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.

I am waiting for news about the explosion in downtown Whitehall. I hear someone say in the hallway outside my office on the Montana State University campus there had been an earthquake at 4:10 a.m. centered somewhere near Whitehall and maybe that is the cause. But I cannot find out how serious the damage has been because there is no story about it in my morning paper.

IN MY FREE MOMENTS I scan the news websites. The Bozeman Chronicle doesn’t update very much and then with scant new bits of information. The Billings Gazette yawns a bit because this is happening to someone else 140 miles away. The Montana Standard, in Butte, seems to update their online site less often than the newspaper itself. Radio? Nope. TV. Nope? Old news. What in God’s name happened to that poor woman who disappeared? Wendy goes to The Academy of Cosmetology on Mendenhall Street for her seven dollar haircut in downtown Bozeman on Saturday and learns a number of things. One of them is that the remains of the still unnamed missing woman have been found across the street from the blaze. This seems most gruesome and I begin scanning my sources, even trying to resurrect a Twitter account I had opened long ago and abandoned because it didn’t make any damned sense to me (being not under 40 years of age). There is nothing. When the newspaper plops on my doorstep Sunday morning I brush the snow off of the plastic bag and pop the paper out of the rubber band (seems a bit extravagant to have a rubber band AND a plastic bag) and the news is … the missing lady is still missing. All resources are focused on finding her. Fire suppression still going on.

MAYBE THE ASSISTANT CITY MANAGER Who Used to Be the Fire Chief whose daily quote appears each day within the first three paragraphs will spill the beans. But there are no beans to be spilled and I keep wondering what the actual Fire Chief is doing while the Assistant City manager is telling us this is the worst disaster he has “worked.”

The news from Whitehall is not as grim but still involves at least four historic buildings in the center of town going up in smoke. There is a bit of speculation now about the relationship between earthquake and gas explosion. When a story does finally appear in The Chronicle I can feel the collective yawn coming from the staff. Whitehall is 60.1 miles away from the Academy of Cosmetology representing a strain on the editorial resources of the Chronicle. Hardly something of interest to readers in Bozeman caught up in the biggest story of the century. They can let the Montana Standard cover it being just the other side of Homestake Pass. That is, if the Standard can find anything located on the east side of the Continental Divide.

I WANT TO GRAB the nearest editor I can find (of course I know nearly all of them since I studied journalism in Montana, uh, about 30 years ago) and shout … DOES THE FACT THAT TWO DOWNTOWNS OF TWO CITIES A MERE 60 MILES APART HAVE HAD TWO DISASTEROUS FIRES CAUSED BY GAS EXPLOSIONS WITHIN A DAY OF EACH OTHER IN ANY WAY SPARK A BIT OF CURIOSITY?  But these guys are my friends and I can’t say anything so rude to them.

The Whitehall story has disappeared from my newspaper today. Coverage of the Bozeman debacle is shrinking rapidly. In Billings the hot story is the rescue of Duke the St. Bernard after two days being stranded on a frozen lake. Humans rescuing a St. Bernard … GET IT? Not dog bites man but man saves DOG?

My sister, who lives in Ontario, can find photos of the Bozeman mess on CNN. Looking back I may have been very wise to simply get into my car and drive in the direction of the column of smoke so that I can SEE with my actual eyes much of what is happening. I learn that one of my work colleagues is standing on a street corner a quarter block away from the explosion and she can describe the loud boom and how she is still a bit shaken. Ron the special education consultant calls the teacher in Wendy’s classroom in Gallatin Gateway to say he’s OK, has been evacuated from his office, the flames are still shooting up into the air and he’s afraid there is loss of life judging by the size of the explosion. The teacher then has to call her spouse whose office is in the bank directly across the street from the blast to make sure he is OK.

IT’S DAWNING ON ME that I should simply send my son down to the Academy of Cosmetology with a note pad (he always needs a haircut anyway) and he can bring back firsthand reports of the latest rumors. The truth is hardest to accept. There just ain’t a lot of media here. Not a lot of news. And when there IS a lot of news, the pipeline for getting it to me is like a drip, drip, drip and I have my mouth positioned to catch every splash.

Tables turned

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?

Why did the compassionate conservative immediately get the poor into a vice grip from which they cannot escape until well into the Obama administration? Why did Bush listen to certifiable nut cases such as Paul Wolfowitz and Ron Perlman? Why did people in the Bush administration believe that if you have a football game but tell the referees to stay home, everyone will still play nice because it is in their best interest to do so (see Gordon Gecko and Adam Smith)? Why did our beloved Senator Ted Kennedy allow himself to be bamboozled into co-sponsoring what is now fondly known as “No Child Left a Dime”? Why did Bush do nothing in regard to the Middle East until his final week in office? Why did the American People elect him to a second term after knowing full well what they had got from the first?

The musical sound of helicopter blades spinning

SOMEHOW I DOUBT there will be a Bush version of “Nixon Frost” so I’m not optimistic I will ever have an answer to these among my many questions. The people who voted for Bush the second time probably aren’t talkin’. I know I wouldn’t. So I don’t think I’ll be eliciting any explanations from certain people most responsible for the mess we’re in – the people who voted for GWB in 2004 and the people who didn’t vote at all.

What liberal isn’t happy about the ascendency of the first real minority (other than Irish Catholics) into the American monarchy. We rejoice in the take-over of Congress (we can expect results from the Franken-Coleman race in Minnesota no later than next summer) by politicians who are more progressive than, well, the people who were in charge before. We breathe a collective sigh of relief as we contemplate the retirement of the handful of liberal voices on the U.S. Supreme Court. Just in time politics. A bit too close for comfort.

It’s easy to be happy that a smart, even-headed, even-handed guy like Mr. Obama has finally managed to become “the leader of the free world.” But what a mess he has to clean up. After so much promise and the enormous good will following September 11, so crudely squandered on a simplistic right wing agenda. The good news is people beyond our shores can’t possibly hate us more than they do now.

I won’t get my answer. But at least, now, I no longer need or want to ask the question.

Musical sound of helicopter blades growing softer with time and distance.

Ahhh. The quiet sound of a new Pres. Obama signing legislation into law. Probably the one that extends health insurance to little kids that was vetoed by that other guy.

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

With a distinct absence from the room of anyone over the age of 22, it has never occurred to us to consider even for a moment that our radio station is broadcasting only into our college’s dormitories. The signal introduced into each building’s electrical system by way of a very low power transmitter. Lacking Arbitron ratings on our listening audience we don’t even know whether we have any listeners considering it’s possible to hear WBZ in one’s dental fillings. Classical music from WBUR, the new public radio station run by Boston University next door, can be heard in our stereos when the volume is turned low enough.

FINDING THE TRUTH. We are student journalists and we have an audience that is depending on us. We think it wise, at least, to send two reporters, not one. So off to the “T” they go for a quick ride on the Green Line, a slightly longer ride on the Red. Harvard Square. Last northbound station. On the surface, they finally report breathlessly from a pay phone, there is a maelstrom of rocks and bricks, police billy clubs, burning storefronts and, who knows, maybe a burning car or two. In the aftermath it is unlikely that Store owners in Harvard Square ever connect the dots between opposition to the Vietnam War and crimes against their enterprises other than an ill-chosen location.

We learn from our reporters that the Red Line is fueling the melee in the way an open staircase fuels a fire. Wave upon wave of young people, many of whom might also fail in connecting dots between Vietnam and broken store windows, are pouring forth into the square. Our reporters realize the situation is way too hot for a couple of twerps lacking bon a fide press credentials and who look strikingly the same as the people throwing the rocks. Except for the oversized Norelco cassette tape recorder they carry with them (the station manager having warned that he has just taken delivery of the new units and wants no harm to come to this one).

DON’T BREAK THE TAPE MACHINE. Our staffers retreat to the underground hoping to catch the next Red Line train south (they are not planning to obtain a receipt for their fare). But there is no Red Line train. The police have ordered it shut. No trains arriving and thus no trains leaving either. Tear gas from the street is flowing into the station and our colleagues are choking on it. Or have the police tossed a tear gas canister down the stairs? Somehow the radio newsmen-in-training  manage to reach the surface again. Buses are cut off as well and they find a cab.

We do get a few of the phoned reports onto the “air.” And add a long report when the two adventurers finally return. But there are no awards forthcoming. The Radio Television News Directors Association (RTNDA to the initiated) is not listening. Fortunately neither is any of our parents.

Fire, broken glass and tear gas

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.

Now our lives are filled. We do what we have to do. We celebrate each of the milestones. The happy photo at college graduation. Our child beaming, confident and strong. The parents’ smile telegraphing a hint of relief; no small amount of pride. Our visage showing greying brow, sagging jowl; our bellies a growing paunch. We pose knowing not what happens next. No pink slip arrives regretting to inform us that our services no longer are required. 

We want nothing in return, really. I understand this now. We expect nothing. Maybe – probably – we deserve nothing. We have heard the call of our species and answered. We do what we can to prepare them for their life independent of us. Maybe we prepare them well. Maybe we don’t. But we do hope. The best and the worst of us do that each in our way. We wish for them a future in which they live their lives in relative happiness.

Then it is up to them.

We remain on call. Ready to help, if asked. Ready to do almost anything necessary. Often we stand aside while the people we will always call our children struggle with what comes their way; struggle with what they bring their way. If we are wise, we choose our words carefully. If we are not, we choose badly. Either way the consequences do not belong to us.

Our children teach us what it is like for our parents to raise us. As I reflect on my own young adulthood, I realize that a good portion of the time my father was right. Now, someday, maybe, it will be their turn. Then we, the grandparents, will watch removed still further; raising our hopes for another generation; wishing for them the same as their parents.

Sandy wins.

We each begin in more or less the same place. Start working at St. Joseph’s Hospital at the same time. Our salaries are roughly the same. Our organizational “rank” is about the same. Both of us have a nuclear family of four – older daughter and younger son.

Sandy’s thesis is: Stay in the same place. Keep the same job through thick and thin. Earn annual cost of living increases. Learn things through professional conferences. Seek advancement within the same organization.

Patrick’s thesis is: Move a lot. Make more money because the next job pays better than the old. Learn by doing. Get promotions by obtaining more responsibility in the next job.

For quite awhile I am out ahead. Occasionally Sandy catches up and then I leap forward with my next move, swamping her incremental gains at St. Joe’s. Sandy gets promotions. Eventually attaining a very senior position reporting directly to the CEO.

Patrick and his long suffering family live in lots of interesting places and we all have lots of interesting experiences. Spouse completes a bachelor degree on tuition remission. Number one child completes a bachelor degree almost tuition free. I’m in the right place at the right time so far as my choice of nonprofits is concerned.

Even with these advantages Sandy is steadily catching up. And the coup de gras most definitely comes when Patrick stumbles in his philosophy. We end up living in the same place for 11 years and nobody in the family wants to move somewhere else. The Sandy philosophy wins (the bet) because it is sustainable.

Oddly enough, I know Sandy will vigorously defend my approach at the same time that I am vigorously defending hers. I admire her steadfastness and consistency. She admires my adventuresome spirit.

Which one of us is “right?” In many ways I would argue that I really haven’t had a lot of choice in the matter. Both of us have gotten the calls from the headhunters. But for me, moving really is important to my learning my trade. At SJRMC I make a decision that I want to be a development professional but where am I going to learn how to do the job?
Still, I don’t want to take anything away from Sandy’s triumph. Starting out I believed Sandy would do better if she followed my prescription. Now I know she has done the right thing by following her heart. And I have done the right thing by following mine.

Fearsome window | Photo: P Sheehy

That’s bad enough but then I imagine that a small fire has started on some far reach of the second floor or is it the fourth. You know how dreams don’t care about the fact that my house is a mere two stories with a hip roof. We’re reaching for all kinds of stuff and somehow manage to snuff it out before serious damage is done.CABIN FEVER. Maybe I’m coming down with cabin fever. The temperature outside IS dropping to seasonal levels just around freezing. The leaves have been whooshed into the path of the city’s semi-annual cleaning on our side street. But there remain the large black balloons containing more leaves and these want to go to the compost site. So maybe that’s the answer. Get me into the outdoors properly bundled up in a “jacket” (it’s a Minnesota word and I haven’t yet figured out the difference between a jacket and a coat but there is a difference, I’m told by my spouse’s in-laws who are natives). And maybe I should lead my Australian Shepherd around on a leash (or the reverse, I never can tell).

The fall ritual | Photo: P Sheehy

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.

WE DO NOT SEE OUR FRIENDS Gretel and Charlie from Dubuque very often. We do this annual camping trip together in August and for the last few years it is the only time we go out with our camper. Gretel and Charlie are tent camping but it has been raining beginning early in the morning the day after we arrive. Gretel, ever the early riser, manages a short hike before the rains begin. So she becomes the only member of our party to see any of the park other than the place where we are camping by the Whitewater River.

So we huddle into our trailer alternately squeezing around our little “kitchen” table and stretching out on the bunks for a snooze. We catch up and play a few games. The rain will stop eventually and then we can break out of here. Even if it doesn’t we will have a few fleeting hours visiting with our friends. Every time someone exits the trailer to run to the restroom or trip to the car to get something, he returns soaking wet and bringing quite a bit of wet with them as they climb back up from the white gravel pad. This necessitates use of towels to dry the returning hero and more towels to mop up the floor. We feel almost cocky about our safe haven.

Then Charlie goes to check on their tent. It is awash with rainwater reminding me of the fellow Boy Scout who on one of our many camping trips as kids found himself dry in the morning but floating on his air mattress. But this was more rain even than we would see in Pennsylvania. More rain that we’ve ever seen in our lives. Pounding rain. Unrelenting rain. Charlie says there is no way they can sleep in it that night and they are going to break camp and head for Gretel’s mother’s place in Decorah. They want to get there before nightfall.

We are deeply disappointed and try to suggest some creative alternatives involving the back of a Volvo station wagon but we know they are right. We might have thought it wise for us to depart as well but it is no fun taking down a tent trailer in the rain and we have been through bad storms before. We’ll “ride it out.”

Inside our popup amidst the usual controlled chaos 

WE ARE READING IN OUR MOSTLY COZY popup trailer. The golden colored 12-volt light falsely assuring safety. One weather caution from the ranger fails to dispel this illusion. Then, 11 p.m., rap, rap, rap. Door opens and Patrick Henry stands before us water pouring from his round wide-brimmed mounty hat.

You’ll have to get out of here. NOW. This whole valley is gonna flood.

I feel the need to parse his interpretation of the word “now” just a bit. NOW meaning get behind the wheel and hightail it out of here leaving trailer and all else behind? Or, NOW meaning get packed up fast and go? NOW meaning about a half an hour he suggests. Our neighbors are having little trouble getting his meaning. As they work furiously they are standing ankle deep in gently running water that covers their entire site. And I have the audacity to add to their troubles by asking for a jump.

Back at our campsite what I considered to be flotsam and jetsam in this desperate moment of choices is collected and deposited in a shelter. It appears to be the highest spot in the campground and the picnic tables inside seem good platforms. No time to properly pack the trailer so there is room for a dog crate in the rear of our wagon. Crate and other boofy things get left behind. Pure adrenalin has Wendy, Mariah and Dylan working as an efficient machine. They have the trailer folded and ready to be hitched up.

I hold the lantern for the other party as they find their hitch and then rev up their 4×4 truck. The guy helps us push our car back enough so the cables will reach. FIRE IT UP WENDY! comes the call and all are grateful when the engine immediately turns over. The powdery limestone pad has held up enough we succeed in pulling the trailer out. The caravan begins. Once circling incongruously in a parking lot but giving us a view of the flooded entrance earlier referenced by the ranger. There is an exit directly onto the highway and the gate is open.

*  *  *

Our campsite 

WE HAVE NO BUSINESS DRIVING through all of this. We have no idea what it is we are braving. The enormity of what is happening. No one does. Not the firefighters in Eyota who soon will come sliding down their poles to go … where? Not the rangers in Whitewater State Park. Not the people living next to the sleepy trout stream known as the Whitewater River. I guess now that it is not until 3 or 4 a.m. that the worst of it will come. By that time the road on which we are driving south will disappear into a gorge. The roadway at the spot we turn into Eyota will collapse and disappear along with a culvert. Dylan and I will watch them rebuilding (beep, beep, beep) a week later when we return for our stuff.

For now we know only the road a hundred feet or so ahead illuminated by our peeping headlights. Black rain and a black night. Where do we go to be safe from it? The pounding rain sounds like hail as it bounces off of our wagon.

Finally we reach the Interstate. Caravanning there with a couple, also Whitewater refugees. Heading west to Rochester we can see the road a little better. We have more confidence that the very high road will not lead us in to another underwater crossing. But the driving is still hellish. My hands grip the wheel as though someone or something is going to grab the front of our car and cast us all into a borrow pit. I don’t think … can’t think … have no mental capacity to think about all manner of things that still could go wrong.

 Receipt for purchase of Parks permit the day we enter Whitewater State Park

All of 20 miles total. Maybe an hour. Seems longer. And we are fortunate at last to find a hotel – the seventh we think – that has a room, a cancellation. At this moment I will take a stable and hay so long as the pounding waters are kept outside. But we do better. Warm, dry. Hot shower. The next morning we call the front desk to explain we will be showing up for breakfast in our stocking feet.

When we return to the room from the meal we switch on the TV to see whether there is any tidbit of news about what had just happened to us. We think we should be calling MPR and the Star Tribune to describe our ordeal. As though we are actors in some cable TV disaster movie the local news comes up. An extended newscast to report on the flash floods of southeastern Minnesota. The media and the survivors are learning together what has just occurred in the space of a mere 24 hours. Ten inches of rain. 15 inches in some places. Tiny brooks turned into boiling Rocky Mountain rapids. The waves crashing like a tsunami on darkened sleeping towns. People trapped in cars. Hanging onto trees. Losing their grip. Miraculous and heroic rescues including rescues of the rescuers. Now I think about those Eyota firefighters. So many stories. Tragedies. Oh what a month August has been in the state of Minnesota!

*  *  *

At the point the road begins descending into the Park 

A WEEK PASSES, OUR WAGON IS IN THE SHOP having all of the seats and carpet removed and treated. Our trailer sits in the garage under bright lights and powerful fans. Dylan and I are on our way to The Flood Zone to retrieve our stuff. The rangers know we are coming and caution us about the road coming in. At Eyota we are diverted because the culvert is being repaired. We go north following the detour and are turned back by a sheriff’s deputy. An accident. Recreational vehicle lying on its side. Maybe some poor soul still rattled by the ordeal has gotten just a little too close to the edge of the highway. We find a gravel country road and then we’re back on our way.

At the beginning of the grade dropping into the park we see the impressive and definitive signs. ROAD CLOSED. We follow our instructions and go around. It is as we descend into the valley previously referenced by our ranger that we gain an immediate understanding of how the Grand Canyon was formed over millions of years. But this canyon is formed by a single night’s flood waters which have carved a gulley between five and six feet deep. In one spot the road is completely eaten away and our instructions are to drive through the Nature Store parking lot. Some park staff in a truck see us, scowl and give us the twirl around signal meaning get the hell outta here. But we’re given a chance to explain and they know who we are. “Stay way off to the right as you go down there” one of them cautions.

We come to a park office that looks exactly the same as the Friday exactly a week before when we came to pay for our permit. Inside a bunch of rangers, most in full uniform, are standing around commiserating. I explain who we are and why we are here. We were in the Gooseberry Campground last Saturday night. They look at us. A few with their eyes growing wide. One reaches across the counter and says “let me shake your hand.”

View Larger Map | Gooseberry Campground

We are led to the campground entering the same way we had exited. The ranger leading us opens the long log gate that is locked shut, I think, even in more prosaic times. “I’ll walk in” the ranger says. I pick my way along a route that is not fit for cars. It is easier to drive on the grass. I gun it just before passing through a mud field. As we approach the shelter we see our blue dog crate in the bright late afternoon sunshine sitting outside the shelter on the stoop. Off to the right, we see the Whitewater River and piles of downed trees that look like a clear-cut. The remarkable thing to us: we can see the Whitewater River. It was obscured by vegetation just a week ago. And the ranger tells us the flood has changed the river’s course.

Our camp spot looks surprisingly inviting, though the white pad and camp road have been all but washed away. Inside the shelter is about three inches of mud. A staff member has used our jettisoned table cloth as a cover for a pathway in. All the time we are hauling out stuff the ranger is sharing his experiences. He is from Rushford, Minnesota, one of the cities worst hit by the floods. The water there is so rank that authorities don’t even want people flushing their toilets with it for fear of introducing e-coli bacteria into their homes. Neither he nor any of the other park staff have lost their homes to the flood, he tells me.

When our car is packed up and we reverse direction through all of the carnage I want to turn back to the park office and hear more about the experiences of the park staff. I say something to the ranger about coming back in a year for a flood anniversary camp. He looks around at the mess. Mumbles something about FEMA and advises us to make that very, very late in the summer. I don’t tell him that I’m not at all sure I can go to that place. How can we experience that 12-volt golden glow knowing what we know?

We go St. Charles and find the town park where we want to dump some stuff that is smelling up the car. Wendy, on a cell, advises us to ditch the soft-sided cooler along with its contents even though it doesn’t have a speck of mud on it. The plastic water bottle already is left behind with me agreeing with the ranger that it will never hold potable water again.

Back home with the loot including a collapsed dog crate 

Making our way back home on the freeway, I notice out of the corner of my eye a very large and most ominous looking brown spider hoofing it northward along the inside of our windshield. Dylan mumbles something about knowing it was there when we were loading the car and not knowing how to coax it out. I pull off on an exit. Stop. Find some toilet paper on a roll in a packer box. I manage to brush the little guy with just the right amount of force and, a second later, see him or her scampering away beneath my car. One more survivor evacuated from the flood zone. I wish him (or her) well in their new and less flood prone home.

When we go camping you intentionally expose ourselves to the elements. Maybe to remind us that even with all of our creature comforts we are still animals sharing the environment with that spider and the awesome power of nature itself.

View Larger Map

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 water going over the falls. Reminds me of visiting the Alamo in San Antonio: for Texans a place so revered they remove their 10-gallon hats upon entering. But here is something not observed in the news: these visitors are middle to upper middle class types. Minnesota’s Alamo for people who drive cars back and forth to the suburbs.

Someone has mounted two U.S. flags above the downriver side of the bridge. A lefty bicyclist crossing toward Minneapolis breaks the silence by shouting: “What’s patriotic about a bridge collapsing?”

I wonder what people make of all of this mess as we walk down Second Street to the point at which the freeway crosses on approach to the river. Concrete sections are aimed up and aimed down. Vehicles glued crazily to them as though the drivers set their parking brake whilst exiting to run for their lives. One car turned upside down onto another. Dylan notices the giant numbers that have been spraypainted on the sides by rescuers. We stand across the street and Dylan says: “This is close enough.” He can see all he wants to see.

Is there any lesson for wealth-bearing Americans at this place? We are viewing mayhem that is but a fraction of one day’s worth of death and destruction in Iraq. Would that country have been of such great interest to our Texan president were it not for its vast oil reserves? Here on our own soil we get a taste of what our oil-based transportation economy is doing to us. We drive our cars there to have the experience. Do we also experience the irony?

The lefty guy on the bicycle and dozens like him whiz across the Stone Arch Bridge on their way home from work, weaving around gaping members of the throng and barely glancing over their shoulders. This is not their bridge that has collapsed. Not their disaster. Many of these folks will be riding to work in the dead of winter while automobile commuters wait in traffic to follow MinnDOT’s convoluted detour.

Click on photo to see source

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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.  

During a disaster you sit in front of your TV watching the same images over and over again, waiting for the massive public radio organization about nine miles away in Saint Paul to stop broadcasting “Marketplace” and get someone to the scene. You hear the same information on the TV delivered breathlessly by reporters who are trying their best not to allow themselves to be stunned into silence by the horrific vision behind them. You wait and wait and wait in front of the TV for the newspaper to bounce against your screen door the next day. You know, at least for the moment, there are a dozen actual journalists issuing forth from the newspaper office for every one of their compadres in television and radio.

The newspaper reporters stand back. Their photographers scramble in every direction. The television people — especially those from the networks — elbow their way to the front. TV and even public radio can’t, won’t, tell you what happened. TV and radio can’t put you on those concrete chunks with the survivors following those able to help the injured. TV and radio cannot describe for you what it is like to watch a car slide off the deck into the black waters of the Mississippi River, a trail of bubbles coming to the surface representing a life being snuffed out as you watch helplessly. Asking yourself, how did I survive? They can’t capture all of that because they can’t BE there when it happens. And if they can’t BE there they settle for secondary images. The stories they are telling make very little sense.

The newspaper reporters, an endangered species, study, synthesize, argue with their colleagues and editors, write and occasionally rewrite. Interviewing everyone they can find: survivors, family and friends of survivors, family of the dead and missing. They bring humanity to the enormity of tragedy. And if that were not enough, they take their little narrow notebooks and start trying to find out why it happened. They are everywhere at once. Interviewing every expert and piecing together the puzzle as best they can. Long after this story loses its visual impact and thus the interest of visual media, the little narrow notebook people layer on a little more. Inspections, politics, money, power, public opinion, Congress, special session, NTSB final report. Every day somewhere near the front page we will read about it.

In short order public radio and TV and all of the new media will be building their stories using one secondary source conveniently delivered to them each day.