The news as seen through the keyhole of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle
I AM AWAITING NEWS ABOUT THE EXPLOSION in downtown Bozeman. I can see the thick column of smoke rising straight up over the empty day care center across the street from my house announcing that something has happened. But I cannot find out what because the newspaper has already been delivered.
Jean gets a closeup from the "Blue" standing area
NOW THAT HE’S GONE, I suppose we can begin reflecting on the eight years during which George W. Bush was our President … of the United States … of America. It really happened, right? All of those images flash by at warp speed. Mission Accomplished. Clearing brush down on the ranch in Crawford, Texas. As I review these things I can’t help but ask myself a very simple question: WHY?
Continue reading “Questions for which there will be no answers” »
JUNIOR COLLEGE STUDENTS live a half life. Accelerating into two years the matriculation that takes four for bachelors candidates. Maybe that goes for experiencing life as well. Pack a lot in because in May 1971 it’s all over – that is if graduation is held amidst calls for strike, strike, strike.
Being broadcast journalism students we feel this obligation to move beyond keeping students informed about the length of the line at the Food Circus. We have available to us what looks like a radio studio for a small radio station. One that is seriously overstaffed. On the evening of the so-called Harvard Riots, the room with a single ancient teletype machine, nearly a dozen beat-up manual typewriters and a bunch of scratched up wooden desks that might have been props in a production of The Front Page, the regulars are there in force. Holding their breaths each time the phone rings and it is one of our two reporters on the scene in Harvard Square.
The Harvard Square riot follows a peaceful "Moratorium," Oct. 24, 1969
WE DECIDE FOR WHATEVER REASON that we wish to aid in the propagation of the species. Then with ease or following great trials and tribulations we are with child. That happy day arrives – probably at 2:30 AM – and we become parents. And on that day when the first of our brood makes her debut our lives are changed. Eventually we don’t remember the nature and form of our existence BC (before children). We adapt, not easily. The shock wears off. It becomes clear to us there is no return policy.
I HAVE A 20-YEAR BET going with my friend Sandy from way back in the St. Joseph Regional Medical Center days. We each bet that we will out-earn each other following our respective life/career philosophy.
Sandy wins. Continue reading “Sandy wins” »
DO YOU HAVE HOME MAINTENANCE NIGHTMARES? I do. I have them at night. When I’m sleeping. Honest to goodness nightmares regarding things that, fortunately, are not nightmares in real life. Dreams tend to disappear (poof!) when you wake up the next morning so I have to write quickly before my faint memories go away. In real life I am recalling that yesterday I was leaning out a window on my stair landing grabbing at a few vines that are on their way toward eating my roof. My dream surrounds the notion of this same window leaking air around the frame. The window is only a few years old and so it is in my dream. Upon further inspection I find that the window is leaning out at a crazy angle toward my neighbors. Daylight and wind pouring in all around it. Continue reading “Home maintenance nightmares” »
Fun and games as we wait for Noah to give us the thumbs up
WE PEER THROUGH THE STROBE LIGHT flashes that all but obliterate the road and terrain ahead of us. High beam. Low beam. High beam. Family including dog huddled in their seats. Soaking wet. Not shivering. It is summer. Defroster on high. Windshield wipers crossing furiously to wipe away the waterfall that is crashing onto our station wagon. Water on the road! Too late, we are in it. Parting it like Charleton Heston holding up his staff (or is that a rifle?). Is there pavement beneath this rippling highway?
The second time through the water we see there is more out ahead and turn off into a tiny town asleep to what is yet to come. A fully equipped fire station. Brightly lit. Engines at the ready. Boots just beneath the pole. Radio crackling in the next room. Firefighters asleep waiting for the alarm: 4000 homes are inundated by biblical floods. Continue reading “Black Rain” »
A Week and two days has passed now and today the remains of three of the missing are recovered. Navy and FBI divers are helping out. So Dylan and Kinzy and I, having an errand in Minneapolis, cross the river on the Third Avenue Bridge and make our way to Second Street just north of the collapse site. The crowds are not what they have been. Still, there are thousands. The Minneapolis Parks & Rec department has installed a dozen biffy’s. Trash cans overflow. The already dry grass is pounded into dust like the midway at a circus or the Minnesota State Fair. The police peremiter is established. City police officers and county sheriff’s deputies are standing under little white tents. Some workers at a steel milling plant watch us impassively from a large doorway as we come and go.
James Hill’s Stone Arch Bridge, a grand curving railroad entrance to downtown Minneapolis now is a pedestrian and bike way. It has a spectacular view of downtown Minneapolis and the St. Anthony Falls, now nearly dried up in the drought. But all eyes are turned downriver. What we can see is the 10th Avenue Bridge. It is quite beautiful and it should be a delight to behold except that we’re not supposed to be able to see it.
THE DISASTER SITE PHENOMENA is as described in the news: large crowd of people so quiet I can hear the wind blowing across the river and the faint sound of Continue reading “Hushed silence” »
They did not stand on the banks with microphone in hand jamming it into the face of an eyewitness: “Did you see any dead bodies?” Most of them have no fancy electronic gear. No cameras. No whirlygigs spinning around on their beanie hats.
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They come equipped with the same narrow white spiral bound notebook that I used 30 years ago during my brief journalism career during a decidedly lower tech time. They write their notes on both sides of each sheet and with that capture history one mental snapshot at a time. Continue reading “Getting at the story with a little narrow notebook” »
