Adventures in local journalism, or, Help, I’m being stalked by e-mail

I haven’t posted for a while, I know. It’s just that I’ve been busy with some big stories at The Bradenton Times. When you’re one of two reporters and you’re coming into the season, well, big stuff is starting to happen and I want to be there.

I recently violated rule No. 1 of journalism. I attempted to reason with an angry reader. Well, here’s what happened: I have been covering a certain city in north Manatee County, and a former employee of said city decided that I was going to help “clean up” the political cesspool of the city.

I am not a cleaner of cesspools but an observer, though, and after a second letter expressing dismay with a profile of an elected official in that city, I decided to respond and that triggered another response.

Then a third, because I noted in my “Fly on the Wall” political column that someone had written to me that the profile caused an upset stomach.

I have a bad history of dealing with readers. One time, before I took the sacred vows of journalism, I wrote a piece detailing my lack of belief in god and received a very angry letter forwarded from the newspaper from a local person.

I guess I write too much, when I do write at all.

In other news, it’s been raining like heck lately, and the lakes are getting high. But the cats and I are still here, and that’s always a good sign.

Death of Boca Raton News sad … but anticlimactic

The news came in Friday, as I did my daily perusal of Romenesko: the Boca Raton News is dead.

There’s talk of a Web site, but let’s face it folks, a former newspaper that’s now a Web site is not much. The dead tree edition brings in the revenue, with its coupons, full-page ads and more; most folks just try to avoid the online ads.

I work at a place that’s been a Web site from day one, though people insist on calling to complain when their Bradenton Herald isn’t delivered. I explain gently that we’re new and different, and direct them in the right direction.

I learned journalism in college, and on the first Web sites The Palm Beach Post did (the hurricane, Marlins, business section and ValuJet Flight 592 sites), but the Boca Raton News was where I really learned journalism. I worked there twice, from September 1996 to November 1998 and from January 2001 to July 2001.

It was fun, infuriating, awesome, frustrating, nerve-wracking, joyful and more to be in that newsroom. The 25/43 project hadn’t increased readership all that much, but it was a boost to me to know that some people were loyal, and I tried to earn my wings every day. Some days I did a great job; others, well, I showed up and something landed in people’s driveway.

My brother Robert thinks we’re all communists and socialists in the news business, America-haters all, who weigh each story according to our liberal bias and then put all the stuff we want on page one and bury the rest. Believe me, it’s a more complicated process, with stories coming in on the wires and local news. The positioning of every story is seen as proof positive of our socialist tendencies.

Some people read too much into the positioning of stories.

The Boca Raton News’s death is, to me, like hearing that my old Marine squadron, VMA-513, is being disbanded. Sure, the folks in it are not the folks who were in it when I was there (save for Skip Sheffield), but those folks are going to lose their jobs and be ejected into the market at a bad time.

Here are my top 10 moments from both my times at the Boca Raton News:

10. The night I left early and we reported that “lightening” had hit the Boca Police Department building. (First tour.)

9. Being advised by Phyllis Gilchrist that “Fuck!”, “Shit!” or compounds thereof were not appropriate language among the young ladies on the copy desk. (I resorted to “Aw, cat food!” or “Cat food and canaries!”, even at my later jobs.) (First tour.)

8. When the features editor brought her cat into the newsroom, and he ran under a desk and I had to retrieve him. (First tour.)

7. Just seeing the features editor, who tended to wear skirts with dark pantyhose, which were sometimes torn or with runs. Sometimes she’d leave and there would be problems with her pages, and no one could reach her. (First tour.)

6. The night a violent thunderstorm’s lightning knocked out our power and we had to work very late to get the paper out. And the emergency generator was locked and no one nearby had the key. (Second tour.)

5. Rebooting the server for AP photos. Had to do this at least once a night. (First tour.)

4. Putting out the first Web site for the paper, then going home and finding something messed up so I came back at 1:30 in the morning and fixed it, and getting told not to come back after leaving because it could be fixed in the morning. (First tour.)

3. Thinking I had 1A put to bed on a Saturday night, then hearing John Futch, who was the editor and would help out on the desk very often, announce: “Uh-oh, Princess Diana was in a car accident.” We didn’t have to stop the presses, but I had to re-do page one, of course, with two black plates. On the first, the headline was: “Princess Diana injured in Paris car crash.” For the second, the headline was: “Princess Diana killed in Paris car crash.” We actually had the first one plated and on the press but the press was about 30 minutes from starting when it was confirmed that she was dead. So the first one never ran; that plate was pulled and the new one with a new story was substituted. I thought our headline was better than another paper, which had “Di dies.” (First tour.)

2. Working with Randall Murray. My mentor in journalism. A beacon of cynicism and inspiration in the newsroom. He’d write little “It Occurred to Us” pieces on the editorial page, and one time when President Clinton pardoned the Thanksgiving turkey I told him, as a joke, that I heard the turkey was seen in an office surrounded by Clinton administration officials and signing a check for $50,000 made out to the Democratic National Committee. He knew it was a joke by me, but he acted as if it were real and wrote about it. Some people even thought it was real. (First tour.)

And the No. 1 event I’ll always remember at the Boca Raton News:

1. The busy night during the Christmas season when the city editor came up to me and asked me if I was OK. He was worried that the news that someone had gone berserk in a postal facility and shot a manager might give me some wacko ideas. From then on, whenever anyone in the post office shot someone or acted up, a person at the news meeting would always say, “Someone went Vinny at a post office somewhere.” (First tour.)

There were some not-so-fun moments in that first tour, like the time we heard the paper was for sale, then found out some outfit we never heard of was buying us (we were hoping for Gannett; yes, we were very delusional from the stress).

The changes when CNHI took over were just awful, like when they took away the Mac used by our wheelchair-bound copy editor, when news that a local theater nonprofit was about to go bust was buried because the proprietor was a friend of the publisher (one of the infamous Martin brothers), when I could see that it was time to move on and more.

In my second tour, the bad times were the times when there was no paycheck, the day a whole lot of people – including Randall Murray and Sandy Wesley – got laid off, and how the editorial pages and so much else at the paper went to pieces after that.

Ralph Martin was very understanding when I left, and even helped me get paid up in full after I was gone. I always thought that he was an OK guy.

One time, I was looking for something and stumbled on Google’s images of newspapers. Suddenly, I was reading an old Boca Raton News from when I was doing the A section. It was weird to see my work 10 years later.

Goodbye Boca Raton News. You may not have been much at the end, but when I was there, you were some place to be.

Postal Service races from crisis to crisis

I still remember the dire pronouncements when I worked for the Postal Service.

Mail volume is down, way down, because of the recession. Costs are up, way up, because of the price of gas and salaries and benefits (for workers, not management and administration). People are finding alternatives to the mail and it looks like this is the beginning of the end.

Yes, times were pretty tough for the Postal Service – in January 1983. Postmaster General William F. Bulger welcomed us new-hires with the news that the Postal Service needed to cut more than 100,000 jobs in the coming year to stay afloat. I wondered if I might have a short postal career.

I still remember the dire pronouncements when I worked for the Postal Service.

Mail volume is down, way down, because of the recession. Costs are up, way up, because of the price of gas and salaries and benefits (for workers, not management and administration). People are finding alternatives to the mail and it looks like this is the beginning of the end.

Yes, times were pretty tough for the Postal Service – in January 1994. Postmaster General Anthony Frank warned that there might have to be more job cuts. There had been an early-out just before Christmas 1993, and there was talk that people “who didn’t touch the mail” could find themselves sent back to regular work or RIF’d out if they wouldn’t take a demotion.

Some of the 204Bs (acting supervisors) looked nervous. Sure, there had been talk before of cutting management, but no one had the cojones to actually follow through. I knew one woman, one of the only postal managers I ever knew who was capable of independent thought and was open about her discontent. She worked in Quality Control, which she admitted was mostly a joke since no one in management cared if the work was done right. If mail was sent to the wrong destination, it was just brought back and counted again as if it had just arrived.

She mentioned to me on her rounds that they were talking about making the office types work on the workroom floor. I thought it would be a cold day in August in Florida before the “non-prods” did anything but do clipboard-lifts on the floor. I was right.

Not only were there no cuts in postal management and administration in that mid-90s crisis, more people were promoted into management and administration. I went to a career awareness conference in 1993 where there were hundreds of people, all allegedly “injured” on the job, and working in the EEO offices of various postal installations. Few if any of them had touched the mail in some time, but they still pulled down a hefty paycheck plus benefits.

Now, it’s 2009. I hear the dire pronouncements about the Postal Service.

Mail volume is down, way down, because of the recession. Costs are up, way up, because of the price of gas and salaries and benefits (for workers, not management and administration). People are finding alternatives to the mail and it looks like this is the beginning of the end.

Yes, times are pretty tough for the Postal Service – in August 2009. The Postmaster General has warned that there might have to be more job cuts. There’s talk of closing postal installations of all shapes and sizes, and the ultimate blasphemy has been spoken: end Saturday delivery.

It’s interesting, though, that the union people in the facilities where postal workers are going to be transferred to have had little to say. That’s because more workers means more union dues for their locals. But those union officials who are in facilities that are closing or moving operations are being a bit dramatic.

Look, does anyone really care what the postmark is or where it’s applied? To be honest, I don’t. I’ve heard it from the office of a congressional representative and read it in newspapers that people are worried that they will lose the sense of community they supposedly have if the postmark goes away. Really, do AT&T Mobility, Bright House Networks, Wells Fargo and the other companies whose bills I pay through the mail even care if the postmark on my stamps reads “Sarasota-Bradenton P&DC, FL” or “Tampa P&DC, FL”?

Postal customers who raise the issue of the loss of postmark are being coached, I think, by the unions to say that. In any case, in the case of the Sarasota facility, the outgoing cancellation operation (called the 010 in my day) is moving, but the rest is staying. Sure, it sucks to have to drive to Tampa every day, but consider the alternative: unemployment.

Unlike the 1983 and 1994 crises, I think this one is the real thing for the Postal Service. Things have changed, and technology has driven that change. The downturn has hit pretty hard everywhere. Look at me. I went from one dying industry – postal operations – to another dying industry – journalism – in about 15 years.

I have no regrets, and believe me I’m glad I left the Postal Service. The West Palm Beach GMF was a mismanaged zoo back then and a nest of corruption, and the top brass weren’t much better. Going to college and seeking a new way was the best thing I ever did.

The real postal tragedy is that a lot of good workers will probably suffer. Even worse, when the economy recovers the Postal Service will probably go on a promotion and administration binge again, creating more supervisors and administrative types to sit around and photocopy papers. And the cycle begins again …

Fake job postings and e-mails continue from Monster.com

Every few days, I get an e-mail with “Great News!”

It’s from the ultimate fake job site – no, not Craigslist – but Monster.com.

The e-mail is the same every time, and it informs me that is has found a “Journalism, Design and Photography Opportunity” in Sarasota. The employer? The U.S. Navy.

Bullshit.

This is an example of the spamming Monster.com does because some companies (including the Navy) pay Monster to post fake job postings. There are no jobs with the Navy in Sarasota in journalism. It’s just to lure you in to get called by a recruiter for an exciting career, probably as a nondesignated striker, on some destroyer in the winter in the North Atlantic.

Sorry, but at 48 and as a Marine Corps veteran, I’d eat the eagle, globe and anchor before I’d ever put on that silly squid outfit.

The sad reality is that this is the golden age of the job scam. Scumbag scam artists have a mass of choices for their entertainment, including the aforementioned Craigslist, Monster.com, Careerbuilder, and the bogus and nonsensical job advice in what’s left of our local newspapers.

There’s an outfit in Tampa called Pro Source Services, and they purport to be some kind of marketing company, but they’re also bogus, according to some who’ve fallen for their game. They post under a couple of names on Monster.com looking for “entry-level” people and pretending to offer real jobs.

I’m pretty savvy, and I have to confess that I even sent a resume to Pro Source thinking it was a real company. Fortunately, they never called back.

The other big scam out there is the “laptop presentation” scheme. This is really nasty, because it’s trying to sell annuities to senior citizens. Any company with “Ameri-,” “Income,” “Life,” “National,” “Liberty” or any combination thereof is probably an annuity company looking for economically desperate people to pitch their trash to seniors. So many retired folks have been scammed in Florida, even the state’s CFO has complained about the companies, but they appear to own a few key state legislators, and that keeps them in business. Once in a while one gets busted, but the rest keep on keepin’ on.

Some people wonder why you never read exposes about Monster.com or Careerbuilder.com and the junk jobs they allow on their site. Simple. Newspapers have deals with those two and would rather write about job scams on Craigslist, though it is true that virtually all the job ads on Craigslist are bullshit.

But there are exceptions. The place I work at recently got good results from its Craigslist job ad. Why? Well, my boss was honest about the qualifications for the job and, most important, he put up his real business e-mail address and the business’s real phone number (I should know, I took many of the calls.)

We had a good number of fabulous and well-qualified people who inquired, and picked someone who is eager to become a member of the team. I did my best in replying to all of those who called and wrote (mostly by e-mail but a couple of people got a phone call) to thank them for applying and to tell them the job was filled. It hurts, I know, to get that call or e-mail, but I felt that replying to them and acknowledging them was the right thing to do.

See, that’s the way to do things honestly and upfront, even on a site like Craigslist. No hiding behind “craigslist.org” e-mail addresses, no lies, no deliberate vagueness.

Times are hard enough for everyone as it is, and to read about all the fake job posters out there and the pain they’re causing is infuriating. Knowing that job ad companies are complicit in a lot of the fakes and frauds just shows their managers’ moral bankruptcy.

Moon retrospectives’ editing steals glory of the achievement

The 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 and the death of Walter Cronkite made for a busy week of news, but many of the retrospectives were ruined by the editing of the landing of Apollo 11 and the walk on the moon.

I suppose the most egregious mistakes were made by New York Times columnist Alessandra Stanley, who changed the date of Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon to July 26, 1969, instead of July 20, 1969. Of course, the media is dominated now by people born long after that first step, so it’s not uncommon to hear about how Apollo 10 landed on the moon (NPR) and how the “Lunar Rover Snoopy” (sic) got to touch down on the surface.

After I and hundreds of others sent letters to NPR, the host issued a correction, but I bet the damage was done.

Most of the documentaries about Apollo 11 featured some of the weirdest tapes I have ever seen, as well as some pretty deceptive editing in of films from other missions.

I know it’s dangerous to use Wikipedia as a source, but since this is for my blog and not a news story, I feel it’s safe to quote from Wikipedia here about the “separation” and “staging” shots that were shown in the retrospectives.

Documentaries often use footage of a Saturn V launch, and one of the most used pieces shows the interstage between the first and second stages falling away. This footage is usually mistakenly attributed to the Apollo 11 mission, when it was actually filmed on the flights of Apollo 4 and Apollo 6.

A compilation of original NASA footage shows the jettisoning of the first stage (S-IC) and the interstage ring as seen from the bottom of the second stage (S-II), followed by the separation of the S-IVB third stage as seen from the top of the S-II. The hot, invisible hydrogen-oxygen flames of the J-2 engines on the S-II can be seen impinging on the S-IC and the ring. The S-II/S-IVB separation footage shows S-IVB ignition, and both films show the more conspicuous plumes of the solid lower stage retrorockets and upper stage ullage motors as they pull the stages apart.

The cameras filmed at high speeds causing an estimated 15 times slow-motion view of the sequence when seen in a documentary. The camera capsules were jettisoned soon after the first stage separation, and, though at about 200,000 feet in altitude, were still below orbital velocity. They then reentered the atmosphere and parachuted to the ocean, where they floated waiting for recovery. Only one of the two S-II cameras on Apollo 6 was recovered; the other was lost due to a problem with its locator beacon.

Another launch shot often attributed to Apollo 11 and other launches was shot on this day: it shows a view of the rocket lifting up, positioned relatively close up and dead center. The shot can be identified as Apollo 6 by examining the Apollo service module on the launch; Apollo 6 was the only Saturn V-launched Apollo craft with a white SM; all others were silver.

One of the weirdest films shown – and one I had never seen before – is the traditional “astronaut’s family gathers around the TV shot.” It was in a retrospective for Apollo 8, and while Jim Lovell was talking, there was a shot of what I suppose was his house. It shows how things have changed for the better in what happens. A woman with short blonde hair, in the foreground (Lovells’ wife?) sticks a cigarette in her mouth, then turns her head to look at the TV, then lights the cigarette, inhales, exhales smoke and looks back at the TV (with the cigarette still in her mouth), while in the background the kids don’t look all that thrilled. Granted, in late 1968 probably more than 70 percent of adults smoked (I may be wrong here) but my memories from that time indicate that at some parties, you needed to file an IFR flight plan if you were a fly in a room.

Launches are the most creatively edited, with swing arms swinging away, and then being magically back in position depending on the shot. Indeed, some of the tapes are run out of order. There’s always stirring music, and an audio track of white noise added while the tape is run in slow motion. I guess it’s my taste, but I prefer the real thing in a launch in a documentary, not multiple shots of Apollo 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17. And no, as mentioned above, there was no live shot (as there is today of the space shuttle) of the launches from the top of the spacecraft.

This may come as a shock to many people, but there was not a TV camera showing the landing of the Lunar Module Eagle on the moon. We did not get a “live” shot of that. Oh, you reply, but there’s the descent film and the audio. Well, here’s the deal. The Lunar Module had a sequence camera mounted to point out a window. Soon after Apollo 11 returned to Earth, the camera’s film was developed and shown on the evening news.

Later, an audio track was added. Here is the word from a more credible source than Wikipedia, the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal.

The sequence camera was pointing out Buzz Aldrin’s right-hand lunar module window. It ran at 6 frames per second for the landing and was fitted with a 10mm wide-angle lens. The clip runs approximately from 50,000 feet altitude to the lunar surface, from about 102:30:45 to 102:46:38, one minute after touchdown.

Initially, the lunar module windows faced down towards the surface to allow Armstrong to perform visual landmark tracking. The spacecraft then rotated 180 degress to a windows-up position at an altitude of 40,000 feet to allow the landing radar to take altitude readings of the surface. The window view was of black sky during this orientation until they reached 33,500 feet when the moon slowly reappeared at the bottom of the window, just after the first 1202 program alarm announcement. Following the pitchover manoeuvre at about 7,000 feet, the moon climbed higher into view as the lunar module tilted to a more vertical position for landing.

Surface detail became clearer below 500 feet and boulders were visible as Neil flew level looking for a clear landing site. As touchdown approached, East Crater passed 150 feet below them, the descent engine blew dust across the ground, and the shadow of the landing gear appeared. As the spacecraft dropped the last few feet, its shadow filled the camera frame, blacking out the surface. The blowing dust cleared within seconds of touchdown: this phenomenon is observable in the small slice of the surface visible in the camera frame above the lunar module shadow.

The soundtrack includes:

• Lunar module descent engine ignition for powered descent initiation at around 46,000 feet

• Losses of voice communication and data telemetry

• Recurring computer alarms

• Landing radar dropouts

• Low fuel warning light in the lunar module

• Two verbal low fuel warnings from mission control

• Contact light announcement

• The landing announcement, and mission control’s enormous relief

The voices are mainly those of Buzz Aldrin and capcom Charlie Duke.

Armstrong, Collins, and public affairs officer Douglas Ward are also heard occasionally.

In the documentaries, the audio track is usually truncated and only the last few seconds of the descent is shown.

The lifting off of the ascent stage of the Lunar Module was recorded on the sequence camera, and the shot that’s usually shown in any case is the one from Apollo 14’s sequence camera since it shows the flag blowing outward from the blast of the engine. Also, white noise appears to have been added to some documentaries. (I guess they figure people won’t get it unless there’s a “whoosh” sound.”)

I guess I’m a bit of a stickler for facts, and that’s why a lot of people think I’m a drudge, but I think accuracy is key to avoid giving people incorrect facts. If you don’t agree, sue me.

Among the films showed on TCM was “Marooned.” I was always a great admirer of Martin Caidin’s writing, but I never really liked “Marooned.” Still, I sat through it recently.

The film, made in 1969, tells the story of Ironman 1, a mission to a Skylab-like space station, and what happens when the service module engine fails as they attempt to do a deorbit burn.

The fun begins with the launch, because the service tower, which surrounds the Saturn V rocket, magically disappears after being in place up to 15 seconds before launch. The launch shows, for a brief moment, a Command Module without an escape tower. Also, as the Internet Movie Database entry for the film notes in its goofs section, you’d just need the smaller Saturn 1B rocket for those missions. (Apollo 7 went to orbit atop a Saturn 1B, as did the Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz missions.)

Also, the astronauts are told to stand by for a “10-count,” which of course is nonsensical. Believe me, they’d know when there was 10 seconds left.

I suppose the most cringe-worthy part of “Marooned” are the scenes where they are getting ready for the deorbit burn, and two of the actors playing flight controllers do a countdown, loudly and in perfect unison: “10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0 – Retrofire!” In fact, they do it twice (and both times the engine fails to fire), and then again at the end after the two surviving astronauts are rescued by the XRV. I would have demanded to speak to my agent if I were those actors. Why did two have to do it at once? Why not something like, “On my mark, Retrofire!”?

I guess they needed to build suspense.

Now there are people who would say that I shouldn’t be so critical, but it’s just in me to want things to be right. Maybe I’m nuts.

But when I do astronomy stuff, I avoid giving out bad information – and admit when I don’t know an answer. I’d expect the producers of documentaries to respect their audiences and not splice tapes and edit them to appear to show events that did not happen.

The missions to the moon were grand adventures, and I just want people to know the real story.

Maybe the excitement is building for Apollo 11

Well, things have certainly heated up on the Apollo 11 front, with the awesome Web site We Choose the Moon being a regular destination of mine. (It’s best in Firefox 3.5.)

There are no events locally in my area that I have found (the biggest event that I have to deal with on July 20 is a Palmetto City Commission meeting) but of course there are events at the Cape. Wish I could be there to meet the men who rode those amazing and awesome Saturn Vs in to space. Even if they orbited in the Command Module and never touched the surface of the moon, those astronauts are my heroes.

That’s all. Just a short note. Got a busy day today.

Little excitement as 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 looms

I met Buzz Aldrin 20 years ago.

It was at an event at the South Florida Science Museum in West Palm Beach, Fla., and he was there because the planetarium was named for him. He talked with a local radio talk show host named Jack Cole about the space program, and then signed books. He was genial, gracious and tolerant of the very long line of people who came to see him.

A reporter for a small local newspaper was there, and she asked me, “So what did this guy do anyway?” It stunned me that someone could have so little knowledge.

A few weeks ago, I did a story about a woman in Bradenton who sewed the flag that went to the moon on Apollo 11 and is still up there. The exhibit’s artwork was less interesting than the artifacts, including a jigsaw puzzle of The New York Times’ front page from July 21, 1969, and newspapers from Houston.

A 22-year-old girl was looking at the exhibit and I walked up to her to ask her what she thought. She seemed pretty bright but admitted that she actually had had no idea that there had been space missions to the moon in the past, and that men had actually walked on its surface. Florida’s public schools are focused mainly on standardized testing because that’s how school administrators get $150,000 a year jobs in the system, and subjects like history and science are considered disposable.

It’s hardly a surprise. Many people I talk to have no idea that there was a time when giant Saturn V rockets took men into space. No one has left the gravity of Earth since December 1972, 37 years ago, when Apollo 17 set off to explore the mountains of the moon. I’ll grant you, the space shuttle has done some good work and the International Space Station is important, too, but 37 years of orbiting the Earth is a bit much.

A few months ago, I met a journalism colleague named Pat Duggans at a library in Sarasota. He was talking about his book “Final Countdown,” about the end of the space shuttle program, and asked the audience which mission was the first they remembered. I replied, “Apollo 8,” the first mission to the moon. Duggans said he had talked to several people in and around the space program who still believed, even after all the missions to the moon, that Apollo 8 was the most exciting.

For the first time, humans were breaking free of the bonds of earth. For the first time, men were riding atop the Saturn V. For the first time, human eyes (as opposed to space probes) would see the “dark side of the moon.” And on Christmas Eve 1968, a live TV broadcast from lunar orbit brought it all home to us that three members of the human race, while studying the surface of an alien world, wanted us to share it with them.

It was an exciting time, but the best was yet to come. I still remember the excitement building for the Apollo 11 mission, which was to be the first to land men on the moon. In my family, we prepared for the party. It was a Sunday night, and we learned that the moonwalk would happen at 9 p.m. The scene was re-enacted in the movie “Apollo 13” and I’m sure many people still remember it, watching that ghostly image of Neil Armstrong coming down the ladder and then stepping off into the universe.

It saddened me that future missions – save for Apollo 13 – did not get the attention they deserved. Those astronauts who walked on the moon and orbited its surface saw the most astonishing wonders and we learned an enormous amount about the moon, and even today we’re learning from those samples they brought back more than 35 years ago. And a mission in October will set off an explosion on the moon, visible from the Earth to those of us with telescopes, that may open up even more wonders.

One time, I was at my grandmother’s house and the TV was on. And on the TV was a scene from the moon, with the caption “Live from the surface of the moon” under a shot of a man in a space suit. Imagine that, live pictures from another world. In 1972, people, it was a big deal to me if to no one else.

I dreamed of being an astronaut and going into space, but a stunning incompetence with math and the political currents of the age worked against me. I had to set my sights lower and watch as others set off for what’s beyond Earth. The closest I’ve gotten in aboard commercial airliners; maybe I can have my ashes sent into space after I die, but I’ll never be a spaceman.

People who were still interested in space exploration were called “space cadets” and ridiculed. Who really cared about a bunch of guys going somewhere and bringing back a bunch of rocks? It was all a canard, some said, and there are still those who believe the Apollo program was shot on a soundstage at a top-secret location, and that the men who went to the moon were threatened with awesome punishments if they revealed the truth.

It sounds almost absurd to say that I believe the astronauts when they say they went to the moon. It’s like saying computers don’t exist.

I can wonder at the awesome achievements in the past, and the achievements to come. Maybe I’ll live to see humans return to the moon, watching on TV as they explore that place just 240,000 miles away. Maybe they’ll find the old Apollo hardware and take us on a tour, showing us the descent stages of the lunar modules, the flags, the Rovers from Apollos 15, 16 and 17, the tracks from feet and wheels, and that golf ball that Alan Shepard hit on Apollo 14.

Maybe a new generation will learn that there was a time when people went to the moon and did things that scarcely seem believable today with equipment that seems impossibly ancient. But it happened, it really happened.

On July 20, 2009, for a moment I think we should forget about our problems, our cares, our worries, and honor that day when human beings decided it was time to become, as Carl Sagan once said, “citizens of the cosmos.”

While I was still working for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, I was doing one of my least-favorite jobs – editing the calendar listings – when I noticed that a local science museum was having an event with Dr. Edgar Mitchell, who walked on the moon on Apollo 14. He and Alan Shepard explored the Fra Mauro region of the moon, and it was the most awesome honor I can imagine as a reporter to have had the chance to shake hands with a man who had gone to the moon. He was friendly, gracious and very generous with his time, both with me and with the people and children who came.

He answered the kids’ questions and shared some of his ideas and philosophy with them. Mitchell is truly a man of the cosmos, even if some of his ideas are not totally accepted. Still, when a man has walked on the moon, I’ll listen to what he has to say.

Another voice is that of President John F. Kennedy, who of course made this declaration in his “Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs” on May 25, 1961:

“I therefore ask the Congress, above and beyond the increases I have earlier requested for space activities, to provide the funds which are needed to meet the following national goals:

First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish. We propose to accelerate the development of the appropriate lunar space craft. We propose to develop alternate liquid and solid fuel boosters, much larger than any now being developed, until certain which is superior.”

But the best expression is, I think, the speech he gave on Sept. 12, 1962, at Rice University in Houston:

“Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it — we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding. …

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

Maybe July 20, 2009, will be the beginning of a new time when we reach out and really begin a work that’s more than just going someplace, but making a better life for us all.

Of course, that’s from a charter member of the “space cadet” corps, but I can always hope.

You’d think John Lennon had died again

It’s a rule that if you’re a blogger you have to write a column about how Michael Jackson was such a genius and how the world will never recover from his death.

Well, I find it hard to feel that way. I confess, I laughed at the jokes about the glove, the music (I’ve heard endless parodies – some obscene – of his songs), the children, Neverland, etc. You can’t say he was cut down in his prime, because I think his prime was long past.

Let’s face it, maybe he would have found a future career playing Vegas or an Indian casino for an aging cadre of fans – others have, and made a good living at it – but Michael Jackson was hardly an artist.

I told someone at work today that you’d think he was John Lennon. Now, there was a tragic death that shouldn’t have happened. Who’d expect a nutso fan to go after Lennon? I mean, I’m sure every celebrity worries that every smiling fan they encounter may turn out to have serious mental problems, but to have someone pull a piece on the walrus and blow him away, well, before Dec. 8, 1980, it just couldn’t have happened.

I was more broken up about the death of Farrah Fawcett, whom I keep calling in my mind Farrah Fawcett-Majors. Sorry, that was who she was back in the 1970s.

She defined the look of that time, and nearly every teenage girl from that era seemed to want hair like hers (of course, all the girls from that era had no interest in me; not much has changed), though there was one I remember who showed up for school one day with her hair cut shorter than mine. Sorry, the Marine look was pretty awful on me and even worse on girls.

My favorite memory of Michael Jackson and his family was in 1984, when he and the band were going to play New York City. The hysteria was pretty wild, and there were stories going around that some schools (private schools, maybe) had threatened dire levels of discipline to students who went to the concert. They didn’t like Jackson’s religion and thought he was a bad influence.

There were always those who despised Jackson for his music, his commercial appearances and the growing weirdness. He was a tragic figure, but he brought it all down on himself.

As someone in the news media, you have to realize that the only thing celebrities fear worse than having the media dogging your every step is the media not dogging your every step. Of course, I find that kind of reporting to be total junk and always wanted relegated to the back of the paper, but if there’s some interest, well, we have to do what the people want.

The supermarket tabloids will go into editorial orgasm and I bet right now there are page layout people (in India, maybe) designing pages with “MICHAEL’S LAST DAYS” and “HIS FAMILY IN TEARS” splashed across pictures of the gloved one.

I won’t miss Michael Jackson. I never bought his music. I feel bad for his family, though, and the kids.

But Michael Jackson had it all, and totally blew it, and he’ll get no sympathy from me.

Quiet, but not silent

If you’re one of the people (or the one; Thanks, Mom!) who’s been following my blog, you might have noticed that it’s gone quiet of late.

Looking at the calendar on the site, I see I haven’t posted anything since May 24, when I wrote a long post about my time in the Postal Service.

What’s the deal?

Well, my job at thebradentontimes.com is keeping me very busy, and I have also been writing a lot.

When I was a copy editor at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, I rarely wrote anything beyond headlines or cutlines, though sometimes I was able to cover a story with prior permission. Now that I’m at a startup, I’m out there every day covering stories and writing. We just hired another reporter, so thebradentontimes.com has two people producing news. Actually, there are a couple other people, but they’re more in the weekly area of writing.

It’s kind of fun – as well as challenging – doing daily journalism. I’m learning how to attend a government meeting and get the gist of what’s happening. It seems sometimes that it all proceeds at a snail’s pace, with long debates about minor points, but much of what we see today in Florida is the product of government boards – county commissions, city councils, etc. – engaging in these meetings. And the media must be there to let the people know what’s happening.

With another reporter, we’re able to capture more of what’s going on in Bradenton and the results are encouraging. More stories means more readers and more readers means more advertisers, and more advertisers means more revenue so we can hire more people and become a better news source. As newspapers shrink, I know that the Web sites like thebradentontimes.com will catch up and fill in the gap. We’re missing a lot of stories, I grant you, but I think we’re catching a lot.

The great thing about the Web is that there’s no length limit, and I am able to quote more people at greater length about issues that I cover. That’s an advantage of the Web over newspapers. I know that reporters chafe at the limitations in the newspaper. I hated to have my stories cut, and to have to cut stories as a copy editor, to get it all to fit.

So my writing efforts have been transferred to the new site, but I will keep up the blog. In the meantime, please keep commenting, and don’t forget to visit thebradentontimes.com.

Giving your life to fix the Postal Service is not worth it

I’ve been reading the long laments over the possible loss of postal facilities and post offices, and somehow I get the feeling it’s déjà vu all over again.

Maybe it’s because when I quit the Postal Service in June 1994 it was going through the same talk of changes, and remember that the Internet and Web were nowhere near as powerful as they are now.

Back then, there was chatter about cutting the “people who don’t touch the mail,” but that died away after a few postal managers and 204Bs (acting supervisors) either had their jobs changed or were sent back to regular work. Soon, those who were out of management were reinstated, and people who’d been taken out of the administrative offices found themselves back among the desks, copiers and filing cabinets.

And there were even more people in management and administration. A little-known thing outside the Postal Service was that people who had been injured (or claimed that they were injured) on the job sometimes ended up working in the office, pulling down the same pay but posting stuff on bulletin boards, making copies, etc. One of my strongest memories from the early 1990s was of a career awareness conference where almost the entire EEO office of several facilities was people on some sort of injury comp.

I had ambitions to improve myself, which is a ticket to career stagnation in the Postal Service. I guess taking management classes on my own time and at my own expense marked me as someone to keep out of management at all costs. When I managed to talk my way into a position as a 204B, I was assigned to oversee an unmotivated group of people, most of whom could not follow even the simplest instructions. My fondest memory is of someone I had worked with making a lame excuse for not doing something, and me shouting “Bullshit!” at her. I got a talking-to for that from another supervisor.

One thing that is certain: when it came to supervision, I blew chunks. (I didn’t do much better as a manager at a newspaper, though I’ve mellowed since.)

Another “fond” memory is that when one supervisor (who nearly set the record for sex harassments and often wrote people up for discipline on their first night on the job) saw me dressed for supervision and announced: “Now you’ll see what kind of trash these assholes really are.”

Getting busted back to craft was almost a relief, and while I was really upset, it actually was a good thing because it motivated me to register for college and get serious about a new direction.

Oddly, I continued to work and work well. Admittedly, I did decide to burn up a small portion of my mass accumulation of sick leave if there was a big test the next day, but mostly I came in, did the job and went home. My heart was in college, and while most were impressed at my determination to get my degree, a few were convinced I was crazy. One thing you have to do when you’re trying to improve yourself is to remember that others become very worried when you’re starting to change.

People would tell me that I’d never get a job outside the Postal Service, that I’d be an educated idiot, about their cousin Wilbur who had a bachelor’s degree but was still a moron, or their Aunt Hortense, who got a college degree and was working the drive-through at Burger King because she couldn’t find any job in her field.

A couple of the management types noticed that I had stopped applying for management jobs. I used to intensely study the openings, and wore out several typewriter ribbons making up the Form 991s and 2945As (I think that’s what the latter form was), sending the forms in and waiting to hear if I got an interview. My lack of success became frustrating, and helped convince me that I was wasting my time and theirs.

A tour supervisor said one day she noticed that I hadn’t applied for the latest batch of management jobs, and I said that I was on a new track and didn’t want to waste any effort on a hopeless endeavor.

It takes determination to get ahead. For six years, I worked at a large postal facility at night, then went home to sleep, then went to college, first at Palm Beach Community College and then at Florida Atlantic University. I was able to pay as I went, and graduated from both colleges with no student loans. I was also active on the schools’ newspapers.

I can see why so many, especially in management, were trying to discourage me from pursuing higher education. One manager had told me, “Henry Ford said blue-collar workers need to know only three things: Where to show up for work, when to show up for work, and how to do their job. Everything else is a waste.”

In fact, managers with just GEDs or high school diplomas were mostly eager to keep the upper hand intellectually over workers. Someone with college could stir up a lot of trouble and might even take seriously the notions then being bandied about regarding  contacting the Postmaster General directly about conditions at the facility. (They even gave out a toll-free number.)

I did even more than that. I wrote opinion pieces in the local newspaper, and even sent long, detailed letters to the Postmaster General. I’d get back from the latter’s office mildly threatening letters about not bothering his excellency with my comments. One of the nastiest letters I ever got was from the local head of HR at the postal facility, telling me – he thought – once and for all that I should just stop griping and accept that I was doomed to be a low-life.

Seeing no future in the Postal Service, I decided that trying to change things was pointless. But I was developing journalism skills, and decided to tweak the nose of management with a new employee newsletter. I called it “Samizdat” because I knew no one would even know what that meant. (Samizdats were illegal publications written by dissidents in the Soviet Union.)

I’d lay out articles, grab stuff out of Federal Times and other publications, and even take stuff from memos sent down from Elephant Headquarters. I loved to watch incognito as people picked up my newsletter in the break room and read it. Right then, I fell in love with journalism and the power of the written word.

I was nearing the end of college, with enough credits to graduate. I decided that I’d graduate in April 1994 and quit in June 1994, so I decided to go out in a blaze of glory. I sent the Postmaster General a copy of several issues of “Samizdat” and a letter detailing the racial views of one supervisor (a very bitchy white girl with a propensity for using the “N-word” whose reward for hating black people was being put in charge of a number of black employees) and another who was just evil toward everyone. Local management seemed to figure they had the right idea even if they were violating several rules governing behavior, and I thought since I was leaving I might as well do something good.

Well, I got more than I bargained for. The local plant manager summoned me to his office, with the black shift supervisor. I had asked the Postmaster General to come to the facility in West Palm Beach, Fla., where I would name names. The plant boss asked me to name names, so I did. I also reported the use of the “N-word” by one supervisor, and said I didn’t care what happened to me since I was leaving in June (this was around March 1994, before my graduation.)

The plant manager actually tried to talk me out of quitting, and dangled the prospect of an immediate promotion to management if I stayed. I could help fix the Postal Service from within with my knowledge, experience, education, training and understanding, he said.

It’s important to recognize that the above-mentioned qualities were often used as reasons to not advance someone in the Postal Service, so I was immediately skeptical. What would happen when he or the other people moved up, I wondered. I could be left in a very bad position. I said I’d think about his offer.

Also, I had seen in more than 10 years multiple plans to treat the workers better, and they all fell apart due to management opposition. Supervisors rarely acted to make like better for the workers in the Postal Service, and those significant few who tried found themselves treated as outcasts and usually transferred to less desirable shifts or even sent back to craft. When all else failed, kick ass and take names and write everyone up was the way to go.

I talked to the few supervisors I respected, and they expressed their own dismay with their current positions. I appreciated the honesty, and decided not to accept the offer.

Did I ever regret quitting the Postal Service? No. I moved on in my life and career, and found that no one cared that I had worked there when I went looking for a job. Could I have fixed the Postal Service? I doubt it. The system rewarded those who were corrupt and punished those who were honest. New hires would sometimes foolishly believe that if they blew the whistle on something that they had protection, but that was on paper. Announce that a facility was sending mail to the wrong place or doing something else wrong, and the offenders would get off scot-free while those who made the charges would find themselves with a ruined life.

In one case, a supervisor who reported over-reporting of mail volume nearly had his life destroyed. To me, it just wasn’t worth losing everything to fix a broken system whose managers wanted it to stay that way. Life is just too short to waste on lost causes.

This goes for a lot of other places as well. It would be nice to believe that one person can fix some place, but unless you’re rich you’ll probably end up destitute, in debt and unemployable.

Face it, some places will never work right. I’ll admit that I get all the mail I’m supposed to from the Postal Service. I suppose it does a good enough job. About the only thing I’d give the agency credit for is giving me enough salary to have a decent middle-class life (albeit as a single man living alone with cats) and to finish a college degree without taking on debt.

Other than that, the Postal Service went its way, and I went mine.