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.

Patrick's blog

I haven't written anything... yet... about son, Patrick, joining the Navy. But I will. In the meantime, he's entered the blogger world. You can find his blog here.

My environmental disaster

From time to time, I come to the conclusion that I'm mostly part of a problem, than part of a solution.

Here's a Flash piece I put together that explains what I mean. If you're using Firefox as a browser, you may not see this (they have some weird security rule for stuff that's on another sever. If you're a geek, and you know how to change that, look at the code and tell me what I need to do). Otherwise, use Internet Explorer.


Update: They bagged the event today, after just one day. I did a story an interview here if you're... well... unbelievably bored.

Norman Mailer? **** Norman Mailer!

To those who know me, it comes as no surprise that I've never read a book by Norman Mailer. First, I don't read many books. I have to be moving all the time. And, second, even if I did read books, I probably wouldn't read books by people who write books that people who like to name-drop read. I feel the same way about Woody Allen movies. And, up until I started working in Public Radio, I thought the same thing about National Public Radio.

In other words, I'm pretty much a putz.

But I'm a putz who unwittingly told Norman Mailer off face-to-face, once.

It happened like this:

Back in 1994, the world headquarters of Minnesota Public Radio was being rebuilt, so they moved us to a dumpy old radio building in St. Paul that once had obviously housed a dumpy old radio station (I believe it now houses the crew from A Prairie Home Companion, and that's a whole 'nother story).

The "newsroom" -- and the studios -- were in the basement and there were two sets of stairs leading to the same point just outside the newsroom/basement. The stairs were at 90 degrees to each other.

One day, Norman Mailer was upstairs, (near one set of stairs), to be interviewed for, God knows what... just so someone could say they interviewed Norman Mailer, I guess. He was waiting to be led downstairs to the studio.

But also upstairs, near the other stairs, was Ron Popeil; he of the Pocket Fisherman fame, although at that time I think he was pushing his spray paint for bald-headed men. He was the maker of all that cheap junk on TV. You know, "But wait! There's more!"

Being a putz, I had to meet Ron Popeil. And so I started to dart out of the newsroom saying, "I have to meet Ron Popeil."

"Norman Mailer's upstairs too," my colleague said.

"Norman Mailer?" I said just as I left the newsroom and entered the stairwell, "**** Norman Mailer!"

I didn't know it at the time but Norman Mailer was walking down the stairs and just as I said, "*** Norman Mailer!" he turned the corner, and was now about 3 inches from my face.

I didn't stay around -- Ron Popeil was upstairs, you know -- but I understand he registered his complaint with the management.

And so I've outlived yet another person in the newsroom who thought I was a jerk.

Dinner and an earthquake

We had a very nice anniversary dinner this evening at McCormick and Kuleto's Restaurant. Our menus said "Happy 25th Anniversary" on them, we got a lovely cake and the company was exquisite, of course.



When we were walking back to the hotel, a T-shirt booth saleswoman said, "did you feel the earthquake?" And, of course, we didn't. Rats. I feel about earthquakes the way I feel about tornados, which I've also never experienced. Actually, the day my oldest son was born, we did get a 5.3 earthquake in White Plains, NY.

Alas, we apparently were the only people in the region not to feel the earthquake, for when we got back to the room, the TV was full of anchorpeople talking to people who reported it created a "rolling feeling," which I presume is the earthquake version of "it sounded like a train," for tornados.

It was, according to the TV, a 5.6 quake -- not real big -- centered down around San Jose.

Anyway, back at the room we recreated the original wedding toast, which we do every year, although we didn't bring our special crystal glasses out here.




Oh, and I found this picture of a tough Carolie on "the rock," from earlier today.




You don't want to mess with that.

Happy anniversary and all that

Today completed the tourist portion of our trip, on this the 25th anniversary. So we celebrated "the ball and chain" (as Carolie said) by traveling over to Alcatraz for the morning.

It was sightly drizzly and cold, which is appropriate weather for the trip, I think. I was interested in some of the history, Carolie was particularly interested in the takeover on behalf of Native Americans in the early '70s, but I think we both were most interested in some of the flowers and greenery around the island, all of which - I guess - had to be brought from somewhere else. We also spotted a few hummingbirds about.

And, of course, took dorky pictures...



... which are tough to screw up with such a pretty city for a background...



Carolie near the water tower...



And the obligatory shot from inside...



We spent about three hours over there and then walked up to North Beach for lunch at an Italian Restaurant and then back to the hotel to sleep for a few hours before going out -- somewhere around here -- for our anniversary dinner.

This afternoon, I checked the mail from work and see we've hired the online editor at the St. Paul Pioneer Press (will the last person in the newspaper business please turn out the lights?) to replace me, so that I can go off and write online stories and play online host and that sort of thing. I haven't yet got it fully figured out in my mind how it's going to work or how it can possibly be successful but I'll come up with something.

I probably shouldn't have checked the mail until vacation was over because it's one more thing to think about.

Still, tough to exhale around Casa Collins.

Sigh

It was hard getting "in" to the vacation today as there was a family crisis back in Minnesota and we were pretty powerless to do much about it. We were on the way to Muir Woods to see the redwoods when the first text messages started arriving. Within a few minutes, though we were outside of cellphone range.

So here's the big trees.



We found this deer nibbling on something. He didn't seem to mind us much.



It's pretty hard, with a cheesy camera like mine, to get a good picture. There isn't enough light to get a good picture without a flash, and the trees are too big, so a flash just makes a dark picture. I gussied this one up a bit.



Carolie hid in this one, but I found her.



We stopped in Sausalito on the way back and walked around -- a bit in a daze, frankly -- for a half hour...



The weather is foggy and cool. We made our back into San Francisco and headed for Haight-Ashbury. We made contact with #2 son, who had told us earlier in the day that a speeding ticket that wouldn't go away was likely going to result in his losing his paramedic job. Very sad.

By the time we made contact again, he had apparently decided to join the Army Navy , something Carolie says he's been thinking about anyway. I presume this is an article for another day; I've written in the past about my ability to worry. I stay up late and look out a window into the night and think about my kids often. I've done a bad of job of letting go. There's a war on, I've heard, and this one isn't going to be easy. I don't know how people do it. I can't just shrug my shoulders and say "oh, well."

So I sigh instead.

We pressed on walking up a huge hill. Before I got to the top, I had to stop. I wasn't sure if I was having a heart attack or a panic attack just thinking about things. We stopped in a cafe but I couldn't bring myself to eat. You know how people say "I feel like I've been kicked in the stomach"? Now I know what they mean.

Anyway, back on the wharf later in the day, bought some popcorn and made a friend.



Within a few minutes I was like freakin' Tippi Hedren



Tomorrow morning, we're going over to Alcatraz. And then at some point we're going to try to figure out the mass transit system to get to Ocean Beach.

Sigh.