So long to the Pine Tree State

This morning I am no longer editor of the Franklin Journal and am a little less bound to play my cards close to my vest, though there is little point in providing a lot of unnecessary details. What happened was that I began the job in January of 2007 and, in June, the publisher who had hired me decided to head back to his native Oklahoma.

He had functioned not only as publisher (ie, CEO) but as editor of a biweekly paper and he also did much of the work on the frequent advertising supplements plus generally pitching in whenever things got busy. I was named interim publisher and gained those additional editing tasks, plus editing of a weekly paper when the editor there was fired by our publisher on his way out the door. It took about four months to replace that editor.

In the meantime, the owner decided to sell out and the company that purchased the paper did not replace the publisher position, using a group publisher instead. Nor did they hire an additional editor to handle the biweekly and the special publications. This left me with all those new tasks and no backup -- now the only other person in the organization who knew how to edit was the new editor of the weekly, who was 20 miles south of us and had her hands full with that task. Hence the 60-hour, six-day weeks that expanded to seven days often enough.

And so I am going to Lebanon, NH, to edit the Connecticut Valley Spectator, a weekly community paper. I will have more backup and less work and hope to return to a five-day, 40 hour week. My charge there will be to mentor a young staff, tighten up the editing and add more substantial news coverage, but not to wreck something that is essentially working. My new boss also owns a pair of Rhodesian ridgebacks, which was not the deciding factor but doesn't hurt. I had applied for the job back in June but they had already filled it. A few weeks ago, I got an email from the owner/publisher saying that hire had not worked out and asking if I were still interested. That was more or less my job interview: I threw a figure at him, he agreed to it and then I drove down there, we had lunch and I met the staff and we talked a little more and the deal was made. And, as a bonus, one of my favorite little people in the world lives there.

The past year and a half has involved an awful lot of work, but it has not been without joy, as I hope has been clear. Before signing out, I went through the picture files and pulled out a few favorites.

Senator Susan Collins is running for re-election and was in town two weeks ago. I caught up with her at a grade school where she took questions from the kids before going to the teachers' lounge for a more intense grilling from a high school class. This was the third time we'd met -- fourth if you count being at an event I wasn't covering at the Margaret Chase Smith Library in Skowhegan -- and we'd built up a good relationship. I think she knows we don't see eye-to-eye politically, but that she'll get accurate coverage, and we laugh a lot, too. She was quite dismayed to learn I was leaving and that was a very nice compliment.

Her Senate colleague, Olympia Snowe, only came to town once during my time here, though I also met her briefly at Skowhegan. I wish we had run into each other more often because, while I'm not easily intimidated, I was blown away by the intensity of her intellect and wit during a three-hour visit to downtown Farmington last month. Here she's looking over a map the downtown merchants had put together, with a state senator who is also a tree farmer and Maine Guide, and the head of the industrial development commission, who is laughing over something Walter has just said. Snowe strolled the shops, talking to whoever she ran into about whatever was on their minds and pulling facts and insights out of nowhere with an ease that was stunning. And in between that, she was cracking dry little jokes and laughing over other people's comments, which is the real mark of intellect -- she's smart enough that she has no issue with acknowledging someone else's wit and I don't think it would even occur to her to do so. Classy and magnetic.

Meanwhile, on the local level, this is a picture I got at the annual Blueberry Festival Parade in Wilton. The driver is Tom Saviello, a state rep with a deserved reputation for being everywhere. He gets his face in the paper often enough that it is a running joke, but it's because he will go cook at a charity barbecue or help out at a town meeting or show up for a tribute to some local hero and his involvement is genuine. In this case, he was using this golf cart to run people back to their cars or wherever they needed to be after the parade, and I happened to catch him with another state rep who is, in fact, a political rival, hence the hilarity. And you bet I ran it!

I'm going to go have a beer with Tom on Monday, and Walter, the state senator with Olympia Snowe, dropped by the office yesterday just to say goodbye. It's good to have made a mark.

But it's not all fun and games. The fellow in the red cap at the center of this picture, and the woman next to him in the white sweater, have just seen their tool shed burn to the ground. Now, "tool shed" is a relative term. It was the size of a good sized garage or a small house, and, for a dairy farmer, a tool shed doesn't just contain tools. It's full of odds and ends, in this case about three generations worth, of washers and bits of wire and odd-sized screws and nails and other things that you can't put a name on, but when you need to fix something are just what you need. You can replace the tools, but what they lost was the equivalent of a third-generation college professor's library, including clippings and magazine articles and odd letters. But he's got a smile because, well, what are you going to do? And besides, the barn was only about 25 feet away, and aside from some melted and scorched siding was undamaged. The nearest firefighters had just come back from a training and were cleaning up when the alarm went, which brought them to the farm in time to set up a defense for the barn. Meanwhile, all the other people in this picture are farmers who scrambled when they heard the scanner, got out there and got the cows out of the barn and pitched in to minimize what could have been a horrific disaster. It is a fraternity of colleagues not to be despised and that was what I covered, rather than a routine story about some guy's tool shed burning down.

Speaking of fires, here's a scary picture for those of you with small children. The night before this was taken, two things happened: The father of a four-year-old set his new sneakers, the ones with the cool blinking lights, on the kitchen table, as part of gathering the kid up for bed. The grandfather came home with some Dunkin' Donuts coffee, which he planned to microwave in the morning, and set that on the kitchen table. That was lucky, because when the shoes burst into fire, they melted the plastic coffeecups and put themselves out -- you can see some coffee around the edge of their soles. Neither the people at Wal-Mart headquarters nor the state fire marshall had ever heard of this happening, but, if the shoes had been halfway under the couch or in a closet, or if the entire kitchen had gone up in flames, who would have thought to trace the fire to them? (As it was, the house was full of some pretty nasty smoke and one family member was hospitalized briefly with respiratory problems.)

Part of the job involves recognizing an opportunity for a story in the mundane. Much has been made here, by me and in comments, of the problems I have had each winter with snow sliding off my roof. So during last winter, which was particularly snowy, when we got a routine press release from the power company asking people to shovel out their meters, it occurred to me that, yeah, that could be a hassle. So I went around with a meter reader and got this shot of her scaling a small mountain to read the meter, which is enough under the eaves that, once she got up there, she could read it. But she was awfully grateful when the people at the next house had used the snowblower to carve her a path.

And I would be remiss if I didn't include the occasional news tip, such as the fellow who emailed to tell me he had seen evidence of wiretapping on a road leading into town.

I would also draw your attention to the work of Jason Togyer, who commented in the last entry here and is a friend from r.a.c.s. Before I became too overwhelmed to be able to think of such things, I would send Jason an idea for a political cartoon and he would draw it up and send it back. These were extremely popular and had reach well after the coffee grounds and fish bones had been encased in the rest of the day's paper.

This one in particular struck a responsive chord. Our governor hatched a plan to save money by consolidating school districts, but he hatched it fully-formed and sprung it on the state with the help of a willing legislature which his party controlled. It has been a complete disaster and, in our area, turned two districts who had already been cooperating, including sharing music teachers, technical staff and a business manager, into bitter rivals who are barely speaking. I expect that the resulting plan will be voted down in November -- both school boards voted (as required by law) to submit the plan, but then voted in straw polls to oppose it by a combined margin of, IIRC, 19 to three.

Fairly early in the process, Jason did this cartoon, working from photos and physical descriptions I sent him of the school superintendants in our area. Somebody in a statewide group of some sort took it upon herself not only to copy the cartoon but to color it, frame it and send copies to the fellows depicted. I have seen it on the walls of the superintendents of the two districts mentioned above; this is the desktop of a third of the crew. I would bet money it's on display in the other offices as well, but I haven't been there to see. I would also bet money that it is not hanging in Governor Baldacci's office.

And I hope I have this much fun at the next place, from which I will report faithfully once settled.

(click to enlarge)

So long, Butch

I was on the cusp of 20 when “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” came out, and I immediately watched it twice more in the theater and then two more times when it hit the drive-in.

I was in school at the time; my roommate was night manager of a Standard station back when gas stations employed mechanics and tried to hide the more unpresentable ones on the night shift.

Thereafter, he would respond to my bursts of college-boy enthusiasm with a shake of his head and say, “You just keep thinkin’, Butch. That’s what you’re good at.”

It reflected his wish to be the deadly Sundance Kid, but I’d always wanted to be the sidekick anyway, from the time back in first grade, when I watched Davy Crockett but identified with Georgie Russell.

Butch Cassidy was the best sidekick ever, because, even though he had never actually shot anyone, and even though he didn’t know how much dynamite to use to blow a safe (sorry, Woodcock), he was still the leader of the gang and just as apt as Sundance to end up with the girl.

Paul Newman played a lot of those roles, the guy who manages to keep a twinkle in his eye no matter how badly he’s losing, the guy you’re willing to believe in, even when it’s plain he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Best of all, in real life, he kept that twinkle and that willingness to go after what he wanted -- a great marriage, a LeMans trophy, a business that gives back, a charity for kids -- and somehow, against the odds, he got it all.

Maybe in real life he was like Fast Eddie, not content to play it safe and not afraid to lose. Maybe he really believed what Fast Eddie said: “I'm the best you ever seen, Fats. I'm the best there is. And even if you beat me, I'm still the best.”

However he did it, he managed to make second place the winner’s circle.

(This piece first ran as an editor's note in the Franklin Journal, September 30)

Great! Just what I needed ...

One more bookmark to click on every morning! (Click on the image for a readable size)

A Moment of Compassion

NYTimes Columnist Judith Warner ponders the unenviable position of Sarah Palin in a column so well-reasoned and well-crafted that I won't excerpt it here. Basically, she goes beyond the hype and the tribalism of the election campaign and considers the person herself.

Granted, it's probably a hopelessly liberal position to identify with your opponent on this level, but I think there are a few belief systems that demand it. As one reader comment put it:

There she was, a moderately successful governor of a modestly populated state, a big fish in a small pond. While I don’t agree with her conservative views, to her credit she did some good things ... And then along came McCain ... To select *any* small-town mayor or rookie governor without proper vetting, or even a modicum of serious pre-acceptance coaching and discussion about what life in the national limelight is like, seems unusually cruel. I am saddened for her personally since I fear she will be permanently caricatured in the national memory, much like Dan Quayle. How miserably unfortunate, especially for a woman so young, with so many years left to live it down ... I’m coming to realize Sen. McCain’s choice says far more unflattering things about *him* than it does about the Governor. Thanks, Judith, for expressing for her the compassion that any human being deserves when they’ve gotten themselves into a mess they don’t recognize until it’s too late.

And that's only a reader. Warner herself says it better.

My heart soars like a hawk

I remember one day in, perhaps, 1979, when my boys were about 6 and 3, and the six-year-old had had enough of the three-year-old following him around and trying to horn in on his games, and he'd gotten rough with him. There were a lot of tears and I was absolutely furious, explaining to the older boy that he could absolutely not beat up a little boy, but also trying to tell him that his baby brother adored him and ...

... and I had this horrible moment of thinking that, if I had to explain that, then everything I had done was wasted, and I realized that all I really wanted out of life was for my boys to be friends, that nothing else, absolutely nothing else, mattered. That whatever I left behind on this planet was pointless without that.

A little while ago, I called my older son to check in with him about something or other. His wife answered the phone and said that she was studying for a test and that he and the girls were at Uncle Gabe's. It's about 120 miles away, and this is not, by far, the first time the boys have gotten together on a whim, to let their children play and to spend a little time together.

The little girl being held is Gabe's, the three others are Jed's daughters. The cousins are very close friends and I can only imagine what underage maternalism will erupt in December when their male cousin arrives on the scene.

And my heart soars like a hawk.

Excellent analysis

My Grandfather Speaks (again)

About a year and a half ago, I posted a letter my grandfather had written to his grandchildren. Here's another of his letters I just came across that has not lost
its relevance since 1969.

It's no secret that I was a dropout at the age of 15. At the time I believed that I was doomed to live out my days as a nonentity in the town of Ironwood, as did all of my classmates of the primary grades.

Some, or most of them, were perfectly content to do so. The possibility that I could improve my lot was dinned into my ears during the ensuing two or three years by two men – John V. Brennan, the sup't of schools, and Rolland Mothersill the science teacher, who used to talk to me periodically after working hours. They were wonderful men.

I finally came to believe that I could improve my outlook if by some means I could get into college. In a short time this became an obsession with me – I had to have a sheepskin! During this time I had no dreams of great fame or wealth, merely an improvement be it small or great. However, once I had started on this tack there could be no turning back, and this was important.

Eventually, I received the diploma, and a whole new world was opened for me. In the ensuing years I learned many things that have served me well, and I want to discuss some of them here. You may argue that my ideas are passé; that I'm not attuned to the modern problems of your age group.

Perhaps, but everything wasn't smooth sailing for us either. While we didn't have sit-ins, mass protests and race riots, neither did we have the time for them. When we weren't actually doing our school work, most of us were trying to aid our finances by doing odd jobs or sometimes regular work. There were no welfare payments or government scholarships and few of our parents could provide more than minimal help. Neither was there any TV enabling the show-offs to get cheap publicity.

Perhaps the most important guideline was that one must never quit because the going becomes too tough. Never! Never! Never! For other reasons possibly, but not because you can't take it. This becomes more important as you rise to bigger responsibilities, since the Home Office immediately loses interest in a man who even talks of being discouraged.

Then, too, I learned that some of my best efforts would go unrecognized, or apparently so. I recall as a third grader reading in The American Word Book that "Virtue is its own reward." I couldn't grasp its meaning then but I do now – and it's so very true. When a man can get pleasure out of doing a good job, whether the world recognizes it or not, he has arrived. He will then do it even though he expects to be ignored.

Don't look for cash on the barrelhead in payment for every good deed. Deferred payments often bear high interest rates. Belated recognition is much sweeter and more effective than that given instantly. I often think that there could have been a 10th Beatitude saying "Blessed be they who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed." At first glance it seems flippant, but think it over.

Similarly, I have learned that modesty as to your accomplishments pays off in the end. While you may miss recognition for some of your better efforts, you may well be given credit where you don't really deserve it, and in this case your protests merely serve to strengthen the idea. I have been in gatherings of "big shots" where one after another claimed credit for an idea or an accomplishment, and none of them were very convincing. The very fact that they considered it necessary to talk about it merely served to highlight their own doubts as to whether they were getting the idea across.

I know a superintendent of a mine who made it a point to disclaim authorship for any new or novel way of doing the various underground jobs. It usually got to the point where the visitor he was escorting through the mine decided that he was actually lying and that he was involved in most of them. I've used this system on occasion, too. In a word, it pays to forget about "I" and use "We" or "They."

To proceed: I've learned that when I'm faced with a distasteful job, I must do it wholeheartedly. For example, during the 30's when there was no federal or state aid for the unemployed it became necessary for local citizens to raise money and to administer it among the needy. Being primarily engineer-oriented I detested such work, but as manager of the only industry in Cornwall I could not pass this responsibility to others. They unanimously agreed that I was "it."

After approaching the problem without enthusiasm for a while, I realized that it wouldn't go away and that I had better tie into it. In a little while I found that I was doing a better job and that I enjoyed it. When one considers that I was in the forefront on the fundraising for all of Lebanon County, and the sole disbursing agent of funds throughout the year at Cornwall, this was no small task, but it's no secret that the job was well done. Incidentally, during the fifteen years (more or less) that I was in this activity, I never received any money either for work done or for traveling or other expenses, and furthermore although I never mentioned this fact everyone knew it.

Along the way I have been faced with some "No-Nos," such as – Do not rely on favoritism to advance you in your career. The only "pull" that has any value is that which you have created by your own efforts. If you depend on the favor of someone in the hierarchy of your organization, your future is only as secure as his. Should he drop out of the act, you most certainly will end up in the doghouse or out in the cold. Furthermore, you will be thinking of this constantly and will worry about the possibility. I've seen it happen more than once, and to people in high places.

I recall an incident that occurred while I was winning the war in South Carolina in early 1918. A brother shavetail suggested one day that I become a Mason. In answer to my query of why, he said, "When you get out of this army you will undoubtedly go to work on some job where it will be necessary to call on important people, either to sell something or to get them to agree to some proposal, and when you can reach up to your lapel and expose a Masonic pin the man across the desk will be more likely to cooperate."

"But," I replied, "I intend to be the man on the other side of the desk."

Here's another gripe of mine: -- Never admit to anyone, especially yourself, that 'you did the best you could.' In the first place it probably isn't true, and secondly you are saying that your best is not good enough, you are admitting defeat. Many people feel that such a remark justifies them before the world. I claim that it merely proclaims incompetence.

Before ending this exercise I'd like to go on record with one more admonition: -- Avoid selfishness like you would avoid poison. You have all heard that the love of money is the root of all evil. I would substitute the word "selfishness" for "love of money." You haven't seen it in your home, thank heaven, but you will see it as you go out into the world. I could base my reasoning in this matter on religious teachings, but I maintain that it just doesn't pay.

Finally, and this word may have been too long in coming, I'd like to give you my idea of what makes a successful man. If he excels in his chosen field, whatever that may be, while leading a life marked by honesty, integrity, and the respect of his fellow man, he is a success. I can give you no better examples than your father and mother, which brings us back to from whence we started.

Sincerely,
Grandpa

***************

Arthur F. Peterson (1893-1978) was the son of Danish immigrants on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. After dropping out of school to help support his family by working in the mines, he was persuaded to return and earned a scholarship to study metallurgical engineering at the University of Wisconsin. I have often described his career as one that began by his carrying a lunchpail down into the mines and ended by his carrying a briefcase up into the executive towers. The picture was taken at my wedding in 1971.

(CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO CLIP)

Local boy does good

(Just realized the clip starts by itself -- very annoying. Worth posting, but not worth embedding, since it would start up with every visit until it rotated off the blog into the archives. But do click on the link above.)

I'm fast to mock the competition when they do something foolish. The other night, I spoke to a class at the University of Maine about media and said that TV news people tend to be well-spoken, telegenic and vacuous. But I went out of my way to compliment Rob Caldwell's interview with John McCain, which I almost didn't watch because I assumed it would be a collection of star-struck fluffball questions.

Granted, he didn't get any scoops. But he didn't let McCain walk away from his questions and this is a good interview. Very good.

Meanwhile, what alerted me to the availability of this clip was a factcheck.org piece on the energy issue and the absurdity of the Palin/McCain claim that Alaska produces 20 percent of America's energy supply. It's not close. It's not even sensible. As Obama has said, "Do they think you're stupid?" Evidently they do.

Executive Action

A story in the Wall Street Journal, that bastion of the liberal Democrat-controlled media, describes how, under the administration of Mayor Sarah Palin, the town of Wasilla managed to bring in this ambitious sports complex with an additional $1.3 million in costs and legal penalties, due to the fact that they began construction before they had clear title to the land.

There was a court case over ownership of the land, and, after the town won, Palin's administration proceeded to clear land and build roads, despite a pending appeal. Which they subsequently lost, which triggered more legal hilarity over their impetuous improvements to the land.

There was a happy ending, however. The town took the land by eminent domain, proving that the government can muscle its way to whatever it wants, over the property rights of the individual. Perhaps the McCain/Palin campaign could make use of that in its appeal to the conservative base.

Anyway, I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities. Like keeping your town out of foolish, costly litigation.

Separated at birth

Only one of these couples is real, of course. The other consists of an underage girl and a hockey player and is entirely fictional. Can you match them up? (For those without access to Canadian TV, the phrase "He Shoots, He Scores" is involved. )

Kids and Dogs
(Well, kid and dogs)

I finally had the chance to get out of town for more than a few hours this weekend. The big deal was that I got to see my mother, who is eight hours away and so really can't be seen on one of my usual down-and-back one day dashes. But the pictures there were taken on film and I don't have them, so here are the pictures at each end of the trip.

I started by driving four hours to Norwich, Vt, which is basically White River Junction for those who know the area. Here's my youngest granddaughter, Johanna, with Destry and Ziwa. Her own dog, Scout, was somewhere in the area, but of course Grandpa's dogs were the novelty.

Dogs, however, are not as exciting as homemade ice cream, and when Mommy says you can lick the bowl, well, you can lick the bowl.

The spoon was primarily a prop, but it was good for getting into the corners where the face couldn't reach.
As you can see, the face reached pretty well, however.
Sunday, I drove down to Mom's in Mount Vernon, NY, about four hours from Gabe and Sarah's and had a nice visit with her, the first time we'd seen each other since I took this job, nearly two years ago. Then I drove back up another four hours to York Harbor, Maine, where my stepdaughter, Paige, lives with her husband Gene and their dogs.

Other people's dogs have pretty much stayed out of these pictures somehow. In this case, they weren't in the pictures because when I got up at 6:45 and took my two out in the back yard to feed them, I realized we were locked out of the house. Since we had intended to take a walk anyway, I decided we might as well just go ahead and then rouse the house when we returned if it hadn't roused itself by then. (Which it had)
The sun came up shortly after we reached the beach.
A little fill flash and you can see the doggy faces. They're only allowed on the beach until 8 a.m. during the tourist season, but that's plenty late enough. And, of course, low tide not only gives you the best running surface, but the best things to look at and smell. I don't think they were impressed at all by what was going on behind them, but I thought it was rather nice.

I also thought getting to see that much family was rather nice. Had good visits all three places and got home at noon and back to the office about 2 p.m. Monday so I could do a little editing and get things squared away to hit the ground running Tuesday morning -- the beginning of a short week that has just as much work as is contained in a regular one.

But a good start for such a week.

I think this is probably real. Nobody would just make up stuff about something as important as the Presidential Election.

Remember when you could concentrate?

I took this picture recently to illustrate a story about a mushroom lecture at Saddleback Mountain, a ski area in Rangeley. That's gravel -- the mushrooms are about half an inch tall. As I looked at it, I thought about the comic strip Cul de Sac, not because there's anything about mushrooms in that strip but because it provides a window on childhood that I really haven't seen before, and the specific connection is that, when I was about six or seven, I would have hunkered down and looked at this tiny forest of mushrooms and really examined it and considered its colors and textures. I'd have had, as a matter of routine, the kind of viewpoint that this photograph artificially provides.

Calvin and Hobbes was childhood as we remember it. Cul de Sac is childhood as we don't remember it, but as we do as soon as we're reminded. It's a strange little world in which we don't quite know how to rank the things we've noticed, so we just notice them all in a big pile from which we haphazardly select random things to worry about, or to believe, or to laugh about or to obsess over.

This relatively new strip is brilliant work by Richard Thompson, who also keeps an extremely thoughtful blog about things he's done and what he thinks of them now. The piece on Ingres is what reminded me to post this. I've just added his blog to the links on the rail to the right because it's certainly worth visiting and I suspect you'll end up bookmarking it. (Though you're welcome to come here regularly and use the link provided!)

Meanwhile, here are a couple of Cul de Sacs that cracked me up. Click to get a readable version.

I love when the competition does stuff like this

Think how dull it would have been if he had just written [GET QUOTE] and then forgot to do it? It's not just the humor, it's the repercussions down the road. I've gotten quotes from this architect in the past and I probably will still be able to get quotes from him in the future, too. (Click on image to read it)

The view from a Mile High

Ed Stein of the Rocky Mountain News has a cartoon blog that should be interesting over the next few days as Denver hosts the Democratic Convention. As always, click on the pic to get a readable size.

The Rocky is also featuring animated editorial cartoons from Drew Litton which you can see here. To be honest, I've seen very few animated editorial cartoons that wouldn't have been improved if the effort had gone into a little more thought instead of a little bit of motion, but chacun a son gout.

A lesson on dialogue

Not goin' anywhere for a while?

I hope so, because these are going to take a little time out of your life.

I was looking for information on this classic Snickers commercial and had to sort through a large number of links to the video before I finally found out when it aired (1996) and who came up with it (Gerry Graf). Which page includes a video portfolio of his more recent work.

If you click on that portfolio link, I cannot be responsible for your being late to work. Or, if it's late at night, for your waking up the family.

(I think Cardinal O'Fiaich would rather have this picture from the Flax Trust
than a picture of himself. Fair enough.)

He did not fear to fight, but he never failed to love.

A conversation with a friend reminded me of something from both my professional and personal life.

From the Colorado Springs Sun, February 15, 1983:

The man from Crossmaglen

His enemies refer to him as "The IRA man from Crossmaglen," a nickname which one suspects hurts more than his casual attitude indicates.

He is a man from Crossmaglen, the little village in South Armagh, near the border with the Republic of Ireland, which is considered the capital of the bandit country. And he, like most of the people in that part of the North of Ireland, would like to see Ireland united.

But when Thomas O'Fiaich goes off to his job, he wears a little red hat, a sash around his waist and a gold chain of office around his neck, for Thomas O'Fiaich is Cardinal of Armagh, a prince of the Church and one of the most powerful churchmen in all Ireland.

He is an Irishman who loves his nation and a Christian who lives a life of peace. It cannot be an easy combination.

Thomas Cardinal O'Fiaich was in Denver recently, on a fund-raising tour for the new University of Ulster in Coleraine, a non-denominational college dedicated to collecting and preserving the ancient manuscripts of Ireland. Even this apparently non-political mission, however, requires the packing of the entire Irish burden.

For many Irish-Americans, it comes as a shock to learn that there are Methodists, Presbyterians and Anglicans who read the Irish language and study Ireland's ancient literature. The reason for their surprise is that they assume, as many assume, that Ireland is torn between a Catholic Irish population and a Protestant population which is not truly Irish.

O'Fiaich is concerned about what he calls the misinformation which flows so freely between the United States and Ireland, particularly since so much of it is deliberately inspired by what he referred to in a Denver speech as "A country which shall remain nameless." The line got a laugh that night, but in an earlier interview he was quite frank about Britain's manipulation of the media.

"I don't think there's any other country in Western Europe where the church leaders meet so regularly as in Ireland," he says. "Yet despite all that, you never hear about (interfaith cooperation) in the United States. You only hear that Catholics and Protestants are killing each other, that they're at each others throats. Whereas, side by side with the killings that go on on the part of a small number, the vast majority are trying to build up links of fellowship and friendship, and I think it's worth emphasizing, but it's very, very rare that it's emphasized at all."

According to O'Fiaich, the British government has a vested interest in portraying the Irish in the Six Counties as violent, genocidal and somewhat psychopathic in order to justify its continued presence there.

There is also the standard problem for those in the public eye that bombings make more interesting reading than the good news.

"I think nearly all the news that comes out of Northern Ireland is simply bad news, that one hears about the murders and the killings, the kidnappings, even of racehorses, the intimidation, but you never hear at all about all the positive things that have been done to bring the churches together and to bring the people of different denominations together."

He cites as evidence a series of regular interdenominational prayer services, including priests and ministers from the various churches, which attract "a considerable number of people" and help bring the clergy together.

O'Fiaich is planning to join with the Primate of the Church of Ireland in leading an ecumenical pilgrimage which would encompass London, center of the Anglican Church (of which the Church of Ireland is a part), Geneva, birthplace of John Calvin and end up in Rome.

In this way, the pilgrims of different faiths may come to appreciate the deep feelings each of them has for his own religious traditions and to learn to respect and even share those feelings.

Also on the drawing board is an Irish ashram of sorts, an interdenominational Christian community which will serve as a retreat center and as an example of ecumenical unity.

The religious community in the Six Counties is also involved in more immediate, pressing needs. O'Fiaich is confident that the church can continue to be relevant despite the pressures of life in the ghettoes.

"There has been a big falling off of church-going in the ghetto areas in the past 20 years," he admits, acknowledging with a laugh that the problem is not confined to ghettoes or Ireland. "I think that would have come about without the Troubles, because it has affected Dublin as well as Belfast."

Still, he does not intend to change his preaching to avoid offending. "I suppose there'd be the odd person who would say 'Ach, Father's always going on about violence,' but then, I've always tried to condemn violence from both sides."

Preaching does not fill bellies, however, and with 50 percent of the men in West Belfast unemployed, the churches are aware of a need to provide some practical assistance for the body as well.

"In West Belfast, for instance, a priest there has set up a kind of cooperative movement. They've taken over a disused linen factory, so they call it the Flax Trust and they've succeeded in getting some bank loans, but most of their funding is from two countries, Germany and the United States. I've written letters of introduction to several American cardinals and bishops (for travelling fund raisers). They now have a considerable number of young people employed in various projects; they have one group apprenticed as engineers who were just taken off the streets. Otherwise, these young lads of 18 and 19 would have been cannon fodder for the IRA, ready made recruits for them "

Finally, there is the challenge of preaching to those whose bellies are full, the middleclass Irish whose natural clannishness makes for an "I'm all right, Jack" attitude.

"One thing that strikes me is that the Catholics of the South of Ire­land, the southern part of my own diocese even, they want to distance themselves from the violence of the North. They're inclined to say 'God, keep it up there, as long as it stays away from us, we're OK.' There's a certain attitude that I find a little bit unChristian in certain areas of the South.

"It's a terrible situation; the sadness and suffering that so many families in the North — Protestant and Catholic alike — have come through in recent years, and I mean, it's not a thousand miles away, it's not in Afghanistan or Iran or Iraq. We shouldn't distance ourselves from any suffering, but at least it should be easier to distance ourselves from those than from
something in Ireland. Yet they do try, even from something which I think Christian charity demands that we try to be helpful with."

The cardinal from Crossmaglen speaks as a man who has not distanced himself from his cultural roots, his religious background or his fellow human beings in a difficult, complex corner of the world.

-----------------

Then, on May 17, 1990, I wrote this:


Sometimes you can't get an interview out of your mind. Seven years ago, I saw how the light of God shines on the face of a man of God.

Cardinal Tomas O'Fiaich was Primate of Ireland, the religious leader of Catholics on both sides of the border, who served from a seat in the Northern Irish city of Armagh.

But Tomas O'Fiaich was a man of God, not because he wore a little red cap and stood up in the front of a church, but because he walked through a landscape of hatred, despair and misery, and, where he walked, there was love, hope, and cheer.

I was, at the time, a freelance writer, a sometime lecturer on Ireland and lead singer in an Irish ballad group. O'Fiaich came to Denver as part of a fundraising tour for the University of Ulster and, when my band was invited to play at the benefit, I also sold the Colorado Springs Sun on letting me interview the cardinal.

"He is an Irishman who loves his nation and a Christian who lives a life of peace," I wrote. "It cannot be an easy combination."

There are those Christians who shrink from confrontation, who abhor violence and contention regardless of cause, who turn the other cheek as submissively as a dog presents its belly in surrender.

Then there are those who claim Christianity, but abandon pacifism entirely in the face of injustice, those who support violence because it is opposing evil, and they find righteousness in that fight.

There are two kinds of cowards: Some who are afraid to fight, and others who are afraid not to. Tomas O'Fiaich was no coward.

He was a man of peace, a man of God, and he would not be dragged into violence. But neither would he accept the injustice around him. He did not set his face against his nation, and he did not set his heart against those who lashed out in their despair and their poverty and the bleakness of their empty lives.

He did not fear to fight, but he never failed to love.

He embodied, in its purest form, St. Paul's most difficult admonition: He hated the sin, but loved the sinner. And he did not for a moment hesitate to preach his vision, in any place, to any audience: "I suppose there'd be the odd person who would say, 'Ach, Father's always going on about violence,' but, then, I've always tried to condemn violence from both sides," he told me.

He did not just condemn violence, however. He condemned a lazy press that glutted itself on easy stories of violence while ignoring the harder reporting.

"I don't think there's any other country in Western Europe where the church leaders meet so regularly as in Ireland," he said. "Yet, despite all that, you never hear about (interfaith cooperation) in the United States. You only hear that the Catholics and the Protestants are killing each other, that they're at each other's throats, whereas, side-by-side with the killings that go on on the part of a small number, the vast majority are trying to build up links of fellowship and friendship."

He condemned injustice. He spoke of years of discrimination, and of Catholics hired as laborers to fill quotas while the skilled jobs still went to Protestants, and of factories built out on the far edges of the cities, too far for inner-city residents to commute.

And he spoke, with hope, of job training centers, run by private charities, that tried to bring skills and opportunities to people who lived in the most grinding of multi-generational unemployment, with no hope and with no one to turn to except these small, underfunded centers, or to the paramilitaries of both sides who offered them another way to escape their tedious obscurity.

And he condemned those in Ireland who could not hear the cries, who could not see, who would not care. "It's not a thousand miles away, it's not Afghanistan or Iran or Iraq," he insisted. "We shouldn't distance ourselves from any suffering, but, at least, it should be easier to distance ourselves from those than from something in Ireland. Yet they do try, even from something which I think Christian charity demands that we try to be helpful with."

I walked into the interview expecting to learn more about Ireland. Instead, I learned, as if for the first time, about faith, hope and love, and about how the hard realities of the world can be met with the heart.

May 8, Tomas O'Fiaich died of cardiac arrest. "Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart," Yeats wrote of Ireland, but years of sacrifice and sorrow never made a stone of Tomas O'Fiaich's heart.

It failed only as an organ of the body, never as an organ of the soul.

And now for something completely different ...

A good journalist knows when to put down the dust mop and grab the camera.

Was that "Knol" or "Null"?

So Google has this new thing called "Knol" that is going to replace "Wikipedia" by being more complex. Instead of people just dropping in and changing entries, now they'll have to sign their names and, if they want to change things, as I understand it, they'll have to consult with the original writer.

Now, I only change things for a living, but this sounds like ... well, never mind. Let's look up some things and see how they do, because it's not fair to trash a concept without giving it a chance.

So ... how about Jimmy Stewart?

Search Results:

No results found for Jimmy Stewart

Okay. Let's look up "Thirty Years War."

Search Results:

No results found for Thirty Years War

That's okay. Um ... Mona Lisa ...

Search Results:

No results found for Mona Lisa

How about "Missouri"?

Search Results:

No results found for Missouri

Search Results:

No results found for Mickey Mouse

Search Results:

No results found for Julius Caesar

Search Results:

No results found for penguin

Search Results:

No results found for America

Search Results:

Results 1-3 of about 3 for dog

• Dog training

  bySierra Senyak

  

  Published version 2. Last Edited on Fri Mar 21 17:54:42 PDT 2008
• The Dog Trainers' Trainer

  byLeslie Smith

  

  Published version 3. Last Edited on Mon Mar 17 11:40:48 PDT 2008
• Dog Genetics

  

  byChristian Ashlock

  

  Published version 9. Last Edited on Fri Feb 15 11:25:25 PST 2008

Finally! Let's look at "Dog Training" by Sierra Senyak. Here it is:

***********************************

No dog is born with good manners. Pooping on the carpet, leaping enthusiastically onto guests, pulling so hard he practically yanks your arm out of the socket when on walks -- that's all perfectly acceptable in the canine world. It's up to you to teach your dog to behave the way we humans want him to. Not training your dog and expecting him to be pleasant to live with is like never sending your child to school and expecting him to ace the SATs.

As well as making life with your dog more enjoyable, training is the best gift you can ever give your pup; friendly, housetrained, well-behaved dogs are less likely to be surrendered to shelters or put down. Plus, training is a great way to bond with your dog or puppy.

Despite the adage about old dogs and new tricks, there are no age limits to teaching dogs: puppies as young as three weeks old can learn, as can adult dogs of any age. And whether you've got a brand-new pup or a senior dog, the first step is the same: learn how to be a good teacher.

See all at DogTime.com.

****************************************************

The verbiage here is cut-and-pasted from Dogtime.com, which is a commercial site that wants you to basically buy in. So this Knol entry is essentially an ad.

Let's go the next one:

Um ... it's another director to Dogtime.com

Okay, let's try the third entry:

****************************************************

Today, class, I will be lecturing on dog genetics. As you may know, our canine friends are descended from wolves. How did wolves turn in to dogs? Humans messed with their DNA by selective breeding. Want to create a dog with a long tail? Only let long tail wolves mate.

Dogs are wolf mutants.

What can we learn from this? The more your dog looks like a wolf, the closer your dog is to nature. The wimpier your dog is, the more your dog is a man-made freak. I know this is harsh, but it is the truth.

You homework assignment is to use the visual scale below to rank your dog’s wolf-freak level.

****************************************************
(I didn't stop ... that was the entire entry)

Oh, yes, this is much better than Wikipedia. Now, granted, Wikipedia has entries for Jimmy Stewart, Thirty Years War, Mona Lisa, Missouri, Mickey Mouse, Julius Caesar, penguin, and America, but when you ask about dogs, what do you get?

Well, you get an article about dogs, and you get references to

• Bark (dog)
• Dog king – Scandinavian tradition
• Dog licence
• Dog odor
• Dog paddle – basic swimming stroke
• Dog park
• Fear of dogs
• List of dog breeds
• List of dogs
• List of fictional dogs
• List of most popular dog breeds
• Subspecies of Canis lupus
• Wolf-dog hybrid

But nothing about Dogtime.com

You call that a reference work? Feh.

The people of old Mississippi should all hang their heads in shame!
I can't understand how their minds work --
What's the matter -- Don't they watch Les Crane?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal.

-- Phil Ochs ..................

(That's Crane on the right, interviewing Mario Savio
of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement)

I remember the Les Crane Show and was surprised to read that it had such a short run. I suppose it hit at the right moment -- I was still at home (so I watched TV) and I was at an age where I stayed up late. Apparently, I wasn't in the demographic he needed.

And today I'm in the wise-ass demographic that will come away from this obituary pondering a man who divorced Tina Louise and married a woman named Ginger.

In any case, there was a time when the media was truly liberal. Les Crane, Laugh-in, the Smothers Brothers, David Susskind and the like were all over the tube. Very good for the New Yorker crowd, perhaps not so good for selling Shake-and-Bake.

Paris Mis-Match