Heard from afar

Uncle Harry, the magic man

2010-07-30T11:55:00.016-05:00

For much of my life, I secretly wondered whether Uncle Harry was just a dream.

He was, after all, beyond real. Who else could reach into an absurdly cluttered closet and pull out a gift from a princess or your mother’s childhood toy? Who else could just touch people and leave them both smiling and ache-free? And who else could make dogs speak, birds dance and perfect strangers sing with him in public?

Words can never describe Harry Gibbings. Technically, he wasn’t my uncle but my mother’s cousin – a relationship I’m not sure has an endearment. Some people never even knew him as Harry – just George Gibbings, the globe-trotting BBC cameraman.

Though I loved my grandparents, I saw them only a few times in my life. But Harry wove his way in and out of my entire life. We lived thousands of miles apart and often didn’t see each other for years. Then I would hear an unmistakable “Hello, my boy,” and be back in his world. It was always as if we had parted in mid conversation while he went out of the room for a cup of tea, only take up from where we left without batting an eye.

For my mother, Harry was the bridge to the life she left when we moved to America. He would show up at our house just when she most needed a dose of England and the London she so loved. He could bring the memories, the laughter and the smiles back to his beloved “Dinah” in an instant with that special twinkle in his eye.

Harry’s gift to me, however, was the ability to respect life while bending its rules. I learned from him that a good laugh served the world much better than a smug smile, that most doors were made to go through despite the signs above them, that “neat” was a relative term – and that people really should sing in public.

He may not be listed in the history books nor become a statue in Hyde Park, but Harry brought more living to life than any roomful of statesmen ever has.

Maybe Uncle Harry was not a dream, but just a welcomed bit of magic. Even when he is gone, he is always here.

(Harry Gibbings died in London July 25, 2010, just a few days after his 90th birthday.)

A name on a tag, a memory in my mind

2009-08-08T14:30:00.006-05:00

The old saw “memory plays tricks on you” isn’t quite accurate when it comes to high school reunions. Memory just tries its best to please you.

Last night Cecile and I attend the first of two soirées for the 40th reunion of the 1969 Shasta High School class. Viewed with the detachment of a documentary filmmaker, it probably was hilarious. A couple hundred graying (and/or balding and paunchy) grandparents wandered around the spacious hall glancing only briefly at the faces of their classmates. Our eyes were most often fixed on the paper nametags stuck to the dresses and casual-chic shirts we hoped would show we still had “it.”

Not that I viewed it with that detachment. I, too, was reveling in the pleasant warmth of selective memory.

The Class of ’69 will never be the subject of one of those inspiring movies about little guys changing the world. When I ran into Principal Duggan years after graduation, he said our class was more like a bad dream.

But give us a break, Mr. Duggan. Between Vietnam and the barely-cold war, “future” seemed an ethereal term. Unfathomable authority was not limited to the Pentagon. Here in Northern California, girls were sent home for wearing pants, but could wear mini-skirts even shorter than today’s fashions. And Duncan’s puzzling new school motto, “Only the best is worth trying for” seemed to license the cynics of ’69 to ignore the expectations of our elders.

We didn’t need one of Mr. Longnecker’s history-class analyses to understand the significance of Woodstock that summer. We let other classes step up the challenge. We were simply challenging.

But 40 years later, those cynics are wrapping up careers as teachers, carpenters, nurses and cops. Pretty traditional after all, but for those wonderful nametags. One glance at a nametag and that gray-haired lady was the svelte girl who distracted me in English. Another tag put a mop of my buddy’s hair on the shiny-bald head asking me where I was living now.

A few drinks and a few hundred nametags changed a room full of respectable oldsters into a mob of wise-assed (high school) seniors who thumbed their noses at the world.
At least that’s the way I remember it.

Daughter to Dad: It’s a local issue

2009-03-18T11:24:00.008-05:00

My recent comparison of newspapers to farms drew a number of comments from fellow journalists, but the one that gave me pause was from an unusual source – my daughter.

“Unusual” is not quite a fair term, as Gillian has never been afraid to voice her opinion. She has not only her father’s genes but also has a journalism degree from the University of Oregon.

Not that she shared my addiction to newsrooms. She instead became an elementary school teacher before tackling the full-time job of raising my rambunctious grandson and his lively little sister. At 31, she and her husband live in Charlottesville, VA, where she balances motherhood with authoring magazine articles and a book.

All that detail is a long way of saying she has a marketing bull’s-eye on her back. Gillian is in the demographic that newspaper advertisers most want – middle-class, college-educated moms who make the buying decisions for their fairly affluent families. And she even lives in the outer suburbs of the East Coast megalopolis.

All of us in the news media want the Gillians. My expert, however, warns that to woo them we need to work a lot harder than just diversifying into niche papers.

“I think that the key is localization not specialization,” she wrote, taking issue with a suggestion by the University of North Carolina’s Phil Meyer. “ I think that the generation that I, and in most ways (her 25-year-old brother) Garrett, are part of are heading to a hyper-local mindset.”

“Hyper-local.” How often have we heard that buzzword at conferences? And how well have we done at actually accomplishing it?

Gillian said she cares not a whit about the plays on Broadway nor who became the new mayor in San Antonio. She concedes that she regularly read the Sunday New York Times … “but it was the first thing to go when our budget got cut -- I could give it up easily.” The Gray Lady was fun, but she found she could get similar content from the plethora of online sites.

Staggering Dad: “Knife in the heart, dear daughter. What’s an old newspaper man to do?”

Impatient Daughter: “How about pay attention?”

“What I can't give up is reading the C-Ville and The Hook, which are focused specifically on Charlottesville. The "local" paper, The Daily Progress, focus too much on county information for me, so I never read it.”

C-Ville and The Hook? Though they sound like Comedy Network shows they in fact are just two of the umpteen non-daily newspapers in the United States that many journalists pretend do not exist. They don’t count among the Newspaper Association of America’s 1,422 – er, make that 1,420 – “real” daily newspapers. No one writes wistful op-ed piece about “what will the world be like without C-Ville?” In fact, I’ve never been able to find more than a guess at how many weekly newspapers are published in the United States.

(Brian Steffens of the small papers’ National Newspaper Association said “more than 7,000” is a safe estimate, though he has 11,000 unverified titles in his database.)

In both my heart and mind, I believe Gillian is right. But that does not mean only the metros are threatened by the recession. Cathy Harding, editor of my daughter’s beloved C-Ville, reminded me that the famous Creative Loafing filed bankruptcy and most other “alternative weeklies” are struggling with the downturn of advertising. No one is immune from the economy.

For some, the economy of small scale is a blessing. The Hook’s editor/publisher Hawes Spencer said the paper is down about 20%, “but that is not a fatal blow.” Like many small papers, everyone on his staff has multiple jobs and the company operates on a pay-as-you-go budget. The Hook has no middle management and no debt. Wouldn’t McClatchy love that?

Enough with the business stuff. What about Gillian’s local focus?

Local does indeed have an enticing appeal, both of her favorite editors said. While the daily paper is event-driven, Harding said the weekly gives readers something they can settle into for a while. They do that by drawing meaning from fact instead of just reporting the facts alone.

Both papers also put great stock in appearance. “If it was just a rag … it wouldn’t have the loyalty it has,” Harding said. C-Ville is “attractive, bright and free.”

Like the Internet. But neither editor holds out much hope for the digital medium. Revenues from their excellent Web sites are “microscopic.” Hard analysis shows the print publication stands up well to the Web readership, but those digital editions are an “investment in reader habit” that awaits the genius who can pull a Web revenue rabbit from the next generation’s hat.

So don’t give up on print, my dear daughter advises.

“I really do hope that there is a stronger future for small, local, even weekly papers,” Gillian wrote. “I think that the generation coming into things is too used to using cnn.com to get their national news to ever really get into the swing of reading one of the big papers.

“But as we age, we will find ourselves wanting to know what our neighbors are up to.”

Eureka! She really did inherit my news nose.

We Media 3: Person to person Web – literally

2009-02-25T19:48:00.003-06:00

The sessions at the We Media conference in Miami always interesting, but some of the best information is gleaned in hallway chats during coffee breaks.

This morning I heard a broad British accent hail me with “Hello, it’s the famous Clyde who told us about Facebook.”

It was David Dunkley Gyimah, a hyper-energetic and hyper-talented video journalist I first met in San Antonio at the International Symposium on Online Journalism.

“Famous” is a stretch, but at during a coffee break at that 2004 gathering I had tried to tell my colleagues about this oddball Web site that my students were gaga about. I had recently become one of just a handful of faculty to sign on and I a gut feeling there was something to it.

Facebook? Frat party pictures and dorm chatter? I was met with blank stares. It certainly didn’t sound like anything that would be of interest to media professionals. But David thought the dearth of innovative thinking by the gathered journalists was funny.

So today David and I had another great laugh. And this time he told me about a technology to watch.

While David is a noted video innovator, senior lecturer at the University of Westminster and founder of Viewmagazine.tv, he is also a student in what may be the most unusual doctoral programs in the world. SMARTlab is a “practice-based Ph.D. program” Teams of students actually invent new technology after research that includes “landing” in a community, culture or research environment and spending enough time there to know it intimately.

And what’s on the boards these days? How about an Internet variant the lifeblood of which is real flesh and blood?

One of the SMARTlab teams is exploring a system similar to that used by British intelligence operatives to surreptitiously pass messages. The system uses a set of small Bluetooth transponders that exchange information when the person wearing Unit A gets close to the person wearing Unit B.

Great James Bond stuff, but the SMARTlab folks want to know what happens if you have a whole lot of people with those transponders. Could, for instance, one pass a message across a city or whole country by relaying it from a jogger to a bicyclist to a senior strolling the park to the mailman and on and on. Digitial internodal communications. That’s Web talk on the hoof, so to speak.

This is not just fun and games. One might be able to gather information from nearby stores without stopping or pickup news updates while walking to work. Or send a digital personal message to a distant loved one without ever going on the Internet. Who knows what you could do by putting transponders on dog collars.

So it’s my turn. Next conference, I get to give David the loud hello and tell everyone he is the famous seer. But they'll probably already know that before he is in handshaking distance.

We Media 2: Crisis reporting, one text message at at time

2009-02-25T11:17:00.004-06:00

Not all of the gamechangers here at the We Media conference rely on cutting-edge technology. In fact, a project that depends on villagers in rural Africa has, in my mind, one of the best chances of the way distribute breaking news.

Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Swahili, is a non-profit organization that has built a unique crowdsourcing information. Crowdsourcing is the journalistic process of gathering information from a large number of people via blogging, texting and other digital media.

Erik Hersman, director of operations, told a auditorium of Ushahindi works primarily in Africa to gather and forward crisis information. While it will take e-mail and Web information, the tool of choice for its contributors is the simple cell phone. Not the iPhone, Blackberry or other smartphone. Just the cheap “dumb phone” that does little else but make voice calls and allows text messaging.

In countries where wired phone systems are unreliable, newspapers seldom make it to the hinterlands and broadcast media is often government controlled, the cell phone is ubiquitous across social classes. For instance, the International Telecommunications Union said about one in four Ugandans – 8.2 million – carry a mobile phone.

When a natural or political crisis erupts, an Ushahidi user sends details by text to the organization. After a local NGO verifies the account, Ushahidi logs the incident on database and plots on a digital map with space for pictures and video. Reports can then be texted back to local leaders, who respond to disaster or mediate community conflict.

It’s almost too simple to be true. It reminds me of the old “farm telegraph” where the call for help was passed from neighbor to neighbor by ringing bells. In this case it is done by with open source software Ushahidi shares freely with others.

Take a look at http://ushahidi.com . This is not only a stellar humanitarian effort by a simple use of technology that could be modified for many uses.

We Media 1: How do you change the game?

2009-02-24T15:47:00.002-06:00

Escaping February’s icy grip on the Midwest is always a treat. But for me that usually means a convention and more time in an air-conditioned room than in the sun.

We Media Miami promotes itself as a different sort of conference and I was treated to a different sort of introduction. I had to catch a plane that arrived seven hours before kickoff, which meant I had a chance to relish a Latin lunch and a few minutes of sun before I got to work.

Work? At a conference in Cocoanut Grove? Alas, there is no free lunch (especially cilantro soup). The Reynolds Journalism Institute sent me here to look at the We Media organization’s concept of “gamechangers” for the Web and the world.

We Media describes itself as “a Web site, a community, a conference and a global movement to make the world better through media.” It is the brainchild of Andrew Nachison and Dale Perkins of the Seven26groups consulting company.

The conference is framed around a competition for which 35 Web sites were nominated. A panel of judges this week pared that down to eight.

Prior to the announcement of the finalists, I went through all the sites myself and then asked 24 students in my citizen journalism-focused Online Journalism class to do the same. We each ranked the sites on a 1-5 scale and then made comments.
Twenty-somethings are hard to impress. I found a few gems in a mostly been-there, done-that field. But the students were harsh, giving only one site a “3.” At least it was one of the sites I liked well enough to grant a “4.”

I often notice in class how jaded young people are about technology. They have grown up with life-like video games, CGI movies and a Google answer for anything. To catch their attention takes work.

For We Media, the students wanted both new process and intriguing output. Mere content would not do it.

The site that did that was Charitywater.org. Like me, they appreciated the social benefit of funding clean water projects around the world. And we both enjoyed the ease of navigation and the web cam documenting well drilling.

To me that was not enough to “change the game.” But the way Charitywater.org ups the ante in fund raising is. The site looks like something from Ikea and has the same appeal to the pocketbook. You can give on any page.

But I think what most impressed me was Twitter campaign. Sure, we have all been asked to use that addictive SMS community to promote a cause. But this was the first time I was given a long list of pre-written comments I could copy and past into my Twitter feed. Very cool.

But not cool enough for the judges. It didn’t even place.

That’s the conflict of ideals and ideas I will explore this week. Through Thursday, I will be blogging from the conference with my observations on why people think the game needs to be changed and how they think we should go about that. And I’ll weigh in with my own opinions – which are never in short supply.

Information rich, media poor

2009-02-21T10:32:00.006-06:00

I don’t think I can take any more news. Not in my brain, but in my pocketbook.

Like most Americans, I’ve been glumly looking at my bank accounts, retirement plan and other assets. The result is the realization that I would have done better with a coffee can buried in the backyard.

That search also led me to take a closer look at what I pay for information. I was surprised, but newspaper publishers should be terrified.

Let me preface this by noting that I am a proud member of the embattled middle class, with a professor’s paycheck that still hasn’t matched what I earned in the industry.

I am also a lover of newspapers. I subscribe to two and read others online. But it is not the newspapers that are taking the bite from my wallet. It is all those electronic services I consider basic utilities.

The National Cable and Television Association says the average price of expanded basic cable is about $44 a month and digital averages $60. I pay $84 for digital cable here in Columbia, MO. My wife and I have jobs that require an Internet connection that runs about twice the price of normal broadband in Columbia. We pay $140 a month.

Alas, it was Steve Jobs who finally did in my budget. I succumbed to those alluring Apple ads last Christmas and bought iPhones for my wife and me. Just $170 per month, paid with a nervous smile. That is not far from the national average of $60 per month – per cell phone user and a bargain since my son moved out of the house.

Hardware costs could make the total zoom much higher but the laptop, the wireless router and the cell phone handsets are not monthly charges. Yet.

I doubt that I am the only cost-conscious citizen who conducted a recession excavation of the bill basket. But, what I found surprised me. I pay nearly twice as much for digital media each month than I do for newspaper subscriptions in a year.

I also doubt that I am the only cheapskate who turned down the New York Times offer of $13.40 a week for arguably the finest journalism in the world. Too much money.

But though I could buy a sports car for the $394 I pay each month to look at passing electrons, I don’t think of it as a luxury. I put all that whizzbang technology in the same category as the light switch on the living room wall. The home wouldn’t be a home without it.

After thinking about my dependency on all this interconnectivity, I’ve come to believe that few of us even think of those technology services as “media” costs and instead lump them with our other utilities.” With apologies to my other colleagues trying desperately to monetize online news, I think we are on the wrong track. Americans only want news and information. But they value information delivery systems.

It may be time for journalists to bite the bullet and concede that content is priceless. As in without a price that the public will pay.

The television and movie industries figured this out long ago by demanding a lucrative cut of cable revenues. People are willing to pay for delivery, but not to buy a television program.

The anarchistic-by-design Internet laughs at Web-wide relief for newspapers. However, many Webheads concede that without newspapers and their reporters, there would be little news content to deliver. So there is a small chance content providers will some day be able to cut a deal with Internet Service Providers.

Perhaps, however, a better route would be to develop a valued delivery system for our legacy print editions. The Web is driving subscriptions down, but print editions still hold marketable appeal and generally outdraw newspaper Web sites.

If our problem is more in our circulation system than in our content, it may be time to blow up the tradition of kid-on-a-bike/motor route carrier/coin-fed news stand. Like cable and Internet, perhaps the newspaper should emphasize the value of an information stream rather than the content itself. Could print newspapers have a delivery structure like an ISP? For a single rate to a delivery company (Newspaper Service Provider/NSP), could I get any newspaper I wanted on whichever days I wanted?

Perhaps that “NSP” could even be the local ISP or cable company.

Far fetched, perhaps. But I once thought the idea of using my cell phone as a bubble level was beyond the pale.

Newspapers, farms and Bud's advice

2009-02-16T19:31:00.002-06:00

When the Tribune Co. announced bankruptcy in December, I had one immediate thought:

I wish they’d really bought the farm.

The World’s Greatest Newspaper is broke and an uncomfortable crowd of metros is teetering on the brink. Even the New York Times is hocking its skyscraper to pay the bills.

It’s a sad time for those big broadsheets we traditionally use to define “newspaper.” Here in academia, out in the blogosphere and certainly in the corporate boardrooms, the fear is palpable and the dream of an online white knight ubiquitous.

But I keep thinking of the farm.

Out in the Heartland, the papers that report on the 8th Grade Softball Championships and PTA chicken dinners also are hurting. Hurting, but not dying.

The National Newspaper Association and the Suburban Newspapers of America recently reported that revenues for papers with under 100,000 circulation are down nearly 2%. That’s tolerable. The total newspaper industry is down 18%.

The metros are dreaming of a federal bailout. The community publishers have hunkered down and are waiting for another storm to pass.

I learned my key lessons in newspaper economics while working as the general manager of the East Oregonian, a small daily in the namesake town of Pendleton wool. There are still sheep in the hills, but Pendleton is surrounded by those amber waves of grain that encourage God to shed his grace on thee. Dryland wheat farming is a bigger gamble than the stock market – only half your land produces a crop each year and the cash you get back depends on the current popularity of sandwiches and ramen noodles.

But like the East Oregonian, most of those wheat fields have been tended by the same families for generations. That, I learned, is the key to the historic success of the American press.

Newspapers are farms, not factories.

Manufacturing is a highly volatile industry. It takes a constant flow of new capital to develop those new and improved products, to buy and replace ever-changing machinery and to keep the foreign competitors at bay. Ergo the stock market, where investors bet you can appear to promise enough success to edge the value of their shares up a few points next quarter.

Those investors don’t turn the cranks nor staff the assembly line. They impatiently snipe from the sidelines for greater and greater quarterly gains to drive up the price of their stock .

I thought Knight-Ridder’s a 19% profit margin sounded pretty darn good, but Wall Street forced its sale to drive up its stock value. Even in these times of misery, Gannett reports a 9% net profit (down from the mid 20's).
By comparison, Wal-Mart posts a 3% profit, down from about 6%. But the happy face is still on those discount stickers.

In Oregon I came to appreciate patience. On farms there are no fiscal quarters, only crop seasons. Anyone with soil beneath their fingernails knows droughts will take their rotation with bumper crops. That’s what barns, haylofts and grain elevators are for.

Newspapers once shared the economic strategy of the farms. They delighted in being among the oldest continuing businesses in their regions. Families owned them and, like farms, they were passed down from generation to generation. Publishers felt they both owned their communities and the communities owned them. They expected there would be lean years when they ate beans with the farmers and boom years when they shared brandy with the bankers.

In their quest to keep up with the factories, big media borrowed heavily to buy more and more papers they could run with journalistic sharecroppers. The addition of that heavy debt load was never part of the successful farm/newspaper economy. The drought hit in a big way and the notion of a quarterly gain became a joke.

But a newspaper, like a farm, must exist over a span greater than a fiscal quarter.

I will never forget the pleasant shock I had when I was introduced to Bud Forrester, the septuagenarian patriarch of the family that owned the East Oregonian.

“Clyde, just give me a new car and maybe a trip to Hawaii. But take care of my newspaper.” He shook my hand, smiled and walked away.

I had the good sense and the good skills to deliver more than that. When a friend faced the ax because his chain paper’s profit dropped below 20%, I rejoiced that but-for-the-grace-of-Bud, there went I.

Bud Forrester is gone and I no longer ride herd on the East Oregonian. This year I wouldn't be surprised at all if his grandchildren are making do with not-so-shiny cars. But the season will change.

And they’ll get that trip.

In the crowd

2008-12-04T09:39:00.003-06:00

Wednesday was a hectic workday and today a juggling day.

I launched a survey of the faculty and staff of MU yesterday afternoon. It was created by a class, but I'm constantly online tweaking it and working with respondents.

And I'm doing that while trying to pay attention at the Information Valet conference. Poorly paying attention, that is.

That said, it's nice to be sitting in a crowd that has more working journalists than academics. So I should get my attention back to them ...

Mental coffee

2008-12-02T16:54:00.002-06:00

It's amazing how being busy can clear your mind. You'd think that a landslide of expectations and obligations would smother your sense of direction. But somehow it acts like that morning cup of coffee -- it focuses me on the task at hand.

Tuesday is a non-teaching day for me. Which really means it is a bust-your-bottom day. As this was the penultimate Tuesday before the term ends, it came with an extra level of urgency.

My research class -- cleverly called "Solving Practical Problems" -- is supposed to have its final survey in the field this week. Thanksgiving, procrastination and technical foibles got in the way, however. I spent the morning and much of the afternoon reformatting their questions so the online survey would actually work

During "breathers," I processed the 61 email messages that had arrived since midnight. That meant I had to answer sets of questions from two student researchers -- one from California and the other from New York -- who solicited me as an "expert." And field a half dozen questions about a GPS project I'm toying with. And find the revised dissertation I was supposed to read and approve.

But I took time to have lunch with Associate Dean Brian Brooks, my mentor and guide in the academic world. He wanted me to explain how I was working with Missouri community newspapers for my editorial writing class and to explore how we might expand the idea. He is always a great sounding board.

So now I'm hammering away at this blog before I have to leave for a meal with a church "Dinners for 8" group. Wednesday I teach, then jump into the RJI "Information Valet" conference.

This is your (insert adjective) life

2008-12-01T21:20:00.002-06:00

I've never been excited about diary blogs. I like to write about my experiences, but not about the play-by-play.

But if you have read the notes to the left, you know I have discovered Twitter. I'm fascinated by how much one can express in a mere 140 characters. That fascination led me to revisit my view on diaries.

The actual driver was the blue mood I found myself in after assigning a group of students to write a "This I believe" essay. I realized that I had never made that type of statement myself and should put my ego where my mouth is.

Twitter is fun, but I've too long stayed away from more traditional writing. So I'll give it a try for the next few weeks. Perhaps documenting my daily thoughts will give me insight to what I believe -- or don't believe.

Clyde-o, the red-nosed professor

2008-10-28T12:36:00.003-05:00

Oh fun. For Halloween I get to go as a leper. Or a teenager.

I don’t like to make light of people whose lives are hell – and I also am not poking fun at lepers. But I’m certainly getting the look.

Like a lot of men my age, my skin is paying me back for the abuse I gave it as a boy. In northern California’s blast-furnace summers, we started the summer with intentionally acquiring a cherry-red sunburn. The theory espoused by our elders is that after you burned once, you healed with a tan that spared you of further sunburns.
It didn’t really work, but even in black-and-white family photos you can see I turned dark as well-worn pair of Oxfords. And in a few, you can see my nose threatening to peel away to a stub.

Lo these many decades later, the blisters of those sunburns are turning into the scaly patches of “sunspots.” Worse, I am indeed a cancer survivor, though in the most unheroic way. I had a couple of basal cell skin cancers removed a few years ago. They are the most common form of cancer (a million new cases a year) and seldom kill you unless they are ignored. Not ignoring them means carving them out with a scapel.

But they start with those sunspots. So every year I have the doc squirt the latest crop with liquid nitrogen. It doesn’t hurt at first, but in a few days it looks and feels like someone stabbed the spot with a hot poker. And like a burn, it heals and away.

This year my dermatologist asked if I would try a new treatment that lasts five years or more and doesn't burn. I just had to put up with a red and spotted face for about a month.

Ergo the leprous look. Each night I rub fluorouracil cream onto my face and ears, and each morning I awaken with spots that are a bit redder. After three weeks of this, the spots – and chance of cancer – are supposed to go away.

Fluorouracil is pretty neat stuff. It’s a chemotherapy chemical that attacks the DNA of screwed-up cell while leaving the good skin alone. Kind of a smart bomb for overly bronzed bodies. No pain but great gain.

By the end of the week, my face should be in full bloom. So now the big question: Do I dab on some of my wife’s makeup or celebrate the season with a ghoulish countenance?

I suppose I could also just put on a geeky plaid shirt and flip-flops. In some of my classes, no one would ever know . . .

Facing the music with Itzhak

2008-10-07T09:49:00.005-05:00

Musicians intrigue me beyond description. They are our access to an alternate universe where countless emotions flow freely on the backs clefs and dancing notes. From thin air, musicians pluck magic that sticks in my brain for days, weeks or a lifetime.

I’ve always wanted to have music, but that simply is not my lot. Words live in me. Music just visits.

Monday I had more than a simple visit; I was treated to a visage. Itzhak Perlman’s face, to be exact.

Last spring my wife asked if I would like a special musical treat for my March birthday. Cecile knows I can’t tell a sonata from a sing-along, but she also knows I love “historical” opportunities. That’s how we ended up with front-row seats for violinist Itzhak Perlman’s scheduled Columbia concert.

A health problem kept the Perlman from playing for my birthday, but the cherubic master finally came to Jesse Hall this week.

I’ve been to concerts of many kinds in many halls. I am often sadly disappointed by classical music performances that seldom seem as good as listening to my own stereo. But this time Itzhak Perlman’s face was no farther from me than if it had been on the television in my living room. That face became the concert for my eyes that his Stradivarius gave to my ears.

Perlman doesn’t play music. He releases it. To watch him tuck his violin beneath his chin and look down the strings is much like watching a pigeon fancier touch the bird to his lips before giving it to the sky.

And when he plays, it is a constant conversation with the score. Some notes he had to coax – furrowing his brow in concentration. Others he welcomed with a big smile. And during a Beethoven sonata, I swear that Perlman seduced the music into the air.

My lasting impression, however, will be of Itzhak Perlman playing Stravinsky’s Suite Italiene. He greeted the piece as an old friend, laughed with it, reminisced with the sernata and danced the jig of friends for the tarantella.

I watched in awe as he cracked open the door to that other place where beautiful sounds eliminated crowds, the exhaustion of touring and even the polio that hobbles Perlman’s legs. He did not read the notes on the stand before him so much as he glanced back to make sure his friends were still following him into the concert hall. His was not the stare of concentration, but the approving gaze of love.

Today I peck at a tuneless keyboard and try to capture some small part of the wonder I experienced last night. I still don’t have music. But at least I’ve come face to face with it.

And that in turn gave me words.

Coming home is easy. Coming down is not.

2008-07-22T11:26:00.008-05:00

I’m suffering withdrawal pains. Adventure withdrawal, I suppose.

When I finally realized (with help) what an anti-social SOB I have been for the past two weeks, I started looking for the source of my irritability. I found it in Mongolia.

I spent the first two weeks of June chasing Chingaas Khaan (aka Genghis Khan) across the dry landscape of one of the world’s most remote countries. It was part of a University of Missouri program that may rank as one of the best means devised of developing international awareness. The Global Scholars program joins teams of Mizzou academics from across the campus with scholars from other campuses for intense study tours of different countries each year.

Not to teach, but to learn. Few of the scholars selected have any previous experience with the country. But on their return they spread the knowledge of another culture across the curriculum.

And the trip to Mongolia certainly hit the mark for me. I will include snippets of information about the Mongolian press, political system, weather and religion in my curriculum for years.

So why am I such a curmudgeon?

While the Global Scholars program irreversibly changed my attitudes toward Mongolia, it temporarily transported me to a new life. Not a life I long to keep, but one I enjoyed more than I realized.

To step out of a comfortable American cocoon into a world that constantly challenges your senses is both breathtaking and overwhelming. I was bombarded with imagery and ideas foreign to both my scholarly mind and my writer’s imagination. Countless books and movies tried to give me a taste of “adventure”. But Indiana Jones and his friends are just the hors d'oeuvres that hint of the banquet.

But the new places were just a portion of the experience. The new faces that soon became familiar friends were equally important.

For two weeks I spent day and night – and even bunked – with people that I would have never met and less likely would have socialized with. I explored the back streets if Ulaanbaatar and our minds with Marty Walker, the retired Marine colonel who now keeps the College of Engineering shipshape. Nicole Monnier, the Russian professor with a disarming pixie stature and delightful a smile, would set me back on my heels with her acerbic wit and criticism. Physical therapy professor Marian Minor looked perfect for the stereotype of gentle grandmother – but then she wowed us with tales of scubadiving and world travel.

There were 12 of us in all. Twelve very different souls packed into bouncing Russian vans, aching from the hard beds in Mongolian gers and trying to smile as we ate another meal of over-boiled beef and noodles.

But we also looked together in awe upon the Eternal Blue Sky and the sheer vastness of the Mongolian countryside. And we sat wide-eyed as historians told us about an amazing genius our culture dismisses as a ruthless barbarian.

And we talked. I plowed the fields of my mind with an adventure but cultivated it with unexpected friendship.

I had never met a scholar on Buddhism before Jim Hubbard. I laughed with Amanda Sprochi over the challenge of being a vegetarian in a land that proclaims “meat for man, grass for animals.” Monika Fischer was gracious when I tried my high school German. The elite academic status of noted Amazon expert David Campbell at first intimidated me. But his amazing range of knowledge and his glimpses into the core of humanity worldwide captivated me.

We all talked and talked and talked. About heady concepts from our academic worlds and about the inane in our real worlds. By the end of the two weeks, my mind was just as full of visions, sounds and ideas as my camera was full of photos and my heart was full of emotion.

That was a few weeks ago. Now it is unbearably slipping away – leaving me unbearable.

I vowed to keep in touch with my new friends, to retain every bit of my new knowledge and to hold tightly to my awakened sense of adventure. But I don’t talk to the gang, other than to share an occasional e-mail. Every time I look at one of my pictures, I find another I can’t remember enough about to write a caption. And I sit at this damned computer day after day rather than riding the steppes or even exploring my own neighborhood.

Withdrawal hurts. I’m not a stoic; I tend to share my pain far too freely. So my family and friends suffer this summer for the enjoyment I had. Knowing that fact hurts even worse.

But the up side of fading memories is that life goes on. And gets better. Some friendships rekindle and memories unexpectedly return with a few notes of a song, a once-again familiar smell or a rediscovered scene in a photograph.

Then I’ll smile. Patience, Clyde. The true reward of past adventures is in the future.

Surprises from nature and man

2008-07-01T20:36:00.008-05:00

So remember how I wrote about how dry Mongolia is? And how peaceful Mongolians are?

And then I left the country.

Just as we were packing up, it started to sprinkle. The drizzle turned to downpour that kept up for five days. Look at this comparison of how I saw the Selbe River compared to the shot Brian White took just a few days later:

Mongolia started to turn green again. Pasture was assured for the herds. A pleasant democratic election was a few days away. Life looked good.

So much for the idyllic. When the former Communist Mongolian Peoples Democratic Party declared victory, the rival Democratic Party cried foul and alleged voter fraud. Some people were more than a bit politically peeved -- a crowd attacked the MPDP headquarters and burned it. The riot left 400 police injured and pall of smoke -- and dread -- over Ulaanbaatar.

And now madness has set in. Someone torched the Cultural Palace and National Art Gallery, damaging the artworks students were unable to save from the flames.

I cannot tell you how sad I am to hear this latest turn in events. Both parties had defensible policies -- but different version of how Mongolia should develop its new-found natural riches.

Political anger is an emotion I understand well. I can recall my rage at Richard Nixon and the sick feeling in my stomach when I read of the Bush Administration's attacks on Constitutional rights.

I'm writing this from Charlottesville, in the Shenedoah Valley of Virginia. They know disagreement here -- locals in gray helped VMI professor Thomas Jackson "stand like a stone wall" until Phil Sheriden's boys in blue ripped through. Thousands died within a few miles of me over a political disagreement.

I know that many of the landmarks of the South were lost in the battles, as they always are in war. But to turn your anger pointedly on the cultural archive of a people who have influenced the world for 800 years or more is insane. And very sad.

Brian White is providing continuing eye-witness reports on his blog. More on-scene reports on the situation are from Radio Australia and The Associated Press.

It's not easy being brown

2008-06-23T07:36:00.010-05:00

I never really appreciated the wonder of green.

After two weeks in Mongolia, I just spent three days in Boston. Like the Sceptered Isle for which it is named, New England practically glows in its lushness (I think mere politics kept it from being New Ireland.)

Where Mongolia is dominated by the grays and browns of its gritty soil, Boston fills the eye with chlorophyll. Given my Britannic genes, it was like soaking in a warm bath after a day of hard labor.

I know, however, how unfair it is to judge a land by your heritage. I spent several years in Texas, where the highest point on the horizon is a freeway overpass. I nearly when crazy for lack of a comforting mantle of surrounding hills. I had a friend, however, who had been terrified by a trip to my native West. Those mountains, he said, loomed over him like mountains.

The Mongolians more than love their open spaces – The Eternal Blue Sky is their spiritual anchor. And drought-parched land is such a part of their land that they don’t really see the lack of lawns in their cities or the brown of the landscape. When rains finally cause the hardy grass to jump out of the soil, their jubilation is for better pasture.

But I love green and always will. I’ll also always love Mongolia and the Eternal Blue Sky, I can’t easily comprehend finding the splendor in dry emptiness just as I delight in eye-filling foliage. But like the unqualified love for both my children, it is part of my soul.

Mongolia's past is prologue

2008-06-18T21:50:00.010-05:00

So is the past just a portent of Mongolia’s future?

Although I had visited before and fallen in love with the Mongolian people, the country itself was still something of a distant mirage in my mind. My 15 days with the University of Missouri Global Scholars program, however, awakened me to both the reality and dream of the land of Chingaas Khaan.

Much of Mongolia is shockingly bleak. In the drought-stricken Khentii region, finding a live blade of grass took hands-and-knees inspection. The cows, camels, sheep, goats and yaks wandering the steppes did little better with their parched tongues. A precious few herders live the traditional life in felt gers, moving frequently in search of better pastures.

But in Ulaanbaatar, construction cranes rival hood ornaments on upscale new cars. Fashions and hemlines are high. And so is the optimism. Someone is pumping lots of money into this forgotten nation.

Mongolia must be the most overlooked keystone in the global economy. The fact that it is a democratic country nestled between Russia and China is alone enough to raise an eyebrow. But since finding that the hooves of its herds pounded over huge mineral reserves and potential oil fields, Mongolia is poised for another of its many evolutions.

Chingaas Khaan was nothing if not wily. He understood that the best road to success was adaptation. He invented the Mongolian Way – an intensely emotional way of retaining his culture as a spiritual value while absorbing and capitalizing on the attributes of other peoples.

I have no doubt that Mongolia will put its own ancient spin on the 21st century. The gers won’t disappear as nearly half the population moves to the city – but they will likely become as “authentic” as the teepees in the American Southwest.

The potential of wealth for a country of 2.5 million souls evokes visions of Middle East sheikdoms or Latin American banana republics. But I don’t think so. Mongolians are both hard-headed about their independence and loyal to the teachings of Chingaas Khaan. Back in his day, the Great Leader developed a unique method of pillaging – he sent teams of accountants to the vanquished city to catalogue the booty so that it could be doled out to Mongolians in what he considered a just way.

If I wait another six years for a third visit, I have no doubt that I will find another Mongolia. Change is in the dry Mongolian air. While I’ve heard Westerners bemoan the fading of those quaint traditional herders, that’s really a selfish wish for their own entertainment.

Besides, you can count on some Chiingist to erect a “Mongol Land” under the Eternal Blue Sky.

Going to the Gobi

2008-06-13T21:05:00.008-05:00

The Gobi Desert. It is hard to imagine a more forbidden name. Sandstorms, nomads, camels with two humps. And no water.

I unfolded my legs from an eight-hour train ride from the Gobi. It is indeed dry. Sandstorms are awesome but not fun. But the camels are a blast.

We spent three days wandering around in the desert in a Russian van that had no first gear and only worked in four-wheel-drive for a few feet. Gritty sand blew into everything -- I doubt my camera will last much longer.

But the Gobi is not without life. small lizards scurry across the sand and large green insects vaguely akin to grasshoppers cling to the thorny brush.

The people in the Gobi are mining the region's new gold -- tourists. A monk wearing a cartoon-emblazoned towel led us through a new-age "World Energy Center." A group of believers chanted then plopped onto the sand to suck up energy. Ger camps are blossoming everywhere.

My favorite adventure was a stop at the ger of a young couple who raise camels. Bactrian camels are almost like big dogs. I loved them, expecially when they gave me the reins and I got to jog through the desert unaccompanied.

But the Gobi has long been conquered. As far as I walked and rode into this vast and legendary desert, the tracks of inconsiderate man were everywhere. The discarded beer can is the universal symbol for "We Were Here." Garbage is our legacy.

Here are more photos.

The greater Mongolia

2008-06-10T10:18:00.003-05:00

Today was our wrap-up session, as half the group leaves for home tomorrow and the rest (including me) goes on a side jaunt to the Gobi Desert. The farewells were bittersweet, but the conclusion of the tour gave us a chance to contemplate Mongolia as the academics we are.

This is a country of surprises, challenges and opportunities. It is all but unknown to most of America, but once changed the entire civilized world and is positioned to have major impact again.

Our trip to the very rural countryside emphasized the contrasts in Mongolia. We were all delighted to return to Ulaanbaatar, which in comparison seems on the cutting edge of modernity. As Brian White noted about the capital, "We are hanging on to civilized life by our fingertips here."

But as the sages among us have noted, all that could change in an eye blink. Mongolia has discovered that its herds of goats graze over a fortune of buried minerals. Will it become the new Kuwait? And if so, will the people benefit or just the leaders and their foreign sponsors?

I may be an optimist, but I think Mongolia may take the "good" path to its future. The sultans of the Middle East historically grabbed the wealth for themselves when they conquered. But Chingaas Khaan had a trailing army of accountants who inventoried all the booty in a captured city and then divided it among the Mongolian people.

The Mongolians may let the Chinese, Koreans and Canadians turn the first spades in the mineral boom, but I have no doubt they will hold onto a major share of the total wealth. If the Mongolians are true to their heritage, that means we may see a wealthy country of highly educated and articulate people who keep in the office while the tourists go out to the countryside to see the quaint (and by then subsidized) nomads.

Today was our wrap-up session, as half the group leaves for home tomorrow and the rest (including me) goes on a side jaunt to the Gobi Desert. The farewells were bittersweet, but the conclusion of the tour gave us a chance to contemplate Mongolia as the academics we are.

This is a country of surprises, challenges and opportunities. It is all but unknown to most of America, but once changed the entire civilized world and is positioned to have major impact again.

Our trip to the very rural countryside emphasized the contrasts in Mongolia. We were all delighted to return to Ulaanbaatar, which in comparison seems on the cutting edge of modernity. As Brian White noted about the capital, "We are hanging on to civilized life by our fingertips here."

But as the sages among us have noted, all that could change in an eye blink. Mongolia has discovered that its herds of goats graze over a fortune of buried minerals. Will it become the new Kuwait? And if so, will the people benefit or just the leaders and their foreign sponsors?

I may be an optimist, but I think Mongolia may take the "good" path to its future. The sultans of the Middle East historically grabbed the wealth for themselves when they conquered. But Chingaas Khaan had a trailing army of accountants who inventoried all the booty in a captured city and then divided it among the Mongolian people.

The Mongolians may let the Chinese, Koreans and Canadians turn the first spades in the mineral boom, but I have no doubt they will hold onto a major share of the total wealth. If the Mongolians are true to their heritage, we may see a wealthy country of highly educated and articulate people who keep in the office while the tourists go out to the countryside to see the quaint (and by then subsidized) nomads.
Today was our wrapup session, as half the group leaves for home tomorrow and the rest (including me) goes on a side jaunt to the Gobi Desert. The farewells were bittersweet, but

Road to adventure

2008-06-09T11:21:00.010-05:00

My energy and my enthusiasm are at odds with each other tonight. It is after midnight and I am dog tired. But my head is still swimming with the sights, sounds and smells of three days on the road in rural Mongolia.

Chingaas Khaan spent most of his youth in Khentii region of northeast Mongolia. Later it was his staging ground for the reorganization of bands of nomadic herders into the mighty Mongol nation.

Accompanied by Mongolian historians O. Sukhbaatar and Munkh-Erdene Lhamsuren, we caravaned through Khenti in two Russian jeep/vans and a more modern but less comfortable Mitsubishi. It was a tour of history, wonder, lifestyles and vistas tempered with a developing environmental disaster.

Mongolia is dry in the best of years. But this year the rains did not come to Khenti. The grass in the pasture takes a good eye to find. The cattle are thin and many carcasses littered the landscape. And this is early summer. With no grass now, the livestock have little chance of making it through the sub-zero weather.

If he herds die, so do the Mongolians.

Bed beckons, but there are plenty of photos on the Flickr site. And here is the short version to be fleshed out later.
-- "Road" is a relative term in Mongolia. At times it meant nothing at all as we simply drove off across the trackless steppes looking for our next waypoint.
-- "Road sign" is not a relative term in Mongolia. It is simply meaningless.
-- Camels are curious, but don't like cookies.
-- Milk tea is really salty milk and water, but tastes surprisingly good.
-- A ger is strangely roomy comfortable.
-- Mongolian faces are beautiful. As are their hearts. They welcomed this band of strangers into their gers, fed us from their larders and charmed us with incomprehensible words but universal smiles.
-- Chingaas Khaan camped in more places than there are inns in which Washington slept.
-- We erroneously start the history of Mongolia in the 1200's when Chingaas Khaan rose to power. But centuries before him the Turkic people, the Huns and others rode the steppes. Still earlier -- much earlier -- Stone Age people turned giant stones into art.
-- The secret to keeping a UAZ van on the road is to carry an extra distributor in your tool box
-- Dust storms are nasty. Just nasty. You taste them for days.
-- Hours, miles and bruised tailbones fade rapidly when you spend them with a handful of colleagues from various MU departments. I learned as much about myself, my school and my profession on this trip as I did about the simple cow herder who conquered most of the civilized world.

Too much to tell

2008-06-05T12:58:00.003-05:00

In the past couple of days, I've chatted with Buddhist monk, posed with Lenin's statue, eaten horse for lunch, examined the bullet-riddled skulls of purged Mongolians, wandered the infamous Ulaanbaatar Black Market and, well, had one hell of a time.

But I still have to pack for a weekend trek to the the steppes and I'm too tired to write. So instead take a gander at the zillion photos I put on Flickr. I'll write again when I get back from the wilds.

The Grand Tour updated

2008-06-05T11:06:00.003-05:00

Before World War 1, affluent young men and women celebrated their entree to civilized life by taking "The Grand Tour," a leisurely cruise to exotic ports around the world.

Winthrop and Penelope, buzz off. Meet Turk and Spence, the "two idiots with $600" and a desire to see the world.

When we were touring the Mongolian National Museum in Ulaanbaatar, I heard an accent from one of my favorite places in the world. "North England?" I asked as I passed a somewhat scruffy young man asking his friend where the **** they were supposed to be going next.

"Yeah, Manchester. You from America?" And indeed I was. There is an instant and amazing kinship among people who hear something close to their native tongue in a sea of unintelligible voices. And when I told him I was a journalism professor, his smile broadened, he nudged his friend and said, "Have we got a story for you!"

I wish I had met Paul Turko and John Spencer about 40 years ago. I take it back. I probably wouldn't be writing if I had.

Turk and Spence just graduated from Leeds University but wanted to have an adventure before going on to grad school. So they scraped up 300 pounds ($600) each, stuck out their thumbs and hitched rides to Ukraine.

And there they met Natasha Fedorova, whose gentle smile and gazelle-like grace would stop traffic on any continent. Natasha gave her boss an excuse, grabbed her bag and joined the adventure.

They took a train across Russia to Irkusk, delighted in the deep waters of Lake Baikal and headed down to Ulaanbaatar. Only to find me. Bummer.

The saving races is that they ran into Degi first. With true Mongol style, he offered them a place to sleep, access to his favorite watering holes and expert translation/guide service.

When I left the four, Turk and Spence were loudly debating their next move and wondering whether the Pacific Ocean was really a barrier to hitch hiking. Natasha looked bemused. Degi just patiently waited for the two Brits to stop talking and get moving.

And I'm sure they did. Keep an eye out for them. Or at least watch their YouTube movie for a bit of fun (but remember Manchester United fans seldom spare the course language).

Clyde TV, Mongolia edition

2008-06-03T11:14:00.006-05:00

I'm a print journalist, so video does not come naturally. But the Web makes it easy to add motion images. And now my still camera -- a Panasonic Lumix FZ7 -- has a nice video feature that lets me take nice shots without hauling a special camera.

So I gave it a try this morning. With the 13-hour time difference, I could not sleep. I was up at 3:30 a.m. I did email and sorted photos, then decided to walk through the awakening streets of Ulaanbaatar.

Here's a still image of what I saw, but you might enjoy this brief video. Be prepared -- I had no camera operator or remote control, so had to do a bit of running to get into the scene.

The Ulaanbaatar look

2008-06-03T10:29:00.008-05:00

Dark stringy hair, weathered brow. A worn wool coat ( a deel) and felt boots with turned up toes. It's the Mongol look, right?

Go West, young man. All the way to Paris in this case. Although you still see traditional garb on the streets of Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolians out chic Americans coast to coast. I've never seen so many men in expensive suits, women in heels and expensive outfits or such great hair on both genders.

No nation can be fairly stereotype, but all in all the Mongolians are handsome people. They are fairly tall, have elegant facial lines I always associated with the "Indian princess" of old movies and a grace of movement I envy.

They are also exceedingly clean. That sounds like a given unless you have looked at the streets and surroundings of Ulaanbaatar. Dirt is the operative word. It's too cold and too dry for lawns or other landscaping. If it is not paved here, it is just dirt and rocks. And not many paths or shortcuts are paved.

But no one seems to have dust on their shoes, spattered trouser cuffs or telltale dirty handprints on their shirts. It's a trick I wish I had learned as a 5-year old. And especially as a 57-year old.

Here are a few street scenes of Mongolian fashions. I hope you are pleasantly surprised.

Khey, Chet it right, will you?

2008-06-02T10:24:00.003-05:00

One of the interesting lessons of my first day of class in Mongolia is that I may have never correctly pronounced anything to do with the country – other than the name of the country itself.

The Great Khan is the Great Han. K is a silent letter in Mongolian. And Genghis – especially when pronounced as “Jengis,” is a puzzle for Mongolians. He is Chingaas (“cheen gus”).

And then there is the capital with all the vowels. Ulanbaataar in my lexicon was OOO-lon ba TAR. Here, its “AlonBAtar” – said quickly with all ahhing and no oooing.

I was wrong about trying to learn the Mongolian phrase for "where is the toilet" so I don't even need to remember to drop the "h" in jorlong khaan baidag ve. The International Sign Language for Guys system works well here. You can hop on one foot while grabbing your crotch in any place on the planet and some fellow will direct you to the can.

And this is not a one-small-drink country, so give up on the chance you will be able to toast with a cheery "Erüül mehdiin tölöö’" when your turn comes around the table.

So a simple "bye-arsh-te" and a nod of thanks will do.

The long and the shorts of it

2008-06-01T18:48:00.004-05:00

We are here!

Our skivvies are not …

Missouri’s learned envoys to the Land of the Endless Blue Sky arrived in Ulaanbaatar Sunday evening after (hang on… 2 ½ to St. Louis, almost 5 to LA, carry the layover, 13 to Seoul times a cramped leg plus transfer to Mongolia ) one heck of a long time on our bottoms in a variety of semi-comfortable seats. But we were all in good spirits, especially when Dan, Monke and Brian from the trip showed up and we found that Ted from Tennessee had been on the plane with use.

We chatted away with excitement while watching the bags plop onto the carrousel at glacial speed. And we grinned at each other as the crowd of fellow travelers dwindled.
And then we looked at each other in dismay when the last bag came up the belt – and wasn’t one of ours.

Our baggage is somewhere between Mongolia and Seoul. Or Seoul and Los Angeles. Or Los Angeles and the moon.
We were not alone. Several other long-distance passengers were left baggedly clueless. I knew we were in trouble when a very patient and very polite Mongolian official smiled and whipped out a sheet with pictures of various types of bags and descriptions in Cyrillic text. I wasn’t even exactly sure of the color of my new case and less sure how you describe a rolling backpack.

Korean Airlines has but one flight per day to Ulaanbaatar, so the best we can hope for is to have clean underwear sometime Monday night.

In the meantime we took a bus down the bumpy road to the Flower Hotel. Brian White, the host from CIEE, explained that Ulaanbaatar is like Las Vegas – very pretty at night. You make the call in the daylight.

It is indeed a city of lights. Not a lot of traffic, but interesting signs – the Hanburger. The Khan Brau beer palace, etc.

The Flower Hotel is older but nice. It has a famous Japanese restaurant and a bathhouse. But I most appreciated the in-room Internet for just $4 a day. And the bed. I talked to Cecile by video Skype, washed out my shorts and went to bed about midnight.

And here I am. Ready for my first meal and my first day of adventure – armed with the key phrase of the day.

Jorlong khaan baidag ve. (Where is the bathroom?)

Sometime in nowhere

2008-06-01T11:12:00.002-05:00

I knew that an excursion into the world of Genghis Khan was a “timeless adventure,” but I didn’t take that phrase so personally.

I’m not really sure where I am. I’m not sure what time it is and I’m not really even sure what day it is.

There is little map of the Pacific Ocean on the video screen staring at me from the seatback on this Korean Airlines jumbo jet. The little picture of a plane is hovering over what I seem to recall is the Kamchatka Peninsula. Hmm. Isn’t that where the Russians shot down a Korean Airlines jumbo jet a few years ago?

So am I in Russia, or just a part of that cartoon airplane on the map? I think for now my home is Seat 23E, a reasonably comfortable cocoon tended by a bevy of graceful and bilingual ladies bearing plastic cups of orange juice. A Korean girl who just finished her junior year at an Austin high school is dozing on my right. She’s going home to visit her parents. Next to her is an older Korean-American woman who is even more talkative than me – I know she is from Orlando, doesn’t like CNN and told me her three all-time favorite preachers. I had a hard time politely coming up with a list of my own. I don’t think the old guy on the bench in front of Tiger Barber counts.

The lucky fellow with the aisle seat to my left installs scoring devices on bombing ranges. He has expensive earphones, quickly dismissed the video games on our seatback screens and has whipped through a couple of movies since we boarded. Not much you can say to someone wearing a sound-deadening Bose headset. He lets me get out when my kidneys wake up, though. And at least he won’t complain when I snore.

But I can’t get a grip on time. I’m like the cartoon fellow in those educational cartoons, rocketing through space while a clock back home doesn’t move. I think I crossed the International Date Line for the seventh time in my life while dozing awhile ago. The seatback video map says it is 20:31 at Departure and 2:32 at Destination. But not MY departure – I started in St. Louis, not LA . Nor MY Destination – Seoul is just a dinner stop before we head to Ulaanbaatar. So what time is it in Seat 23E? Between the 24-hour clock on that video screen, the darkness in the cabin and the fact that I could eat, sleep or pee at any hour anyway, I don’t have a clue.

That’s kind of nice, really. I’m not anywhere or any time in particular.

I just am.

Genghis Clyde?

2008-05-27T10:09:00.003-05:00

I’m getting out of here. WAY out of here.
I leave Saturday for 15 days in Mongolia as part of the Global Scholars program at the University of Missouri. Seven faculty and staff from different departments will join a half dozen others from additional universities to rediscover the legacy of Genghis Khan.

I’ll be in the good company of Amanda Sprochi from International Education, Monika Fischer and Nichole Monnier of Foreign Languages, Marty Walker of Engineering, Marian Minor of Physical Therapy and Lorie Thombs of Statistics. We will be joined by five professors from other universities.

"Mongolia" always seemed like something of a joke word to me, It was another way of saying “you can’t get there from here (“Emerald Street? Man, that’s way out in Mongolia!...”)

It’s not. When I first went there in 2002, to teach online journalism to news people with minimal access to the Web, I discovered it was a wonderful country with a rich history and friendly people. Wonderful, but cold as a the bells on yak herder's hat. It snowed in Ulaanbaatar this weekend.

I’ll be recording our adventure on my blog – aptly named Heard from Afar. So tune back in for the adventures of Genghis Clyde and the Mizzou Horde.

Just a game of catch

2008-04-11T17:06:00.003-05:00

I think I went through some sort of baseball-inspired time warp last night.

Like most fathers, I’ve spent many hours playing catch with my son in the back yard or tossing Wiffle ball for him to smack. But more often than I am proud, his plea of “Can we play catch, Dad?” was answered with “I’m a bit busy right now, son.”

But when I was to throw the first ball out in a Mizzou baseball game next Sunday, I realized with some terror that my 57-year-old right arm had not thrown overhand in at least five years. That corresponds with the time my son left high school for college.
So I was relieved when Garrett offered to toss the ball around with me this week. But then he added “when I get some time.” Sounded a bit too familiar.

Garrett’s about to graduate as a mechanical engineer and is overwhelmed with classes, job interviews and the construction of a hydrogen fuel cell race car. So he is legitimately busy.

Despite all that, he made it over, last night, mitt in hand. Wre went out to a nearby field, where HE patiently gave ME advice.

“Let’s start close, Dad. "

“Keep it up where I can catch it, Dad.”

“That’s it! Throw it again just like that, Dad.”

I think the last time someone said that to me I was 12 years old. Except Dad didn’t call me "dad."

Catch with your boy – it’s always been wonderful. I just never thought it would be quite like this. It’s more than a game, in a way.

It’s catching life again.

Put me in, coach

2008-04-06T22:37:00.002-05:00

I knew the scouts would find me eventually. Cannonball Clyde is finally taking the mound in a big-time ballgame.

Well, sort of. Two of my students are members of the Tiger Crew -- bat persons, grounds assistants and cheerleaders with personality. They arranged for me to throw in the first ball for the MU-Texas game Sunday, April 13.

Oh lord. What have I done?

Every boy in my neighborhood dreamed of becoming a pitcher. We all practiced standing at the mound with glove-hidden ball tucked near your groin. And looking over your shoulder to first base. And most of all, spitting.

I got that part. It was the actual pitching that did me in. I was pretty good at firing a fast one over the top of the backstop or bouncing it twice before crossing the plate.

So I've got a week to practice. Goal No. 1: Don't make a fool of yourself. Goal No. 2: Show 'em how to spit.

Going afar again

2008-04-02T17:10:00.005-05:00

I'm back.

It's been a year since I last wrote, but it is time to fire up this blog again. I am, as it is, going about as far afar and you can go -- Mongolia.

I recently was selected to take part in the University of Missouri's Global Scholars tour "Mongolia: Empire and Democracy." Seven professors from various areas of Mizzou will join a dozen or so others on a mission to find the legacy of Chinggis Khaan -- aka Genghis Khan or Chingas Khan. Mongolian spelling doesn't translate well.

The tour participants gathered yesterday to meet, fret over logistics and see who knew what about where we were going. The group ranges from an engineer to a librarian to a statistician to a Russian teacher. All have travelled abroad, but none but me have been to Mongolia. And all are prepared for the adventure of their lives (so far).

We leave May 30 and return June 15. Between now and then, I'll write about the logistical, mental and cultural preparations. And a bit of dreaming, while I'm at it.

Stay tuned.

Lessons from Lily

2007-03-06T22:19:00.000-06:00

Who is this woman? One moment she is an obnoxiously insistent telephone operator. With just the merest change of facial expression, she is a precocious 6-year-old. Turn around and she is an acerbic housewife.

To you she is Lily Tomlin. To me she is one of my favorite journalism professors.

I was gilded by the Lily 36 years ago when I was a sweaty-palmed student and cub reporter. Sunday, as a confident-if-graying journalism professor, I finally got to say my thanks to a gracious, unassuming and deservedly famous lady.

In November 1971, I was a staff member on the Pepperdine Graphic. I was a mismatch for the conservative college’s politics and religion, but I love the gritty journalism we did in South Central Los Ang eles before the Waves fled to Malibu.

One of the advantages to going to school in Los Angeles is that you are surrounded by glittering personalities. But Pepperdine’s diminutive size and sedate reputation didn’t exactly draw herds of press agents and promoters to our newsroom. You can imagine how delighted I was when we received a call from an agent saying that the star of Laugh-In wanted to meet students, so would spend an hour with us if we liked.

OK, youngsters, consider what that meant. In 1971, Laugh-In was the Daily Show, the Colbert Report and Mad TV rolled together. On steroids. The show mercilessly poked fun at everyone -- often by inviting the targets as guests. Hubert Humphrey once said declining Laugh-In’s invitation may have cost him the 1972 election. Richard Nixon, after all, made a “Sock it to me” cameo.

So when section editor Arlene Ubrey, my girlfriend-now-wife Cecile and I arrived at a nondescript office building to meet the famous comic, my palms were sweating. I was officially the photographer in the group, but we all asked the questions.

I’m a small-town, blue-collar guy who grew up thinking celebrities were super beings who granted occasional audiences with we the lesser but existed mostly for our adoration. Boy, did Ernestine/Judith Anne/Mrs. Beasley set me straight.

Lily Tomlin was far more affable and open than most of my professors. Within a few minutes our “interview” was like a bull session among old friends.

I don’t remember the details of the story we wrote, but I found a yellowing clip of the photo I snapped and a poorly-exposed contact sheet of the other shots. We picked the photo of Lily leaning on her elbow while we chatted at the conference table. The other shots show her gesturing with her trademark animation and laughing as much as we were.

The story and photo were nice additions to my portfolio, but the lesson from that evening was priceless. Lilly Tomlin was my first of many celebrities. And thanks to her, I was never again so awestruck that I could not see them as the humans they were. They all had impressive-sounding jobs but they were still just people.

When I heard Lily was to perform in Columbia, I tracked down her personal assistant (journalists are good at that), sent an e-mail recounting the story and asked if I could say hello. Vivian Schneider was as much a jewel as her boss and set me up with a handful of tickets and a backstage pass.

Sunday, Cecile, my son Garrett and Vox magazine editor J.D. Rinne laughed along with the full-house crowd in Jesse Hall as Lily regaled us with pointedly liberal humor. But the svelte, hyperactive and endearing young woman I met 36 years ago with gone. In her place was a svelte, hyperactive and endearing 67-year old wonder.

So even before our reunion, Lily Tomlin gave Clyde Bentley another lesson in life. She bounced, beamed and belted it out like a kid. I was getting embarrassingly winded just laughing. I couldn’t keep up with her one-liners (check how many “Lily Tomlin quotes” sites are on the Web), but I certainly got the message that if you want to stay young, be young. And as unafraid to question the world as is a 6-year-old.

Backstage, we met, we shared memories and we signed photos. Her signing a souvenir photo for me, I expected. But asking me to sign an old snap of longhaired Young Clyde, at first took me aback.

But why should it? As Lily taught me long ago, celebrities are just people.

Old soldier, new media

2006-11-14T09:53:00.000-06:00

I’ve plugged away as at citizen journalism as both a professional and researcher for more than two years. But it took an old soldier with a horribly toothy grin to give me a real revelation.

I’m in London this semester teaching a group of Missouri students to think globally – and trying to sneak in as much sight-seeing as possible. In the name of the latter, I attended the Remembrance Day ceremony Sunday at which the Queen and a long list of dignitaries placed wreaths at the Cenotaph.

I couldn’t see Her Majesty over the top of the bearskin hats, but I did have a wonderful conversation with the Falklands veteran standing in front of me and snapped dozens of photos of Britain’s finest soldiers past and present.

When I returned home, I went to the Web to see how my UK online colleagues covered an event attended by thousands cheering Brits.

Except for free-lance photos on BBC and The Sun, they didn’t. The nation remembered the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, but the editors were waiting for something better.

That seemed a bit curious, so I downloaded my own photos to my Flickr site, tagging the set “Remembrance Day.”

Someone remembered. Within two hours, three people had labeled the Falkland’s vet photo a “favorite” and I had one direct comment. By Tuesday, it was a favorite for five people – and 203 had viewed it. In a few days visits topped 350.

That may not sound like a lot of people, but consider that to find my photo someone had to do a keyword search in Flickr for “Remembrance Day.” Could the UK media have simply waved the flag by linking to citizen sites like mine?The ceremony may not have been “big” enough to get the immediate attention of the online UK press, but the audience those journalists serve went to a lot of trouble to find old Peter Freestone in his battered Royal Army beret.

Cheers, Peter.

A-ha, Praha

2006-10-31T17:17:00.000-06:00

So now I know that Walt Disney wasn't all that original afterall. Long before there was the Magic Kingdom, there was Prague.

What the Czech's call Praha and we call Prague for many years rivaled Vienna as the cultural capital of Europe. For the dark Communist years after World War II, it slipped away from us. But now thousands of tourists flock to the old city.

Tourists like Cecile and I.

Last week we spent our mid-term break in Prague. We decided against "Six countries in eight days" trip that most of my students planned and instead found a great little hotel near the Medieval city center and just spent five days wandering the cobblestones.
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Clyde Bentley's Prague photoset

Although it is very much "discovered," Prague is still a wonderfully simple city. The Czechs are honestly friendly. The food is hearty and very good. And the beer -- oh that beer! Czechs are Europe's biggest beer drinkers for a good reason -- they really know how to brew. The Budweiser brand (Budwar) started there generations ago but the version poured in Prague taverns is far richer than the This Bud's for You variety for which Anheuser-Busch borrowed the name.

Castles, churches, cobbles, smiles and a river that takes your breath away. It was and is a delight.

Look homeward, Anglo-American

2006-10-19T11:03:00.000-05:00

For the first time since arriving, I felt ready to go home today.

I was crossing a road on the way to school and forgot to look right instead of left. A black cab reminded me that Angles sometimes turn unwary Yanks into angels.

I'm fighting a cold and that puts me in a sour mood anyway, but I heard my mind scream "I'm tired of this! I just want to sleep in my own bed and smell the trees in my own yard."

It was just a flash of homesickness, but it was a surprise. I quickly came to my senses and looked up at a building that was an old place when Jackson was president. Then I was given an honest English smile from the old bloke ambling toward me. If you can survive the traffic, London is a nice place to be.

Nice, but not always comfortable. I think the elation of just being here word off today and I stumbled into the realities of English life. The Brits, as I discovered on an earlier trip, are masters of putting up with minor discomforts. They can wait in a queue for hours without grumbling. They are unfazed when a huge fire truck roars down a barely two-lane street at 60 miles an hour late at night -- but then, pedestrians have no right of way here except at the infrequent-but-boldly striped "zebra" (as in Debra) crossings. Water meekly trickles from century's old pipes, the composition of which you just don't want to know. And a rush-hour ride on a bus or an Underground train is Neptune’s reminder of what we do to sardines.

But it is amazing how a good cuppa tea will make you forget that lumpy, narrow bed. Or how the bright smile and "cheers" from the newsstand agent blows away your complaint about the prices. And of course, a pint of Guinness or cask ale can even make the rain seem warm.

Next week is mid-term break. Cecile and I plan to explore another famous city -- Prague. It will do us good to take a break from students, computers, telecommuting and the other stress we put on ourselves without the help of England.

But the nice part is that the taxis try to run over you from the left.

The importance of being urn-est

2006-10-03T04:44:00.000-05:00

There are times that I feel I am living in a P.G. Wodehouse novel.

Wodehouse wrote a series of stories about Bertie Wooster, a member of the British idle rich in the 1920s. Most people remember him for his "gentleman's gentleman," Jeeves, but I always liked him for the crazy antics of someone with to much time and money on his hands. He was the successor to those Three Men in a Boat.

The residential hotel in which I stay is populated mainly be students and professionals from every country but England. However, there is a small corps of "permanent residents" who meet each night in the bar for a glass of wine, a political argument and a stream of very British jokes. They are always proposing but seldom executing some cockeyed scheme to either irritate the "foreigners" or to set the English-speaking world right.

A few years ago, the group was joined by James. He didn't live at the Vincent House, but was a frequent visitor. One day recently, James dropped dead while standing on a train platform.

Last week, one of the old boys came to breakfast with a large plastic bag. Curiousity got the better of Torquelle, who strolled over from his table to ask in his public school accent "Just what is it you have in the bag, Bill?"

Bill, ordinarily the most conservative of this conservative group, unemotionally replied "James. Won't you join us for breakfast?"

Bill had the ashes of James in an urn on the table. He was taking him for one last round of his favorite haunts.

After toast, beans, fried tomatoes and sausage, Bill led a party of friends on a long London pub crawl. Towards evening, they wobbled to the Thames and "pollute the river" with what was left of old James. The made it home for dinner as usual.

I can only hope that someone gives me such a last ride. Pip pip, James.

The celluloid throne

2006-09-26T10:20:00.006-05:00

The Queen granted me a royal lesson in human behavior the other night.

Not Her Majesty, to be sure. Cecile and I had already been to Buckingham Palace without receiving an invitation to tea. But the opening of Helen Mirin’s new film, The Queen, was just too great an opportunity to miss for transplanted Yanks.

We paid the equivalent to $35 for two tickets at Nottinghill Gate Cinema -- and you thought U.S. movie prices were outrageous. There is a significant difference in atmosphere, however. The Nottinghill Gate is a former music hall with ornate ceiling decorations and a stage. The single-screen theater offers a full bar and a snack menu far beyond nachos.

And then there was the film. Until I was back outside and talked to a middle-aged British couple, I thought it was just my lack of Britannic experience that made me think the royal characterizations were “spot on.” But the press and most of the Britons I have run into are amazed not only at how well Mirin looks and acts like the Queen, but how well the nuances of Charles, the Queen Mother and especially Tony Blair came through.

Yes, Tony Blair. The film might have easily been entitled “Young Tony” as “The Queen.” It takes up right when Blair wrests the Labour Party away from its left-wing roots and sweeps into the country vowing to modernize while protecting social welfare. To be sure, the UK critics say director Stephen Frears gave Blair too much credit for bringing sanity to the Royal Muddle when Princess Diana died, but even if it is fiction the plot is food for thought.

The story actually has three streams, represented by three protagonists. The Queen and her family (Philip the Boor, Charles the Hesitant and Queen Mother the Irascible) are stuck in another era – an era that may have never existed outside the regal imagination. They truly believe the British people will simply smile and curtsy to their monarch without question and that it was only the press that stoked the fire of admiration for that nasty Diana.

Blair is something of an urban rube in an ill-fitting suit who is a bit overwhelmed by it all. His wife detests royalty and misses no opportunity to say so. But Blair is also an astute observer of the collision of politics and culture. When even his wife and aides advise him to go for the throat of the Royals, he recognizes the value of the monarchy to the Sceptred Isle. Implausibly, he is a radical realist.

The overlooked third protagonist in the film is Blair’s chief aide, Andrew Campbell. He is the archetypical political wonk – cynical to a fault, loyal to his man, impatient for the next big win. The sharp-tongued and sharp-witted Campbell must have either memorized or inspired every episode of West Wing -- politics is neither polite nor merciful. (It was Campbell, by the way, who wrote the joke about Blair’s wife that the PM used to critics this week. He also gets credit for naming Diana “the people’s princess.)

The tension between the three sides is the meat of the plot. That the three were able to reach even a fragile state of balance is rather amazing and very much worth watching.

Equally amazing was the timing of the film’s release. When the cameras started rolling for the movie several years ago, Frears could not have known it would premiere just as Blair is being ushered to an unwanted retirement. Good call. At the end of the film, Queen Elizabeth tells a cocky Tony that, as it did for her, his popularity could fall in a moment.

It did.

There is also a momentary quip that almost no American will get but that brought down the house in Nottinghill Gate. As Blair is dashing about solving a crisis an aide shouts “Gordon is on the phone.”

Gordon Brown is the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Blair’s erstwhile partner in the New Labour revolution. They struck a deal that Brown would get the PM spot in a few years but Blair liked No. 10 and refused to budge. Now Brown is the archrival who is forcing Blair to resign.

In the film, Blair curtly responds, “He’ll have to wait.” And though Brown waited and waited, I’m glad I didn’t.

A curtsy, M’am.

Tea with the Queen

2006-09-21T05:30:00.000-05:00

Sorry, Mom. I still didn’t have tea with the Queen.

This week I had the rare opportunity to tour the state rooms of Buckingham Palace. For years one needed at title more impressive than “Dr.” to gain entrance to these opulent halls, but then the Queen’s beloved Windsor Castle burned. To raise the pounds needed to restore that palace, the Queen agreed to open her downtown digs to the public for a few weeks each year.

For Cecile, I’m sure, it was a chance to view the stunning artwork and architecture. For me, it was another chance to remember my mother.

My mother was London born and bred, but her family was more on the “Andy Capp” side of the pedigree chart than the “Duke of Roxburghe” side. When I was a boy, hot tea heavily laced with milk and sugar was the medicinal equivalent to chicken soup. “What you needed is a good cuppa” meant sit down, get in touch with your senses and let’s talk for awhile.

But for my brother and me, tea was also the key warning that we had reached the limits of Mom’s patience. My mother insisted on a modicum of table manners – not a simple demand on a pair of rough-and-tumble 1960s boys.

“Clyde and Mark! Stop throwing food. How am I ever to take you to tea with the Queen?”

Tea with the Queen. Was that supposed to mean an old lady in a crown would help me recover from a headache or a bruised shin? It was several more years before I discovered “tea” in this case was the meal, rather than the beverage. But in the meantime, the phrase became part of the sophomoric banter young brothers share.

“Good one, Mark” I would say when his attempt to laugh while drinking milk resulted in a white geyser. “You’re never getting invited to tea with the Queen.”

For me, it was usually a reminder of my penchant for missing my mouth with my spoon. As I looked down on blob of oatmeal drooling down the shirt Mom had just ironed for school, Mark would say “So I guess you won’t be having tea with the Queen…”

But for the record, Mom, I was on my best manners when we were at the Palace. I said “please” and “thank you” instead of nodding and grunting. I didn’t wipe my mouth with my arm, burp or throw a sock at a surrogate brother. And on the food side, they knew I was coming: Large signs banned food or drink.

So I know it wasn’t my fault. I think the Queen was just away enjoying the Scottish air in Balmoral.

I guess she’ll never be invited for beer at the ‘Berg.

When in Britain, do as the Romans do

2006-09-14T10:01:00.000-05:00

Americans often say they love Britain for its “sense of history.” I think that I am more fascinated with the history ignored.

Much our official introduction to London over the past two weeks has been the history of this island. We have been to the Museum of London, the Tate Britain gallery and heard professors tell us of British culture and art.

You quickly realize that Americans have only a nominal grasp of “history.” And event that happened 200 years ago is more like old news to the British than it is historical.

Even so, I’m astounded by how easily we forget our past. Everywhere we turn we hear of lessons unheeded or that simply faded away.

On my last trip, I was surprised to learn that Great Britain was a thriving part of the Roman
Empire for more than 300 years. If the fact that England was Latin for longer than we have been a country was in my history books, I completely missed it.

But the bigger surprise was how civilized and comfortable that Roman life was. The Museum of London has several typical Roman living rooms based on UK excavations. As one might expect, the room where the governor or similar leaders lived was palatial – far nicer than any house I have lived in. But I don’t think most Americans would feel the middle class home was “primitive.” And even the working class home was as nice as most summer cabins.

My students were rather amazed to find that the Roman culture was very extensive in Britain and enjoy mostly by native Britons rather than Italians.

So what happened here? Britain went from flush toilets and central heating to open sewers and pigsties and smoking fire pits. It took more than 1,400 years to regain the general level of comfort and sanitation that the Roman Britons enjoyed. The lesson for me was not to take technology for granted – it can be (and has been) erased from our society in a historical eye blink.

We often talk of our lapse into mediocrity as "Dark Ages." I can't help but think "Dumb Ages" is a better description.

Portobello Market

2006-09-09T07:40:00.000-05:00

A few hundred yards from my hotel, the world comes to shop.

Portobello Road is a mile long, winding lane that has attracted shoppers, browsers, street performers and pickpockets for nearly 300 years. Weekdays, it features a few produce stalls and one of the best selections of antique stores in the country. Each Saturday, however, it comes alive with a fantastic array of stalls.

At the Notting Hill Gate end of Portobello Road, the stalls are mainly upscale antiques and artwork. As you stroll on, it becomes decidedly downscale with stalls of souvenirs, T-shirts and rummage. That rummage, however, might sell for premium prices at Missouri antique stores. It takes a few hundred years for something to be a real antique here.

About halfway down the road, it becomes an international food mart. Sausages, fruits, great loaves of bread, exotic olives, fresh fish and a mind-boggling array of cheese tempted my palate. I resisted (OK, I had a pastry), but couldn’t help consuming all the conversation I could. There was chatter in at least a dozen languages as London’s global community joined tourists from all over looking for the right ingredients for tonight’s meal.

I am trying to resist spending too much at the market until Cecile arrives. I drooled, however, at a stall filled with 19th century tools. I love the concept of labor combined with art and the Victorians made almost every common tool into a masterpiece,

I can tell now that the Portobello Market will be a regular Saturday morning pleasure for me. If nothing else, it will give me an opportunity to exercise my photographic voyeurism. Speaking of which, you can click here to see more of my Portobello Market photos. I will add to them through my stay here.

Cut to the quick

2006-09-07T14:27:00.000-05:00

Ah, England -- where the weather is damp but the wit always dry.

Tonight as I was going through the dinner buffet I came upon a large bowl of spinach-like greenery that had no apparent connection to the main course. One of the hotel's permanent residents was near me, so I asked "What is this?"

He looked at me for just an instant before making his decree with a very British accent:

"Lawn."

(Another resident explained it was watercress, much disliked by my culinary guide but generally prized by the British.)

Birth of a Newspaper

2006-09-05T07:19:00.000-05:00

Witnessing the birth of a metropolitan daily newspaper is a rarity something akin to watching a volcano erupt or a comet streak by. Especially in my profession, where we are much more experienced at mourning that celebrating.

Monday I watched a lively metro spring full-grown from the loins of the inimitable Rupert Murdoch. That in itself was remarkable, but I had missed the earlier debut of of yet another paper only days before.

In the newspaper business, England swings. London is home to a dozen English-language dailies of all sizes, styles and political persuasions. And, unlike many American newspapers, they each choose very different stories for their front pages.

But as in the States, daily newspaper readership is declining. Young readers want their news fast, free and a bit on the ragged edge of propriety.

Murdoch’s answer to that – an Associated Newspapers 10 days prior – is a free daily tabloid handed to commuters near Tube stations ever evening. The two evening freebies join the pioneering Metro and CityAM.

Associated publishes the Evening Standard, which identifies itself on the front page as “London’s Quality Newspaper.” It was hard to miss its new product when I came to town this week, however. London Lite looks very similar to the supermarket tabloids that U.S. journalists dismiss but readers snap up. Monday’s front page, for instance, had a huge white-on-black headline block “The Croc Hunter is killed by a fish.” And in boxes above that, “Liz’z love boat” and “WILL ANTI CELLULITE BERRIES WORK FOR MISCHA?”

Considering Murdoch’s reputation, I expected worse of thelondonpaper (all one word, lower case in the Internet style). And the debut front page in deed recorded the demise of the TV star, but with a more sedate “Steve Irwing Stabbed in Heart/CROC MAN KILLED BY STINGRAY. The other headlines on the page were much tamer, referring to stories on Rocker Pete Doherty’s court appearance, sports salaries and coffee addiction a rock.

Damn. Where is the “Alien meets with Bush”?

The young Londoners at which the free papers are aimed didn’t seem to care. Thelondonpaper came out at 4:30 p.m. By 5:30, the only way I could get an issue was to ask to see the copy a street person had on her lap (“That’s OK, love. You take it – I’ve already ready read it.”) I later took a bus from Notting Hill Gate to Picadilly and, despite my second-deck vista, never saw a leftover copy in the sidewalk detritus of the day’s news.

The key test, however, was Andrew. While teaching in London for four months, I am living in an old residential hotel much like Fawlty Towers. It has a bar/lounge in the old London style, with high-backed chairs, a snooker table, wine or port on you account and a contingent of “permanent residents.” Andrew is something of the major domo of these gentlemen. He introduced himself soon after I arrived, noting that he was “former Royal Army” and not at all keen on these immigration policies. He reads the Times, the Telegraph and the Evening Standard daily. The Guardian, he miffed, is “mostly for those liberals…”

When I showed him my battered copy of thelondonpaper, his bushy gray eyebrows literally raised. “One of those free things, eh?” Though he harrumphed, he took it to his chair while I talked with the other residents. When I looked back a few minutes later, he was taking notes and nodding his head.

“This is quite impressive,” he said. “There were several stories I had not seen before.”

Thelondonpaper could indeed be a portent of things to come. It’s not just a “movie rag.” It’s a good read, with good reporting. But it is delivered free in a convenient package. Just like the Internet. It makes one wonder whether the touted popularity of Web news is based on electrons or ease of use.

Monday’s Media Weekly, published by the Independent, featured a long interview with the admiral of Murdoch’s fleet, Clive Milner. Milner was candid about the research that backed the paper and News International’s strategy of keep costs low by employing “multitasking” journalists. The same people write, edit and design pages via new user-friendly technology. And he vowed to eliminate the litany of rules and traditions that drive advertisers crazy.

Milner was especially blunt about his goal for the free daily. His sights are on the dominant paid-for evening paper:

“If I was an employee of the Evening Standard, I would be looking for career advice quickly.”

Serious research

2006-09-03T11:32:00.000-05:00

Clyde with a Scots Guard at St. James Palace<">Clyde Bentley.

There are two things you simply must do when you visit London -- have a pint of hand-pulled beer in a pub at least 150 years old and have your picture taken next to one of the queen's guards.

I had the beer Saturday and posed with a Scots Guard at St. James Palace today. I don't think I need to bother the men in the busbies again, but I'm not quite ready to come home. I stiil have to do a bit more investigating on that first chore...

H is for the heart

2006-08-30T17:34:00.000-05:00

If a homecoming is good for the health, this evening's hug from Harry should make ensure my old age.

Harry is my uncle ... well, sort of. My grandmother was his father's sister but in their working-class neighborhood in pre-war London, the kids from both families merged into virtual siblings. But that's another story.

To make it more confusing, Harry is also known as George. During his decades as a technician and cameraman at BBC, his professional moniker made him namesake of old London politician George Gibbings. And that's yet another story.

He is simply Uncle Harry to me -- a larger-than-life man with natty suits and jaunty bow ties who would show up in our home almost magically whenever "the Beeb" sent him to the States for some story. I took the Tube to his Harrow house this afternoon for dinner and a heartfelt homecoming.

Through the years, Harry has made me laugh, fascinated me with the most outrageous stories of our family and made my brother and I feel as if we were the sons he never had. An evening in Harry's company is one of my favorite tonics.

But he can top that. Harry actually makes people feel better.

"H", as the family calls him, has always been something of an eccentric. That role took a sudden upward turn toward the end of his BBC career when he was marking time between camera shoots by reading headstones in an old cemetery. He was startled by an unusually tall, craggy old man carrying a metal pole. The man thrust the pole to Harry, saying something about his unusually strong aura. Uncle Harry thought the tall stranger had outdone even H at eccentricity, but humored him by taking the pole as the man tossed a set of car keys into the tall grass.

To his own amazement, Harry was able to quickly find the keys with the rod. He never got the old man's name, but used his "divining" skills as a party trick for several years. Then one day he found he could divine someone's aching joints and the pain went away.

So now it is something of a family joke ... "Where'd Harry go? Did he stop to heal a waitress again?" He never takes money or accolades for his special skill, but you are seldom around him long these days before someone asks for his touch.

And, weird as it sounds, it seems to work. When H places his hand on your back, neck or shoulder, it goes right to that nagging spot you don't like to talk about. His hands become unusually warm, as does the spot. And when he removes his hands, the pain has diminished.

It doesn't keep away forever for me, but then I'm not much of a believer. But it works at least as good as a stiff drink -- with no residual hangover.

The magic is getting its toughest test now. Harry is 86, chipper, but with a weak ticker. The pills help, but the man with the healing hands can't use them on his own heart. For a fleeting moment, the impish delight vanishes from his face when he explains this divining Catch 22.

Damn unfair, isn't it? H has lifted more hearts than he will ever known.

The comforts of home?

2006-08-29T15:29:00.000-05:00

I knew there was something that just wasn't right about flying these days -- something that was right there in front of my nose. But it just couldn't get it.

Maybe it was the decline in "style" since my 1963 trip on PanAm. Monday I flew with a herd of business and pleasure travelers on Northwest. Back then, airline passengers were special folks who were waited upon by classy stewards and stewardesses and who dined as if they were at a resort. I kept the tiny PanAm salt and pepper shakers for years. I don't think I want the paper condiment envelopes from this trip. And don't get me wrong, the flight attendants were nice -- kind of truck-stop diner nice, but nice.
Maybe it was the seats. I refuse to believe my girth has expanded that much beyond the national norm in the past few years. Instead, I think they mis-translated "coach" into "petite" when designing the plane. I rolled around for most of the flight trying to find a home for my mildly ample bottom. I hate to think what poor Mom would have done with her more substantial avoirdupois.
Or perhaps it is the airlines' odd sense of scheduling. It's bad enough that one has to wait hours at a "hub" for connections to a "spoke" that is usually a state or two out of the way. But then there is the fumbling over what used to be pretty good food service. On domestic hops, they've cut most of the chow. The cabin attendants just walk up and down the isle offering half glasses of ginger-ale. But they are still supposed to serve real food on international flights -- so eat whether you like it or not. We boarded at 9:30 p.m. eastern U.S. time (3:30 a.m. GMT) and got dinner at midnight (6 a.m. in London). I'm sure that fits in someone's schedule.
And then there is that herd metaphor. Nothing makes one feel like a world-class traveler better than an hour wait among your sweaty peers while someone rummages among the underwear.

But I don't think that was it. I realized just as we were about to land that the answer was not in FRONT of my nose, it was the schnozz itself.

I snore. Not just a little, but enough vibrate the bolts loose on a Lazy-Boy. True traveling discomfort is waking up with a snort on a crowded airliner that seems just-a-bit-too-quiet. And noticing, when you casually look around, that half the cabin is staring back at you.

Scotty wherever you are, for God's sake beam me up. That's the only way to fly.

Return to England

2006-08-21T08:58:00.000-05:00

In many ways, I am the classic "man without a country." More precisely, I'm a "man with three countries. I was born in Germany, the son of an American GI and an English singer and actress. Each of my parents gave me an abiding love and appreciation of their homeland and I took it upon myself to learn the language and customs of Germany.

But next week, I return to the Mother Country. Or at least the country of my mother.

I leave Aug. 28 for a four-month stay in the United Kingdom, where I will teach in the London Program sponsored by the University of Missouri. A consortium of Missouri colleges under the banner of International Enrichment takes a large group of students to London each semester. The Missouri School of Journalism sends the largest group, along with a professor to give the students a class that is credited toward their journalism degree.

It's my turn to be that professor. Tough duty.

We teach at Imperial College, right next to Royal Albert Hall. Cecile and I will stay at the Vincent House, a residential hotel in Notting Hill. I teach one night class a week, help with a second class and chaperone the students on a Wednesday field trip. I also oversee the internships that each student will have.

My course will give the students a comparison of British and U.S. journalism. I plan to draw upon my personal experiences to give them a flavor of England.

It wasn't until I sat down to write this that I realized how extensive those experiences are. This will be my seventh trip to England. (Click here to see a collection of my travel photos) Sometime after my birth in 1951, Mom took me to visit my Nan, Pop and relatives at their workingclass London flat. Mom, brother Mark and I spent most of the summer of 1963 at that flat, discovering in depth our family ties.

I returned with my bride in the bicentenial year of 1976. Cecile and I spend nearly a month touring England in a white Mini borrowed from Uncle Harry. That tiny car took us on some of the most memorable adventures of my life -- and further cemented a love that has grown for three decades.

In 1990, we returned with the family we decided to have just after our 1976 trip. Gillian was a pretty and imaginative middle-schooler. Garrett was a rambunctious tyke. We had not quite realized how cold and blustery England would be in December, but the Christmas holiday was the time we had available. It was cold but wonderful. We heard the choirs at the London cathedrals and celebrated both Christmas and Boxing Day with family in Cornwall.

By 2001, my family had endured my mood swings and self-induced poverty as I earned my doctorate at the University of Oregon. We felt that Garrett had been cheated from the family trips he should have enjoyed in high school, so Cecile and I took him to England. The itinerary was up to him, so he chose a hunt for castles. We drove through northern England and Wales looking at a fantasy land of old stone and mortar.

Cecile and I returned -- albeit briefly -- in 2005. We had gone to Ireland for a summer holiday with Gillian. She and Will were living in Dublin where he worked as an architect. While we were there, the family in England organized a reunion and party to mark the 85th birthday of Uncle Harry. Harry Gibbings is the spirit of our family -- a jovial and quirky former BBC cameraman. He has treated me as a son since that 1963 trip.

My life is full of memories, pictures and phrases from England. Now I get to add more. I also get to spend four months as a childless husband with my lovely wife. I look forward not only to rediscovering Britain, but reveling in the romance of a couple as we did in 1976.

A parent's song

2006-03-14T15:14:00.000-06:00

You can escape it in no corner of the world when the March lion roars. Usually The Song comes on the silken voice of a tenor. But it could as likely be a sweet soprano or mournful guitar that grabs both ears and heart.

Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling…

From glen to glen, radio station to radio station, country bar to Irish pub, the unofficial anthem of those who wear green plays again and again. The reaction is inevitable – puzzled young people turn back to their conversation or drinks while the gray let tears flow down their aging cheeks.

I was one of the former for longer my hair color should have allowed. The Song was something of a joke for the most of my life.

I first remember paying attention to it as I watched my mother cry with great sobs as the instantly recognizable melody played on television.

The summer's gone, and all the flowers are dying
'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide.

The occasion was a memorial to a great man, but the tears were for someone dearer. I thought at the time Mom’s reaction to the song was plain silly and it teased her back to an embarassed smile. It took many years and two children of my own to put that moment together with another, more poignant memory.

I come from an Anglo-Irish family. In those genes came a mix of anger and guilt tempered only by our familial admiration for a pint of stout and the indomitable spirit of both island nations.

Years before I watch my mother cry to The Song, I watched her weep as her father gave her what he believed was his last hug. We had traveled to England to see the relatives. As we left for the airport “Pop” was solemn. Mom gave him a hug and he looked up from his chair.

“I’ll never see you again. Goodbye, Diana Mary.”

Not “farewell.” Not “until we meet again.”

Goodbye.

And if you come, when all the flowers are dying
And I am dead, as dead I well may be
You'll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an "Ave" there for me.

I still didn’t understand. No young man should understand The Song. To do so would keep us from straying far enough from home and hearth to move our society forward. But bye and bye we gain the painful wisdom of age.

About two years ago, my life and appreciation of The Song changed. My daughter, her husband and my cherished grandson moved to Dublin to be part of the economic boom the press calls the Celtic Tiger.

I realized that it was ironically fair that I give Ireland my daughter while I waited behind. Generations of Irish fathers had lost Dannys and Mollys to the Americas. And though The Song was written by an Englishman who never set foot on the Emerald Isle, it perfectly captured the emotion of parent letting go of child.

Not long after Gillian left for Ireland, I was alone in my car when The Song came on the radio. It was the very first time I understood it. With gray in my hair, I knew well my own mortality and the possibility that my child and I might never be reunited.

And I shall hear, tho' soft you tread above me
And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be

I cried so hard I had to pull over to the side of the road. Like my mother before me, I sobbed from the pit of my soul.

If you'll not fail to tell me that you love me
I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.

I sobbed ... but then smiled at the warm consolation The Song gives to parents who give their children to the world. It is right.

I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.

Irish or not, my eyes are smiling this St. Patrick’s Day. I sleep in peace these nights knowing that my child will indeed come to me – if only briefly before going to another new life in Oregon. I will again bounce my grandson on my knee, discuss the news with my son-in-law and let my now pregnant daughter kiss me on an aging cheek.

A cheek that will forever more be blessed with tears when a tenor sings The Song.

I remember the Alamo

2005-08-10T17:58:00.000-05:00

Memories of another era cried out to me as I strolled through hallowed ruins of the Alamo today. But Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and company can rest in peace.

The Alamo is much more than a tourist destination or restored pile of adobe bricks to Texans. The small sign out front says it all in the subtitle: The Shrine to Texas Liberty.

Gentlemen are asked to remove their hats. Ungentlemen are watched like hawks by the guards. And hushed voices are the order of the day. Someone once told me that every Texan has two home towns, where they live and San Antonio. And every good Texan pays homage to the Alamo.

It doesn't matter that Bowie was a notorious slaver and some researchers think Crockett surrendered. It doesn't matter that the major battles of the Texas Revolution were fought elsewhere. And it certainly doesn't matter that the United Sates refused to let Texas into its club for years after the fight.

This is the Alamo. And folks in these parts Remember the Alamo.

But as I revisited the old Mission and bought a special trinket at the gift store, what I remembered was a very blond tyke. Back in 1989 he was my special little man who rode on my shoulders and looked at me with with piercing eyes that one minute shone blue and another seemed green.

I remember oh so well that summer when I had the chance to really be a dad. I had quit my newspaper job in Idaho that summer of 1988 and was waiting to enter graduate school at the University of Texas that fall. Cecile was putting in long hours in her new management job. And I got to spend each day, every day with Gillian and Garrett.

Gillian was always full of ideas for crafts or outings or movies or whatever. She was a typical active grade schooler. But Garrett was a preschooler with narrower ambitions. His favorite videatape by far was the story of Davey Crockett. And when I asked what he wanted to do for the day his reply was always the same: "Go to the Alamo."

I didn't mind. I loved walking on the stones of Alamo Plaza or soaking up the shade of the trees surrounding the shrine. But I couldn't put Garrett off long. We would reverently go inside the Alamo and walk up to the glass case holding Crockett's gun.

I once tried to tell him that that particular gun wasn't really "Old Betsy," and how unlikely it would be that even the Mexican Army would keep the gun of the defeated Texians.

Waste of breath. We were there to see Old Betsy. Again.

We made the pilgrimage many times that summer and each time I marveled as Garrett's eyes grew wide when he pulled his chin up to the glass case. It was a look of utter awe and admiration that any real hero -- or real father -- would give his life to receive.

So, yes. I remember the Alamo.

Conveniently inconvenient

2005-08-02T23:03:00.000-05:00

Many of us who came of age in the 1970s practically lived by the famous "Don't Panic" mantra of "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:"

A recent trip to Ireland and England gave me no reason to doubt Douglas Adams' sage advice. But I realize another quote from protagonist Arthur Dent may be the real clue to the operation of our little world. Faced with an almost unfathomable alien bureaucracy, Dent becomes the hero by volunteering to negotiate the waiting line:

"I'm British. We know how to queue."

While that line was likely lost on American audiences, it is essential for understanding how the European Union is competing with the United States. We are more aggressive. But they are better at waiting in line.

The key to Europeans is their high tolerance for inconvenience.

This became very clear to me when we took a discount Ryan Airlines flight from Dublin to a suburban London airport so we could attend a family reunion. Ryan is one of those airlines that your read about in the U.S. and shake your head in disbelief. Sometimes flights between Ireland and Britain sell for under 10 euros and they allegedly let people board the plane free if their are empty seats. It wasn't quite that cheap for us, but it was still a bargain.

I think. For the price of the discount, you get a very different level of service. Instead of serving pretzels and soft drinks, the cabin crew comes down the aisle selling everything from sandwiches to watches and perfume. It's kind of like flying for an hour and a half on the Home Shopping Network.

But our seasoned fellow travelers took it in stride. What do you expect for those prices?

The real kicker, however, came when we arrived at London/Luden airport. The plane was short on overhead bins, so we had check our luggage. So we hurried to the carrousel after landing -- and waited. And waited. It took nearly an hour before our bags trundled down the conveyor.

The Americans waiting for their bags were livid. They -- we -- paced back and forth, muttered oaths and peered through the slot into the baggage room where we could see that a single small crew was casually handling all the luggage from one plane at a time. It was agonizing beyond belief.

But not for the passengers who get their paychecks in pounds or euros instead of dollars. They know how to queue.

The Europeans stepped out for a smoke, when to the cafe for tea or a beer or just leaned back and chatted with each other as if this was the highlight of their vacation. No one seemed the least anxious -- when the bags arrived I swear I heard one man say "That wasn't bad..."

Afterwards, I started paying attention to how non Americans cope with the little indecencies of life. Because it has a boom economy, Ireland is filled with workers from all over the European Union, so it is a good slice of life -- European life.

As everyone who has read a tour-guide knows, that European life is quaint and bucolic. Supermarkets exist, but they have to compete myriad tiny stores that sell just produce or just meat or just baked goods. That means a walk down the street rewards you with sights, sounds and especially smells you would never find in a U.S. mall. And then there is transportation. "Petrol" is God-awful expensive, so folks walk, take the bus or catch a train. It seems so civilized.

Civilized, yes. Convenient, no. Shopping for tonight's dinner can take an hour if you walk a quarter mile to the produce shop, then down the street to the butcher and pop over to the baker -- stopping each place for a friendly chat. And that double decker bus looks great, but slogging up the steep stairs to the top deck while it is dodging through a narrow street quickly loses its charm.

So how do they put up with it? By building inconvenience into their lives.

My son-in-law, Will, was incredibly frustrated by the pace of his new job at an Irish architectural firm in Dublin. He showed up at 7:30 the first day of work so he could get an early start. Then he had to wait outside the building until someone showed up at 9 with the key. Work starts at 9:30. Lunch is an hour and a half starting about 1. And you are ushered out at 6 p.m. even if you have a project to finish -- employees don't get keys.

But for Europeans, that schedule makes perfect sense. It means you can get your children off to school in the morning ("Schoolbus, what's a schoolbus?") and actually go home for lunch with your family. Or you can take that mid-day break to do your shopping, banking or other personal business without the stress of an American pace. The system provides extra time that we Americans might see as productivity-killing. But our friends Over There know they will make good use of that time. After all, you need to stand in line...

And Europeans know how to queue.

Dad, the miles and the memories

2005-07-26T03:09:00.000-05:00

A year ago today, I was walking atop the Great Wall of China with my son, Garrett. And while we were marveling at this ancient feat of engineering, my father quietly passed away in California.

Today I am sitting in a holiday apartment in Dublin, Ireland – again many miles from home. But again, I am not far from family – or my father.

Ed Bentley was both a simple and a complex man. He was raised in a harsh and almost primitive environment in northern Idaho. The log house he shared with a huge gaggle of siblings had neither electricity nor running water and much of the technology the builders of that Great Wall used would have been familiar to him.

Perhaps that ever-present sense of necessity drove his lifelong love of history and the way things work.

Even though he was terminally ill, Dad insisted I go through with a planned trip to China last year. He marveled at photos we sent him through the Internet and my son, my wife and I all recalled his many stories of how amazing it must have been to watch a people with only horsepower, elbow grease and ingenuity construct the massive wall.

I thought of Dad again yesterday when we toured the Neolithic structures on The Burrens in western Ireland with our daughter Gillian. In many ways, the crude structures like the wedge tomb at Poulnabrone were even more amazing. In my mind’s ear, I could hear Dad extolling the wonder as his eyes traced the outlines of the huge stone slabs. “ And they didn’t even have metal tools! Can you imagine it?”

He could. And thanks to Dad, I can. His legacy is an appreciation for the ability of the human mind and agility of the human hand that I believe passed to my son and daughter and now to my grandson. Though not quite 3, Briton reflected my dad’s unabated sense of wonder as he pointed to a flower he found among the limestone rocks.

“Look! Look, Papa, look!”

A pint of of brilliance

2005-07-22T04:46:00.000-05:00

Ireland is the stuff of poetry. There is life. There is love. And there is Guinness.

Guinness is more than a beer to Ireland. It is a cultural icon on par with the finest wines of Bordeaux or Burgandy. The Irish swear by it as a tonic, ascribe to it all sorts of powers and serve it with cult-like ritual.

And they are right.

I never really liked the Guinness I had in the United States. It seemed bitter, overly dark and rather flat. But my first sip at an Irish pub made me a convert.

A good pint is a wonder to behold. The bottom three quarters of the class is not black, but a deep, deep ruby. Tiny waves of bubbles course through it -- not simply rising, but dancing through it in winding streams. The pint is topped by a fine froth that puts quality whipped cream to shame. In the mouth, that foam has the texture of "crema," the delightful foam at the top of a real Italian expresso. And the first sip is not bitter, but a curious mixture of flavors ranging from sweet to nut.

It all seems rather magical.

But Paddy, Collin and Shannon at the Guinness factory set me straight. It's science -- and a little magic.

Beer tourism.JPG

The Guinesss Brewery is one of the top tourist destinations in Dublin. The actual beer making goes on in a modern, stainless steel plant next door, but the old collection of oak barrels, copper pots and great pipes has become a visitor center and convention facility. It explains the worldwide appeal of Guinness, the advertising prowess it has developed and the purity of the ingredients.

It also explains some of the Irish cult of Guinness. The company at one time provided 30% of the jobs in Dublin. It was the first to provide hospitalization, pension and paid holidays to its workers. And its pay averaged 10% above similar wages in Ireland. It was also the most noted export of Ireland and still ranks in the top tier. While there are a number of outlying plants around the world, Guiness for the eastern U.S. is stilled brewed in Dublin.

I couldn't quite understand it. If it is the same beer, why didn't I like it cold on tap in the U.S.? The tour offered precious little on why the beer was so different, so I asked a couple of the employees. Paddy grabbed the "talking sheets" given to employees and went off to photocopy them for me. When he returned, young Collin proudly explained how he wrote part of the talking sheet and waxed poetic about the quality of a good pint served not ice cold, but at a proper 6-degrees celsius. And then he handed us off to Shannon.

A masters degree student in language translation, Shannon held court at the "instruction bar." She gave Cecile and I small glasses of freshly poured stout and then made us wait the requisite two full minutes before drinking. Guiness is properly served in a "two pull pour." The first two thirds of the glass is filled and then the beer sits for two minutes. Then it is topped off with a flourish that raises the head.

Advertising hype? Not really. In the old days, Guinness was drawn from two barrels -- one flat and one bubbly. It was a trick to combine them to get a proper head. Now Guinness is injected with nitrogen as it is pumped (unlike the harsher carbon dioxide that puts the foam in U.S. lager). The nitrogen bubbles are small and produce a creamlike head. But they take time to gather and add their flavor to the brew. Hence the two-pull pour.

Drinking a pint is like sipping a fine wine. It takes time, patience and preparation.

And like a wine steward, Shannon also instructed us in the art of "retro-nasal breathing" that enhances any beer or wine. We sucked in a breath, took a sip, swirled the beer in our mouths and then exhaled as we swallowed.

The Guinness ads have a most appropriate term for the the resulting explosion of flavor.

"Brilliant."

The downside of travel

2005-07-21T04:33:00.000-05:00

I love to travel. I hate to be away.

My parents taught me the value of experiencing new sights at a very young age. It is of no surprise, then, that my wife and I made a concious decision to "collect memories, not things." We spend our money going places, meeting new people and experiencing new lives rather than investing in big cars or other suburban baubles.

But travel can be hard. Last year, my Dad died while I was in China. It pierced my heart not to be with him, even though it was Dad who insisted I take the trip.

Life continues to happen while you are away.

Right now, my son is going through a rough time. I don't want to go into his private life, but Garrett is at that agonizing age where I young man's life is tormented by the unholy trinity -- cars, school and girls.

With modern technology, I can hear his voice, read his typed words and offer my own across the miles. But it is not the same. I can't touch him gently on the shoulder or squeeze his hand in support. I can only feel inadequate as I do what father's are supposed to do -- let him grow up.

But Garrett, I love you. And no matter how many miles, no matter how many years I always will.

Family spelled with an "H"

2005-07-18T07:10:00.000-05:00

I learned family relations by correspondence course.

My mother was English, wooed away to the exotic United States by a handsome American soldier. She left behind a working class family rich in shared history, exuberant in their love and wry in their humor.

My father, on the other hand, came from a back-woods Idaho family that went to some lengths to keep away from each other. So for many years the notion of "grandparent" was rather vague to me -- something about people like me who lived somewhere else.

I visited England with my mother and brother the summer between fourth and fifth grade. Life has never been the same. That great family -- Smiths and Gibbings with a Barratt here or there -- pulled me into their lives as if I had never left the old sod. Throughout the rest of my life, my contact with family was via letters, phone calls and later e-mail.

I've been especially close to two person, my Uncle Harry and my Cousin Les. And, typical of my family, neither of those names is entirely accurate. Harry was my mother's cousin but raised like a brother -- and he often went by George. Les is the son of one of my mother's other cousins and is actually Leslie.

Not to worry. Harry kept me in stitches as a young man and in awe as an aging Baby Boomer. Childless, he "adopted" me a as a favored nephew and became one of those magical uncles of which novels are made. He was a cameraman for the BBC and travelled the world. When he could, he would drop in on us -- something Cecile and I were later able to do with him. Our daughter, Gillian, visited him as a teen and still keeps in close contact.

Back during my first youthful visit to England, my brother and I were often shooed out of the house so Mom and her parents could visit. Our guide to English children's life was cousin Les. It was wonderful. Spectacular. I learned to play football -- the proper FA version -- and even a bit of cricket. We explored London parks and even learned how to swear ("Bloody hell") like a Brit. And I became addicted to Cadbury chocolate. And when Les, brother Mark and I ran even a bit short of mischief, Uncle Harry was there to kindly lead us all astray.

It all seems like ancient history now. The updates have become frequent with the advent of the Internet, but Les is as gray as I am now and managing a growing family in Milton Keynes. Yesterday he invited the whole clan over to mark the 85th birthday of Uncle Harry.

Maybe "Haitch" (as the family calls him) really is magic. He certainly doesn't seem just 15 years short of a century. His eyes gleam, his hearing is sharp and he can out-jokes the best of us.

He was in his element as Cecile and I joined his brother's grown sons and herd of offspring drank beer, ate more food than was good for.

The hugs and kisses were real -- not a series of Xes on the bottom of a letter. And when we said farewell, it was "until later," not "goodbye."

At one time I envied friends with "close family." Silly me. It took me nearly a lifetime to fully comprehend that "closeness" has little to do with physical distance.

The Dead Zoo

2005-07-14T17:54:00.000-05:00

It's amazing how much you can learn about life from the dead.

While that sounds like a promotion for "CSI" or one of the other coroner/detective TV shows, it was a thought that jumped into my mind today when we went to the "Dead Zoo."

Dublin has two zoos -- the normal kind with elephants and monkeys in cages, and the "Dead Zoo" downtown. It's actually called the National Museum of Natural History, but everyone seems to know it by its colorful nickname.

Inside are glass cases and open displays of stuffed animals, bones and specimins floating in jars of alcohol. While many American museums have moved away from the clinical look in favor of dioramas showing the stuff creatures in "natural" settings, the Dead Zoo is organized more like a library. All the apes are in one case, the deer in another, etc.

As cold as that seems, it is a great way to see how animals are related to each other and how they compare in size and color. (Well, kind of. Most of these animals were stuffed in the 1890s, so they have a similar gray-brown color no matter what they started out like.)

But it was interesting. Gillian said one of her Irish friends could not get the concept of a turkey clear. From the photos, she thought it was very much like a peacock, with the same giant fanned tail. Finally, she went to the Dead Zoo to see the case in which the turkey and peacock were displayed next to each other. The difference was obvious.

So the lesson? Beware of form over function. Dioramas are pretty, but they convey different information than do "catalog" displays. We need them both. I'm sure it is the same in much of life.

My Irish ayes

2005-07-13T16:47:00.000-05:00

Thank you, Ireland, for taking care of my child.

It's Wednesday evening here, but midweek afternoon in Missouri. Except for snatched naps in the car as we drove to Chicago, on the plane and in our holiday apartment here, we have been up for about 36 hours. Time to go to bed and start this vacation in earnest Thursday.

But first, a reflection of that joy. Seeing my daughter, Gillian, and grandson, Briton, awaiting us at the airport brought a special joy to my heart that I think only a parent can know. I am intensly proud of Gillian and Will for taking off on an adventure of there own, but I miss having the warmth of their love at my side.

Here in Ireland, I can only be thankful that this country that send so many of its children to the United States is so kind and generous to the Americans it lured back. I cannot imagine the pain of hundreds of thousands of fathers who saw their daughters and sons step off the docks but who, at the most, could only wish for an occasional letter to warm them. I have the Internet, video conferencing and telephone to bring a piece of my child back to me. They had only memories.

Today we made a quick tour of the neighborhood in which Gillian, Will and Briton live. We have rented a delightful holiday apartment over Roche's Chemists -- a pharmacy and convenience store. Gillian' smaller apartment is a few blocks away. Will rides his bike to his architectural office in a nearby converted Abby.

The neighborhood is beautiful -- mostly old town homes, some converted to apartments. Schools, parks and churches abound. The Irish also delight in painting their front doors bright colors -- allegedly a remnant from a protest when they were told to paint their doors black to honor a dead English monarch.

The weather is springlike cool and comfortable, as it is most of the summer here. The people provide the warmth and good humor.

Tomorrow we take off for our first adventure into the city.

Where is the civility?

2005-07-13T16:29:00.000-05:00

Somehow, I think we have forgotten a level of civility.

This has been quite a year of travel for me. I just returned from Korea and now I am in Ireland. In the past three weeks, I have flown about three-fourths of the way around the world -- but in two legs going different directions,.

Yesterday's flight from Chicago to Dublin on American Airlines was a marked contrast from the flight two weeks ago from Seoul to San Francisco on Asiana Airline. Class, of course, counted. On Asiana I was pampered in business class and in American I flew coach. But I had considerable crossover in both -- wandering back to coach on Asiana and sitting just behind the business/first class seats on American.

It wasn't just the better food or the hot towels the cabin attendants chop-sticked to us on Asiana. The whole plane has an aura of civility that just wasn't there on American. The American Airlines crew did an adequate job -- but it was like driving a durable Chevy pickup instead of a sleek Lexus sedan.

I realized, part way across the Atlantic, that my whole American flight was designed for efficiency and minimum wear and tear on the crew. The Korean counterpart, however, was focused almost exclusively on the experience of the consumer. I also noticed that a few years ago when I flew on Singapore Air.

We likely have the same issue in most industries -- certainly in newspapers. In our business, we publish as much or more for ourselves as for the "readers." We seldom simply ask readers what would make them happy -- and even more seldom respond to their reply.

Perhaps we have simply forgotten the joy of civility. I don't think we teach students in any profession the skills to please. We focus instead on the skills to perform. Taken alone, neither will bring success. But the flaw of having one without the other is all too obvious.

Hello, world

2005-07-09T16:41:00.000-05:00

It's hard not to be a blogger right now. Although journalists are trained to write well and often, we are not, by nature, diarists. We write for a specific purpose to a specific audience. But the age of weblogs is upon us, so it has become an obligation to share one's written life with the world.

So be it. Here is my blog, which I foresee as a rambling diary of my somewhat chaotic life and mind.