'K' for 'Killer'

He was my apartment mate in Chicago when we were both going to school there. Older, wiser, much more sophisticated. John L and I hooked up and agreed to get the place, moved our boxes of stuff in, and I took off for a weekend of fun elsewhere. Sometime during that weekend John's girlfriend jumped out of the window of the apartment and died in the courtyard below.

So when I got back one evening John wasn't there, and shortly the police were. They took me in to some Northside cop station and without offering much in return, asked questions about John. I didn't give them much, which was a problem for them, and they made it one for me. Kind of a stand-off. To be fair, on their side it was an unexplained death and a possible witness who wouldn't tell them anything. To me fair, on my side, they wouldn't share either. That lasted a good deal of the night. It was another set of detectives coming on shift who told me that the death was suicide, John was totally in the clear, and that he had checked himself into the hospital for his mental state. When he came out he had the letter 'k' tatooed on the inside of his shoulder and said it stood for 'killer', which he felt himself to be. We moved and shared the new, much nicer, and deathless apartment for a but more than a year. Then he moved in with a girl and ultimately I lost track of him. Alas.

Bedside Manners

Went in to see the doctor, Alan G, whining about a list of ache and pains. This and that. Alan listened to the whole complaint and said, 'Tom, nature doesn't care about you anymore.' Jesus, Alan! 'Yup, it's all gravity and desiccation from here on out.' Great.

So that very evening, by wonderful coincidence, I had dinner with friend Chuck, also a physician, and told him the story. Expecting.... what? I don't know. But in fact what Chuck said when I finished was, 'Did you want a second opinion?'

Time for Single Payer

Bit ago I got my first big boy glasses, prescription ground, wire frames. Frames cost a bunch. Couple hundred bucks. Time passed.

Significant wife complained mightily about my alleged snoring and I submitted to laser treatments on the soft tissue at the back of my mouth. Hurts. Another story. Cost a bigger bunch than the glasses, like 1200 bucks. Time passed.

The very wonderful but no-cheap-bargain dentist we patronize lobbied to have me accept two tooth implants. Titanium screws in the jaw upon which are placed crowns of synthetic tooth-like material. Also hurt. And I don't like to think how expensive they were. Plus, you're paying for pain. Serious money was committed to the project with splendid results and excellent pain drugs. Time passed.

Now it is to be a hearing aid. Skipping to the good part, 2700 bucks, and not much larger than the fake tooth purchased above. Good news is, one, glasses seem like a bargain now, and two, I don't think it will hurt. Physically.

Saving the World

Son Cisco invented a way for home-owners to install solar electric affordably and it's catching on big-time... for instance, a Science Magazine blog entry from Copenhagen. Wowie Zowie.

Max Headroom Lives

Ah, and where have you been, Max?

Dad's Gone

Death in the Family. Dad died. Nearly 97 and ready. Still.

From the Minneapolis paper:

Rev. Harold John DeVries completed his earthly life on Feb 20. He was 96 years old and at peace when he passed away at his home, Friendship Village in Bloomington. He had spent his life as he wished, in service to his Lord, as pastor to many, and husband to his beloved wife June who preceded him.

Rev. DeVries led congregations in Michigan, Illinois and the Twin Cites beginning more than 70 years ago. He counseled, taught and inspired tirelessly, never stopping his own study, never failing to look to Heaven for direction, never wavering in his faith and his witness. He loved to preach and sing, he loved his work, and he loved the Lord. He believed deeply in spreading the Gospel and with all his heart, mind and body supported the missionaries of Christ around the world, introducing them to his churches, praying for them, and visiting them in the field.

And he loved his family. His children, Tom, Susan and Steve, made Harold grandpa to eight, and in turn great grandfather to eight, all of whom knew and loved him. So the impact of his long life – which began early in the Twentieth Century – will easily extend at least to the end of the Twenty-first.

He knew without doubt that a place had been prepared for him in Heaven. He left us for it with anticipation and joy. As much as we do and will miss him, we are happy for him too. It was, as they say, a righteous life.

Stay Wet

Article from National Geographic (of all things) says "Influenza germs last longer ... in lower absolute humidity -- i.e., when it's cold outside and the air is dryer." So, once again, consider carrying a saline spray inhaler. The brand Ocean, and others, are in the nose ailment department of your local drug shop. For two or three bucks. They keep your insides damp and healthy on airplanes, air conditioned hotels and offices, and Aunt Harriet's overheated apartment. Beat the flu and colds. Feel superior. Dr. Tom says Do This Thing.

Dusters

I met a crop duster pilot one really hot, pretty dusty afternoon on the west side of the Central Valley. You have to see these guys, working at the way unglamorous end of the airplane pilot business, dressed in jeans and dirty shirts, but with the spiritual swagger of a Top Gun.

Anyway, the west side of the Valley is lined with the legs of the electrical power grid that feeds the water system pumps and LA..... lots of huge power towers, cables, going every direction. And I asked this pilot if he didn't worry about the power towers as he flew his barely-off-the-ground routes in the truck farms and orchards that lie between the pieces of the grid. And he said in fact he did not worry that he would hit a tower or clip one of the 28,000 volt wires.

"Know what I think. I think, they ain't movin' and they ain't drunk."

A Dog Story

One May night in 2003 the Today Show sent me to a veterinarian's office in Clear Lake to deal with a dog. Dosha, the rasputin dog. Dosha had escaped from her yard, been hit by a truck, shot (that is, put down) by a cop, put in the animal morgue and left for dead. (Her picture is borrowed from People) But Dosha was alive, and pretty well, all things considered, and Matt Lauer was booked to do a live interview about it.... Matt in his studio in New York City, me and Dosha and the vet in Clear Lake. Our slot was 7:40 AM Eastern, 4:40 AM in Clear Lake California.

When I got to the vet's there was a satellite truck in the parking lot and I said hi to Phil, the operator. Phil and I had done this a lot. But Phil said he was there for Good Morning America. (Actually, we're cool people so Phil called it 'GMA'. More insider stuff.) So ABC was gonna see the dog too, at 7:20 Eastern. And my truck and crews (two cameras) arrived. GMA got one examining room and I got one. Lights, cables, audio stuff. We're working away in the night. And at some point I told the control room producer in New York that GMA was there too.

And the control room producer went berserk. Seriously off. Very bad language. And she told me I was to tell the ABC crew that 'Today has an exclusive.' So I'm supposed to go tell these other guys who've been working along side us much of the night that they should pack up and leave because, you know, we have an exclusive with the dog. So I did. With not a lot of passion, and kind of pushing it off on the crazy person in New York.

The ABC people did not pack and leave, and of course, they concluded I was a jerk. Fun.

Then the control room producer -- who runs the on-air show -- called to tell me I was to produce Dosha for a 7:20 'live tease.' Of course -- and the producer knew this as well as I -- at 7:20 Dosha was gonna be on TV, live on GMA, the competition. It was surely unnecessary for me to have pointed that out, but I did. And she said, 'Get. The. Dog.'

There are in fact a handful of people in America who do watch all the morning shows and pay attention to who has what, and who has it first. The NBC producer's boss at 30 Rock is one of that handful.... of what, twenty people? Thirty? What had happened here was a Today booker had nailed down the vet, a very nice person named Dr. Sally, but did not nail down the dog. I hid Dr. Sally in my satellite truck so ABC couldn't get her, but, you know, GMA got Dosha.

Anyway, I groveled, and bugged the ABC people, who hated me very much, and I got Dosha back, not at 7:20 Eastern, but in time for a 'live tease, dog only' just before the local news break at 7:25. And we had the dog for a live picture during the Today Show news at 7:30. And Matt Lauer had a very nice chat with Dr. Sally and admired Dosha who had altogether much better manners than the control room producer and under much more trying circumstances, having been run over, shot and frozen and all.

We cleared air and the producer and I went at it by cell phone. She told me essentially I was a disgrace to NBC News and my profession. I said back really intemperate things, beginning with 'it's JUST a DOG,' and ending with 'go fuck yourself.' And I got fired. I am no longer hired to stay up all night for 300 bucks baby sitting dogs, heroes, nut cases, violent death, cute children, and the other things that make the Today Show producers happy. I do not miss it, but do feel a bit sorry about being rude to the over-caffeinated, under-experienced, silly producer who has to deal with considerably worse people in her chain of command. But I win, because she's probably still doing it, and I'm not.

Airplane Noise

Virtually all World War II film was shot silent, MOS is the insider term. So when you watch movies of dogfights and so forth, the burning plane trailing smoke heading for earth, the whining sound is faked. Sweetened is the insider term. I owe this wisdom to Chris Koch and don't think about this much. But now CNN is on the air covering a plane crash in Buffalo and asking a witness to compare the sound of the plane coming down with those World War Two movies and I'm mumbling to myself again. I mean, not only does he not know enough, he doesn't even register that the Buffalo crash was a jet and all that faked sound from WW2 on TV he's seen was prop noise. Lordy.

Law and Order

There was loud shouting and banging from the stairway inside. On the 2nd floor balcony of the apartment building a man and an elderly couple stood, she crying, the young man -- her son, it turned out -- talking almost continuously to the people, including half a dozen police officers, below. This is in Banja Luka, the capital of the Serb portion of Bosnia, after the war. The dispute, between the balcony and the people banging on the door inside, was over control of the apartment... both sides were internally displaced by the war, and competing authorities had given each a claim on the place to live. I was there with a reporter from the Serb TV network. Onwards of half the population of Bosnia left home during the fighting, voluntarily and not, and there are a lot of this kind of thing -- who owns what.

The police seemed bemused. They didn't much want our crew to shoot video. They didn't do much except keep the door bangers from breaking in. And I'm so naive, I asked the reporter who would decide who gets the apartment. 'Nobody knows,' she said. I think I asked her and she said 'nobody knows' three times before I actually heard her. In fact, nobody knows. There was no system to resolve disputes, no judge, no court, no proceedure. The apartment went to whichever party paid the right bribes, or had the most powerful friends, or knew the nastiest thugs.

Justice, order, predictability, rule of law, the kind of thing we can assume without thinking, just were not available in Bosnia.

Don't have a war.

Guy Owes Me a Thousand Bucks

In Beban's Coral, a bar in Chowchilla California, a guy offered me a thousand dollars to kill a lawyer, one he didn't know. The lawyer was defending a kid who had helped kidnap a bunch of local children from a school bus. The kidnappers stashed the children in a buried truck body and frankly the kids probably would have died there except that they escaped. Anyway, at Beban's Coral a bunch of the local boys had convinced themselves -- not unreasonably, if you think about it -- that crafty big city lawyers were going to get the kidnappers off and they didn't like it. So I was a stranger and this murder for hire idea was justice, as far as the guy was concerned.

My friend Wayne King came outside the bar looking for me and I told him about the deal. Wayne worked for the New York paper and was there like me to attend the arraignment of the kidnapper (then still the alleged, but later the convicted and still imprisoned, so the murder was not really going to be necessary as it turned out). Wayne, being a Southerner, had a really different sensibility about all this than I. He figured that sooner or later somebody in Beban's would get drunk or greedy enough to actually do the assassination and he, Wayne, wanted me to tip the police. This is just exactly how it happens, he said, it being the kind of horrific humN violence a reporter in the American South had seen way too much of. So Wayne insisted, in fact, kind of forced me and I did warn the Chowchilla Chief of Police. And nobody killed the lawyer, or to my knowledge even tried.

But once in a while I think about this, and leave a message for the lawyer that in a way he kind of owes me a thousand dollars. I don't want the money so much as I hope it might occur to him that he has a reporter to thank for his life. Wayne, not me. Not that I'd have done any killing of course, but I didn't really know much about small towns, and ole boys drinking Salty Dogs at ten in the morning, and rage. Wayne knew that stuff.

I am looking for network news I can watch -- without screaming. I've given up on my old employer NBC. Way too 'local' and foolish. There's the Lehrer Report, I know, but I don't get a good PBS signal in Mariposa... and I don't need the depth. I already do a lot of reading and don't need the nice folks at PBS to rehears what I've already heard. I want to participate in mass culture. See what my fellows are seeing. Does anyone have a favorite they can defend?

Party w/o a Soul

I got a live call from the DNCC, fund hustling arm of Dems in Congress. Told the nice lady that I didn't trust them and was giving money only to Act Blue. She said, 'oh, then you're in the Progressive Wing of the Party.' Well, I guess I am, I said. She wanted to explain why sometimes they had to run a Blue Dog to win, and I said I understood, but that they weren't going to do with my ten bucks. No hard feelings.

We need a new plane crash

US Air 1549 ditched in the Hudson on Jan 15. That is, as we speak, ten days ago and has become the Story That Won't Go Away. On Crash Day NBC gave the story the entire first segment, eleven minutes. Seemed excessive then, and it was just the beginning. Today they had voice over of the bird-struck engine being lifted out of the water, and full package treatment for Hero Captain Sully being welcomed home in Danville. I've marked the day, Jan 15, 2010 in my calendar so to watch for the one-year-later, where-are-they-now stories, and I now believe the networks will cover the birth of children to survivors.

The Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, on the other hand, haven't been covered for days.

On the problem of determining sanity

Charlie Smith was the over-night assistant city editor at the Sun-Times in Chicago when I worked there.... you know, a while back. Charlie came in just after midnight and baby sat Chicago until the next morning, mostly with darn little to do. It was a just-in-case kind of slot. There was a single desk assistant too, sometimes me, to go to the library and make beat calls and that. Not much happened.

So Charlie read books. He bought them used and went through several every week.

One night he called my attention to the book he was reading and pointed out that a previous reader had underlined every line -- every single line on every page -- with a ruler and pencil. I admired. And Charlie told me that he had concluded that the person was insane. I agreed. Charlie was a wise man, and my boss.

A little later I noticed across the desk that Charlie was erasing the underlines, all of them.