ONE MORE POST BEFORE CALLING IT QUITS...
I think we've all seen this coming for quite some time now...

I've kept this blog going since the year 2003. That's the better part of a decade. I've been turning my soul inside-out on my best posts, and have been marking time with my not-so-good writings. I was just over 50 when this thing began; now I'm staring 60 in the face. This blog served a valid purpose for me during the first years of its existence; I was able to express frustration, anger, joy, desolation, happiness, sadness and I shared all the good and bad times here. So what's my problem? Simply put, I just don't have any reason to keep this thing going anymore. My heart's not in it. My days are just as full as they've always been; I'm still the same person I was; I still love Oregon and am glad I moved here. I'm still playing guitar, taking photos, and enjoying life as much as I can.

I'm just running out of mental energy. So why don't I just keep the blog going and post once or twice  a month?, you ask. Because it's more irritating if I place upon myself the thought that I need to put something in the blog. It nags at me. I used to feel all self-important after I posted something high and mighty; I'd read back over what I'd just written, not really believing that yes, I was this person who posted all that. I used to swing violently at issues, politics, politicians, and others who I wished would Just Go Away. I used to think I could show everyone how smart I really was by writing on all kinds of topics, and that's a by-product of my low self-esteem; I was the Paper Man inside the computer spewing forth all kinds of stuff, whether I cared about what I was writing or not. Getting out there in front of people was my objective. All of a sudden the playing field was leveled. Here I am, world, and I'm here to take you on!!!

But I'm not smart. I'm not gifted. I don't have any unique insights into anything. I've long thought that I should do a post on "Who and What am I, This Person Who Blogs?" But I've shared enough over the years, through all my old posts, and readers can come away with an educated opinion of who this person is behind the computer screen. Rather than this blog being All I Do, as it was in the first several years of its existence, nowadays it's often the last thing I think about doing, which happens by the end of the day, when I'm just too tired to care. Finally, Facebook has a lot to do with this decision. Rather than sit here, trying to "compose" for hours and hours, laboring over detailed posts and photo inclusions, when I think of something, I can zip over to Facebook, and just toss it out there. Every fully-developed blog post of roughly this size takes me at least 2 or 3 hours to complete. It's not as if I'm dashing this stuff out with reckless abandon. These blogs make me feel like I'm doing a Term Paper. Ask any of my former teachers...I never EVER did a good term paper.

But Facebook is getting old, too. It's like a big cyber-billboard for the entire human race, and I weary of the religious and political issues that people seem to plaster all over their Facebook Walls. I'm really tired of all the bible verses and new-age homilies I see posted everywhere on Facebook. But there's enough happening with people I know, former colleagues and classmates as well as current friends, to keep me coming back. I'm not saying Facebook is a wonderful be-all, end-all, but it is a convenient way for people to communicate. I used to wonder if anyone at all read my blog; I do know for a fact people read what I write on Facebook. And I hardly ever read anyone else's blogs, but it's refreshing to know what's happening in a capsule-sized Facebook tidbit. It just fits my limited attention span better at this point in my life.

I'll close out this last post with a development that happened to me not long ago. As I've blogged about on occasion, I did not have a good relationship with my Dad and I never really did. But I loved him, although he was hard to feel close to. The thought of him has always brought turmoil to my life. He could cut me down to size and make me hate myself, and he often did. Imagine my reaction when I saw his name in the topic line of an e-mail I was sent last month. This person had information on my Dad. Turns out his Dad and mine were on the same Bomber Crew in World War II. He never spoke of his Wartime Service, other than he was a "bomber pilot over Germany". And so he was...

Third from the left in the back row is My Dad, with his crew. Dad and one other guy in this photo survived the war. Flying one of these huge B-17's was hazardous. I am told of one mission where the Germans made swiss cheese out of the plane, the bullets ripping through the plane, which began a tailspin headlong toward Earth. 500 feet off the ground, Dad managed to pull out of the tailspin and get his crew back to safety in England.


Here is my Dad's airplane in flight. It was originally named "Gypsies", but was renamed "Blood N' Guts". He flew at least 35 missions, bombing various encampments and industrial sites in Germany. There are some videos on YouTube which feature the B-17 in all its glory, and as I watched young men readying their planes, assembling for duty, or attending pre-bombing meetings to discuss strategy, I found myself looking for Dad.

I was literally stunned and the old feelings of uneasiness returned when I'd first received these e-mails about my dad. Those feelings turned inward, chewing me up, and all of a sudden I felt like a 5-year old kid who was being punished for something. Over the last couple of weeks, I find myself coming to a sort of peace about all of this, now that I know a little more about him. The above crew photo was taken in 1944. I was born ten years later. I'd never seen Dad this young before. I'm sure that all his life he was trying to deal with bad wartime memories in addition to dealing with everyday life. My Dad was Strong. And he always was. And when Mom died, he didn't feel as strong anymore. I think that's part of it.

So, folks, that's about it. It's a fitting way for me to close out the blog, by including something important and definitive. I'm sure I'll see you on Facebook, as well as some of you on "Huckleberries", the blog maintained all these years by D.F. Oliveria of the Spokesman-Review newspaper. It's an interactive blog, and it's absorbing and thought-provoking. It'll be a couple of weeks before I delete this blog; for those of you who live in Coeur d'Alene, you might want to comb back thru my old posts where I used to pass along a whole lot of area history. Take care, everyone...

LET THE WORLD NEVER FORGET...
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To this very day, I am in amazement and awe of those whose lives were sacrificed on 9/11/2001. Let none of us ever forget that day. And let the world know that sooner or later, we will "get" those who perpetrate unjustified violence against this country.

KEEPING THE ANCHOR CHAIR WARM...
...the saga of Kathi Goertzen and the price she paid...
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Have you ever heard a news story that absolutely left you blind-sided? I had just returned home from my 40th Class Reunion in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho and everything went so well, and I'm glad I went because I have some new good memories that I'll have forever. I was expecting to spend the next week operating at a slower pace and just ease back into "livin' Coos Bay style". I was watching Mariners' baseball that Monday night, and one of the sportspeople said something about the death of "mgmmxxph of KOMO-TV news"...I didn't pay any attention to the name. I hooked up with the Mariners' blog-site to comment on the game, and on the news page (the blog is run by The Seattle Times), was an article about Kathi Goertzen, a news anchor who passed away that morning. For quite a few years, things went exceedingly well for her during her news career; right out of college, she secured a news position with KOMO, was a well-known anchor/reporter in the Seattle Area, and she and her co-anchor were the longest-running Anchor Team west of the Mississippi, and as you know, that's rare in TV news, where many hirees are here-today, gone-yesterday.

Beginning in the late 1990's, though, she began having problems. She lost the hearing in her right ear, and parts of her face began feeling numb. It was found that she had a non-malignant meningioma, just below the right side of her skull, and needed surgery right away. Doctors removed most of the tumor, and she bounced back and continued anchoring the news for another few years before the tumor had once again grown, and once again she underwent surgery. Throughout the late 1990's and beyond, she had surgery six different times for the same tumor. Why "six"? Because not all of the tumor was removed until it was much, much too late. Removing all of the tumor could have resulted in damage to the nerves that controlled swallowing, the ability to smile , and speech. The tumor had wrapped itself around those nerves and just kept growing until the next surgery, because the decision was made not to take out the entire tumor. She'd emerge, recover for a while, go back to her news anchor position, but all the while the tumor was growing...
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Then the process would be repeated; get most of the tumor, control the rest with radiation, hope for the best. Except, the radiation treatments and experimental drugs used on her just weren't effective. Her last surgery involved dealing with not only the original tumor, but an offshoot of that tumor which was growing behind her eye. Her first Surgery was back in 1997. Her second was in 2005. And after that, it was operation after operation, in which the surgeons were able to remove most of, but not all, of the tumor, which eventually spread out to other parts of her brain. Technically she succumbed to pneumonia, which came about due to the harsh effects of all those surgeries and experimental treatments. In 1997,when she was diagnosed, she already had been a news anchor for close to 17 years. And if Surgeons had removed ALL of the tumor back then, perhaps she'd still be alive today. After yet another surgery (in 2010), she was left disfigured and couldn't appear on the air anymore. But she still went to work, doing what she could, landing interviews and helping out in general. One such interview was with sportscaster Keith Jackson. Her speech was easily understandable; Jackson gave a great interview, and cameras pictured Kathi from the back, so viewers wouldn't be shocked by the effects of surgery on her face. (Which didn't look all that bad to me.)
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Kathi in better times.

I can't help but think that if she'd had all of the tumor taken out when it was first diagnosed, she'd still be here today. She could've taken pride in the fact she'd been a successful news anchor for so long, and she could still be "in the biz" as far as writing, producing, interviewing, etc. Did the fact that she was a News Anchor, whose facial characteristics are transmitted nightly, influence the choices made NOT to remove the Entire Tumor? Is this, perhaps, a fatal case of putting one's job before everything else? Clearly, she loved anchoring the news, and everyone loved her and were praying for her. Maybe she couldn't face life as Not Being An Anchor. In a way, the job might have killed her. Gotta look good for the cameras, after all. From what I can tell, Kathi was a dear, sweet, genuine and gracious lady. The world can't afford to lose people like her. I'm sure people would've understood if she couldn't appear on camera anymore; indeed, she was gone for long periods of time after some of her more recent surgeries. In 2009 she had surgery, recuperated, came back to her Anchor position, and then had to leave again two weeks later because doctors said the Tumor had Grown Again.
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My major in College was Radio/TV Broadcasting with a Journalism minor, and I've always paid special attention to the world of broadcasting, and the people in that world. It's my sense that Kathi was not ego-driven to a fatal degree, but somehow the relentlessness of the news factored into the decisions made regarding her surgeries, most of all the decisions not to "get it all" because it could potentially be harmful to her career. Indeed, she knew people wouldn't want to see her face, the way it was after her final surgeries. She said in an interview that it would be "unfair to the viewers" to comprehend the news with her looking like she did. She knew she couldn't be an anchor anymore. If she'd come to that realization years earlier, maybe she'd still be alive today. Anchoring isn't everything. Maybe she didn't want to adopt that outlook. But it's just a job. As such it's not worth dying for. No matter how you look at it, her death is a tragedy. My heart goes out to her family, her co-workers, and her viewers.
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This post has been bouncing around in my head for the last week and a half, and it's been driving me nuts. Everything I've seen regarding Kathi, over the internet, television or newspapers has been nice and very sweet and supportive and complimentary. Maybe I can't help but see the other side. I've never lived in the Seattle Area, never saw Seattle TV, and knew nothing of Kathi until the day she died. But I do remember a TV station in Spokane, Washington, that I used to watch; they had a great weatherman, Peter Colford, who succumbed to cancer in the mid-1990s. Very, very sad. This post is the by-product of several weeks' analyzation of internet writings and all the video I could find. And I've come away thinking, "what a sad story". A tragedy indeed.
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AN INCOMPLETE DIARY OF A ROAD TRIP...
...and you thot talking on cellphones or texting while driving is a bad thing!
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I hadn't been away from the Southern Oregon Coast in six years. But it was bound to happen. I'm talking about The Class Reunion, different this time around because I had to Travel over 300 miles to get there. For years, I lived in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho and graduated high school there. Not this time around! I flew the coop and got out of there only to fly back into the coop six years later for my 40th class reunion. This post, then, documents photos I took on the Sly. For, you see, I shot photos while driving. I'm not proud of that, but I'd already postponed the trip by a day, and I had to make good use of my time. This was also an opportunity to get photos of Other Things Besides My Area Of The Coast. So I did what I did. But I kept the car "shiny side up and between the ditches".
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-First of all, let's hear it for I-5. It's a really great road in that it's mostly level and fairly straight. One hand on the wheel, the other holding the camera. Taken somewhere around 8am, the temperature inland wasn't that much warmer than on the coast. So things started out fairly well. That would later change...




Another shot from I-5, looking eastward. The Willamette Valley looks like one big flood plain, and it's easy to imagine the distant hills as islands in an earlier water-logged or glacial environment in which things were leveled out on a grand scale. We're about 150 miles south of Portland here...as you can tell, this is quite the agricultural area...


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To get to North Idaho from I-5, you Go to Portland and take a right turn, which sends ya up the Columbia River Gorge. It gets hotter the further east you go, and if it wasn't for the wind vanes on the hills, this part of the country would be uglier than it already is. This is Biggs Junction, which is about halfway between Coos Bay and Coeur d'Alene. "Desolate" doesn't begin to describe this place. This photo looks north toward the Washington side of the mighty Columbia...

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Crossing the Columbia River, and negotiating the traffic mess that is the Tri-Cities in Washington State, you can see the country doesn't change much in appearance, though the temperature had to be somewhere close to 100 degrees out here. Please, car, don't break down now! If you've ever envisioned yourself going absolutely nowhere, this is what it looks like when you get there...


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It was getting hot and late and I put the camera aside and concentrated on driving hard the last three hours of the trip, which grew volcanic-hot because I had no Freon in the air-conditioning. I just wanted to Get There. I met up with Interstate 90, blasted through Spokane and arrived in Coeur d'Alene after over 11 hours on the road. So how morbid was this road trip? Look at where I stayed! But the room had a great air conditioner! Not bad for a cheap motel. Best of all, I Survived The Bates Motel. I heard no loud screams as the shower water was running, and needed no bandages. All in all, things turned out much better than I thot they would.

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I arrived in Coeur d'Alene on Wednesday night, which gave me all day Thursday to putt around town, seeing things, driving around town, looking at all of the changes (see "A Tale Of Two Coeur d'Alenes", a couple posts below this one), but this lake photo was taken Wednesday night after I checked into the Bates...I headed for the one place in town I wanted to go...Coeur d'Alene City Park...and I knew the view that I wanted to see, and this was it...
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Sitting on a park bench, behind the sea wall, once again I was looking out over Lake Coeur d'Alene on a warm Summer evening...Mica Peak in the distance, looming in the west as the temps Finally Cooled Down. I spent a lot of time here in younger years. I always wondered how I'd feel, coming back after being away for so long. And you know, it felt good. I'm reminded of a quote which singer Loreena McKennitt included in her latest CD, "The Wheat That Shakes The Barley"...
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"Every Once In A While, there is a pull to return to one's roots or beginnings, with the perspective of time and experience, to feel the familiar things you once loved, and love still." And although the area has grown tremendously over the years, everything I sought was right where it was supposed to be.

A TALE OF TWO COEUR D'ALENES...
...it was the best of times, it was the worst of times...
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If by "the worst of times", one is referring to the economy, he/she's probably correct. But within that climate of economic paranoia, towns keep growing, inventors keep inventing, businesses keep popping up everywhere, and life goes on, which indeed it has in my old home town of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Now before I get started here, I'm no supply-side economic theorist; I approach it from the impressions it makes upon me and what I come away from it all thinking. My old home town's been growing, growing, growing. I may not know which businesses are in what building, but there's been a lot of building going on. So, that said, let's take the plunge...
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I don't know if downtown CDA's premier coffee shop is still called "Java On Sherman", but for old times' sake, I got my day started here this morning. Until I moved away 6 years ago, I was in here at least 4 days a week, breathing in coffee fumes as my life depended on it, which it probably did. This is what I miss most about the Coos Bay, Oregon area I live in now. There are no coffee shops!
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However, everything changes. Here inside "The Java Place", the chair I used to sit in is gone, replaced by counters and other implements of the coffee trade. Good coffee shops are great places for one to immerse himself in public. In my case, I overheard two guys talking business, and felt glad that I didn't have to do that anymore.
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MMM..along with coffee, a big raspberry muffin...who cares what kind of muffin it is as long as there's plenty of overhang and a double-dose of sugar on top. It's nice to know some things don't change; years ago when I was last here the muffins were just as huge as this one. Consuming that muffin helped me to carbo-load for the day ahead...I gained five pounds just Looking at that muffin!

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Fortified at last on my muffin diet, I hit the streets. At photo left, here's a big landmark that wasn't there several years ago before I left. Taken from in front of the "Zip Stop" gas mart that's managed to survive over the years. The only bummer-factor here is, that Tall Building is but one of those blocking the view of Lake Coeur d'Alene, which is back there somewhere...

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Strange creatures have been frozen forever in suspended animation on various street corners downtown; I believe this is a "bum" steer? It's nice, I suppose, to run across something unusual like this. Although, there's a paradox here; Coeur d'Alene has some of the most stringent business sign laws in the world, but artists can put artificial animals of most any size most anywhere.
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This is Sherman Avenue between 3rd and 4th; what you see here is the historic Clark's Jewelry Street clock; that's where it was when I used to win radio contests long ago, with the winning price being a Caravelle watch, which I won and gave to my Mom. A couple times a week I'd go pick up 5 records which the Radio Station sent to Clark's. Fun times from waay back...
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There are several businesses inside this building, which is the Old Coeur d'Alene Fire Department structure. On the east side of the building, you can see the big arched structures that fire trucks used to come out of and park themselves back in. It's nice when these grand old buildings are resuscitated by Positive Economics. Also, the old IOOF building nearby has been converted into a "Great Floors" franchise.
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Coeur d'Alene seems to have been inundated by strange metal animals appearing all over the place. This one's in front of a bank. There's another moose similar to this one, who's parked himself near where the Seaplanes take off. Every city must have it's own thing; in the Coos Bay/North Bend area, fire hydrants have been painted every imaginable color and one day I'll do a post on those.
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Coeur d'Alene's downtown is changing very rapidly, and the growth
of the trees you see here make shopping at downtown businesses seem like a nature walk. Way back in the summer of '85, the city street department ripped up all the pavement you see here, and walking on Sherman back then became very much like hiking through the wilderness...
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In the northwest portion of town, a big development has opened up, featuring shops, services, escrow houses, cinemas and apartment houses all over the place. In fact, it's frightening in a way, how people are stacked into boxes that are made of ticky-tacky (quote from an old Pete Seeger song there), but undeniably the times they are a-changin' in the Coeur d'Alene area.
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But it's a tale of two Coeur d'Alenes. When I got to my motel a couple of days ago, the owner and I were talking about this area. He graduated in 1968 from Coeur d'Alene High, and he said that (the proverbial 'they') have taken "all the real jobs out of Coeur d'Alene". Meaning, of course, mining, logging, and other core industries. And it's true; those businesses are long gone. One of the "Coeur d'Alenes" is ritzy, appealing, designed to fill every rich tourist's dream, while the "other" Coeur d'Alene, which begins at 8th and Sherman and proceeds east, looks just like it did in the 1950's.
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The people in the neighborhoods which surround the East End of Sherman are all working-class people, struggling every day to make ends meet; some with dingy homes that have fallen into disrepair, trying to grind out the American Dream, at service jobs, gas stations, grocery stores, manufacturing plants, driving local taxi-cabs, or reporting to work at 6am to slap them Sausage-Egg McMuffins together, trying to stay on the good side of ruthless bosses. Chances are those blue-collar workers won't be shopping at expensive downtown stores; they'll be buying used clothing at Goodwill or St. Vinnies, and trying to make their money go as far as possible by clipping coupons and hoping they have enough gas in the tank to get to Wal-Mart once in a while.
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This post was written in my motel room at The Bates Motel, and remarkably, no one has stabbed me in the shower yet. I'm getting this room for $32 a night. It's a Cheap motel room. On the East End of Sherman Avenue, of course.