity?" I asked.

"You can't really feel it when you're a kid," she said. "But when you get older, you'll know."

I'm older now, of course. I recognize humidity and loathe its existence and the passing of time that made its recognition possible.

The senses are a time machine. A song on the radio takes you anywhere in the past you want to go. A smell -- for me, it's Candyland in downtown St. Paul -- transports you to a boardwalk, a summer night, and a lost love.

I could avoid the outdoors no longer this morning. I had to dump the coffee grounds in the compost bin. I had no choice but to accept fate, open the back door and step into ... 1964.

This temperature. This humidity. I remember this exact combination in a place and moment that no longer exists. It's a trailer on the oceanfront of Plum Island in Newburyport, Massachusetts, which seemed like luxury then but which I realize now was a desperately cramped spot for five kids and two parents.

I am 10 years old and it's the beginning of another perfect day, me with my freedom to spend it roaming the beach looking for lost lures, watching the charter boats head for George's Bank, seeing what's up at the Coast Guard station, standing at the end of the jetty as the tide comes in pretending I'm the captain of a trawler in the storm, smelling the rope at the tackle store, or riding the bike to the variety store for the latest Archie comic book. My parents are half the age I am now. It is summer, I don't know what a dewpoint is, and these are the best days of my life.

Be careful if you go out today. You might become 10 years old again.

The RKO years

It's impossible to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade each year without thinking back to two years I wish I could do over.  The parade at that time went down Broadway, and I worked on the 5th floor of  1440 Broadway, at the RKO Radio Network. Thanksgiving was a good time for our families to come into the sports department and watch the balloons go by at eye level  (The image above is the 1985 parade from the vantage point). I was usually working in the windowless newsroom, so I never really got to see the parade.

It was 1984 when I moved to New York. The radio news business was different then. There was a "nuclear core" of the industry. If you worked in the news business, you wanted to get to New York. It's what motivated radio newspeople in small markets all across America.

I'd worked at WHDH in Boston, which was the only dream in broadcasting I ever really had -- Boston -- but much of the newsroom was laid off in May, even though we were the #1 station in the market.  My old boss, Ed Bell, helped me get a "summer relief" job at WCVB in Boston, which at the time was known as the best local TV station in America. It was an honor richly deserved.

But I never felt comfortable in TV; I couldn't understand the entire "write to the pictures" method of writing, and I never could figure out the union duties and who could do what. In radio, you controlled the story from the beginning all the way to the end. It doesn't work that way in TV.

So when RKO's managing editor, Harvey Nagler,  called -- presumably at the behest of my old WHDH pal Nick Young-- I jumped at the opportunity to fly down to New York and check out a "WGA" position (Writer's Guild of America). Basically, WGAs called people and interviewed them, sliced up the tape, and sent it out to the anchors. Also involved was an editor's shift or two. No heavy lifting, really.

I was hired and we moved to New York where we were immediately depressed by the apartment market. We were moving away from families and New York then seemed far away from Massachusetts. I wish I'd known then what I know now.

I loved taking the train into the city, I loved the Empire State Building at night,  I loved being around the best of the best, and  I loved reading some of the finest writing I've ever seen come out of an anchor's hands, but while I thought $43,000 was a lot of money, in New York it was chump change. We couldn't really afford to do anything to enjoy New York.

On the second day of work,  RKO was reported to have double-billed advertisers in its 1984 Olympics coverage. It would have to repay it and everyone knew that money had to come from somewhere. Its owner, General Tire, was already known as a corporation that wasn't qualified to own broadcast facilities in the country (this was back when the FCC gave a damn about the character of the people who ran broadcast stations). Over the summer that number grew into the millions.

Every week, another story came out about the future of the RKO Radio Networks, given the collapsing finances of General. And I liked job security (which is why my decision to get into radio wasn't that bright to begin with). The stench of death was in the air constantly and I don't deal with that well, not being that optimistic a guy for one. Being a stupid 30-year-old with a new baby at home for another. 

When the layoffs start happening, Nagler called me into his office. I thought it was the end. "Are you worried about losing your job?" he said.

"Yes," I said.

"Don't be," he said.

Still, I sent resumes out. I wanted to go work at ABC News, but nothing developed. At the same time, I was working with people I admired tremendously. They were professional. They were fun. It looked easy for them. And I was out of my league.

A year later, just before 5 on a Friday night, a memo was circulated. We'd been sold to Dick Clark and the Transtar Radio Network, which distributed syndicated music specials. I, and a lot of other people, knew that they weren't interested in running a news operation (which was renamed the United Stations Radio Network).  they were interested in the satellite transponders RKO owned, and the affiliate lists.

In the spring of 1986, my father-in-law asked me to come back to the Berkshires to help start an FM station in a license battle the company was involved in. For two years, I'd heard some frustrated RKO anchors say, "I'd like to go back to run a small-market radio station," and given the opportunity now, it seemed like a no-brainer (it's the hardest thing in the broadcating business, I know now, but that's another story).

After I gave my notice, ABC News called and the news director said, "I just now saw your resume and I think we need to talk." But it was too late.

As it turned out, leaving New York has worked out well, and yet I regret I wasn't smart enough, good enough, or adult enough to be better at it.

A year or so later, we had a reunion on Long Island.  It was great fun to see everyone again. As we were leaving, Ross Klavan, an anchor I was saying goodbye to laughed at one point and said, "We were glad to see you go."

I laughed too, even if it was the worst thing anyone has ever said to me.

And even though he was right.

Our disappearing lives

Yesterday, Netflix announced that it will begin to offer a lower-priced package for people who would rather stream movies than get a DVD in the mail. It's big news in tech circles today and judging by the number of blogs I've read today, people are switching their plans without giving it a thought.

I, however, did.


Netflix's announcement has spawned another panic attack that my family's analog -- and now, digital -- history is disappearing in a hurry and I probably shouldn't put off saving it any longer. But save it... to what?
Over the weekend, I crawled into the space under the stairs to get the Christmas tree and decorations (the earliest I've ever done that so I'm not completely losing the non-procrastinator war) and stumbled across this:




It's a Super 8 mm movie projector, still apparently in good shape after 20+ years of no use. Inside was this treasure:




A take-up reel (this was once an "every day expression"), a rusty shoe horn (beats me, but I think I've used the projector more recently than the shoe horn) and the only roll of film I ever shot of my oldest son, on his first days home from the hospital more than 25 years ago.

What would you do now? That's exactly what I did.



Unless I get around to finding some place that will convert Super 8mm film to digital, that history is gone. Forever. When I was growing up, my parents had a huge drawer of these films, documenting the lives of me and my four brothers and sisters. As far as I know, that's all gone now, too.

My house is full of disappearing history. In closets and cabinets all over the house, there are VHS cassettes -- unindexed -- occupying space. I didn't shoot a lot of video of the kids -- I didn't want to be that guy -- but what little I shot is around here somewhere.



And if I ever find it, this is the last remaining VHS player in the house: the old TV.




Another one died a month or so ago and has left us permanently. When this one goes, all that VHS history probably goes too, unless I get around to transferring it to another media -- perhaps DVD. Underneath the TV is a DVD player we bought when VHS started to disappear.

This week, an old desktop PC which has most of my digital images started dying. Of all the important data that's on it, my first action was to save the pictures -- our history. I burned them all onto a DVD.
And that will work fine, until DVD players disappear too. That will probably happen in my house, because last month we bought this:



It's a home-entertainment system that connects to the Internet and allows us to stream video. No DVDs necessary. This is why Netflix did what it did yesterday. And this is why all the other media in the house is nearly obsolete.

I'm not recommending we go back to the old days. But as technology moves along at an ever-increasing pace, it makes it difficult for us to preserve our visual histories. Maybe today you'll upload your images to Picassa, or a blog, or Flickr, or Facebook, or leave them on your phone, not thinking that there's no guarantee Picassa, your blog, or Flickr, or Facebook, or your phone technology will be there 30 years from now, any more than there was a guarantee that my movie projector would work today. Maybe that doesn't matter to you now, but it'll matter in 30 years. Trust me on this.

Now here's the odd part: Of all the technology that exists and has existed to preserve our histories, this is still the one that seems to work the best over time in my house: a shoebox.



Beat that Netflix.

It was 25 years ago today

Today is my oldest son, Sean's, 25th birthday and just as I did on #21 and #23, I'm about to embarrass him again. Because I have an audience, Sean and Patrick get to have many of their secrets aired in public.

See this?

We had a lot of rocks in Sheffield, where we lived from the time Sean was six months old to the time he was 6. One day, he decided he would collect them, paint them, and sell them.

As with so many of the exploits of my children, I talked about this on the radio one day and when I went to get lunch at the local pizza joint, the owner said he wanted a couple of these well-painted rocks to "sell." So I delivered two of them, and gave Sean $1 each. If you're a parent, you know what this means: It means you're about to get a whole new crop of painted rocks, and a heightened expectation of riches.

I kept this one. I keep a lot of things from my kids' youth. I've got old hats they wore at baseball, old games, T-shirts and God knows what else. There isn't enough money in the world to pry this rock from my hands.

Like other parents, I look at all of these things and try to remember the kids that fit them. But I mostly can't. When Sean and his brother, Patrick, were very young, I remember holding them like footballs and thinking, "I've got to remember what this feeling is like." But while I remember doing it, I can't quite remember the moment. Few people can.

Our brains are not wired to be able to remember a snapshot like this. Our memories might be preserved but the feelings are not. As each one comes along, our brain rewrites the previous one until after 25 years, you have a composite feeling made of little pieces of 25 years. It's a good feeling -- a great feeling. But it's not the feeling of a singular moment.

On his 25th birthday, I want to believe that my oldest son had the best childhood a kid could have, that his memories of being the son of Bob and Carolie Collins are as joyful as his mother's and mine are, and that at 25, he realizes the great things that are still to come, and that they will be better than anything you can imagine.

Just like he is.

Video: A good case of the blues

During much of last night's Buddy Guy concert at the State Theater in Minneapolis, I kept thinking how I could get my kids to one of his shows. At 74, he remains one of the greatest bluesmen ever. Every time he comes to town, I'll be at the venue. He's backed up by a sensational group of musicians, especially guitarist Ric Hall (in the Orioles jersey). What must it be like to play with some of the greatest jazz artists ever? Check out Ric Hall's Web site.



Here's a better look at the two of them:



What were you doing when you were 8?

How I inspired Ira Glass and kept my job for another week

Welcome. You've just been sucked into clicking on a link because of a pretty misleading headline that included a big name. I feel dirty about that and now maybe you do, too. I apologize, but it's a dog-eat-dog world out here in blogville.

The trip down memory lane I took this week has got me thinking more about my long road of working in radio. My guess is my radio career peaked some years ago and each day I become "that guy" that most young radio people encountered on their way to a long radio career: the guy with the long radio career that peaked years earlier.

Whatever. I can hold on like most other men in their mid- to late 50s in this recession that's claimed a disproportionate number of them,  which is to say: holding on tight and hoping to survive to work another day. Besides, I'm used to it. It's the way I started every day in broadcasting since 1975. Scared.

Some years ago -- 1996 -- I was in San Diego covering the Republican National Convention. Earlier in the day, I was in Balboa Park where a "Faith and Freedom Rally" was held. It's no big deal now, but back then it was one of the first public displays that the religious right had gained control of the Republican Party. The moderates were left out.

I was voicing a piece I wrote, noting that the event  was a metaphor for the party as a whole. After I finished  sending it back to my organization, a man standing nearby, who overheard it said, "that's the best piece I've heard all week."

I was flattered, of course, but I had no idea who it was and it wasn't until years later that I was told it was Ira Glass, host of the Public Radio's "This American Life," who is widely considered a god among public radio employees.

I'm remembering  this because a week or so ago, a flurry of "tweets" appeared in my account. It was from colleagues of my company who were in Denver for the Public Radio Program Directors convention. They were surprised when the speaker at the "benediction" gave me something of a shout out. The speaker was Ira Glass.




That sure surprised my colleagues. It surprised me, too. Frankly, there's something wrong with journalism when a 56-year-old man who's been doing it for 35 years is its "new face."  It's more than amusing, I think, that a group of colleagues went to Denver only to find out this "new face"  was the old face in a cubicle in the city they just left.

The reality, however, is that I'm not "the new journalism," I'm the old journalism I described in my previous post: just having a conversation with the audience rather than a sermon.  The "antique aesthetics" of journalism, as Ira Glass says, threatens to kill off broadcast journalism now. It's already killed off most of it in commercial media.

But, beyond that, there's a more disturbing reality: The "face of the new journalism" may well be the guy in a cubicle, working too long, and too hard, because he starts each day with the fear that this is the day he gets laid off.

The original posting that Ira Glass referred to can be found here.