Questions

This is the question I've been pondering recently. Can dogs get embarrassed? I think of it whenever I take Otter for a walk, oddly enough. He doesn't seem to have the exact look I usually see when he takes his dump, but trust me: there is one -- a sort of "hey, close the door" look. I see it on other dogs, too.

What about the algae eater in my aquarium?



What does he think about all day as he glues himself to the side of the tank? Does he think his life sucks? If there's a God -- and I'm not saying there's not -- what was he thinking when he created the algae eater? If there's reincarnation -- and I'm not saying there is -- what the hell did the person do in his/her previous life to come back as an algae eater? Is there, like, a pervert in my aquarium?

These are important questions.

It's been a quiet, non-existent spring here in flyover country, although the first real signs of summer -- hot and humid days -- have finally arrived. But the days are getting shorter. I want to believe that summer just started, but the days are getting shorter.

I'm trying to figure out my schedule for the summer. I've got Oshkosh for a week at the end of July. Then I have to go to Denver in August to cover the Democratic National Convention, then back home to St. Paul to cover the Republican National Convention and that takes us to.... Labor Day!

Where the hell did summer go? It's times like this I look forward to retirement. I want my summers back.

In around-the-house news, the weird spring weather created a first. The delphiniums bloomed before the peonies did.



By the way, the yellow siding and blue trim will be disappearing soon. The roofing and siding guy is stopping by today. We're picking a new color. I'm leaning toward colonial red -- both my and Carolie's parents' homes are colonial red, although it's a color that may work better in New England. The dark color may fade quickly, though. Anything but beige, I guess.

Continuing our tour: In the backyard, wouldn't you think the hummingbirds would be all over this beast?



Alas, no hummingbirds.

And what is this plant:



It came back to Minnesota a few years ago when I dug up some bee balm at my mother's house. I transplanted it from the perennial garden because it was clear it was going to spread. It makes a nice ground cover, even though it's heading for the grass and will probably be a major pain in the neck. It'll probably attack the neighbor's house soon. Good.

Update It's Creeping Charlie. I better start digging.

I'll show you mine

This is a nothing post. Just a picture of me showing a colleague how lame and out of date my cellphone is, at least where the camera is concerned. The lens is all full of lint and it takes crappy pictures. This picture, on the other hand, was taken by my colleague -- Julia Schrenkler -- on her phone.

She wins.

Jim Mitchell, 1950-2008

When I look back at 30+ years in the radio industry, there was no place I felt more at home than at WHDH in Boston. I was a Massachusetts kidding living my boyhood dream, working in radio in Boston. Even better, the people I worked with really were like family.

Word came today that another family member has passed away. Jim Mitchell was one of our newscasters. I used to joke that he was in the CIA, because he'd swoop into town from -- it seemed -- nowhere, plop down and do a great job and then disappear, only to reappear again. I'd heard he was in some sort of secret ops in Vietnam, so I was only half-joking.

When my old friend Nick Young (I've written about him here before, too), Jim took on the morning anchor duties on the Jess Cain show (and I've written about Jess here, too). I wish I could find some clips of the old Cain's Crew TV commercials.

I hadn't seen or talked to Jim since and that was about 25 years ago. But I'm not surprised to find his love had taken him to a bookstore.

Here's his obituary (written by his sister), which was forwarded to me today by another "family member."

Henry Milnor “Jim” Mitchell died June 4, 2008 of a heart attack in his home, MainStreet Bookends of Warner. Born March 17, 1950 in Charlottesville, VA, he was the first child of Arthur Hayne Mitchell, Jr. and Edith Looker Mitchell.

With his sister and brother-in-law, he in 1998 created and became co-owner of the community bookstore MainStreet BookEnds of Warner. In his ten years operating the store, it won numerous awards, including Yankee Magazine’s “Must-See Bookstore of New England,” and NH Magazine’s “Best Community Bookstore.” It became the focal point and gathering place for the town. Here he coordinated over 300 events a year, including concerts, lectures, classes, story hours, and the meeting of primary presidential candidates. He was a former director of the annual Warner Fall Foliage Festival, served on numerous town committees, and was named Warner’s “Citizen of the Year” in 2004.

Jim was a decorated Vietnam veteran, being named “Airman of the Year” in 1970. He began his long radio career as a news anchor with WLNH in Laconia, New Hampshire, and moved to WSB Radio in Atlanta, GA where he stayed until 1981. He then came back to New England to anchor the morning news at WHDH Radio in Boston, the afternoon news at WEEI-AM, and then in 1998 became the weekend news anchor for WBZ NewsRadio 1030. He also served as a union negotiator for the news crew. He received numerous broadcast awards including several awards from the Associated Press for "Best Newscast." He was most proud of his award for "Best Spot News" coverage of the World Airways crash at Logan International airport in Boston in 1982, and was known in the Boston area for bringing human interest stories from all around the world. He had traveled extensively in Europe, Asia, South America and the South Pacific.

He will forever be remembered for his clear voice, his humble nature, for his million small gestures of kindness, his ability to make everyone laugh and feel at ease, and his “free balloon hour” in the bookstore.

He leaves behind his adoring sister, Katharine Mitchell Nevins, and her husband, Neil, of Warner. Their children Lane, Matthias, Colin and Klare were his greatest loves. He is also survived by a brother Arthur Mitchell of Virginia, his wife Monica, and their children Katharine, Andrew and Thomas, his aunt Karen Hyde also of Virginia and many cousins. He leaves behind a huge and grateful community of friends in Warner, at WBZ, and within the world of radio news.

Jim’s passion and greatest pride was the little town of Warner. He worked to encourage and promote all the artists, writers, musicians and children that live there. To honor Jim’s spirit and life work, his plans and dream for a community park between the bookstore and the Pillsbury Free Library of Warner will come true. Any donations should be directed, in his name, toward MainStreet Warner, Inc., P.O. Box 248, Warner, NH 03278, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that he created. Burial will be private, but a celebration of his life will be held at the Warner Town Hall on Tuesday, June 17 at 2 pm to be followed by a reception at his home, The Gallery at MainStreet Bookends.

Why journalism is dying

This is very mean of me, but it's not posted with anything but curiosity. We're having layoffs -- a lot of layoffs -- in the media industry right now and we're told -- and appropriately so -- that part of the reason is the Internet.

But merely being on the Internet doesn't mean you take the culture of the dying-trees media and plop it down on the Web, though if you listen to people long enough, you'd swear that the medium by itself is rendering traditional media obsolete.

That's not true.

Take, for example, the front page of an online news Web site I respect... but not today.



Back in the '70s and '80s, I'd occasionally speak to AM radio newsies about the then-dying state of commercial radio news. They blamed everybody but themselves. "What killed radio news?" I'd say to them. "Radio newspeople."

You can't wait 14 hours in today's media landscape to tell people what happened. I see firsthand, all the time, the apparent belief that we in the media get to set the rules by which people will have access to information. Maybe 20 years ago news consumers would adjust to our schedules. But those days are gone.

Which is the primary reason why a lot of newspeople are gone, too.

Pine paranoia

I can't quite put my finger on it, but I'm suddenly haunted by the feeling that the pine trees in the backyard don't like me.

The derelict's game.

Let us be clear about the two most obvious things in life:

I love to golf.

I can't golf.

And here, your honor, is Exhibit A.



The prosecution rests.

Have you ever seen such a horrible swing? If the ball were, say, a crazed rabbit threatening to eat my nostrils, maybe the approach is warranted.

Patrick and I golfed down at Bellwood Oaks in Hastings. I really like the course. I like the fact it was mostly empty and nobody could see me.

It's Patrick's birthday. He's 20. He's no longer a teenager. He's my youngest. Soon, my body will give out and I will be put on life support. I will drool my oatmeal. I will, perhaps, expose myself. I will most certainly have to have my behind wiped after I soil myself.

Then, and perhaps only then, my golf game will be a fitting statement for my life.

I shot a 115. And that's after kicking the ball out of tough lies, taking an extra shot here and there etc.

Patrick? He bought some new irons with some birthday money and he was smoking the ball like I've never seen. He shot a 101, but that wasn't bad for getting used to the feel of new clubs.

Not that I'd know, of course.

Game, heal thyself

I don't know why that -- every year -- I expect my golf game to somehow get better over the winter, as if it were healing itself. My game, however, is terminal as the first trip to the golf course of the year showed.

Patrick and I played at the Ponds at Battle Creek golf course, the one we usually play the most.



I shot a 60 for 9-holes. Truth be told: Even without the almost-broken ankle and the bad rotator cuff, I'd have probably shot a 60.

Patrick shows some good form -- pitching onto the green -- on the way to a ... 55. I think I'm dragging him down.

At the end of a long day...

It's a blast to share a couple of Cuban cigars on the deck. Sean, who works with me, stopped by this afternoon after work (I'm on vacation), lured there by the prospect of a Cuban cigar. They were generously supplied by a co-worker (who shall be nameless to avoid the Homeland Security forces) who brought them back from vacation.

Life is good.

A trip to Tower Hill

Here's some pictures from the visit to the botanical garden at Tower Hill in Boylston, Mass.

I took this shot to show the dandelions. I'm back in Minnesota now, and the dandelions are starting to coming out. How come some lawns -- this one, for example -- look good with dandelions and others don't?



My mother checks out the daffodils.



I really miss New England's architecture.


Spring is quite farther ahead in New England than Minnesota. It was great to see lots of flowering trees. Coming home, I realized I didn't miss much here.



I should've written down what this tree is called. It sure is gorgeous!



Tell the truth: You want your house to look like this, right?



The estate overlooks Wachusett Reservoir, which provides drinking water to Boston, about 35 miles away. Mt. Wachusett -- the highest peak in Eastern Massachusetts -- is on the right.



Here's a slideshow on Flickr with about 3 dozen photos from vacation.

Fitchburg's fate

I've been on vacation in Massachusetts this week, mostly helping around my mother's house with an occasional side trip. I wish I'd brought my cord that connects the camera to my computer because I took some nice pictures of the Tower Hill Botanical Garden in Boylston yesterday. The trip over went through a combination of old colonial towns -- Lancaster, for example -- with fine old architecture and tree-lined streets, then through some of the old mill towns of New England.

It was a study in contrasts and a lesson in opportunities. Leominster, the birthplace of the plastics industry in this country, is doing quite well. Its downtown, even, is bustling. Fitchburg, my hometown, is not. I haven't even bothered to take a look at the downtown because I know what I'll find.


My city was a hell of a city in its day. Many of the factories -- the old Simonds Saw and Steel, for example -- sprung up to build the tools necessary to help the railroads push west through the granite mountains of the Berkshires and beyond. The paper mills along the Nashua River operated 24/7, providing jobs to the immigrants who moved here -- the Finns, the Italians, the French Canadians, the Greeks -- when I was a kid. They polluted the river, fouled the air, and built a country.

We went to school just down the street. The city had fine old neighborhood schools, then. There were more than a half-dozen fire stations, all built on a granite bedrock. The color of my city was brick red -- mile after mile of brick factories followed the river from west to east as it made its way to the Merrimack River, and then on to the Atlantic Ocean.


We had enclaves -- Greek Town, and Cleghorn for the French Canadians, for example -- and yet we never thought twice as kids about the other kids we went to school with, from other cultures. If there was a poster child for "melting pot," Fitchburg was it... helped along in part by the owner of one of the paper mills -- George Wallace was his name -- who actually lived in the city, gave a rip about it, and paid for a library, a civic center (The Boston Bruins practiced there. It's where I met Bobby Orr and Derek Sanderson.), even a planetarium. He's gone, now, and most of his philanthropic legacy is dying.

The city is down to about 39,000 people now. There are a few little factories still running, but not many. The city has a new mayor, Lisa Wong, the daughter of Chinese immigrants. She's quite a success story overseeing a city that is decidedly not. She's got a city council that's made up of some of the people I grew up with -- the kids that sat at the back of the class and threw spitballs. Now they throw them at her. These are the types of people who rail against "elitism," because -- they figure -- there's no nobility in intelligence.

The mayor has got herself a $5 million deficit and every day I've been here, the local paper (which used to be a fine publication but now is poorly written and has fallen into the hyper-local trap) has another front-page story to document the decline. Yesterday the library announced it will now open only three days a week -- all in the middle of the week.

The library, of course, was the place where we all went to write our term papers, but it also served as the meeting place for kids too shy to ask girls out on dates. The library was a "safe" zone where you could have a date without calling it one.

On Tuesday, the story was that the fire department would remove at least one truck from service and lay off more firefighters. The Senior Center is going to cut hours and staff and close an additional day. My mother is concerned that the city is going to add a trash fee. Meals on Wheels is cutting its service.

The thing is: this is still a hell of a city. People -- some people -- still look out for each other. It's still a place that still has -- by accident, perhaps -- something that my suburb in Minnesota hasn't gotten, despite years of trying everything to get it: a sense of community.

My mother, who's 85, needs someone to mow her lawn this summer. She mentioned it to the check-out lady at the grocery store yesterday morning. Yesterday afternoon, the phone rang. It was the "check-out lady" with a recommendation for a college kid who might like to have the job.


If that doesn't work out, the mailman -- who still brings the mail to the door -- might be able to help. He helped find the last person to have the job (who has now moved out of the city). He knows someone who knows someone because he's from a family who's been here for years.

I stopped to talk to the guy next door the other day. We'd never met before but he's the brother of a guy with whom I went to high school. He was on the basketball team. I was the sportswriter for the high school newspaper. My first big "scoop" in the business was the report that the basketball coach had ordered him to cut his hair. Hey, this was 1971; being ordered to cut your hair was a big deal. The neighbor roared with laughter when I told him that story; it's still a big deal in his mother's house, he said. She's still mad at the coach, apparently. Fitchburg knows how to keep a grudge.


As I chatted with the neighbor, cars driving by honked and their driver waved. The neighbor waved back. It's still that kind of city.

As we were driving over to the botanical gardens yesterday, we drove over a bridge that was being repaired in a nearby city that also is crumbling. "We're building a bridge in Afghanistan," my mother said. "We've got a lot of stuff we need doing right here." She's right. There's a war going on in the hometowns of America and the hometowns of America are losing, and nowhere near enough people seem interested.

Someone should give a damn about Fitchburg. Someone should care that its kids don't have a library, that the public transportation system -- once a vibrant street railway -- is gone, that the senior center is cutting hours, that the fire department -- the very definition of a basic service -- is being gutted, that teachers are being laid off in the few schools that are left, that roads are crumbling, that the newspaper stinks (a fascinating online paper exists, however), that the radio station (we used to have two) is just a satellite service, that Meals on Wheels won't be checking on the old folks as often.

The city is hanging on by the fingernails of its sense of community. For what it's given to this country -- and that includes the politicians who milked everything they could out of it, it deserved better.

Back when I did a talk show on the old WFGL, the mayor in town commented, "I don't know what Collins' problem is with me." He never figured it out. He, too, was a politician who twiddled while his city died, aided and abetted by a city council too ignorant or stubborn to go down any road but the one it was already on.

Airport chronicles

I dropped my oldest son off at the airport this afternoon; he's heading to Las Vegas for week-long Microsoft conference. I'm back home but following his flight on FlightAware. Why do I do that? For the same reason you watch your loved ones go through security, just to make sure they get through OK, and you don't turn to head back to the car until you can't see them anymore.

As I watched today, a man about my age and his wife took up their post near me.

"You just want to hold on to every last moment," he said to me.

"Yeah," I said, as I turned and headed for the garage. "I know."

The home in your heart

Some browsers won't display this properly but this is an essay I wrote for the day job. Find it here. Judging by the response, I'm in the minority... again.

The Field of Dreams

There are moments when all you can do is smile at your good fortune. And there are days when you feel guilty for jamming so many moments into a day.

I spent most of the day working on the RV out at the hangar I rent at Fleming Field in South St. Paul (KSGS). I spent most of the day smiling.

I've read an occasional builder log online where the builder complains that people kept stopping by the hangar to see his project, so he couldn't get anything done. I didn't get that much done today, but I'm not going to complain. As the RV continues to grow, each dream is being realized; one of them was to have a project in a hangar, and have people stop by to introduce themselves, and to sit and watch planes in their native environment.


After a day of scratching my head yesterday over the various configurations that could spring out of the very, very poor Van's instructions for the brake and wheel pants bracket on the 7A landing gear, I called up Walter Tondu's excellent site (See landing gear info here) and within a couple of minutes, I had all the answers. Walter is one of the truly good people in the RV community and although I've pulled back from the online forums, exchanging the occasional e-mail and story with builders is always inspiring. It was a pleasure meeting him at the RV BBQ at Oshkosh I put on (but am taking the year off putting on this year; maybe next year).

And so today, I headed back out to the hangar and when I turned the corner on Cessna Lane, I knew I was in for a good day. An RV-9A was sitting outside, waiting for its owner to take it for its first ride of the spring. The morning 40 degree temperatures and clouds were clearing, so I opened up the door on the hangar.

As the RV-9A came taxiing by, and the owner looked inside, then braked and shut off his engine. He and I had the same reaction about each other's plane: "An RV!!"

His name is Bruce and he moved up from Iowa, and just picked this airport out of his hat to house his plane. He was on his way down to Airlake and asked if I wanted a ride. I did, but I also needed to do some work. I gave him a tour of the project and then Vince drove up. Vince is building a QB RV-7 and he needed to look at my rollbar again to see how something works. Imagine that, people are looking at my work to see how something is done. You can't beat that with a stick.


After a half hour or so of standing out in the "street," talking RVs, I announced I had to get back to work. Bruce had to get down to Lakeville, Vince had to go wrestle a rollbar, and I had to get some bearings packed with grease.

One of the smartest moves I ever made was putting one of those EAA Chapter 1000 workbenches on casters, so I could move it out near the door and work while watching planes take off and land. What an inspiration it is to hear and see planes while working. Why didn't I do this years ago? (Answer: because of the $220 a month rent!).

I plugged in the iPod and sang along, as usual, to the steady stream of Sprinsgteen, Clapton, Norah Jones, B.B. King, ZZ Top and AC/DC. They're the soundtrack of my project.


As I started dispensing grease, I thought I heard something and looked up and "Ray" was driving by in his van on his way to the hangar. I met Ray yesterday. "Hi Bob," I heard him say over "Hard Times" by Clapton, as he waved. "Hey, Ray," I said. Hmmm, Bob and Ray. I like meeting my neighbors and this is becoming the best place in the world to spend a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

As I finished packing a bearing, I realized I'm now the old guy with a greasy rag hanging out the back of his jeans. Cool, I always wanted to be that guy; the guy with a plane in a hangar at an airport, while watching planes, and talking to people passing by.

One of Wipaire's big amphibs came roaring over. Is he on a upwind leg? Then I saw the wind had shifted slightly and a Cessna was landing opposite him. He must've gone around. Fun times at an uncontrolled field.


And so it went all afternoon, all sorts of planes to watch, plus the base-to-final turn for MSP is directly overhead. Can it get any better?

South St. Paul is a cool, little airport. It's not one of the Metropolitan Airports Commission relievers. It's a former Navy field (George Bush the elder learned to fly here) that was deeded to the city in exchange for keeping it an airport. Wipaire has a nice facility here, partly in old World War II hangars. Ballistic Recovery Systems, the Cirrus parachute people, are also on the field. They're building a big new facility nearby, too. The Commemorative Air Force is here and there's a couple of really cool turbo prop firefighting antiques. I don't know what they are (see picture) but they roar like a Mustang on floats.

We have a nice little terminal with wireless on those rare occasions when I feel like doing some work (I have to actually go to work to work, mostly).

I Packed the bearings, got the wheel put together and the tube put in the tire. Hey I've got a wheel!! Whoo hoo. I mounted the wheel and dragged the whole contraption around the hangar; then spun in circles pretending it was taking off... airborne for a second, and then landing. Man, that makes me dizzy.


I started on the left side and realized I needed some 1/4" washers. I know I've got some stuck somewhere, but Wipaire has a parts counter that's open on Sunday, so I walked over and saw Linda, the woman who loves soaring. She set me up with some washers and some Torque seal and I walked in the warm sunshine back to work.

I was having so much fun, watching airplane, singing to myself and occasionally talking to folks, that I had to call home. I felt guilty having so much fun watching airplanes, singing to myself and occasionally talking. My wife told me to get back at it. I went back at it, occasionally laughing like James Earl Jones as he entered the corn field in Field of Dreams.

By 5 I reached my self-imposed 'quittin' time,' so I picked up and swept up after deciding repacking another bearing can wait to another day.

I can't wait.

A Day in the Life of a Blogger

Today was the first test of the "new gig" at work, covering breaking news via blog. In my case, this is "News Cut" at Minnesota Public Radio. As people get more used to blogs, telling stories incrementally becomes a faster -- and in many ways a more complete -- way to get lots of information to people on their timetable, rather than waiting until reporters , umm, research, report, write and eventually -- if you're listening at just the right time -- deliver the information.

I think the two methods are most compatible in radio and I'm thrilled that Minnesota Public Radio is courageous enough to try it. Not many mainstream media folks will say to its newsroom blogger, "go do your own show and make it interesting." Traditionally in mainstream media, nothing ends up on the blog that hasn't first been on the radio (or TV or newspaper) or isn't gathered primarily for the purpose of getting on the radio (or TV or newspaper).

The MPR way allows me to actually have conversations with the audience, have them ask the questions, and then I go find the answers. That is then sprinkled around thenuts-and-bolts of a breaking story.

Believe me, I've had my share of sleepless nights wondering whether this sort of thing can work, but today convinced me of some of the possibilities. In a market like this, a reporter usually works one angle. This method makes the blogger more like a "talk show," turning from one angle to another and then another and then another (this is the old "talk show," not the current "let's set fire to a cross on somebody's lawn" version of a talk show).

So what was I able to do? Over the last 24 hours, I:

**Get an analyst at Clark University to give me first impressions

**Provide an immediate FAQ on what the merger means to people.

**Live blog the investor conference call

**Live blog -- sort of -- the news conference

**Examine the "branding" issue and why it's important for a merging company to get rid of the old logo,colors and message of the company being taken over.

**Find out about the frequent flier programs and what people should do to maximize their miles' worth.

**Provide an interview with an economist about what investors were saying about this in helping the stocks to tank.

**Put together an admittedly "turdy little piece" on repainting airplanes.

**Examine the influence of Southwest Airlines, consider the future of regional airlines, and answer a few more questions from the audience.

You know what? For one person, that's a hell of a good day's work. And it's the way a typical day used to be for us newspeople in small market radio in the old days; still, I think, the best form of radio, may it rest in peace.

Oh, and I threw a bone to the core medium, in this segment with Tom Crann on All Things Considered (Listen here in mp3 format).

Man this was a fun day!

Stirrings from the Empty Cubicle

I have no reason for posting this other than I didn't want it to go to waste, even though it should.

The bias against pilots

The captain of the ship carrying millions of gallons of oil that smacked into the Bay Bridge in San Francisco last year was able to pilot his ship even though he was taking medication for depression.

If you even whisper the word "depression," the FAA will ground you.

Who's the the bigger threat?

The only thing we have to fear ...

These are two very nice people I met over at a truck stop in Somerset, Wisconsin today. Carma and Danny Glascock of Jermyn, Texas are independent truckers and I found them today for a piece I wanted to write on what it's like to be a trucker when the price of everything is going through the roof. The piece is posted on News Cut, my day job.

Spending much of my morning finding them and talking to them is one of the reasons I like my job so much. I'd like to do more of it; stories of everyday people doing everyday things. Their stories are compelling and if I can find enough of them, maybe MPR will see fit to keep me employed.

It's funny how I've come full circle in this business because back in 1978 -- has it really been 30 years? -- my career got propelled a bit by a story wrote after spending a night at the West Stockbridge Truck Plaza in Massachusetts -- a night in which independent truckers all across the country pulled their rigs off the road and went on a nationwide strike.

I tell stories differently than a lot of newspeople; rather than talk to a bunch of different people and get quick quotes from each of them, I try to find one person (or in this case, one couple) and tell so much about them, that the big hairy issue at the heart of it is more understandable to the reader, even though I just tell a story about one person doing what one person does every day.

If I were to interview me, it'd be a story about the older American worker, and what happens when an economy heads south. These are scary, scary times for a lot of people, and for older workers in particular. I know. I'm one, and the situation is scaring me me to death.

My industry is dying and I'm feeling like the steelworkers of the '60s and '70s did. Today the New York Times/CBS poll showed 81% of those surveyed think the country is on the wrong track and more than half are concerned about losing their jobs.

It's not as if I haven't seen a recession before. But I haven't seen one before as a 54 year old in a dying business, where there are no more opportunities in the only thing I know how to do. It keeps me up at night. It keeps me thinking about it when I should be thinking about other things. And there are millions of people just like me all across this land.

We tell ourselves that worrying doesn't help, but that doesn't help.

Here's hoping the recession is a short one. Here's hoping we all come through it OK. Here's to the Glascocks of Jermyn, Texas. Safe travels to you both, and to you all.

If I had to do it all again

I'm almost 54 now. I'm a fulltime news blogger now and with the economy being what it is, and the news business being what is, who knows how long this will last. Day after day there's a steady drumbeat of bad economic news and it's quite often hard to figure out how I survive in these economic times. One might be tempted to wish I'd picked some "safer" business to get into 35 years ago.

Today, however, I'm reminded of how great the radio business has been to me. I met that guy at the top of the page through this business. He's Nick Young and we worked together at the old WHDH Radio in Boston in the '80s and then he moved down to New York City to work for the RKO Radio Network and when an editor's gig opened up there, Nick told his boss and his boss called me. He helped us settle in Westchester County and we had some good times over pizza at Nick and Deb's house. You can do a lot of good things when Nick Young is putting in a good word for you. I could've done better in the two years I was at RKO to reward Nick's confidence but what's done is done.

Nick is now the voice of the CBS World News Roundup, which today celebrated its 70th birthday. I think Nick's boss today was Nick's boss then. I haven't seen Nick since the day we said goodbye in 1986. "I'll always be your friend," I said. It's a darned small business with wonderful people and if I had to do it all again, I'd have a better idea of how good I had it every step of the way.



It must be great to carry on a show that featured such stalwarts at Richard C. Hottelet, and Robert Trout, and Dallas Townsend, and Douglas Edwards. Here's the very first broadcast in 1938.

I sure have met some wonderful people in the 35 years I've been in this industry that's been dying, they tell us, for the last 30.

When I was in college, everyone wanted to be in the news business and I saw no way to fit in. Somewhere... somehow... they all dropped by the wayside and I stayed in the business, waking up every day and hoping this wouldn't be the day the bubble burst and I was exposed as a news fraud.

Maybe tomorrow.

Battling boredom

My blogging colleague, DaveG, who runs one of the best blogs I've ever found, writes about another snowstorm that has hit his section of Ohio.

Dave's a lucky guy. Here in Minnesota, everyone is tired of winter, which greeted us with the usual -2 this morning. That's -2 with about 4 inches of snow remaining on the ground -- most of it crunchy and pointless and, down by the road, we have the usual muddy glaciers.

Would I trade it for summer? Of course. I'd even settle for spring. But I wouldn't mind a good snowstorm, either, and that's the problem with winter this year: sheer boredom.

When we lived in New England, we had winters like this all the time, and each night, it seemed, we'd see the evening news video every night with blizzards from Minnesota. Then we moved here and we have nothing but boring, every-day-pretty-much-the-same winters and we see video each night on the news with heavy snowstorms in Ohio and New England.

At least today I was able to get out to Flying Cloud Airport (KFCM) for another session with flight instructor Blaise Eisenbeil. And, like last time, my ability to fly an airplane seems to be coming back. The takeoffs and landings were much better and I made about 7 "pretty good" landings. They were divided pretty equally between soft field and short field and Blaise is pretty demanding about being precise.

I carried too much speed on final fairly consistently and I still haven't been able to 'recalibrate' my visual clues so I'm flaring a bit too early, but the pace of improvement is very encouraging and Blaise signed off my flight review.

We have met the enemy

One of these days, more pilots will understand that one reason for the decline in general aviation is general aviators.

A Berkshire comeback

When I was growing up in Central Massachusetts, I felt about the Berkshires the way most people in Massachusetts feel about the Berkshires -- they're out by California somewhere. As luck would have it, and it is luck, my third job in radio took me to the Berkshires. I ended up meeting my wife there, I wouldn't have gotten the call to Boston if I didn't work at one particular station and if Boston hadn't called, neither would New York and, then neither would the Berkshires again, and then neither would Minnesota. And so on and so on and so on.

It may be one of those places, though, that you don't want spend too much more time there because you can't go home again, much like Jeff Opdyke and his wife discovered when the Wall St. Journal columnist and his wife discovered when they moved back to Baton Rouge from the northeast several years ago. Baton Rouge. Berkshires. Same thing.

In my first trip through the Berkshires -- as a poor and soon-to-be-ditched spouse -- I lived in Pittsfield. In the winters, a newsman, Jeff Gluck, at the competing station in town and I would ski in the morning at Jiminy Peak (we got "press passes," which was probably unethical, but so what? We made about $125 a week), and then work in the afternoons. How many people can do that?

Tonight I watched a James Taylor concert, recorded last summer at the Colonial Theater in Pittsfield. I saw Star Wars II at the Colonial Theater, and then it was going to be torn down. Tonight was the first time I've followed its restoration, which -- like everything else -- has been documented on You Tube.



At the time, Pittsfield was home to General Electric, and was the largest manufacturing facility for large power transformers in the world. It employed more than 5,000 people and was the primary polluter of the Hudson River. It closed during my second foray through the Berkshires.

It's hard to make a living in the Berkshires, which perhaps is why most people make their fortune in New York and then move there. I haven't been to Pittsfield in quite a few years now. Maybe this summer.

Moving day

What am I doing with four bales of straw? Find out here.

Why I'll miss Jess Cain

Back when I was far too young to know how good I had it, I worked in Boston with some of the finest people I've ever known.

Jess Cain was one of them.

Jess, the long-time morning man at WHDH Radio, worked at a time in radio when you had to be funny and clever without being vulgar, and if you think that's easy, turn on the radio sometime and hear how many people don't know how to do it.

I've written before about how strange life's twists and turns are. When I was 13 -- 1967 -- I followed the Red Sox in their Impossible Dream year. I threw a tennis ball against the garage wall with every pitch Jim Lonborg would make. The Sox won the pennant that year, spurred on by Carl Yastrzemski.

Over the winter, we all sang the Carl Yastrzemski song, made famous by Jess Cain. (Listen to an mp3 download here). Then I grew up, went in the radio business, and somehow I ended up working with Jess Cain. He was a big star, and I was a news editor who wasn't worth a minute of his time. But he always had time to say "hello, Bobby" and occasionally we'd chat as if I actually was somebody.

Jess died this morning, and I can't believe my unbelievable good fortune for having known him.

It was 30 years ago...

Blizzards have always been a big part of my radio career, and my first one came 30 years ago this week: The Blizzard of '78.

It started overnight and I was the morning newsman at WFGL in Fitchburg, Massachusetts -- my hometown. I couldn't drive without getting stuck, so I bundled up and walked to work, about 4 miles away.

We were on the air, thank goodness and as the sun came up, news started to spread just how serious this was. It was, basically, a winter hurricane. The coast seemed to be taking the worst of it, but our city was pretty much paralyzed.

Winds of about 70 m.p.h. had driven the snow up against our three-story building. So after finishing a sportscast, I grabbed a long mic cord and -- live -- jumped out the window into a huge drift two stories below. Fun stuff.

Power outages started cropping up but, mercifully, we stayed on the air. Only one other person made it into the studio that day, so we just kept things on the air as best we could, with the help of one lonely engineer in the transmitter shack atop Alpine Hill.

I started a talk show at 9 a.m. and kept going. The other guy made a few calls for me to line up guests. I heard Steve Allen was in Worcester, so we tracked him down. I didn't actually expect to get him but we did and I had nothing to say, so the interview went something like this:

Q: Steve Allen?
A: Yes.
Q: Bob Collins up in Fitchburg
A: Steve Allen in the snow.

And that was about as good as it got. Of all the things Steve Allen did in his lifetime, I couldn't think of much other than a couple of voiceovers for some local banks he did. Embarrassing.

All of the other radio stations -- there were two other competitors -- went off the air as their power went out. But we stayed on.

I talked to my former friend, John Carpilio, who worked at WHEB in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and had driven along the Route 1A in Hampton Beach and described the destruction he saw. We talked to the mayor and the usual suspects. Cars were abandoned on all major highways; nothing was moving, and Gov. Mike Dukakis called out the National Guard. Dukakis got high marks for his performance, and deserved it.

Around 4 p.m., the lights started flickering, and then went out. Our broadcast day was done. So I walked home.

Almost six feet of snow fell and it would be more than a week before we were allowed back on the streets.

Worth reading:
Hampton, New Hampshire stories and pictures of the storm
Wikipedia

The new office

You may recall that during last year's American League Championship Series, I began the bittersweet process of painting my youngest son's former bedroom. Out with the Cleveland Indians theme.





Since then, Carolie has done a great job turning it into her office.

When friends disappear

Kurt and Ann, our neighbors across the street, are calling it quits and putting their home up for sale. They're the last of the neighbors here that we could reasonably call friends, at least enough that we'd have informal chats over a beer, without the need to have planned in advance.

I haven't realized until lately how much kids contribute to the relationships parents have with one another. They're the ones who end up introducing us to the people who will be our friends and bonds that are first formed by the common cause -- our kids.
When the kids disappear, a mechanism disappears, too and one day you wake up and realize that you don't really know anybody anymore.

Take my onetime best friends, John and Debby. John was in our wedding. We've known each other since college. When we were deciding to move from Massachusetts to Minnesota years ago, one of the reasons for not moving -- after proximity to family -- was John and Debby.

A couple of years ago, their only son was killed early one Sunday morning. I didn't find out about it for a month and after traveling back to New England to see them, we haven't talked since. Phone calls, e-mails, and letters go unanswered. No kids, no friends. They've moved on.

"There's really no reason for us to stay here," I said to Carolie last night, making more of an observation than establishing a plan. Still, I'll miss sitting around on the bench with Kurt, as much as I miss the days when you could walk around the neighborhood and stop in for a chat.

The airport life, I hope, will take up part of that vacuum. Last night, I was over at the airport and decided to stop in at the hangar of David and Mary Maib, who are building an RV-10. There was no reason, other than to just say "hello." In this case, our "kids" are actually are airplanes -- or our airplane projects -- but the benefits are the same.

I feel bad for Kurt and Ann. I still feel bad for John and Debby. But in the darkness of an early morning, shocked awake by thoughts of disappearing friendships, I admit to mostly feeling bad for me.

My Buddy LeRoux story

Buddy LeRoux is dead and as befits Stirrings these days, that brings up a story about the time I had a confrontation with him . Hmmm, I see a theme emerging here (See Norman Mailer post).

LeRoux was an interesting guy because at one time he was the trainer of the Boston Red Sox (and the Boston Celtics, too) and somehow he managed to worm his way up the corporate ladder to the point where he was an owner of the team. He was a terrible owner, although I enjoyed watching the team just about every night.

I worked at WHDH in Boston, and Carlo Lagrotteria, the president of the BoSox Club just happened to be one of the bosses at WHDH. So he would come through the newsroom every night and say, "who wants tickets?" In his hand was about a 6" stack of tickets.

I was single at the time, I had no reason to go home, so I would walk over to Fenway and plop myself down in the WHDH seats, 5 rows behind the Red Sox dugout and think about how, at a young age, I had achieved every dream I ever had. I was working in radio, in Boston (OK, so I wasn't a sportscaster; big deal!) and I was sitting in the nice seats at Fenway Park on many an evening. I loved Boston. I loved that life.

But I digress...

One day, we needed to get ahold of Buddy LeRoux for a story. I can't remember what the story was but it was probably about something utterly stupid that Buddy LeRoux had done to screw up the team.

We tried all day to get in touch with him but he wouldn't return our calls.

A friend of mine on the staff, Bruce Cornblatt (another story about him here), who would later to go on to be the producer of Later with Bob Costas (for which he won an Emmy), told me, "leave a message and use my name."

Now, I was young at the time and did not know that when someone says "use my name," what they really mean is, "call and leave a message and say I told you to call."

So instead, I called the Red Sox front office and asked for Buddy LeRoux and when the woman said, "Who's calling?", I gave the obvious answer.

"Bruce Cornblatt," I said.

The next voice I heard was Buddy LeRoux's.

"Hi, Bruce, how are ya?"

In a moment of panic, I quickly evaluated whether I could do a good Bruce Cornblatt imitation and that collided head-long with the moral upbringing my parents had provided to me and so I stammered, "well, ummm, Buddy, this isn't Bruce, really. It's Bob Collins."

God, you probably already know this about the guy who arrived up there today. But that guy swears, God. I swear to God, God, that guy swears.

The rituals of December

This is a picture of an ornament on the Christmas tree at Casa Collins, which is still up as 2007 comes to a close. Back when I was delivering newspapers every morning (1994-2004), I was always surprised by how many people had their tree by the side of the road on December 26. Perhaps they just needed to get the house cleared out to put up the Memorial Day ornaments early.

We have a fake tree now, so there's no rush to take it down, and I think it's wrong to take down a Christmas tree before New Year's anyway. In fact, I favor the second or third week in January approach.

This week, my sister, Cheryl, and my brother-in-law, Willie, were in town visiting Willie's niece over in St. Paul, so we got together on Thursday, and Patrick joined us for lunch. After that we stopped by MPR and Sean gave us a tour (I've seen it before, by the way). It's really a great experience.

Here's a picture of Patrick, Cheryl, and me that Willie took as I dropped them off in St. Paul.
A little earlier than this, I showed them the hangar I have at Fleming Field in South St. Paul. Playing with the wheel pants was the order of the day, I guess.
Cheryl and Willie left early Friday morning with a connection in Chicago, heading back to Boston. She called today to tell me their flight in Chicago was canceled and they had to wait seven hours for another flight.

I don't know of any other industry that treats its customers as poorly as the airlines and rewards its chief executives with millions and millions of dollars in bonuses for doing so.

When my RV airplane is finished, I won't miss them a bit.

A postcard Christmas

The empty nest was not empty on Christmas. Patrick didn't put his Navy papers in. He says it was because he had to clear up a wart before the Navy would have him, though I suspect he wanted to be around for Christmas. Good.

There was a gentle snowfall from a narrow band along a low from Omaha up through the upper peninsula of Michigan. It didn't move for the day so we ended up with about 6-7 inches of powdery snow, and a perfect Christmas scene out the window.

Sean once again came up with a quote that we had to write down for great family quotes. "People who are offended when I say to them, 'Merry Christmas,' can rot in hell," he said. There is irony and so many other things in that sentence that it's nearly impossible to comprehend.



I got a watch from Patrick, which was really nice of him. I'll think of him whenever I look at my watch and think, "I wonder what Patrick is doing now?" Young people: hear me now and believe me later. When your parents say you don't need to give them presents, believe them. Two of my kids walked in the door yesterday, and that gave me the only present I'd hoped for.

Go, Navy! But not so fast, OK?

"It's OK, there'll be other Christmases."

I'm not sure why I said that a few months ago when my youngest son, his mother, and I were sitting in a Navy recruiter's office, and the subject of a date to ship out came up.

Patrick has enlisted in the Navy to try to become the Navy's best medical corpsman ever. And I have no doubt he will.

It'll be good for him, I tell myself. He'll really get a good education and he'll see the world. I tell myself that, too.

There was a chance he wouldn't ship out until May, a greater chance he'd ship out in January.

Carolie told me last night he'll probably ship out -- for Chicago -- next Friday.

Rats

The Omaha difference

(This is a piece I wrote today for my new gig at work, News Cut, at Minnesota Public Radio. I post it here because it's a subject that's always interested me personally. I hope you add News Cut to your daily browsing. Bobby's gotta eat!)

(Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images)

This week's tragic attack in an Omaha mall is playing out in the news cycles across the country, pretty much as one might expect. After pausing for a moment to honor the victims, the gun debate resumed.

"When are they going to understand that easy access to guns - and the violence that accompanies access - isn't limited to inner cities? It's not just drug dealers who are shooting people," says the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial.

"The real outrage of this crime is that it happened in a 'gun free zone' where law-abiding private citizens are disarmed by mall rules and state statute," counters a press release from the Citizens Committee for the Right To Bear Arms, an angle picked up by Fox News. Nebraska, like Minnesota, is a concealed carry state. The mall in Omaha, however, posted signs prohibiting guns.

From Columbine, to Cold Lake, Minn., to Red Lake, to the campus of Virginia Tech, the post-tragedy debates have been changing. It changed with this shooting, too. With a few exceptions, this time, the mental health issue is on the back burner.

We dared not speak of it after Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold gave us Columbine, for fear that attempting to understand their minds would be synonymous with condoing their actions.

When Jason McLaughlin shot up Rocori High School in Cold Spring, Minn., in 2003, there was a hint -- though small -- of an attempt to understand the brain that masterminded it.

Hundreds of people gathered in the past few days to grieve at St. Boniface Church. A priest there, Father Cletus Connors, says he empathizes with the streses of high schoolers like McLaughlin.

"I think at that age of being a ninth grader, a person is growing so much in so many different ways, I can see how things can be disturbed," he says.

As a leader in the community, Father Connors laments that Jason McLaughlin didn't seek help from an adult. But perhaps his church will now have a better understanding of how to intervene with such a young man.

Those were our first steps toward understanding the unimaginable.

By the time Jeff Weise killed nine people -- and then himself -- on the Red Lake Reservation in 2005, the mental health issue was as much a part of the subsequent discussion as the role of guns.

University of Minnesota child psychiatrist Dr. George Realmuto offers another view. He argues some people have a genetic risk of problem behavior. Realmuto says traumatic events including bullying, violence at home or rejection increase the chance that people with certain genetic backgrounds will act out.

The focus on the need for mental health treatment reached its crescendo earlier this year, when Seung-Hui Cho committed the deadliest shooting rampage in American history. In its aftermath, the national dialogue was dominated not by guns, but by the mental health issue.

"We have difficulty recognizing mental illness in the young, often confusing serious behavioral problems with normal, temporary adolescent behavioral changes. Better recognition of mental diseases can act as a deterrent of future massacres by making an honest attempt at therapy and intervening with these vulnerable kids," the Denver Post wrote.

The evolution of the post-shootings dialogue, though, ended on Wednesday. People did see the demons in Robert Hawkins, they did intervene, he did get a diagnosis, and he did get at least some help.

In the end, it didn't matter. We're back to square one.