Exploring, At Last

Be proud of us. Eric and I finally got out of the house! Not for shopping or going to work. No, we went to Richmond. Oh, I felt the wind in my hair. (why is there no type font that would indicate dripping sarcasm?) In any event, we were on the road.

I mentioned to Eric that I had been to the place where Stonewall Jackson was killed when I was in the area years ago. But, oh, the memory grows dim. What I really remember is seeing the trenches that his soldiers dug. They are still there. Some places never change. We stopped where Stonewall Jackson died. He had been shot three times by his confederate soldiers. He may have survived that, but he had pneumonia and died from that. This is the building where he died. I have a picture of the bed he lay in and the clock that ticked off the hours, but I thought I'd spare you that. He was one of my favorite generals in the war. He was very bright and didn't do stupid things that hurt his men. What more could you ask for? Well, perhaps that he fought for the Union side, but you can't have everything.

We didn't have Karen with us, so there was little advanced planning or maps or anything like that. We did stumble into a really cool museum. It was about Richmond during the Civil War and it is housed in an old Pattern Factory by the James River. A pattern factory did not make tissue paper patterns used to make dresses. It made and used patterns of big, clunky metal things. They would stick the patterns into sand and then remove them and then fill the hole with metal. The picture on the left is one of the pipes that carried steam or water. They used water originally to drive the work and then they used turbines around the time of the Civil War.

You may know that Richmond was the capitol of the confederacy. Lee's army worked hard to defend it. In fact, they held on for a very long time, despite being hugely outnumbered. This museum had the nicest rangers in it. It also had a movie and lots of memorabilia. I picked up about a dozen brochures so we will be better prepared when we return. One of the things we learned about was the 7 battle sites that surround Richmond. Eric and I will be back. I even bought a CD to play along with our driving tour.

On the way back we saw this road that goes off to the right. Of course you can't read that sign. It is the road to Powhite Parkway. Is the litter on the road... Sorry. I am much too easily amused.

And Then There Was One

What was harder? Losing the penultimate member of our team or finding her picture? I remember a very nice one that I took over my "back wall" that separated our offices. This is Idalia, in the middle of the picture. She had been at The Times nearly as long as I had. Such a hard working person. Her responsibilities in this dying organization included purchasing all hardware and software. But we had no money to spend. I know she will be okay. She has been preparing for this logical end.

In this picture, we have Gernard on the left. He left first. I'm not sure what he's doing, but I know it involves music and people we've all heard of. That young man knew everyone. Then there is Clif. He won the "last man standing" prize. I don't think that is much of a prize. Next to Idalia is Teena. Yes, this is from over a year and a half ago. Now Teena has a brand new baby boy. Hurray! Finally there is Fred. All my friends wrote to me, worried that Fred was gone. No, he's not gone. He's safely tucked away in the Editorial Systems group. They weren't totally stupid.

But Laura is gone from Chicago. Let's talk stupid. Not her but the people who thought that would be okay. She was with me in India. In fact the only two who are left from the India experience are Sophie and KJ. KJ and I still chat regularly. I'm happy that she made it through the chopper.

What does all this mean? Eric says it reminds him of the steel industry or the auto industry. Or any other slowing dying industry. In no case has there been a group of people smart enough to stop the death. Something remains. I'm sure there are still steel mills and a few viable car manufacturers in the US. And there will still be newspapers. But don't look for it to be like it used to be.

People are looking more to the Internet. I for one love to go to Google for any spare bit of information that might pop into my head. Cindy and I were talking about all kinds of things the other day and I kept looking up stuff on the Internet. It is a blessing. But did you hear what happened with Bloomberg earlier this week? Someone slipped some old news on their website about United Airlines being in receivership (this is just what I remember so it is accurate as anything else on the Internet that doesn't have an Editor), UA stocks took a HUGE nose dive. Then bounced back up, but what a shocking thing to happen based on unverified information. It was on a reputable site, but one that accepts posts from assumed reliable sources.

Say what you will about newspapers and bias, you will be hard pressed to get as accurate reporting on the Internet. What about Sarah Palin's daughter being the real mother of Sarah's baby? I don't care for Ms. Palin (too screechy and too easy at shouting bias - now that the shoe is on the other foot, how does it feel?) But I also think that kind of speculation would never have appeared in a newspaper. We need newspapers. I just hope we can save them before they sink under the surface of the information ooze.

Good luck, Idalia, Laura, Eddie, Paul, Carlos, Armen, Phil, Patrick, Chris, Paulette, Donna, Lorraine, and others who are recently departed from the tribune company. And good luck to all who remain. Sigh.

The Way We Were

The Things They Carried. This book tells about the physical things they carried: girlfriends nylons around their neck; knives, letter, lots of stuff. That's at the beginning. As the author tells more about these very young men at war in Viet Nam, we learn that there is more. What they mostly carried was their histories, the culture that was evolving back home, their youth.

Tim O'Brien is my age. It was hard to realize this because he says many times "I am 43 years old and I am a writer." But this is an old book. He tells us how old he is and what he does for a living because he made it whole out of that war. At least, he is as whole as possible after he left some of the "things he carried" back in that insane war. He and his comrades were so achingly young. Do we send very young men to war because that is when they are the strongest and most fit? Or is it because they are too new to be able to resist? O'Brien writes about us, too, the ones who were at home and would never understand what was happening in those rice paddies.

If I found it hard to understand what my contemporaries were going through, what about the young people who are assigned this book to read now? They must be assigned this book, or why would Cliffs Notes publish a pamphlet about it? This is a very small book. The real one, not the yellow one. How hard could it be to read the stories of these men? How could you begin to sense O'Brien's deepening dispair as he repeats that he is 43 years old and a writer, as so many of his friends will never be?


On the lighter side, we have a serial killer loose in Scotland. Thank goodness we have Inspector Rebus to solve the crimes. Between beers. And disagreements with other law enforcement agencies. In the middle of a meeting of world leaders. Did I mention the beers? This is a good book of its type.

I'm also watching Season 5 of The Wire. I love that series. This, the last season, deals more with the Baltimore Sun. That is a Tribune owned newspaper, much like the Los Angeles Times. It highlights The Sun's editor at that time, John Carroll. He came to The Times after he left The Sun. Lovely man, but you can tell the reporter who left that newspaper to write for this series didn't care for him. It is painful to watch the horrible things that happen to the paper - downsizing and cutbacks, especially after experiencing much of the same at The Times. But The Wire is always great to watch. If you can stand a lot of violence and obscene language, you should watch this. The writing and acting is amazing, from the scene where they only use one word in many variations while investigating a crime scene to McNulty hearing an exact description of himself in a profile of a serial killer given by the FBI. This is a thing of beauty. If I were in the habit of buying DVD's , instead of Netflixing them, this is a set I would buy.

The Girls

Both Cindy and Eric were gone last Tuesday night. "The Girls" usually sleep by the door of their room upstairs. As I've said, they live for the possibility that they may kill someone some day. Tuesday night they stayed downstairs, in front of my door. That's the door in the middle of the picture on the left. The bathroom door is at Sunshine's feet. Bailey is lying in the doorway to the dining room. So, when nature calls in the middle of the night, do you turn on your lights? All I could feel was dog under my feet. And still they didn't move. Turning on the light and taking their picture finally got a response from Sunshine. How could I disturb her sleep?

Sunshine got revenge on Saturday for me disrupting her sleep. I took a walk earlier in the week and took a picture of the sidewalk down our street. It has been beautiful in Arlington this summer. Everyone comments on it. That day, Eric and Cindy decided to take Bailey to the park. They left Sunshine in the house with the other old girl. I thought I had waited a decent period of time, time enough to go around the two blocks I'd been told about. So I let Sunshine out the front door to do what dogs do outside. What she decided to do was to follow the rest of her family. I got all the way down the block before I could grab onto her collar. We were a funny pair. She was not moving. No. We stayed on the corner for some time. We met a new dog and his master. They were very nice. We talked about how old ladies can't keep up with the young 'uns so it would be better to turn around and go home. Nothing moved her. Finally she realized that I was as determined as her. So we both got a little air that day.