It's Nice To Be Back

Some time ago, Harlan Ellison called me a writer. Actually, he did more than that. He announced that I was a writer. He proclaimed that I was a writer. He pointed his finger at me, one of many in his audience at his talk at a World Science Fiction Convention, and made sure the rest of the folks in the room knew I was a writer.

I'd prefaced a question to him by saying unlike many science fiction readers who all seem to be working on novels, I wrote stories for a daily newspaper and had no aspirations to write a book. I never got to the question - Harlan took that point and expounded on it. He reminded all the others whose "books" were still rambling thoughts not yet fastened to paper that writers actually write. And pointed out I wrote on a daily basis.

I wrote for newspapers for 23 years, until one office where I worked made life so peculiar I switched to managing Kenny's cartoon studio. And you know things must be peculiar if working in a cartoon studio felt better than working in a career I had loved.

Then Kenny got hired at Pixar. Then we moved to California. Then I needed a job and figured, hey, with all these papers in the Bay Area, getting hired as a reporter should be a cinch.

Instead, it was a bust.

Folks think newspapers have recently run into problems. I got my heads-up on the matter in 1997.

Ever hopeful, I filled the time between applications with office temp jobs, a short-term bartending gig, telling folks about Hawai`i, trying and failing to be a travel agent, and becoming a top-notch cashier until a nasty fall made them send me home for good.

I turned to teaching ukulele and Hawaiian language in Texas, and started my own halau after we returned to California. Love the teaching, won't give up the halau and other students, but realized at last I couldn't survive solely on that pay.

Thanks to Roger Colton, whose keen eye spotted the ad, I applied to the Benicia Herald for a part-time reporting job. Didn't make it on the first round, but when they posted another opening, I got hired. (Thanks Marc! - He's my new boss!) And this is the door I walk through five days a week.

Working at this paper reminds me of working in the bureaus for the Daytona Beach News-Journal and the Orlando Sentinel. Bureaus are office outposts, satellites operating away from the main office, usually in suburbs of the main office's home metropolis. Sometimes the downtown folks look down on the bureaus as not being as prestigious as working at the main office. But for some of us, it's appealing to get away from the big building, compete with the local papers and other papers' bureaus, and meet killer deadlines that make scooping the competition so much sweeter.

As a bureau brat, I got to know more townsfolks a lot better, which can work both for and against you. But, sometimes the residents would remind me that the bureau belongs to a big metro paper, and I wasn't working for the "local" paper - even if none of their staff was born or grew up in the home town.

Now, I do work for the local paper.

The Herald publishes five days a week. It's the home town paper in Benicia, just a short bridge ride from my home in Martinez. It's not on line, and they've ended subscriptions by mail. You get your paper the old fashioned way, by delivery carrier or by slipping a couple of quarters in the paper machine.


Snagging this job wouldn't have happened if it weren't for many friends, because my clips collection had been ruined. Kenny found a few of my surviving clips, some of which were so damaged they couldn't be scanned - I typed them into the computer and printed them out as if they were raw copy. Gerri Bauer, who worked with me in the News-Journal's DeLand office, located some of my stories about Stetson University, where she works now. That included my scoop on Barbara Bush. T. C. Wilder found some of my historic pieces on Eldora, an unincorporated community within the Canaveral National Seashore. Countless folks offered to be references.

I found other co-workers through Facebook who gave me sad news - most of my work has been dumped.

I had written copiously about the Central Florida Zoological Park, where I met Jack Hanna and Stan Brock. Among my stories was one about employees who learned sign language on their own and taught it to the chimpanzees on display. They did it simply to entertain the animals and stimulate their minds, not to make history. But they noticed the chimps were signing to communicate to each other, and were putting signs together to make new words to ask the employees for things. Scientists who had been working with chimpanzees and other great apes were astonished to read the article, which published worldwide by the Associated Press. It had never occurred to those working in labs that apes on display could learn sign language, or that they could learn outside of isolated, one-on-one lessons.

I wrote many stories about the nation's Bicentennial. I did a series on folksinger Barbara Muller's trek up the east coast, gathering obscure songs along the way. I rode along for a day so I could file a story on the Bicentennial Horse Ride that gathered horseback riders from all over the nation. I chronicled older residents' memories of their lives, written at the prompting of another senior, Nikki Wahl, whose story we always had hoped to tell, but who, instead, sent us to others who, like her, had lived in fascinating times.

I'm sorry those stories are gone, but as I now say, I'm writing new clips. God willing, I will never need to use them. The owner and publisher has told my boss that this paper is a survivor, and I would like to think I'll be a reporter here for a long time.





That's me at my desk, at the end of the week. I've got a story up on the screen, and my steno pad ready for notes.

Best feature on the desk is a photo that Kenny got for me, with the help of his buddy John Field, who may know more about "The Adventures of Superman" television show than anyone who wasn't part of the production. They both knew that when I watched the show, I focused on Lois Lane, played by Noel Neill. Lois wasn't stuck writing for the Society Section, the only opening for many woman reporters when this show was airing. Lois in all her incarnations - tv, movie, and original comic book - wrote hard news, and I found that exciting.

So, when I landed this job, after trying for so many years to get back into the industry, John helped Kenny surprise me with this photo of Noel Neill (posing with Clark Kent doing his side job as a superhero), which she signed "From one reporter to another."

My beats include the city of Benicia, and I'm in the middle of covering election campaigns. I've interviewed the first woman brigadier general in the California Army National Guard. I've written about how our carelessness with trash has caused a floating island the size of Texas, made of plastic garbage, to form in the Pacific. I've filed a story about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's refusal to sign several hundred bills until the legislature addresses water problems, and I interviewed our assembly member and county and city representatives about how this affects the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta - Benicia is a Delta town.

Unlike Lois, I've also written about a recent style show, but this is because the event was organized by Main Street Benicia, which promotes downtown business - I cover business, too.

The important thing is I've been writing. My by-line is back on Page One.

And, yes, sir, Mr. Ellison - I am a writer!