Tag: Barney

Blessed by three special mentors (and lots of other help) along the way

I got to shake the baby-smooth hand of Vice President Nelson Rockefeller when he visited Portland.

Wow, I haven’t posted here since my early December a-fib two-night hospital stay, my first since, oh, chickenpox/measles as a very little boy? Fortunately, I got better fast when they switched me from a bad to a good pill and in time for Deb’s Stage 4 cancer battle that’s still ongoing.

But I digress, as always;-)

Blake Timm, a communications guy at my alma mater, Pacific University in Forest Grove, spotted a comment I made on a recent LinkedIn thread regarding my early career, and three special mentors that… well, here’s what I said:

Oh I always have tons of stories, you know me! But the most important of my life was the connection between two mentors, actually three. First was from Chuck Heil at John Adams High School to Fred Scheller at Pacific, then from Fred to Billy Joe McFarland, the UPI Portland bureau chief. That led to my nearly full senior year internship with UPI and the start of my journalism career. Because as I like to tell people, it’s not what you know or who you know – it’s both! I owe a lot to those three great mentors.

Blake asked to tell him more about that, so instead of just emailing him some thoughts, I figured it was worth a blog post – so here goes:

I’ve been blessed many times, before my career really began and ever since, by folks who helped me move on to the next step.

When my family arrived in Portland in early 1970, I and my three brothers began to attend John Adams High School, which drew national headlines and had just opened up a few months earlier, as four Harvard educators were sort of handed the school to test new methods of education. (Which felt like it was mostly sitting in a circle at our desks as teachers said, “What do you want to do today?” Yeah, one of those;-)

I had been writing up news at school since second-grade home room (my mimeographed – make that purple, dittoed masterpiece: The Room 210 Tooter).

But this high school was a wow in so many rabbit-hole ways, I have to fight digressing. (Some folks buried a car engine behind the school on the very first Earth Day, in 1970. The students also voted NOT to have a Rose Festival Princess. The next year, we had to.)

The most special spot for me was where Chuck Heil oversaw the daily TV news show we did, and I was the editor-in-chief. KWAP (Kids With a Purpose, but yeah) was the first of its kind. Even though it was black and white, we all learned a lot about how to put on a news show, from the set with a rear-screen projector to a very early, spendy portable video recorder, the Sony Portapak, which I seem to recall was about $1,200, so Chuck said: “If it falls, fall under it”;-)

Chuck somehow – I’ve forgotten these details, too -had or made a connection with TV/radio professor Fred Scheller at Pacific, and so I was able to go there, starting in the fall of 1973.

Fred was another great guy – very involved in the large contingent of Hawaiian students, who put on an amazing annual luau. We all learned the basics of TV and radio especially, and I can still see his smiling face and hearty laugh.

I became manager of the campus radio station, KPUR, for a year or two – no one could really hear the thing, but we painted the studio blue and moved up from a beast of a gold tube-powered “board” – from KEX I believe – to a cool, small QRK board with colorful LED lights, the whole shebang.

I did have other summer jobs during my college years – one summer, staying in the basement of Mac Hall and working for Charlotte Filer, writing for Pacific Today, the alumni magazine, helping paste newspaper clippings in a scrapbook with rubber cement, etc. Another summer I wrote news releases for the local hospital. (My first paying job actually was before college, in 1972, working in housewares, toys and bikes at the original G.I. Joe’s in north Portland.)

Again, I’m not sure how the connection happened in those pre-Facebook/LinkedIn days, but Fred reached out to Billy Joe McFarland, manager of the United Press International wire service’s downtown Portland bureau.

They arranged for me to spend my senior year as a full-time intern for UPI, starting there in the fall of 1976.

I could write a book about my 15 years with UPI, as we scrappy “Unipressers” took on the mighty Associated Press – and we logged the newspapers to help compile national logs that showed whether UPI “won the play” over AP, with the motto: “Get it first, but get it right!”

For that amazing school year (broken up by a 3-week stint back in “Frosty Grave,” under the 7-7-3 school calendar Pacific was using), I got to report for UPI, asked President Ford a question at the Portland Air Base during his re-election fight with Jimmy Carter, and lots more great memories.

Billy Joe wrote glowing progress reports on my behalf to Fred, and I still have the copies in my home-office file cabinet. I was quite the long-haired hippie then, but I wasn’t alone;-)

I got paid the princely sum of $50 a month for bus fare from my off-campus apartment to downtown Portland. I remember coming home and watching Mike Donahue on KOIN-TV reading MY WORDS on Newsroom 6! (I said I’d rather be doing the writing than sitting there reading it, later realizing he got paid a wee bit more than $50 a month;-)

Those were the days. But I owe a lot to Chuck Heil (and a great speech teacher, Bob Gerber, and the Adams Unity newspaper’s overseer, Jim Rice), and to Fred Scheller (and there, the wonderful speech professor, Hap Hingston) and then to Billy Joe McFarland at UPI, where I worked with a great group of news teachers and mentors, including Bobbie Ulrich and Clyde Jabin – Clyde was the guy who “named” D.B. Cooper, by the way.)

My career has had its ups and downs – whose hasn’t? – but these wonderful guys gave me a chance to do what I loved for a half-century or so – break the news and tell people’s stories – or as I like to say, helping others tell their stories and trying to stay out of the way.

I often say it’s not what you know, or who you know – it’s both. I owe a lot to the special people who helped me along the way.

Tradeoffs and happily uncomfortable chairs

Coming up on six months with my Fitbit Flex, My Fitness Pal combo — and back down to 180 pounds. Down like 30 pounds (my darling wife Deb has lost more than I have, but that’s just fine by me;-)

Fitting old clothes, ‘shopping in my closet’ as Deb puts it – can’t be beat. Sure, there’s a bit of falling off the wagon (I stopped halfway through my 2nd slice of Pizza Hut at Ted Taylor’s farewell party — now that takes willpower in my book!) — can’t remember the last time I ate my beloved French fries, as much nails in my proverbial coffin as cigarettes are for others. Haven’t “forbidden” the bad, just replaced it with good (I really do like Special K cracker chips, for example. And no, I don’t do cottage cheese. Bleh;-)

But everything has tradeoffs. Take sitting, which I do for work. A lot. And is now compared with cigarettes as a killer. Sigh.

If one is blessed enough to lose wait, it doesn’t always go from the places you want it. I really do think it came off my, um, rear end first. So no chair is comfortable for long (well, my LaZBoy, but that’s not a work-conducive chair;-) I even borrowed a fitness ball at work – fun to bounce between keystrokes — but even THAT didn’t prevent a sore hiney after a while. So I’ll be searching for a properly padded new chair.

Don’t get me wrong – I will not go back to Mindless Eating. I log everything I eat, thanks to my lil phone, and will do that even on the fall-off-wagon days.

But now, my rear is saying, in essence, get off your butt! Good message. Maybe I can stand and work. Or work less! (Hah! This weekend I said three little words my wife so rarely hears: “Work can wait!”)

I also have confronted the obvious — thinner does NOT equal fit. Well, fitter sure — but my lower back after last week’s snow shoveling exercise — thank goodness I can walk the neighborhood again — tells me I’ll need to do more than just walk to be in shape. Fortunately, Deb is SO much more full of energy, I have a feeling we’ll be … getting away from the house much more this year. The other struggles of life continue, but we both feel so much better (she also gives huge credit to the Medifast program through BMC BTW;-)

OK, enough rambling. Been far too long since I’ve blogged, just wanted to get back into that again, stop thinking I need momentous stuff to say.

Thanks for reading, and … just let me offer this encouragement – if I can get in better shape, anyone can. I’m not deprived — the flax-4-life chocolate brownies from Natural Grocers are so sinful, and they are on the ‘frequent foods’ tab on My Fitness Pal — it’s just been a joy to realize that a bit more output, more careful, thoughtful input (more protein! fewer carbs!) CAN make a big difference.

YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary) — but I hope it doesn’t. It’s a good — no, great thing.

Of the Fitbit, Evernote and turning over new (fall) leaves

I am writing this at work.

(Why care? Let me explain.)

This blog craves attention I don’t give it. By forcing myself to do it at work, even when busy (ask anyone, I’m always busy) — maybe I can be more consistent. Otherwise, why link to it at KTVZ.COM – the place I/we strive to make sure has fresh content as 24/7 as possible?

So the past month has been satisfying on several fronts (except for my wife’s uncertain work situation, but … let’s not go there, just have to keep the faith.)

My employer, News Press & Gazette, was kind enough to provide us a free Fitbit Flex – a wristband-worn activity tracker — AND a tasty incentive to use it — half off our monthly insurance premiums!

I’d been waiting for a “good excuse” to treat my body better, and this fit the bill. Couple it with what my wife and others say is a much better food logger — My Fitness Pal — and the two sync nicely. (Free, too!)

So at least twice a day, I’ve been taking walks through the neighborhood — and it’s been good, in many ways. Time to think, to breathe deep, to wonder why one neighbor always has the water running (?) and to just … take a break.

I’ve also finally dealt with the mindless eating I’ve grown accustomed to — I bought the book “Mindless Eating” a few years back, but as usual, never finished it — attention span of a gnat, dontcha know. But having to (forcing myself to!) stop and enter the food items can slow one down and get one thinking. The database is pretty darn good, and it has a bar code scanner to help track that way (even if my phone doesn’t always do well focus-wise, it’s almost like a video game to get the thing to beep and recognize it;-) The other night, I was proud of myself because rather than just polish off a Shari’s panini sandwich (side of salad not fries! Wow!) — I stopped myself after one half and brought the other half to work for lunch the next day. Seeing it had 800 calories! — don’t even ask about the sodium! — gave me pause, so… half at a time, good deal.

So also, I’ve been trying to force myself to stop working at home and get in the newsroom earlier. Some days more successful than others, just like anything. (I don’t call the work I do “the Vortex” for nothing;-) It was my call — my great bosses have been exceedingly kind about the flexibility today’s “work anywhere” technology allows, but … being IN the newsroom more has its host of benefits. From answering the phone to helping reporters with questions and just being more … useful. (I’ve never been great at office politics, I just hope being here more averts more problems with ‘Babblin’ Barn’s Big Mouth’ than it creates:-)

I was going to promote a favorite new free reading experience on my Nook — Engadget’s weekly magazine, Distro – but alas, they’ve decided to shelve it, just a few weeks after I discovered it. Oh well, I still have Flipboard, another favorite collection of things fun to read (though my HTC One’s Flipboard is still the king of fun reading).

So instead, I’ll give a shoutout to Evernote — a note-taker that has more bells and whistles than I’ll ever use, BUT has the great advantage of syncing to all devices. I use the Windows client on my work and home PCs for a few extra features, but there’s also a Web sign-in version and apps for the phones. So I can keep all my notes in “one place” — the cloud (mostly) — and not lose them.

So it’s fall — a time of shortening days and crisp (ooh boy, that wind in the face) air and … new things. We’re about to launch our new one-hour 10pm Fox news, have had one of our every-few-years Tsunamis of Change in the newsroom, and another Sweeps period is just ahead, in November.

And I’m back to blogging. I hope you find it enjoyable. Anything you’d like me to weigh in on – journalism-wise, government (oy, the Blame Society at its zenith right now!) or how/why we do what we do at NewsChannel 21 — drop me a note, or a comment here. I’m never short of words or shy of using them;-)

Wow. Talk about spread thin.

No posts here in close to 3 months! I should be ashamed, but I’m not.

In the world of Facebook, Twitter, our Ning forum, heck I’ve even played with Google Wave – not to mention my ‘real job,’ which includes fending off the anonymous nasty comment posters at KTVZ.COM – who needs to blog any more?

But I shouldn’t go so long without sharing. So let’s see how the pic I posted at Facebook looks – of the mean ol’ storm laughing at us as it approached (spotting things in the clouds is as old as man – but from space is funner!;-)

Face in clouds
Is it a friendly face or scary? You decide!

Just got done shoveling a couple inches of crusty snow. Have lost roughly 10-15 lbs. since a troubling July health screening. Have had, um, financial difficulties at home, but lots to be thankful for this Thanksgiving – I and my wife both employed, in decent health, still holding onto our home, unlike so many folks who don’t deserve the crud thrown their way about ‘buying a house they couldn’t afford.’ Whose to blame for the mass delusion?

Oh, and I got a new PC last month! I wrote previously about blowing a hole in my 4-year-old HP PC’s wireless keyboard. Years earlier, the on-button broke, and had been jerry-rigged and hotglue-duct taped back in place. One day, it got stuck. Again. Argh! And my kind sis-in-law Dianne helped make an upgrade to a new, 64-bit HP PC happen. I don’t miss the wireless keyboard and all those batteries. It’s spiffy – and upgrade to Windows 7 went well, but now, alas, IE 8 locks up on occasion again, and after settling back in, boot-up still takes forever. Oh well;-)

Anyway, hope this finds you all well and ready for more snow and holiday stress. Oh yeah, I’m signed up for stress management newsletters from that great site, About.com. Breathing is key, as is not blowing up among co-workers. I’m still working on it as my mentor Chuck Heil back in the Media Production Center at John Adams HS had on a lapel button, PBPGINFWMY (Please Be Patient, God Is Not Finished With Me Yet.)

😉

Blog and blog and blog again

So here I go, blogging again – I’ve been trying this since before the word “blog” existed, remember Microsoft Publisher, anyone?

 

Anyway, I’ve tried several blog or Web-publishing programs over the years, and want to try this one, too.

I have a better reason to do so this time. As many of you may know, this is also the title of my twice-weekly (Monday and Friday) segments on NewsChannel 21 at 5, in Bend, Oregon.

That’s fun, but I love give and take, and room to, well, be the Babblin’ Barn many know I can be.

I also want a chance to engage in more dialogue with our viewers and Website visitors (I’m very proud of KTVZ.COM) about what I/we do, why, how, etc. Some folks couldn’t care less. Others, I’ve found, are intensely curious about TV journalism, and media in general, and find darn few places to ask questions and get answers. I hope this will become one of them.

(WordPress has given me some funky stuff – for some reason, every time I tried to insert a photo, what it appears to have done is opened a new window with the old post – but no sign of a pic. At one point, that meant I had like SEVEN photos in the one posting! What’s up with that?

Anyway, glad to be here, and hope we can share a little dialogue of the friendly, helpful, interesting kind. I’m looking forward to it.