Another reason to be happy
Plagiarizing one of my own lines, from about four years ago:

"Really, the best thing about my job is that, when I walk out the door every night, I'm in Florida."

Technical difficulties
The Boy, 4, unplugged the computer yesterday morning.

That was bad enough.

But then, he plugged it back in.

Oops.

Our cable modem is currently fried. Until we get the good folks at the cable company to bring us a new one (hopefully later today), we'll be out of service at this forum.

Smack talk
The Wife and I find ourselves occasionally sharing a bout of insomnia. We usually deal with this by staying up until absurd hours flipping through channels. Eventually we catch ourselves watching something we wouldn't ordinarily watch.

This is how we stumbled upon MTV the other night, which was running a follow-up on a documentary it did a few years ago on the run of heroin-related deaths in Plano, Texas. We found this interesting because we lived very near Plano -- and, in fact, the heroin story was enough to make us cross Plano from our real-estate list when we moved to the Very Large Metropolitan Area in 1999.

The documentary -- which was very well-done -- segued into the made-for-MTV movie Wasted, a horribly over-acted 2003 version of Reefer Madness. That said, I wonder if it shouldn't be required viewing for parents in Plastic White Suburbia who think their little darlings would never, ever do such a thing as black tar heroin. Nineteen sets of parents in Plano, Texas, certainly found out differently in the late '90s.

Nothing is ever as simple as it seems, of course, and this story certainly wasn't.

Because this is what I do when I get very interested in a topic, I logged on and did some research to remind me what the story was all about. It led me to two observations:

I got a kick out of the generalizations the news media will make in order to make the story, shall we say, more compelling. Plano was often described as "an affluent suburb of almost 200,000 mostly white, upper-middle-class people." Well, that's true for the western part of the city. The part of the city in which most of the heroin deaths occurred, however, was the eastern side, which leans much more toward middle-middle class and, in a few isolated cases, lower-middle class. These weren't all bored rich kids. They fit more closely to the profile of the average drug user I recall from high school. Which, of course, is not nearly as interesting. I find it stunning that, if you believed everything you read, the only people who use drugs are minority kids from desperate situations or bored rich kids. My observation, which comes directly from the middle, indicates drug use cuts across all class and racial lines pretty much equally. Plano often was described as "a suburban oasis," which conveniently overlooks the fact that it's 15 miles north of the nation's eighth-largest city. It's not a far stretch to believe that drugs are fairly accessible in Dallas.

A subculture exists which tries very hard to maintain a straight face while defending drug use on intellectual or medical grounds. These are not people who say, "Man, it's cool to get high, dude; go ahead and try it." These are people who have spent considerable time doing research in an effort to criticize the United States government's war on drugs, while, as a sideline, suggesting that illicit drugs are perfectly safe when used as directed. According to the smack sympathizers, people actually very rarely die just from using heroin. It's only the idiots who drink alcohol or use other drugs while they use heroin. And, if heroin was legal and regulated, its purity would be controlled by outside forces, which would make it less dangerous. Oh, OK. All heroin needs is a warning label. Trust me on this one: An attack on the "War on Drugs" is perfectly legitimate. Don't undermine it by making the completely stupid suggestion that heroin is safe as aspirin.

As a young person, I experimented with this and that, but my friends and I drew the line at cocaine, heroin and LSD. I actually tried cocaine, once, with a co-worker, and it was so damn good I was convinced I should never, ever do that again. My friends -- most of whom never met a joint they didn't like -- were very quick, in their ways, to express their abject disapproval of my having crossed the line that one time. I took that to heart, too.

As a parent, of course, all this scares the hell out of me. I am pretty much of the belief that if you mess with heroin or acid, you deserve whatever you get, be it jail, rehab or untimely death. I have to apply that belief to my own children, too.

I knew drug users as a teenager and young adult. Only one of them I'd classify as somebody who had a serious problem. She's a story I'll save for another time. Another talked about it a lot, but I suspect he talked a lot more than he did.

To my knowledge, most of you have little or no experience with heavy drugs. Here's the thing that, as a parent, I'm genuinely interested to know: What kept you from it? Do you credit your parents? Did you have better things to do? Not enough money? For me, the deciding factor was, quite honestly, the reverse peer pressure thing described above, although that certainly wasn't the only reason.

And if you did go through a phase, I sure as hell won't pass judgment. What pulled you out of it?

Leave a comment, or send a private e-mail (which, you have my word, will remain private). I realize the only thing I can really do for my children is pay as much attention to them as possible and spend the next decade-plus tiptoeing that fine, fine line between keeping them from stuff and driving them to it. But I'll take all the help I can get.

Question which has nothing to do with anything
Why is Charlize Theron not a bigger star than she is?

I'm not ignoring you
On the contrary, I have much to say. I could give you the post about heroin; I could give you yet another damn story from 1989; I could give you the whine I give you every time my wife goes out of town and leaves three children to beat on me.

But for now, I'll spare you all of that. I hope instead that you're getting a chance to enjoy a long weekend with friends and/or family and/or the people and beverages of your choice. I'll let the deep thoughts ferment a little bit more and try again later.

Wonder what kind of warranty it has?
It's been a big week for Schadenfreude. First the Jayson Blair thing, then a sight one doesn't often see: As I was driving the minivan to the Large National Chain Hardware Store to buy something really mundane, I saw a guy having car trouble. He was outside his disabled vehicle, in the median, muttering at the car like you do when your car gives out on you, especially on a hot day on a really busy road where everybody can see you mutter.

The car was a bright yellow one of these.

It's hard to feel bad for a guy driving a quarter-million worth of Italian zoom-zoom, under any circumstances.

Kind of like finding $10 in the laundry
I found an album I didn't know I had. Buried in the depths of our stereo cabinet was an unmarked Maxell tape. I popped it in to the cassette player in my stereo, which probably hasn't been used in five years, and out came the sounds of the Black Crowes' Southern Harmony and Musical Companion. A friend had apparently made the copy about 10 or 11 years ago. I wonder if he wonders where it is. The Crowes' 1992 follow-up to Shake Your Moneymaker wasn't nearly as good, but it was still a strong rock 'n' blues album, the likes of which we haven't heard since. I have often contended that the Black Crowes were the last great rock 'n' roll band. I vaguely remember going to see them play at a musty old arena in Anytown in '91 or '92, and they were great, if slighly weed-addled. Basically, they were the last stand for rock before music went to crap in the mid-'90s.

More on this New York Times thing
I could link to more than 100 stories on the dumbass reporter for The New York Times who thought he could get away with just making stuff up in a paper read by more than 1 million people every day. But I won't. If you want to know more, I direct you to "The Industry" link at right.

(A quick aside: RER called him a "fuckchop." What a great word.)

I can tell you -- from personal experience -- a thing or two about young reporters and affirmative action and how to handle a sloppy reporter.

I was 20 years old, working part-time in the sports department at the Anytown Daily Bugle while sort of attending the Large Multi-Directional State University. I was something of a newsroom star, for whatever it's worth on that level. I had my first front-page tome at 19. It's not easy to crack the front page from the sports department. My supervisor's supervisors' supervisors knew who I was. I liked that, a lot.

When a full-time position came open in August 1988, I know of only one other candidate for the position. He was a black man, a little older than me, who had already graduated from college. To my knowledge, he would have been the first black employee in the sports department. In my unenlightened head, I had already written him off as a shoo-in and was prepared to transfer to Smaller Directional State Unversity, muttering all the way about the evils of diversity and affirmative action.

I don't know what happened behind the scenes. I only know he didn't get the job. I did.

My first step after that was to drop out of LMDSU. My next step was to become a little full of myself. About eight months and several hundred beers later, I was in full-suck mode. I was probably less than half-assing it -- why? because I thought I could -- by the time my boss sat me down and told me my job was in jeopardy, and not in a nice, nurturing way.

As I've stated earlier in this forum, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I didn't go off about how I was a star and was the best damn thing to happen to sports writing since Red Smith. I didn't whine and mope and plot revenge. (Well, OK, I did mope a bit.) I didn't go over his head for a verification of my greatness. I was moved to a job that was a better fit for me. I shaped up, drank less, focused more and started doing better work.

Since August 1988, I've never felt threatened by diversity, either as an employee or a manager. I think diversity for diversity's sake is wrong. I'd rather have a staff of 10 black Jewish lesbians who are dedicated and do good work than a really diverse staff of slackers. There's value in diversity, but only if it's backed up by talent.

I've accomplished what I've accomplished because of my own work. If somebody else gets promoted ahead of me -- no matter what color, race or gender -- I believe they got promoted because they did better work. That's the way I've seen it happen at the places I've been. I'm not naive enough to believe it happens like that everywhere. That's just been my experience.

This whole Jayson Blair thing is a gaping wound on American journalism. We'd have a better chance of recovering from it -- and not embedding in the public's head the idea that we're all a bunch of liars -- if we'd just shut up about it and get back to doing our work.

Now that I've said my piece, of course.

Virtual Sunday Drive

Travel back in time with me to a place I used to go.

The drive: Old Route 66 west from Springfield, Mo.
The car: A 1980 Chevrolet Citation X-11, silver (it looked something like this, only with a red stripe instead of black)
The music: Bob Seger's Like a Rock, or Boston's Don't Look Back, on a cassette tape copied from a friend's LP. The tape is playing in the aftermarket cassette deck, which sits sideways in the Citation dashboard.

Let's go.

The sun is behind you as you point the car west on Chestnut Expressway, a street lined on either side with junkyards, old tire shops and used car lots, where an occasional buyer walks among tired old heaps with "77 $700 COLD AIR RUNS GOOD" painted in white shoe polish on the windshields. Stop at the Vickers station for some 84-cent-a-gallon unleaded, go through the light at the West Bypass, and settle back in the seat. This is the forgotten side of your hometown; the record-breaking growth and prosperity are happening on the other side. You, of course, are going the other way.

Chestnut Expressway narrows back to two lanes and becomes Missouri 266, just past the exit for the big soulless Interstate. The two lanes are barely wide enough to accommodate the Hudsons and Cadillacs and DeSotos that prowled this road back in the '50s. The old fellow at the antique store in Halltown will tell you as much, explaining in his cigarette-stained voice that they called this stretch of road Bloody 66. "Head-on collisions all the time, every day, practically, especially when it rained," he'd say. "Cars coming off that curve tryin' to slow down for the speed zone here, get all sideways and boom! that was all she wrote."

About five miles past Halltown, you stop at a stop sign. Turn right to get on Missouri 96, which was the modernized section of the old Mother Road. Still two lanes, but wider, with an upturned lip on each shoulder. Highway engineers in the late 1940s thought that would be an ideal way to prevent a drowsy driver from drifting off the road and into oblivion. Instead, the usual result was a drowsy driver drifting off and his ghost later finding himself upside down in his '51 Chevy with no seat belts and a metal headliner.

Highway 96 is also dead-level straight for about 40 miles, with one stoplight near Mount Vernon. An old gas station and garage is on the left; the buildings are made of rock, the lot out front is gravel. The pumps are vintage late 1960s, rusting. The price on the pumps reads 49.9 cents per gallon; pre-oil embargo prices. Inside the garage are piles of used car parts, boxes, hoses; stuff that could sit there for hundreds of years before rotting away. And probably, it will.

Drive on down 96 and go through towns that aren't there anymore: Heatonville, Albatross, Rescue, Plew, Avilla. Towns that exist as little more than signs along a highway nobody drives.

The occasional farmhouse can be seen, usually out the passenger window. It's always the same layout: ranch-style house set back about 300 feet off the road; big garage/workshop-type building; barn; silo. Where 96 meets Missouri 97, however, is a different sight. A multi-story farmhouse, big wraparound front porch, majestic in its loneliness. The house is sagging in the middle. It hasn't been occupied for at least 20 years, probably more. At one time, however, it was very likely the jewel of far western Lawrence County.

Drive on through Avilla. About 10 miles later, the road takes a jog to the left and you're in Carthage, a town of about 14,000 that once was the seat of commerce for western Missouri. Stop for some fast food if you want. In the middle of town is a lake, stocked with fish that are all too willing to bite whatever bait you're carrying. Don't eat the fish, though; signs warn of the possible environmental hazards that the town dumped into the lake over the years.

Drive under the exit for Alternate U.S. 71 and continue west. You're back in a semi-industrial zone, which means the occasional small factory or feed mill bounded on either side by a junkyard, a tire shop, or a used-car lot. You'll enter Webb City at the statue of the Praying Hands. At the time the statue was conceived, the location was a very busy intersection of two major federal highways. When the statue was dedicated in 1974, however, the interstate, built several miles to the south, had long since supplanted U.S. 66.

Old 66 follows U.S. 71 going south through Webb City and into Joplin, a sad little city of about 40,000 on Missouri's western edge. In the heyday of Highway 66, Joplin was a reasonably prosperous lead-mining town. When the lead had all been mined, however, there wasn't much reason for the prosperous to stick around. They left behind many of the less fortunate. The percentage of Joplin residents who receive some sort of government assistance far exceeds the state average, and the town shows it. Joplin is neither proud nor ashamed; it is merely resigned to its fate.

You're now going west again on a road called 66; it's Missouri 66, renamed after the feds gave up maintenance of the road in the early '70s. You'll go past another few junkyards before the outline of Missouri on the road sign changes to a bright yellow sunflower. You're now in Galena, Kan., once a major stop on the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway, better known as the Frisco. A restored train depot highlights the otherwise nondescript downtown.

The highway crosses the pretty Spring River and heads south, through Baxter Springs, Kan. -- "The First Cow Town in Kansas!" -- and across the line into Oklahoma. You'll go through the tiny burg of Quapaw, curve around a bit and find yourself on Mickey Mantle Boulevard in Commerce, Okla. Mantle was born in Commerce; his dad was a lead miner. A New York Yankees scout from Willard, Mo., Tom Greenwade, discovered the teenage Mantle playing on the American Legion ballfields in Baxter Springs and Galena and Joplin. What an incredible sight he must have been, a man among boys, slamming balls past the hay haulers and skinny Army-bound kids and boys who were pretty sure their futures were in the lead mines.

South of Commerce, you're on a road that was once U.S. 66/69; the signs for SOUTH 69 are still there, on the right side of the pole. On the left is a sign that says WEST, then nothing. Any 66 sign that the Department of Transportation didn't get to first was long since stolen by a collector. It's probably in one of those "Antiques" stores selling junk that you just drove by.

Soon, you're in Miami, Okla., another town that has obviously seen better days. Closed-down tire factory, empty feed mill, teetering grain silo, silent railroad tracks, old folks sitting on their front porches and simultaneously wondering where the hell their town went and praising themselves for sending their own kids off to better places.

You stop at some off-brand convenience store that could use a good cleaning, buy some gas, a Cherry Coke and some beef jerky or Doritos, and pop in another tape. Head back toward home, only on the soulless interstate this time, a direct line back to a world that's moving forward, and wonder if you're heading the right direction.

Tired, wired and uninspired
Stuff has just been shaking all around me. I have neither the time nor the inclination to go into it in great depth. So, following some great advice I received when I was a young sportswriter -- "If you have nothing to say, at least keep it short" -- here, in short form, is what's going on in my head:

My hometown has been battered by tornadoes. Small towns surrounding Anytown have been shredded. I keep hearing residents of Pierce City, Mo., saying they might just abandon the place entirely. The little town of 1,400 is stuck in a no-town's land between U.S. 60 and Interstate 44. Neither major highway goes through the city, so there's not much reason to be there unless you had lived there all your life. In recent years, residents had tried to build the place into an antique haven, capitalizing on the town's historic buildings and rustic feel. Not a building in Pierce City was left untouched by Sunday night's storm. As a result, the town might join a long list of Ozarks ghost towns, wiped off the map by tornado, flood or simple lack of interest. Worse news: More storms are expected to arrive overnight tonight.

I can tell Ozarkers where the warm, moist air that's triggering those storms is coming from: Right outside my house. Florida summer has arrived about a month early. Florida humidity has its own character, especially at night, where you can practically smell the mildew growing.

Among my activities on Sunday: I got to spend a few minutes behind the wheel of a new Corvette. I somehow received an invitation to a General Motors marketing gimmick on Sunday, which allowed people to test drive the car of their choice in a large parking lot. The car of my choice, of course, was a bright yellow 2003 'Vette Z06 with a 6-speed transmission. It was tightly controlled, of course; you had to test drive some other car first, then stand in line and wait half an hour to drive the 'Vette between a bunch of cones. Drivers were timed, with the fastest time of the day receiving a stereo system. Sunday's time to beat was 13.0 seconds. I did it in 16.5; no guts, no glory. Most drivers ahead of me in line were hitting high 15s. Clearly, I didn't want to rush anything. The car is everything I thought it would be; even in a very limited experience, the car basically did whatever you told it to do. Too bad there's no place to install a child safety seat.

Update from Burnout Central: Now that the war's over, we're back to a much more calm pace at work. This is a good thing. The downside: I find myself still oddly uninspired. A couple of projects sit ignored on my hard drive. The paper isn't generating its own interesting stories, preferring instead to sit back and wait for news. I'm still trying to generate some mental traction.

Off to seek some inspiration. Or at least to earn to earn another day's pay.

Glad that's over
The Young Daughter came home on Saturday afternoon after three nights in the hospital. She's back up to full speed and now has to be re-taught that the world doesn't revolve around her. We were given a solid diagnosis of "your guess is as good as mine."

Thief stopped
This guy's 27 years old and he's writing for The New York Times -- or, at least he was, until he pulled this crap. Said he got his notes and his news clips mixed up, which is why he copied a big chunk of a story from a Texas newspaper instead of writing it himself. That's called plagiarism. Plagiarism is to the news business what gambling is to the sports world. It's the one unforgivable sin.

Journalism Tip No. 1: Your notes are in your handwriting. Your news clips are the items that were set in type. For most sighted folks, it's not easy to confuse the two.

I'm still shaking my head while trying to get my mind around the phrase he's 27 and he's writing for The New York Times. This fellow had somehow developed a reputation for being a newsroom golden boy despite having generated 50 corrections in four years. That's 12.5 "the Times regrets the error"s every year. In my shop, you're going to hear about it once you're past three or four in a 12-month period.

I'm stunned to hear something like that was going on at the Times. His editors should have scared him to the point that he was quadruple-checking everything about 40 corrections ago. They didn't. So he was probably justified in thinking that he could get away with damn near copying-and-pasting from another story. Hell, I haven't been fired yet ...

And had he still been writing for the Boston Globe, he might not have been fired.

The theft occurred in a story out of San Antonio, Texas. It was brought to the Times' attention by the editor of the newspaper in San Antone.

Which leads me to Journalism Tip No. 2: Dude, every editor in the country reads the f-ing New York Times. Most of them are relying on it to make their own news judgments. You're sure as hell not going to be able to steal from a paper and put your ill-gotten booty under your byline in The New York Times and not expect the editor of the paper in that town to see it.

He's 27 and he's pissed away the career opportunity of a lifetime, one that the rest of us would sell out our own mothers for. What a f---ing idiot.

'Her fever's up to 105. We're going to the hospital'
And so began another incursion by The Real World against the Daily Routine, two hours before the usual end of the work day. This aspirated pneumonia thing has the Young Daughter running the thermometer to redline. She and The Wife will spend another night in a hospital (admitted, this time, thank God.) I'll spend another night here with the other two children, not sleeping, idly surfing the Web with the TV on, trying not to worry.

High fevers are not uncommon in my house. This is a genetic thing, passed on from The Wife to our progeny. The house record so far is 106, hit by the Old Daughter when she was 2. I remember The Wife calling the pediatrician at 2 a.m., trying to convince her our kid really did have a fever of 106. "I think you're misreading the thermometer," said the doctor. The Wife restrained herself from saying I think you can kiss my ass. At least, she did while she was on the phone. We went to the hospital, the Old Daughter hit 106 on the officially calibrated measuring device, and the doctor was forced to apologize.

It's been a rough week for the Young Daughter, who's carrying a genetic abnormality despite the fact that neither of her parents actually has the gene. Which brings us to another irony of sorts: the actual disease has not caused the kid any problems at all. She has few visible symptoms of something called neurofibromatosis. She instead is hospitalized with pneumonia because of an infection caused when she aspirated vomit while under general anasthesia which sedated her so she'd sit still for an MRI so we could check the progress of something called neurofibromatosis.

I find myself reassuring The Wife by saying, "It's better to know." Now, I'm not so convinced of that.

Tom Petty was right: It's the hardest part (updated again)
The Young Daughter was diagnosed with the dread disease in October 2001, on her first birthday. Since then, we've learned more than we ever wanted to know about navigating the United States health care system.

She had her semi-annual MRI today. They're looking specifically at an optic glioma behind her left eye. We won't know until Tuesday at the earliest what they actually saw. We need for it to not have grown since October, when it was discovered in her previous MRI. We need for no new ones to be present.

An MRI is not a pleasant experience for a small child. First, there's the general anasthesia. At the exam in October, they had to triple-dose her to get her to the state of deep sleep necessary to keep her completely still for an hour. She wobbled around like a drunk for two days, I'm told. This all happened during the time when I was on the Edge and the rest of the family was still in Texas.

This time, they had a much easier time with the anasthesia -- they gave her a different type of medicine -- and by 6 p.m. tonight, she seemed to be on the upswing. Then I walked by where she and The Wife were laying on the couch, and patted the Young Daughter on the head. "Does she feel warm to you?" I asked, casually. "Yeah," said The Wife. We asked the thermometer for confirmation. It said 104. Yeah, that's warm.

This particular anasthesia wasn't supposed to have this particular side effect, according to our discharge papers.

So, it's Us vs. The System. We called our pediatrician, and left a message with the service. We called the hospital downtown, where the procedure was performed. All the people involved had gone home for the day, and nobody wanted to answer our questions. The person on the other end -- not a nurse, from what I could gather -- told The Wife, "If it were my child, I'd take her to the hospital." Hey, thanks for the tip.

After waiting a few more minutes for the pediatrician to call back, The Wife and the Young Daughter went on to the hospital -- the one out here in the 'burb, not the one downtown. As of this writing, four hours later, they're still there. I'm here with the other two kids, who are peacefully asleep. The Wife has called twice to assure me that everything is basically OK -- "they've given her Tylenol, and her fever's down a bit, and they'll see us eventually."

They wait. I wait. I'm sure everything's OK; she's just reacting to the medication. Our kids, like The Wife, tend to run high fevers when they run fevers anyway. A reading of 104 is barely past "cause for concern" in our house.

But they wait. And I wait. And we're not even to the part where we have to yell at the insurance company.

-------------------------------------------

11:20 a.m. Tuesday update:
The Wife and the Young Daughter made it out of the emergency room around 6 a.m. -- approximately 11 hours after they arrived. Apparently they had a full house in the ER last night, and my kid's high fever was less of a priority than the car accidents or potential SARS cases or whatever the hell they were seeing.

After 11 hours in the ER, they left with this: "Might be a urinary tract infection."

Excuse me. She had an MRI under general anasthesia nine hours previous. You're saying that she picked up a uninary tract infection out of the blue? The Wife reported that even the doctor wasn't convinced. But it had been a bad 11 hours in the ER for everyone involved, apparently, including the medical staff. I suspect this physician didn't want The Wife to leave with nothing, so he came up with his best guess.

I'm frustrated, and I wasn't the parent who had to spend 11 hours in the emergency room last night with a 2-year-old. Amazingly, the 2-year-old was the most calm of all the parties involved. When they came home, the sun was rising, and the Young Daughter was her usual cheerful self -- just like she had been all day.

Nobody told her she had been awake all freakin' night. Nobody told her she should panic. I wish they had forgotten to tell me.

------------------------------------------
4 p.m. Tuesday update
The Young Daughter's pediatrican made the ruling: Aspirated pneumonia. Kind of like a urinary tract infection, only completely different. Suspected cause: She vomited while under anathesia, then inhaled it. I hope it sounds worse than it is.

Now that's a no-hitter
Philadelphia's Kevin Millwood, a Braves castoff, no-hit the Giants on Sunday. No-hitting that crew is a pretty serious accomplishment.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming
Enough weak political commentary. I'm scaring myself with this hard left turn I've just taken. Let's instead tell yet another story from 1989, back when politics was the furthest thing from my mind.

And then, there was the girl who attempted suicide right in front of me.

Her name was Michele, with one "l." She was a year younger than me, tan, big brown eyes, a little on the heavy side. I met her through a mutual friend at school. I was intrigued by her slightly bizarre sense of humor and her really cool voice. We dated a few times. It turned out her sense of humor wasn't the only bizarre thing about her, so I, in my single-guy wisdom, decided that dating her a few more times probably wouldn't be a good idea.

I guess she didn't take it well. One Saturday night in May, about 8 p.m., my roommates and I got a hang-up call right as we were leaving the house. As soon as we determined the caller wasn't going to leave a message, we went out the door. I heard the phone ring again. "Wanna get that?" Mark asked. "Nope," I said.

It was a night for motorcycle riding, and ride we did. When we rode, we didn't drink. (We were at least that intelligent. The margin for error on a motorcycle is pretty small.) We rode until a little past midnight, and came home, clear-headed but tired. When we got home, the message light on the machine was flashing.

Mark hit the button. Michele's voice came from the machine. "Don't call me back, not that you will anyway," the quavering voice said. "By the time you get this, I'll probably be pretty sick." Then some really long soliloquy that I don't remember much of. Then, a pause. I thought the tape had run out. Mark's face was ashen, which surprised me. He didn't scare easily. And I wasn't particularly taken aback; this woman had a flair for the dramatic. I figured she was just doing her drama-queen thing. I wondered what he had heard that I hadn't. I was fully prepared to ignore it and go to bed.

Then: "It's been fun."

Click.

Mark was still looking at the phone. "Guess you better go check that out," he said.

I grabbed my helmet and started for the door. "You know," Mark said, "you probably should take your truck."

Yeah, I probably should. I drove to her apartment, which was near the university campus, wondering what I was going to see. I knew that Michele wasn't, shall we say, mentally stable. I didn't know her well enough to know where her line was. Was this some kind of ruse, or sick prank? Was she just trying to get me to talk to her?

I took a deep breath as I jumped out of my truck and walked to her door. I heard music coming from her apartment. I knocked a couple of times, then I tried the knob. Coincidentally, it was unlocked.

She was sitting in a rocking chair in the corner to my left. A strong smell of something was in the air. I determined it was some alcoholic beverage. This struck me as odd, because Michele wasn't the drinker that, say, I was.

"Hi," she said from her chair. I saw then why the house smelled like wine. The top part of the bottle was in her hand. I walked a little further and noticed the rest of the bottle -- and its contents -- were on the kitchen floor to my right. An empty bottle of store-brand aspirin was on the kitchen table.

It took me about .0023 second to compute the possibilites for that wine-bottle neck she was holding in her hand. It took me a hell of a lot longer to figure out what I should do about it. "Did you take the aspirin?" I asked. "Is that why that's there?" I pointed to the little bottle on the table.

"Yeah," she said. "It was almost full." I looked: 500 count. I doubted that was fatal in itself, but I figured in a few hours she was going to be pretty uncomfortable. And I didn't know how much, if any, of the wine she had consumed.

I was being fairly careful not to talk to her; I figured I had the right to remain silent, and anything I said could be used as an excuse to go off the deep end. I walked to the phone.

She moved in the chair, sitting forward. The bottle neck was in her left hand, sharp side pointing away from her. "Don't call anybody."

"I have to call an ambulance," I said, calmly, trying really hard not to belie my agitation. "You're going to be really sick."

"I'm not going to be really sick," she said. "I'm going to be fucking dead. Don't you understand that? That's what I want." She wasn't trying to hide her agitation. Next step: reasoning.

"If you wanted to be fucking dead," I said, barely above a whisper, "you wouldn't have called me."

"You didn't call me back," she said. "You didn't care."

"I wasn't home," I said, still quietly. "I came as soon as I got your message."

A few minutes of silence ensued. It would be an understatement to call it an "awkward" silence. I was watching her for signs: Signs that she was going to do anything stupid with the bottle neck. Signs of her being sick. Signs of her not actually having taken the aspirin at all. Signs of this being some sort of silly melodrama. While I was watching her, a completely unrelated thought hit me: she was a lot heavier than she had been when I last saw her, three weeks previous. Probably 10 pounds, maybe 15. I don't know why this occurred to me at such a time, but it did. Hey, I was a 20-year-old guy. I noticed these things.

I took another step toward the phone. She sprang up out of the chair and pulled it out of the wall and threw it across the room with her free hand. The bottle neck was still in her left hand. I backed way off; I was standing at this point in the kitchen, one foot in the puddle of vino on the floor.

Apparently satisfied she had gotten her point across, she sat back down in her rocking chair. If it was merely silly melodrama, it had suddenly become quite a bit sillier. I really had no idea what she had done, and what the effect of whatever she had done was going to be, so I decided to go to Plan C: waiting her out. If she had taken several hundred aspirin, at some point, she was going to pass out. I'd make my phone call then.

I went back to Plan B, the "reasoning" approach. "OK, I'm not going to call an ambulance," I said, "but I have to use the phone."

"Who the hell are you going to call?" she asked weakly. Could she be on the downswing? I hoped, and feared.

"My mom," I said, calmly. My mom had experience dealing with mental cases and other unstable elements of society; she had worked in mental health for 10 years before becoming a corrections officer. I had no doubt she would know 1/what several hundred aspirin would do to someone and 2/how to deal with someone who was off her rocker in every way but literally. "I need to ask her a question."

"You promise that's who you're calling?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said. "I promise."

Silence. Then, "OK."

Thankfully, the phone was still in pretty good shape. I plugged it in to the jack in her bedroom and dialed up my mom. It was a little after 2 a.m. I explained the situation as quickly and as neutrally as I could, knowing that Michele was listening. "How long has she been like this?" my mom asked. "I've been here about two hours," I said. "She'll fall asleep soon," my mom said. "You're safe until then."

I looked out the bedroom door, and my mom was exactly right. It appeared that Michele had fallen asleep in her rocking chair. I walked over, very slowly, and took the bottle neck out of her hand. "Gotta go," I said to Mom. "Time to call 911."

I called 911 and asked for an ambulance. A police officer showed up first. I was a little irked by that -- you know, she needs to go to the hospital, not to jail -- and a little more irked when I realized most of the cop's questions were directed toward me. I answered them, trying to keep my irkedness to myself, and the ambulance showed up shortly thereafter.

"You want to ride with her?" the cop asked.

I thought about it. There's my truck. If I ride with her, I'll have no ride home. "Yeah, I'll ride with her," I said.

Michele was completely unconscious by this time. The EMTs were scurrying, which made me feel a little safer; they were at least treating her like she was alive, which relieved me of the obligation to ask. They loaded her up. I rode up front, next to the driver. We made our way to the hospital, lights, no siren.

An awful thought occurred to me when we arrived, crashing through the doors like they do on ER: I had to call her parents. I had never met her parents. I wasn't even sure I could remember their names. It was by now well after 3 a.m. I decided to put that off for a while.

Doctors determined Michele had indeed taken the aspirin. Michele's stomach was pumped, she was given some form of medication, and she was awake and reasonably alert by 5 or so. "I have to call your parents," I said.

"No, no, no," she managed to say, shaking her head weakly. "Please don't."

"I have to," I said. "They need to know." Plus, I thought to myself in my most caring way, you're going home with them, not me. "What are their names?"

She told me, and I called. It was the most difficult phone call I had ever made in my life up to that point. I wasn't sure what I was going to say to these people I didn't know. I identified myself, and Michele's mom seemed to recognize the name. That helped calm me, a little bit. "Michele is in the hospital," I said. After the usual oh-my-gods and yeah,-she's-ok,-but, her mom said she and her husband were on their way. They had an hour drive from a small burg south of Anytown.

I stayed in the room and held Michele's hand until her parents arrived. Michele wanly made the introductions. I braced myself. Her mom gave me a big hug. "Thank you, thank you," she said. Uh, OK.

Mom and Dad assured themselves (and, indirectly, me) that they were going to be taking Michele home. Mom motions to me and asked, "Do you drink coffee?" I didn't at the time, but figured it would be a good time to start. We walked to the coffee machine down the hall.

Mom explained to me that Michele had not been in the best of mental health for a while. She had been living at home and had been doing reasonably OK, but then she rented this apartment in Anytown. She had only been there a few months; she had, in fact, rented the apartment since I knew her. "She got that to be closer to you," Mom said.

I mentally sighed and shook my head. "We told her not to, but she did it anyway," Mom said. She explained that she had decided it would be a good chance to test how Michele would do on her own. I guess they had their answer.

In my not-yet-21 self-centeredness, the main thing I was trying to figure out was if they were upset with me. I was reasonably assured they weren't. "I'm so glad you thought so quickly and helped her," Mom said. "God only knows what would have happened if you hadn't."

"I just did what I thought would be right," I said. "Listen," I added, "it's probably best if I said 'bye' to Michele and let y'all take it from here. I don't mean to be mean, but it's probably best if I'm not around." I wasn't sure how Mom was going to take that. Thankfully, she agreed. "If you need any help on this end, getting her lease canceled or whatever, let me know," I said. "Otherwise, I'm probably going to not call."

"I understand," Mom said.

"Does she need, you know, help?" I asked.

"Yeah, she does," Mom said. "And she'll get it this time." I wondered what had happened "last" time.

With that, I turned my attention to figuring out how I was going to get home. In a surprise development, I saw my mother in the waiting room. She had apparently listened to the whole thing unfold on the scanner. "Man, am I glad to see you," I said.

The sun was up. My mom took me home. I went directly to sleep and didn't wake up until just before I had to be at work that afternoon. At the time, I just chalked it off to another wacky event that had gone on around me.

-------------------------------

I didn't think about that night -- or Michele -- until just before Christmas.

She had sent me a Christmas gift and a card. I set it aside and called her after the first of the year. She asked me if I wanted to get together for coffee, or dinner, or something. "I'm taking medication," she said. "I'm not crazy anymore."

"I never thought you were crazy," I said.

"Well, I was," she said. "Or am, or whatever. That's what the doctors tell me, anyway."

I decided that meeting her for dinner wouldn't be a bad thing. Hell, I needed to eat anyway.

I was surprised to see her; she had changed visibly. She had lost a significant amount of weight since I had seen her last; she was, in fact, thinner than when I had first met her. She was no longer "a little on the heavy side."

She explained that her mental issues -- and her weight -- were caused by a thyroid problem of some sort. With the problem under medical control, she said, she was attacking both issues with equal gusto. Therapy and diet had returned her to a state of solid mental and physical health. She was back in school, down in her hometown, and she was doing well.

She invited me to come down to her parents' bar sometime. I did; that was another story. I only saw Michele one other time after that; a few months later, I was engaged to someone else, and the whole episode had become another footnote among my stories from the previous year.

But I did learn a lot about mental illness. There are some strains of mental illness that run in my family, but it was the first time I had encountered it in a peer, somebody my age. I learned that it's something to be taken seriously, both by those who have it and by those who know someone who has it.

And I had never before been in a position where I had to simply trust my instinct. I could -- and still can -- question anything 10 ways to Sunday. But in the end, you have to do what strikes yourself as right.

I like French wine and the Dixie Chicks. Do something about it
I just composed a long post bemoaning our country's lack of tolerance for dissent. I decided it was worthy of a good ass-whupping from my favorite trio of thugs, Click, Drag and Delete.

Not because I didn't believe what I wrote. I did. I still do. But it was badly constructed and would have reflected poorly on my skill as a writer. I don't give a flying fuck that some of you might have thought it reflected poorly on my patriotism.

I'll come back to this when my thoughts are in a little better order. In the meantime, I offer this:

After some effort -- more effort than it should have required -- I have located the text of the Patriot Act passed in 2001, without any accompanying opinion, analysis or interpretation. Do me this favor. You read it, and you decide for yourself whether it's a full frontal assault on your civil liberties or whether it's a necessary shield to protect this country against a repeat of the atrocities we saw committed against our friends and neighbors and fellow Americans on Sept. 11, 2001.

And then do this:

If you think it's the former, please locate your representative and determine whether he or she voted for the bill. Then, in the next election, do a little research and determine his or her opponent's stance on civil liberties. If it matches yours, vote for that person and not the incumbent.

If you think it's the latter, please click here and explain to me why you think it's OK for us to give up our civil liberties. And then read this (it's a PDF file, Acrobat Reader required) and tell me if you're ready to take that next step.

And, if you think it's the latter, that's your right as an American. I would die to defend that right. But I dare you to tell me that I think it would be OK for another Sept. 11 to happen because I think it's the former.

Getting old, growing up
As part of the brainwashing activities all managers in my company must go through, I'm taking the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator. This is the second time I've taken this test. The first time was in 1998. Apparently, I've changed quite a bit in five years.

Five years ago, I was not yet 30. My personality type was ENTP, which is described as follows: "Quick, ingenious, stimulating, alert and outspoken. Resourceful in solving new and challenging problems. Adept at generating conceptual possibilities and then analyzing them strategically. Good at reading other people. Bored by routine, will seldom do the same thing the same way, apt to turn to one new interest after another."

Now, I'm looking down the barrel of 35. My personality type has morphed to INFP, described thusly: "Idealistic, loyal to their values and to people who are important to them. Want an external life that is congruent with their values. Curious, quick to see possibilities, can be catalysts for implementing ideas. Seek to understand people and to help them fulfill their potential. Adaptable, flexible, and accepting unless a value is threatened."

(The Wife went through the questions, too. It turns out we're direct opposites, which surprises neither of us.)

Both descriptions of me are frighteningly accurate -- the old then, the new now. Five years ago, I was a lot more outspoken than I am now. I was less aware of my "values" and was probably less driven by them. I remain adaptable and flexible, right to the point where it starts cutting into my family time. I'm not as driven by career as I used to be. I am more aware of ways that I can help other people. I am idealistic, but not in the way most people think of the term.

Five years ago, I was midway through my first stint here on the Edge of America. Between then and now was three years in Texas, a place where I was able to spend a lot of time finding myself and confirming a value system. I was working at a job that bored me to tears for two-thirds of the time I was there, but it did allow me time to bond with my family in a way that I wasn't able to when I was here the first time. Now that we're back here on the Edge, I'm back in a job that requires a great deal of my time and energy. Five years ago, I accepted that as part of the deal. This time, I don't, and I think that inner struggle contributed to my little burnout episode.

Am I growing into the person I want to be? I don't know. I'm still a little too worried about money and about material stuff, and it's hard for me sometimes to find the balance between idealism and realism. I was probably better at my job back when I was more outspoken.

But at least I'm evolving. Even with the struggles it brings, evolution is a good thing.

Tunes in my head
I have previously professed my love for Maria McKee in this forum. A mid-'80s album from her days as the lead singer of Lone Justice is still in my regular CD rotation. Her new album just came out this month. She performed earlier this week on the Tonight Show. She was awful. She had a much better voice when she was a blonde.

And then, I noticed in the It's-Stalking-Me ad above an offer to buy a CD of children's music by Nicolette Larson. (The name was misspelled Nicholette, but, oh well.) For reasons that were known only to my 11-year-old head, I had tremendous crushes on Nicolette Larson and Melissa Manchester in the late 1970s. Larson was kind of a one-hit wonder -- "Lotta Love," a song written by Neil Young, made some top-40 noise in 1978 -- but she had hair down to here and an intriguing voice to boot. Plus, I really liked the name "Nicolette" for some reason. Most boys my age at that time were pinning up posters of Farrah Fawcett and Daisy Duke and Suzanne Somers. Me, I had album covers of Nicolette Larson and Melissa Manchester.

Because I was curious, I decided to follow the links to see what became of Nicolette Larson. Imagine my shock to learn she died five years ago. Died of a cerebral edema at 45, leaving behind a daughter who's now 13 and a husband. And her one hit.

If we don't have newspapers, we won't need the Pulitzers
A journalist for whom I have a great deal of respect wrote a piece on an industry web site bemoaning the fact that in the last few years, a disproportionate number of Pulitzer Prizes have gone to the nation's biggest newspapers.

I have to confess I'm a lot less worried about small newspapers' Pulitzer chances than I am about their chances for survival.

After 17 years in the business – at papers ranging in size from the 60,000-circulation paper in my Missouri hometown to the nation's eighth-largest newspaper – I have reached a conclusion about the future of print journalism, and it is this:

The print newspaper will someday die. Its death will be a suicide.

The corporations are going to kill the newspaper by continuing to allow smaller newspapers to be bad.

I don’t know off the top of my head the percentage of the population that lives outside the top 50 markets, but I’m sure it’s a significant number of potential readers. Yet, in many cases, we give these readers two choices:

An under-staffed, under-newsholed, under-funded Gannett or Knight-Ridder profit center, or

a first edition of a possibly faraway metro, which might well have gone to bed as early as 9:30 or 10 p.m and as such lacks key information, such as sports scores.

Meanwhile, the corporations funnel a disproportionate amount of resources, talent and funding to their large papers.

I'm not saying that the paper in Grand Forks, N.D., or Rome, Ga., should be a Pulitzer contender every year. But so many sub-100,000 circulation papers are barely serving their readers, never mind fighting for awards. This is something that should be a matter of great concern among those who have a vested interest in the continued health of the newspaper industry.

Many people choose to live in small towns and cities. These people deserve a good newspaper.

Many other people grow up in small towns and cities and move away. They never pick up the newspaper habit because the local rag isn’t worth reading. As an industry, we need to figure out how to get an interesting product to those people so that when they do move away, they won’t equally ignore The New York Times or the San Francisco Chronicle.

This is not necessarily an anti-corporate journalism rant. Plenty of family-owned small newspapers are gawdafwul. Every newspaper I've worked for has been owned by a large corporation. I'm lucky to work for a corporate-owned newspaper that has the resources to have a serious commitment to quality journalism, despite not being the corporate flagship.

But I've seen -- and have tried to read -- too many examples of the opposite. And I think as an industry, we’re only a few years away from really regretting that we let that happen.