Scene at Moe’s in Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport
There’s a young woman, no older than 22, paying me more attention than usual. She’s a few tables away, wearing a multi-colored dress and far too many bracelets. I’m just trying to scarf down a burrito before boarding my flight to Illinois. No time for googley eyes.
A few minutes pass, and then…
“Can I put my hand on your knee?”
She’s asking the older man at the table between us. I can see that he’s bandaged up, but this seems out of the ordinary for conversation between two strangers. Even with hot sauce flowing freely.
He replies: “Umm, sure.” She scoots over, puts her hand on his injured knee, and starts praying. In the middle of the restaurant. In the middle of Concourse C. At the busiest airport in the world.
This transition from spring to summer has been schizophrenic, seesawing between “no jacket required”-stifling humidity to bitter, Hemingway-depression. Count me in that latter camp: I’m no sunny flower and I love hot drinks too much. 60 degrees and a fine mist is the very definition of a happy Adam.
But who wants to read about the weather? Not this guy. I write about it enough, along with murders, mangled cars and burning houses most mornings at the Journal Star. I’ve come up with a new slogan for my news brief expertise:
Just give me the facts
and I’ll shit out 4 graphs.
I can no longer write casually. This is the literary equivalent of blowing your nose and hoping something becomes dislodged.
6/7/11 – notes from a walk through my neighborhood (written in sloppy pencil)
The veiled moon overhead, neighbors blasting Ben Harper in their backyard, majestic Moss Ave porches ablaze with Django Reinhart drifting from interior safety, runners breathless, bicyclists with lone headlamps mingling dangerously, cherries in my hand, a strange smell of burning house makes me nervous. The first timid fireflies trying their on/off switches for the first time, the stillness of air does nothing for my damp shirt, and yet few mosquitoes exist.
A young guy is out on a Saturday night in his best shoes, talking to a girl he’s met in a bar. She’s nice, he likes her. But he’s got this sort of confession, see. There’s something she ought to know about him. And he’s never told this to anybody. You see, on the inside, deep on the inside, he isn’t really a guy at all. He’s an Olivetti electric self-correcting typewriter. And he can’t even type!
“It’s like this — your family, your wife, won’t let you go out and pick up girls. But you went out and did it anyway,” Mr. Guan said. “Secret flying is like secret love. You do it, you don’t tell people about it.”
EAAAAAGH. I’m sipping on something resembling the unholy union of motor oil and maple syrup.
This is espresso. Or that’s what I ordered. I’ve given up on coffee; too acidic and just too… caffeinated. Yes, espresso has less caffeine in an average serving than a small cup of drip coffee.
Due to the convenient walk from my apartment, Starbucks is where I intake this concoction. I don’t usually mess with the burnt roasts of their classic coffees, but I’ve found no fault with their espresso. Until now.
My mind is being pulled like taffy, Gumby tortured on a rack, then left rotting in a Dali painting. I’m at Copper River Coffee & Tea in Peoria and this espresso is decidedly different. Thick crema and surprisingly little water pours from a La Marzocco beast, with an aftertaste that mows through nerves on the back of my tongue. What the hell have I been mucking around with until now? Watered-down Bud Light?
This is shocking and will require adjustments. I’m not alone. Have you had a similar experience?
The Journal Star is a rare newsroom governed by seniority when cuts are made, as stipulated in our Newspaper Guild contract. I’ve been there almost 6 years – an eternity in print time – but have been left at the bottom of the heap by the departures of younger coworkers.
I was saved on Good Friday in 2010. Today, I was saved on Friday the 13th. Each time, numerous senior colleagues stepped forward to voluntarily face the guillotine. These rolling heads have saved my own.
We’re all acutely aware of reality, that the blood runs freely at every newspaper. Mine is not unique. Each time the ax swings through our newsroom, I duck; I’m a tall man, after all. That swift execution can come on any day of any week of any year. I no longer know the meaning of future plans.
And yet I stay! I persist, much like this infamous cat. I’m not masochistic, but could I convince you otherwise? I will admit that there’s less celebration this second time around. I don’t want to become “good” at this. While my love for newspapers is eternal, we need to hug this out before someone gets hurt.
So much has been written already, but I still feel the urge to add to the pile.
Sunday night, fresh from emergency grocery shopping with my neighbor/friend/coworker, I noticed several tweets by prominent WH network correspondents in my timeline. Each emphasizing the unusualness of Obama calling a presser at 11pm eastern on a Sunday.
I checked NYTimes.com and found zilch. And yet here was Twitter, sputtering to life with accounts of large media organizations calling their hotshots to the White House – “just come in” and “get to work” were common refrains.
I’m a dude without cable TV, so I texted my neighbor to ask if I could hop downstairs to watch the presser. A flurry of texts flew from my phone to alert friends and family, and the great Internet machine ramped into high gear. Read midway through this AP story for some fascinating traffic statistics.
We watch.
Despite knowing that the announcement would be related to national security, I distinctly remember being anxious. And that I was munching on a bowl of cereal – my dinner for the night. I looked at my neighbor, and she seemed unnerved, too. Here we are, newspaper people, worried about the unknown.
I’m not even sure what we were worried about. But “national security” is a big umbrella, one that can hold “aliens have landed” as easily as it can fit “we’ve started another war.”
The toast.
So we watched her television, smartphones in hand, and nervously laughed at CNN’s desperate attempt to hold our attention for lengthy periods of pure speculation. Twitter was desperate with attempts at snarky humor, while Facebook was a bit more measured. Both were unrelenting. I decided drinks were in order, so I ran back upstairs to my apartment and looked for something to toast with – anything, really – and settled on an almost empty bottle of Captain Morgan and two tiny espresso cups.
By this point, crowds began celebrating outside the White House in a way normally reserved for Super Bowl victories. An important realization was reached: neither of us own American flags.
Obama finally spoke, confirmed the news and we quietly clinked cups.
____
Fast-forward to Monday morning at 6 a.m.: I did not get enough sleep. I needed espresso and newspapers. The first is successful, but the second fails unnecessarily. Starbucks had the New York Times, alright, but it was an early national edition sans any bin Laden mention.
I was able to find both a Tribune and Sun-Times later in the day. The Trib chose to hold presses for 2 hours after 1st edition, with editors saying “skip the deadline.”
At work, I immediately set about pushing updated wire reports onto our homepage and packaging it in a way that looked clean and pretty. It’s a difficult task with our Zope CMS system, seemingly developed to tie our hands behind our backs at every turn. I resorted to CSS trickery with negative values and other non-kosher remedies.
Our print edition was striking, one of the few Journal Star fronts that made me want to smash the glass in the single-copy box out of news hunger. Cutting the typical skybox promos let the nameplate float to the very top, leaving plenty of room for a nice, fat 1.75″ screaming head across 6 columns. Kudos to Shannon Countryman, who had to blow up A1 that night like hundreds of other copy editors around the country. Our 11:50 p.m. off-the-floor deadline was delayed until after 12:30 a.m.
Tuesday’s budget had 7 local stories by 6 reporters slated, not including countless wire reports. One of our copy editors said she was in “folo hell.”
Trust me: I don't appear to be shooting through the hole in the glass, but I am. I'll say that this was seconds after getting checked against the boards.
“Hey man, we cut another hole in the glass before the game.”
One of the rough-looking Civic Center employees is talking to me. That never happens. And he’s pointing to an impossibly small area about 50 feet away.
“You might have to get to it from underneath the bleachers.”
Uh, okay. I’m at a Peoria Rivermen hockey game, their last regular season home game of the season. 9,000 fans are packed into the arena, the air is chilly and the ice is slick. I leave my usual, behind-the-net spot where a hole is cut into the protective dasher board glass and try to find my new home.
This is disgusting. And dark. I’m tiptoeing around spilled nacho cheese and beer bottles still oozing sticky amber booze. There’s a real danger that I’ll crack my skull open. Remember those jungle gyms from childhood’s past? Brains all over the ground with one missed step.
I see a tiny bit of light from under the seats. I crouch down and… yes, there’s a hole. And about a foot of clearance. Holy cripes.
I’m not a claustrophobic man by nature, but I do possess a healthy respect for tight spaces. There’s a reason why I don’t climb into places where I could get stuck. I might get stuck.
I imagine getting wedged in tight enough that I’m not able to cry for help. The cheers and jeers of hockey hooligans would serenade the end for this guy. I’d die hearing profanities and body checking. If brave, I might try a “127 Hours” effort. But I subscribe to “never leave a man(‘s body part) behind.”
I slap my head on a girder and realize I have no camera gear. So back through the debris I go, pushing several cameras and a 200-400mm monster zoom under the opening into what might be a fissure in the Earth itself.
My turn. I slither on my belly, cleaning the floor with each inch traversed. I’m doing them a favor, these lazy bastards! One final push and I’m alive… in a cage.
This new hole in the glass was cut at a perfect spot from a photographic standpoint: six feet back from the goal line, with a great view of someone slapping that puck straight into the net.
But the arena configuration means that the seats don’t meet flush with the dasher boards in all places, leaving awkward gaps for stupid photographers to be forgotten.
I need a chair. So I get a chair. Back through the gap I go. A woman screams as she realizes where I am.
And then it’s off to the races. I work and worry about peanuts and pucks and tennis shoes, all hitting the back of my head simultaneously.
The party included two cakes, Jones said. One was decorated with the words, “Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler.” The other bore the phrase, “The South Was Right. White Men Fight,” Jones said.
It’s official: I’m not laid off.
Fast-forward to Monday morning at 6 a.m.: I did not get enough sleep. I needed espresso and newspapers. The first is successful, but the second fails unnecessarily. Starbucks had the New York Times, alright, but it was an early national edition sans any bin Laden mention.
I see a tiny bit of light from under the seats. I crouch down and… yes, there’s a hole. And about a foot of clearance. Holy cripes.