August 30, 2007
A sad day for journalism ...
Scripps has announced that it will sell The Albuquerque Tribune or, barring that, will close the paper.
I can't even begin to say how devastated I am by this.
The Trib definitely was the apogee of my journalism career. I've never worked with a group of more talented, conscientious people. I'm still in touch with many of them. It also marked the first year of my marriage, our first house, fond memories of roaming the Sandia foothills with Pigpen and Crystal ... So many memories flood back to me as I sit in a half-filled house that Lara and I are moving into in Knoxville, thousands of miles and decades away from the Albuquerque days.
I'm hoping for the best for my friends at The Trib and thinking about them a lot these days.
Perhaps the most amazing thing here is that the Tribunista spirit still is alive and well. In the story announcing the proposed sale, former and current Trib employees are flocking back to log memories and pay homage to the greatest little paper that ever was. It definitely brings a tear to my eye as I scroll through them, and it comforts me to know that no matter what happens, The Trib will live on in these incredible people.
Posted by Bob Benz at 1:15 PM | Comments (1)
August 26, 2007
The travel gods give, the travel gods take ...
Business travel can really suck. This past week was a great example. I managed to get stuck at Chicago's O'Hare airport during a swarm of terrible thunderstorms that raked the Second City. As I watched lightning crash around the airfield it became increasingly clear that I wasn't getting home that night. I was booked onto three flights. All canceled, forcing me to wait in a 2-hour cab line to get to the only hotel I could find. It was all the way downtown.
The next morning, I arrived at the airport early, knowing it would be a zoo. It was. After a few delays, I did manage to get home at about 5 p.m.
But the trip had a few bright spots:
-- The sunrise pictured here, as viewed from my hotel room at DFW airport in Dallas. I returned to my room after a 5 a.m. struggle in the fitness center to be greated by this scene. Very cool.
-- The Knoxville effect. It's never hard to tell which gate the Knoxville flight is departing from. It's the one with all the people wearing gaudy orange clothes and baseball caps with the UT Vols logo. And they talk to each other. While other gates are packed with people doing their best not to acknowledge each other's existence, the KnoxVegas gate is filled with people who talk to each other and socialize. This was true even as we watched flight after flight cancel at O'Hare. Talked to several great folks and we decided to laugh instead of cry. A few of them spent the night at O'Hare, and I saw them the next morning after I returned from my hotel to try again. A true Knoxville experience.
Posted by Bob Benz at 9:07 PM | Comments (4)
Getting ready to close the deal
We close on the new house tomorrow and I'll be glad when that's over. Of course, the real work starts from there. The move. Thanks to Lara, that probably won't be as painful as it could be. She's been ruthlessly efficient, building spreadsheets detailing what will go where in the new abode and ruthlessly discarding the crap we've accumulated during our 10 years in the house in Hardin Valley.
Today, we did the walk through, which gave us a final opportunity to measure things and plan what will go where. In this picture, Lara is standing on our dock with Hidden Cove in the background. It was pretty exciting to stand there and look around, and it took everything I had not to jump in the water to celebrate. There will be time for that tomorrow ...
I added a few photos from today's walkthrough to the Flickr set I created for the house. Hope to add more as we get moved in.
Posted by Bob Benz at 8:59 PM | Comments (2)
August 12, 2007
Xena the cone head ...
I took Xena to the vet Thursday for what I thought was going to be minor surgery to remove a golf-ball size tumor from her ear. Not quite. Apparently, the tumor was solidly connected to the ear , not hanging by a thread, as I'd thought.
When I went to pick her up, she was pretty doped up and wearing a large cone made of hard plastic.
"She'll get used to it," the vet tech said as he helped me load her into the truck. "My lab learned to use his as a weapon."
Poor Xena cried through the night Thursday, keeping me up and prompting me to lie on the floor next to her for a while to comfort her. She must have been in a good bit of pain. And she's a schemer. Apparently, Lara did the same thing a few times during the night, too.
It's now been a few days of life with the cone. The pain appears to be gone but not the indignation at having to wear a giant white hood. But as the vet tech predicted, she's learned to use the cone as a battering ram, sweeping aside me and the other dogs as she barges through the house. So far, though, it's doing a great job of keeping her away from the wound, which is healing nicely. We'll find out whether the tumor was benign or malignant this week ...
Posted by Bob Benz at 11:07 AM | Comments (2)
August 7, 2007
It's in the cards ...
When I was a kid, I squandered untold dollars at the local Stop N Go buying pack after pack of baseball cards, trying to get all of the World Champion 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates. I'd buy a dozen packs or so and stand by a garbage can outside the store, throwing away everything but the Pirates while the clerk stood inside shaking his head at the idiot kid in pursuit of all the Bucs. Eventually, I got them all, and I still have them somewhere, stashed in a box that brought me live chameleons that I'd ordered from an ad in the back of Boy's Life.
That was pretty much the extent of my fascination with baseball cards. And baseball, for that matter. So I was a little dubious when I picked up a copy of "The Card: Collectors, Con Men and the True Story of History's Most Desired Baseball Card." I bought it mostly because Mike O'Keeffe, a buddy of mine whom I worked with at the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, is a co-author of the book. And it turns out it's a great book, well worth checking out even if you have only nominal interest in baseball cards and baseball in general.
The story behind the T206 Honus Wagner card is fascinating, especially considering that it's now valued at well over $1 million. Mike and Teri Thompson do a great job bringing the assorted characters to life, including the myriad schemes and machinations behind the multiple deals involving the relic, a 1909 tobacco card featuring Wagner's picture. And Mike puts his chops as an investigative reporter to good use, revealing a lot of the shenanigans that surround big-time baseball card collecting.
A few interesting tidbits:
-- Details on Wayne Gretzky partner and former L.A. Kings owner Bruce McNall's dubious financial dealings, including the fact that he floated loans using bogus "game-used" jerseys and horses he didn't even own as collateral. Gretzky and McNall partnered to buy the Wagner card for $451k in 1991.
-- A great photo of the house Wagner lived in in Carnegie, just outside Pittsburgh, where a "Go Steelers" banner hangs proudly outside the house even though the current occupants have only the vaguest notion of the Pirates great whose image graces the most valuable baseball card on the planet. What a total Pittsburgh moment.
-- A tour of collector Michael Gidwitz's Chicago apartment, which is packed with memorabilia, including a lewd drawing of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky that features Alfred E. Neuman's face "superimposed on the former president's penis head." (Gidwitz apparently has quite a collection of pornographic images featuring Neuman. Truth really is stranger than fiction.
Posted by Bob Benz at 7:35 PM | Comments (0)
A fish tale
Rusty, Wes and I spent a day at sea last weekend fishing for grouper and snapper in the Gulf of Mexico off St. Petersburg, Fla. We set off into what looked like a perfect day, but 2 to 2.5 foot seas made the trip out pretty rough. No seasickness during the hour-plus journey to get to cooler water where the grouper and snapper have retreated in the heat of summer, but we got bounced around a lot and were definitely relieved when the boat finally stopped about 50 miles out and we started fishing.
Overall, we had a great day. Wes snagged a several big snapper and a keeper grouper and Rusty managed to land four sharks, much against his will. He will henceforth be known as "Shark Man," and we agreed never to speak of his antics again, much as the characters at the end of Deliverance made a pact to keep the trip secret. That Rusty sure does got a purty mouth, I'll tell you what ...
We also pulled in a nice kingfish.
In this photo, the frenetic Captain Nelson, holds up two of the snapper we caught while Wes grins smugly in the background. Nelson and Captain Toby did a great job helping us pull in fish and untangle lines.
We retreated to Rusty's house afterward, where Wes and Rusty's wife Janet cooked up snapper, grouper and kingfish in every way imaginable. It was incredible. I had a big kingfish steak, which was much better than the mackerel we caught and ate the last time we fished Tampa Bay.
I've uploaded more photos here on my Flickr account.
Posted by Bob Benz at 7:32 PM | Comments (0)