Patti Ewald with the story behind the story

Mr. Runkle deserves better

2008-11-15T04:53:00.006-05:00

I was in Mr. Runkle's class.
It was during Parents' Night. I sat there as a student would and listened to the seventh-grade science teacher talk about his teaching and grading and disipline philosophies.
It was hard to concentrate -- and not because of the subject matter or the teacher's public speaking skills.
It was because the room was lined with cages. I mean lined. Cages on low tables; cages on higher tables; cages stacked on cages.
There were chinchillas and snakes and everything in between.
"What a cool class," I thought.
It was Mr. Runkle's classroom menagerie and he was there seven days a week taking care of it. He stayed long after school let out and was always there on weekends.
I know because we lived only a few blocks from the school and we could see his car parked there all the time.
My kids really liked his class and I was glad they had him for a teacher.
Maybe you've heard about Dean Runkle.
He's been accused of killing Amy Mihaljevic, the 10-year-old abducted from a Bay Village shopping center in 1989.
Not accused as in accused by police, accused as in accused by Scene magazine writer James Renner based on (in his words) "five or six pieces of circumstantial evidence."
Well, shoot, this "news" is creating shock waves from one side of this country to the other as former students and parents hear about it.
The reactions follow the same pattern -- disbelief followed by a "well, he was a weirdo" followed by a "yeah, a weirdo who was able to motivate middle-school kids" and back to disbelief.
So, who IS this Scene magazine writer who has put Mr. Runkle on a skewer and dangled him over the jaws of those vicious and often illiterate Internet posters who care little for fact and even less for proof?
I Googled Renner.
He's a 30-year-old Cleveland author and film critic who is obsessed with Amy Mihaljevic.
He's also somewhat of a publicity hound. Check out his Today Show man-to-man kiss at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYt6RklOFQk.
So, he's a (relative) kid throwing a 65-year-old strange but dedicated former teacher under the bus with "five or six pieces of circumstantial evidence," which were not enough for the FBI.
It just doesn't seem fair to me.

Insect screens aren't lizard-proof

2008-10-31T07:19:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, I did something I have never done before.
I plucked petrified lizards out of the windowsills in our new house.
That's the coolest thing about relocating -- all the new experiences a person has.
I was dusting and vacuuming and sweeping up a storm, dancing around like Cinderella, so excited that the sale of the house had finally closed and it was ours. We get to move -- today! -- out of the tiny apartment where we use beach chairs for furniture and have only two plates, two forks and two glasses in the kitchen cupboard.
Anyway, in my Cinderella cleaning-frenzy, I noticed the windowsills were awfully dirty. I put the hose on the vacuum and just as I was about to shove it into the window crevice, I saw the lizard.
He was all stretched out and could have been the decorative handle on a drink-stirrer or a pate knife.
I didn't think it was a good idea to suck him into the vacuum. So what?
I made my thumb and forefinger into a pair of tweezers and then, plucked him out and tossed him on the floor.
I'll sweep him up later, I thought, as I continued vacuuming the windowsill.
Then I moved to the next window. There was an even bigger petrified lizard in that sill.
Poor things, I thought. They must have wriggled in through the screen and then were too dumb to remember how they got in and starved to death.
I involuntarily shuddered.
I plucked him out and vacuumed that sill.
Then I went to the third window. It was filled with lizard carcasses. In fact, a tanner could have probably made a belt -- do they make lizard-skin belts? -- out of all their hides.
I plucked them one by one onto the floor where it looked like a lizard ball.
I had tossed them all in relatively the same area and there they were, all lying around on the floor.
Hmm, I should have counted them.
Nah, that would have been too weird.

Hooked on Florida

2008-10-17T13:01:00.007-04:00

I saved my first shore bird.
It was a sunny day in St. Petersburg on Friday. The temperature was a degree or two shy of 90 and I had to use windshield wipers to see through the humidity.
I put two cans of pop (liquid is a good thing in the tropics) in an insulated lunch bag and then stuffed that bag, a book, a towel, a baggie filled with pretzels and my binoculars – an often overlooked beach necessity -- into a bigger bag, grabbed a chair and drove to Gulfport Beach.
Gulfport, a southern neighborhood of St. Pete, is where we are going to live if our bank-owned house ever closes -- but that's for another story.
Anyway, it was really hot so I thought I'd walk out to the end of the pier where the breeze off the water is great.
By the time I walked the two blocks from public parking to the pier -- regretting I didn't leave my stuffed beach bag in the trunk with my chair -- my hair was sticking to the back of my neck, sweat beads were running down my forehead and blisters were beginning to form where my rubber flip-flops rubbed against the sweaty tops of my feet.
And people wonder why they call this paradise!
I said hello to a burly fisherman casting a net over the side of the pier.
“What are you trying to catch with that?” I asked him as I pushed my sunglasses back up my sweaty nose.
“Bait. Little fish for bait,” he said.
Hmmm. I know those fish. In fact, I caught one myself just the other day on St. Pete Beach. Something tickled in the top of my bathing suit. I looked down and there was a little silver fish. I didn’t freak out as much as the man 20 feet away from me in the water who saw more than the little fish as I wriggled it out of the top of my suit.
I continued on my way, walking out the pier. The only other people on it were an Asian couple, each with three or four active fishing rods leaning up against the railing.
I smiled and said hello but they just responded with that nod and smile that says, “I know the word hello but not a lick of English beyond that.”
As I got to the end of the pier, I could see a huge bird standing on it. It was a heron. It must have been about 4 feet tall, just standing there all spindly and, wait, there was something hanging out of its mouth.
I got closer and the gangly bird started to bob away. I stopped but squinted to see what it was chewing on.
A fishing line!
It had a fishing line hanging out of its mouth.
How will it eat with that hook in its throat? How did it get there? How will it survive?
I had to get help. I got to the Asian fisherman first.
He nodded and smiled at me as I approached.
I pointed to the heron and then stuck my pointer finger into my mouth, crooked it and poked my cheek out from the inside, the universal symbol for “that bird out there swallowed a fishing hook.”
He smiled and nodded. I nodded and again pointed to the bird but by this point, the man had gone back to his fishing.
Then I saw the burly fisherman who was casting nets for those little bait fish.
“That bird out there swallowed a fishing line,” I said.
“I know. I saw it. People gotta clean up after themselves. They cut their lines, leave them laying around and the birds get at them,” he said.
“Want to help me catch him?” I asked, smoothing out my sundress in an attempt to look more like a serious conservationist than a sweaty tourist-turned-resident.
“Well, ma’am,” (that’s what they call women down here) the man laughed, “I don’t know what we’d do with that bird once we caught it.”
He was probably right. I pushed my sunglasses back up my sweaty nose and continued flip-flopping down the pier. I kept turning around to make sure the bird was still there.
Now what?
Then I remembered a new friend I had made days earlier -- the owner of the used book store. She was only a couple blocks away. She'd know who to call.
I was in luck. She knew someone who knew someone who had the number of the local volunteer for the Shore Bird Sanctuary.
By the time I got back to the pier, there were four people on it: the burly man, the Asian couple and an older woman, who was thin, wearing shorts, a white T-shirt, white anklet socks – and carrying a net.
The shore bird saver!
I could hardly wait to get to her, to tell her I was the one who called, to ask her if I could help.
“He’s gone,” she said to me before I could speak. “This is the second time today that I’ve been out on this bird and he’s never where the people say he is.”
The people?
“That guy,” she said, pointing to the bait fisherman, “said it was here five minutes ago but now it’s gone.”
“Does it bob on the water? Like that?” I asked her as I pointed to a duck 50 feet away.
“Heavens, no. They have no means of swimming,” she said as she walked away from me.
But I wasn’t done. I set my beach bag on the pier and pulled out my beach necessities one at a time until I found the binoculars.
I scanned the horizon, looking for the bird.
I spotted him. He was on a dingy tied to a shorter wooden pier a little way down the beach.
I frantically looked around for the bird rescuer. I spotted her scurrying along the shore.
I stuck my arm up in the air and waved it at her like someone lost at sea would wave at a low-flying aircraft.
She saw me.
“He’s out there,” I mouthed to her as I pointed to the other pier.
She started to walk toward me as I rushed to her.
“Look, he’s eating the bait out of a bucket on that dingy,” I said as I thrust my binoculars at her.
“Now, why would anyone leave bait on that dingy?” she asked as she took my binoculars.
She held her glasses in one hand as she tried to look out of the binoculars. She tilted them and made them wider and then narrower and then, annoyed, pushed them back to me.
“I can't see out of these."
And then, "I have my own binoculars ... in the car.”
“That’s him,” I said. “You can see the wire hanging out of his mouth.”
She grunted in agreement.
“Well, we’ll just have to hope he walks into my lure,” she said as she walked toward her car.
“Can I help?” I asked, walking as fast as a woman with blisters on the top of her feet and a 20-pound beach bag hanging off her left arm can.
“No,” she said.
So I took a spot on a bench on the beach and watched out of my binoculars as the wiry, white-haired woman went after the hooked heron.
She walked to the end of the pier where the dingys were tied up and then she bent at the waist and did something with her lure, which was a pole with a neon-green net tied to one end of it.
I couldn’t tell what she was doing but all of a sudden, she leaned back and then threw her bony arm forward, casting her lure like a fisherman casting a line.
I rotated my arms so that my binoculars moved from her, down her pole to the net.
Holy shit. It looked like she bagged an emu.
She must have had him by the foot because he was hopping one-legged toward her.
As quickly as she caught him, she scooped him up and out of the net and had the enormous bird folded up and tucked under one arm. She held its beak shut with her free hand.
I ran toward her and she walked back from the end of the pier.
“That was great!!” I said. “How did you do that?”
“I’ve done it lots of times,” she said, more annoyed with me than the emu she had tucked under her arm.
I followed her to her car, continuing to tell her how amazing she was.
She interrupted me in mid-praise.
“Now you can help me. Get those scissors off the front seat and cut this.”
She was pointing to the fishing line that was wrapped around the bird’s neck.
When I got close to the bird, I could see that while it may be 4 feet tall, it only weighs about 4 ounces. It was all spindle and feather.
I got the scissors and cut the line. The hero woman unwound it from the bird’s neck and then carried the bird to an awaiting dog crate in the back of her car.
This is where I found out why the bird had been so subdued: She was holding its beak shut. To put it in the crate, she had to let go of the beak – and immediately lost control of the beast.
As she thrust it toward the door of the crate, that bird extended every possible thing on its body that it could extend to keep from going into the cage – it opened its beak, outstretched its wings, raising every feather as high off its body as it could. It spread its long, stick legs and all the toes on it as wide as it could.
But, in another feat of magic by the rescue woman, it was momentarily in the cage and sulking, its face smashed into a corner.
“Are you taking it to a vet?” I asked of the bird that still had fishing line hanging out of its beak.
“There’s a hospital at the sanctuary,” she said. “They know what to do. They don’t even have to cut the bird. They just reach down its throat and get the hook out.”
Reach down its throat and get the hook out.
“Does this happen a lot?” I asked.
“Yes, it does,” she said getting into her car.
I picked up my beach bag and watched as she drove away.
I scooched my feet back in my flip-flops, keeping the rubber away from my blisters and I walked back to my car.
I threw my stuff in the trunk and got it. I was feeling pretty good, having saved a living creature and all.
Never mind the heat and the blisters and the fact that both my cans of pop were long gone, it really was just another day in paradise ...

House for sale -- cheap

2008-10-10T11:29:00.003-04:00

It's 88 degrees in St. Petersburg today. Good thing me and my stuff are in air conditioning.
Now, if I can just get us in the same air-conditioned space.
As I sit in the living room of our one-bedroom apartment in my beach chair, I dream about the comfy couch across town in a storage facility.
But the end is coming soon!
We bought a house -- a foreclosed house -- from the bank.
The real estate market in southwestern Florida is as bad or even worse than the one I left in Lorain, Ohio.
There are so many houses for sale and most of them are in at least PRE-foreclosure, which seems to mean nothing more than the step before full-blown foreclosure.
We had to look for a second house after the first one we "bought" did not appraise as high as the price we had agreed to pay. The buyers wouldn't budge so we walked away from the deal.
As it turns out -- GOOD THING!
I ended up finding a crackerjack ball-of-fire real estate agent named Delia and she had a house up her sleeve.
It's brand new and twice as big as the first one and has marble and tile throughout -- and we got it for almost exactly half of the price it was when it was foreclosed on two years ago. Since then it has been sold at auction, another deal that fell through. We are the third buyers of this new house. It must have been like gum on the bottom of the shoe of the bank that owned it for it to be offered at such a great price.
We should be in by the end of the month.
It doesn't have a pool -- a deal breaker for my husband -- but with the money we saved buying it, we can afford to put one in -- immediately.
The woman who foreclosed on this house, located in the Gulfport area of St. Pete, was from California. She had it built -- with all the upgrades -- but for some reason never moved in or, obviously, paid for it.
Buyers are lucky in this market but poor sellers certainly aren't.
What's going to happen to all these houses that are worth so much less than the owners paid for them? I don't know but I hope somebody smart figures it out soon -- hopefully someone smart enough not to ask "hockey moms" what the bailout plan should be.

Moving heaven and earth -- and my stuff

2008-10-02T09:40:00.009-04:00

The movers were coming.
The big orange semi into which all my worldly belongings were loaded in Lorain last Friday was set to pull into Quality Self Storage on Pasadena Avenue in St. Petersburg at 8 a.m. Wednesday.
Walid (pronounced Wall-eed), the main mover, called me and said to meet him there.
I made sure I got there on time. Something says you shouldn't anger in any way the man who holds all your earthly possessions.
Plus, it would give me a chance to find some things I wish I would not have packed -- like all my clothes and my toaster.
There we were -- Walid, a local moving man named Greg who was there to help and me -- in front of the Quality Self Storage at 8 a.m.
Too bad the place didn't open until 8:30.
Yikes. I offered to go find coffee for the kind mover men.
We finally got into the place and started unloading. My compartment could only be accessed from inside the huge warehouse because I got a unit that was "climate controlled," which means it is in air-conditioning.
I watched as boxes marked "books" were loaded onto dollys on top of boxes marked "fragile -- wine glasses."
Gulp.
I thought I better help.
So there I was in 90-degree heat and humidity, working right alongside the two men.
I plucked out a box here and there. Some marked "kitchen," some marked "Patti's clothes," some marked "EXTREMELY fragile."
Most of those boxes would be placed toward the front of the storage unit so I could get access to them at a later time.
A few of the others, I would take back to the teeny little one-bedroom apartment my husband and I are inhabiting until we find a house we like, er, can afford.
About three hours into the unloading-off-the-truck-and-reloading-into-a-storage-unit, it became apparent -- to Walid, at least -- that everything wasn't going to fit into one unit.
So, soon we had two.
I was chasing after the cart- and dolly-wielding moving men, trying to read what the boxes were labeled. Darn, I wish I would have put bright yellow stripes on the important ones.
Walid, who came to the United States from Syria 20 years ago, assured me 1. he would stop loading books on wine glasses and 2. he would keep the boxes I need toward the front of the unit.
It took "us" eight hours to get everything unloaded. About six hours in, I gave up caring about anything. They could put the stuff in however they wanted.
I was sitting on the curb outside the warehouse when Walid came to tell me they were finished.
"It was close but we got it all in," he said.
"Just be careful when you open the second unit. We had to put the TV on top."
The TV? The 52-inch TV? On top of what?
"Can I get at the boxes I need?"
Walid didn't answer.
"Well?"
"If you take the TV home first," he said.
"Let's go look," I told him.
He followed me into the warehouse and we stood before the closed door of the unit.
"It's in there," he said.
"Can we open it and look?" I asked.
"We better not."
We better not? What does that mean? We better not when he's still here?
"I want to see what happens when we open that door -- while you are still here," I told him.
So, he pulled open the garage-door-like metal door.
There before my eyes was my stuff -- packed from floor to ceiling. I could see the front tire of a bike and piles of boxes. And right in the front -- if it was any closer, it would be touching the door -- was the back of the big TV.
Oh, well. At least, I had put some boxes in my car to take home with me.
I was too tired to see if I grabbed good boxes until this morning.
I pulled the tape off and opened them.
The kitchen boxes contained not the toaster or my coffee grinder but cups and casserole dishes.
The boxes marked "Patti's clothes" contained not shorts and T-shirts but sweatshirts and shoes.
Well, I never win the regular lottery -- why should I win the box lottery?
Hopefully, we'll be in a new house soon and I'll be able to have everything I need.
Until then, you'll find me walking around in sweatpants and high-heeled pumps as I try to brown my toast in a casserole dish in the oven.

All's fair but that doesn't make it right

2008-09-16T02:53:00.005-04:00

Once we knew we'd be moving to St. Petersburg, we started thinking about where we would live when we got there.
I found a readers' forum on a real estate site from the area and posted a question asking about the best places to live.
I got several replies, including one from a real estate agent named Mike.
We wrote back and forth and pretty soon, he was Our Realtor.
We'd give him a list of houses we found online and he would line up visits for us.
He might have seen us as business clients but we saw him as a friend -- our first friend in Florida.
He took us through dozens of houses.
A lot of them were nice; they were OK. But they just weren't THE house.
Then one day, the day after a marathon house-shopping spree with Mike, I drove around all day long all by myself. I drove street after street, neighborhood after neighborhood, trying to find a house.
Six hours later, I went back to the apartment my husband is temporarily staying in and called up the Tampa Bay Craig's List.
(Craig's List is a free online classified service, available for most parts of the country -- including the Cleveland area.)
I found a house there that seemed perfect. A street was listed but no house number. I sent the home owner, who was selling it without a real estate agent, an e-mail.
She wrote back with the house number and we drove past it.
It WAS perfect. It was in a great location. It was the right price. And, most importantly, it was exactly the kind of house we were looking for.
We went and looked at it, one thing led to another and pretty soon we were making plans to buy the house.
And then we got an e-mail from Mike.
"Where are you guys?"
Mike. Our Realtor. Our friend.
How does Mike fit into this?
We didn't know so we didn't answer him. We haven't answered him.
I asked some friends. They said, "Oh, well. Too bad."
I asked a real estate agent. He said, "It depends on what you signed."
We didn't sign anything. Besides, I wasn't asking about the legality of what had happened, I was asking about the morality of it.
I want to tell Mike we never set out to betray him.
We had every intention of buying a house from him.
It just happened.
I just wish I felt better about it.

Those winds blew some sense in me

2008-09-16T01:43:00.005-04:00

"If a hurricane's coming," I said to my husband the other day, "I'm not leaving."
He turned toward me, laughed and said, "Oh, yes, you are."
"The house isn't that close to the water," I said, waiting for him to keep arguing.
But he was done talking. He wasn't angry but it was clear he thought the subject was too ridiculous to waste any more energy discussing.
I was talking about weathering a typhoon in the house we are buying in St. Petersburg.
If you've ever flown into the Tampa airport, you've seen St. Petersburg. From the sky, it looks like a teardrop -- made up of almost as much water as land -- hanging into the Gulf of Mexico.
In other words, almost all of it is close to water.
The city is mapped into evacuation areas. The areas that get evacuated first are given the letter A. That includes waterfront property and all mobile home parks.
Our new house is in Evacuation Area B -- second highest priority.
But I still thought it was OK to wait out a hurricane there. How bad can it be, I thought.
And then I met Ike.
The winds were just starting to pick up when I dropped my weekend-marriage husband off at the airport Sunday afternoon.
By the time I got home, the sky had a yellow cast and the wind was blowing down leaves and limbs.
My backyard looked like a war zone. Most of the potted plants were tipped over and ...
THE GAZEBO WAS FLOATING UPSIDE DOWN IN THE POOL.
It's one of those canvas shelters that have screen sides that can be pulled shut but most of the time are tied in the corners.
It had been BOLTED onto the wooden deck but now it was in the pool -- like a dead dog in a cartoon with its four PVC-pipe legs sticking straight up into the air.
I've got to get it out, I thought as my head quickly filled with visions of those four pipe legs ripping holes in the pool liner.
I reached in the pool, grabbed one of the legs and pulled.
But the howling wind was pulling back and the water in the pool was lapping over the side of the canvas, filling it like it was a gigantic upside-down umbrella.
I yanked and pulled and rocked and tugged and eventually pulled it out.
Now what?
I now had an upside-down umbrella on land. It was no longer in danger of sinking but now it was in danger of blowing away.
I stood on the canvas to keep it from blowing away and I looked around for salvation that wouldn't come.
I pulled the legs off and dragged it next to the utility shed to shield it from the wind.
The wind was still gusting as I walked back to the house, satisfied I had secured the gazebo as best I could.
I stowed some lawn furniture and righted the plants that had tipped over.
And then I went in the house -- and finally had the chance to say, "Yikes!"
The wind was THIS strong 1,000 miles from where the hurricane made landfall.
How strong must that wind be in Evacuation Area B?
Don't ask me. I'm pretty sure I'll be long gone before I ever get a chance to find out.

The last Chronicle column

2008-09-09T19:13:00.002-04:00

What makes a woman -- who is not going into witness protection -- up and leave family and friends, a comfortable home and a newspaper career to move 1,200 miles away?
A husband whose lifelong dream has been to live among palm trees and palmetto bugs, that’s what.
You see, a few months ago, I dragged home from yet another day leading the charge to put out this newspaper to find my teacher-husband hunched over the computer, feverishly tapping on the keyboard with his two pointer fingers.
There were manila folders and stacks of paper everywhere. His reading glasses were perched on the end of his nose and I’m pretty sure he was sweating.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Sending out resumes to Florida,” he answered.
“We’re moving to Florida?”
“We can if I find a job down there. What do you think?”
What I thought was that our lifelong dream of moving to a tropical climate could actually turn out to be more than a dream.
And I also thought that it would give me an excuse to get out of the newspaper.
Putting out a 25,000-circulation daily newspaper is like riding a never-ending roller coaster. I would never voluntarily get off that roller coaster. It’s too much fun. But, at the same time, I always wished the thing would stop for just a minute so I could catch my breath.
And now, with the words, “moving to Florida,” I thought for the first time in my life, I could actually hear the sound of that roller coaster pulling into the station.
In recent years, there have been some things going on at the paper that told me it’s time to move on. Now I had the chance.
And, so, we were moving – or at least we were willing to move.
My husband sent out close to 100 resumes to Florida school districts that had teacher openings.
He never heard back from any of them … not even a “thanks but no thanks.” It’s as if he was filing those applications into a black hole.
And then he heard from St. Petersburg. He was one of a dozen prospects for one job. He went down for an interview. They hired him that very day.
And so, we really were moving.
Fast forward two months and here we are today. He has a job. I don’t. For the first time in 30 years, I not only don’t work at a newspaper, I don’t work anywhere.
Talk about a woman without a country.
I hope to get some writing work, hopefully on a magazine, and I plan to shop my column around down there.
But I just wanted to say how much fun it has been telling you stories every week in this column.
And I want to thank you for all the kind comments you have sent back to me about it and the stories of your own lives that you have shared with me.
I always thought that deep down we really are all a lot alike. Your reactions to this column proved that to be true.
I’ll keep writing online at pattiewald.blogspot.com.
I’m sure the skunks and other critters that have been terrorizing me in Ohio will get word to the wildlife in Florida that I’m on my way down.
Do you think beating with a broken broom handle on the top of the metal lid of a fire pit will scare away alligators in Florida the way it scared away birds of prey in Ohio?
Stay tuned.

Patti Ewald’s last day as managing editor of The Chronicle was Friday. You can always reach her at pagewald@hotmail.com. Please stay in touch.

Patti and the bachelor

2008-07-10T23:07:00.004-04:00

Well, things have finally calmed down with our local-boy-makes-good story about Jesse Csincsak and The Bachelorette.
I got involved writing the story when Steve Fogarty, our entertainment go-to guy, couldn't watch it one night.
Then, a couple weeks later, he couldn't watch it again.
After seeing it twice, I was, gulp, hooked.
It's a dumb show and I yelled at the TV as much as the sports guys in the newsroom do when they are watching the Cavaliers but I watched anyway.
I'm pretty sure it's just because Jesse was involved. Although I never knew him, he was a year behind -- and a friend of -- my older son in high school.
He also happens to be my cousins' cousin.
So I had more than a casual interest.
I never thought he had a shot ... even when he was one of only two remaining.
But I did think he was the only one of all of them who wasn't the kind of gushy guy I would never want to go out with.
I got the interview with him that ran on Wednesday by calling his publicist -- "Everything has to go through my publicist," he told us -- as soon as DeAnna Pappas picked him.
I asked if I could talk to Jesse the next day and she hooked me up.
I didn't know until I got him on the phone that I had 10 minutes with him. Now, I don't know if you've ever interviewed anyone but 10 minutes isn't a lot of time.
Sure, it was time to ask all the questions I had prepared but it didn't leave a whole lot of time to write down his responses.
If I would have been smart, I would have recorded the conversation.
He's a nice guy. He really is. And as was his style on the show, he seemed to be really honest and forthright with his answers.
I'll be curious to see how the story ends.
Until then, I'm trying to get an invitation to a party he (his publicist) is having when he comes to Ohio later this summer.
If the "press" isn't invited, I told her I would just come as a regular person.
Wonder if she believes me when I say I can separate the two.

The building has no power and neither do we

2008-06-10T02:06:00.010-04:00

We were without electricity for a few hours Monday night after the storm knocked out power downtown and the newspaper's generator failed to kick on.
When we finally were able to get back on our computers, we hustled to get the paper out.
Sometime after midnight we got a tip that Middle Avenue near Value City and a portion of Russia Road had been barricaded and there were many police cars in the area.
We called the Elyria Police and were told that the sheriff's department was handling it.
The only question was: Handling what?
There were no reporters left in the newsroom at that hour to dispatch so I asked one of our copy editors -- Michael Baker -- to call the sheriff's department to find out what was going on.
Well, seems the dispatcher would give him absolutely no information. Nothing.
He came into my office.
"What am I supposed to do in a situation like this?" he asked.
"She wouldn't tell me anything."
I couldn't imagine that a dispatcher would not give us a general idea of what was going on.
So, I said, "Give me that number."
I called her.
"I don't have any information," she said.
"You don't know what the call was they went out on?" I asked.
"I don't have a press release," she said.
She doesn't have a press release.
Now, come on.
"All I want to know is what was the call they went out on," I repeated.
She repeated similar stonewalling sentiments.
She would not tell me anything.
So, I pulled Michael away from his copy-editing job and sent him to the scene to check things out.
Then I left a message on Sheriff Stammitti's voicemail pleading for just a little cooperation.
When Michael got to the barricades, he was told by a law enforcement officer to wait in the Value City parking lot.
Michael asked him what was going on and he said he didn't know.
He said he didn't know.
I was beginning to wonder if anybody did know.
Michael told me that Terry Costigan of TMC News was already there.
I told him to ask Terry what was going on.
And finally, we got our information: There's a hostage situation in a house.
Thanks, Terry.
You know, that's all we wanted to know.
Is that really too much to ask?

Pomp not too circumspect

2008-06-04T00:40:00.002-04:00

It has to be tough to be the superintendent of a school district and have to speak at commencement. And, if there are two high schools in your district, it would be doubly tough.
So, what do you do?
Well, if you are Cheryl Atkinson, winding up her first year as superintendent of Lorain Schools, you just give the same speech twice. Well, almost the same speech.
When I was reading over the story Jason Hawk wrote for Wednesday's paper about Admiral King's graduation, her words sounded vaguely familiar.
So I looked back to see what she had said to Southview graduates the night before.
Monday night, she asked Southview graduates, "Who are you? Are you the next business owner? Scientist? Teacher? President? Will you hold the cure for cancer? Who are you, really?"
Tuesday night, she asked Admiral King graduates, "Who are you? You are the ones who have achieved in spite of obstacles … you are our window of opportunity, cure for cancer, hope for the future of our city, state and nation."
Well, at least by the second reincarnation of the speech, she was answering the question, "Who are you?" instead of following it up with more questions.
Maybe she'll luck out next year and one of these graduating seniors will answer her question with the words: "A speechwriter!"

Of missing bodies and handsome bachelors

2008-05-19T23:34:00.004-04:00

Some nights here in the newsroom, we dig and dig and finally find gold.
But some nights, we dig and dig and all we end up with is a great big hole.
Tonight was a whole lot more the latter.
Court reporter Brad Dicken picked up a lawsuit during late afternoon court checks that had him breathless.
The suit seemed to say that three brothers were suing the City of Amherst for digging up their deceased mother's body from a cemetery and selling it to a man for $70.
Well, after Brad went to Amherst and talked to a few people, the story became: Amherst dug up a woman's ashes from a potter's field in Crownhill Cemetery because a man -- presumably the woman's boyfriend -- wanted to move the ashes closer to family.
It's still an interesting story you can read about in tomorrow's Chronicle ... it just wasn't quite what we thought it was going to be.
But then, neither was the story of our bachelor, Jesse Csincsak, vying for the affections of "The Bachelorette."
Jesse, an Amherst grad, is a professional snowboarder -- and he dresses like one (think skater). He had on a multi-colored jacket and neon sneakers and his hair hung in his eyes.
But, no matter, The Bachelorette not only kept him in the running, she gave him one of the first three roses (which means he's safe from elimination). Steve Fogarty watched the show at home and e-mailed in a story when it was over.
Well, those were the two most interesting stories we were working on tonight.
And the good news is, they're not over yet.
Stay tuned.

Slow night except for the Cavs

2008-05-12T22:56:00.003-04:00

The most exciting thing that happened in the newsroom tonight -- besides the Cavs tying up the series, of course -- was a phone call I got from an extremely angry woman.
"I want to talk to the person who puts the ads in the paper," she said to me through what sounded like clenched teeth.
"Ads or stories?" I asked as calm as she was uncalm.
"Whatever. Did you see today's paper? Despite imposters, wild child, Cavs beat all (that was the headline that ran on the Cavs story on Monday's front page)," she asked, her words dripping with disgust.
"Does that belong on the front page?"
"What offends you about it?" I asked her.
"It's sports!"
Hmmm. I tried to explain to her that every day every story is relative. That's the way the news goes. Sometimes a really great story will end up inside the paper because there just happens to be -- on that particular day -- half a dozen even greater stories.
Other days, a cute squirrel or a Cavaliers preview story winds up on Page 1 because there just isn't anything better to knock it out of its lofty front page spot.
I think I settled her down a little but all that means is she wasn't quite as angry. She didn't stop her sports-on-the-front-page complaint.
I don't know. I think the Cavs are pretty big news right now.
Aren't they?

Workin' on the night shift

2008-05-08T23:25:00.006-04:00

I have new hours custom-made for those upcoming sunny summer days but not so much for an old girl like me.
In a recent downsizing, the paper eliminated the assistant managing editor position and the top three newsroom managers all got jockeyed around.
I kept my title and as many of the management duties as I can perform on the late shift while the assistant managing editor was bumped to metro editor and the metro editor was bumped to a reporting position.
But, seriously, it's kind of nice to be with the night people. The pace is much slower and the aggravations a lot fewer.
Gee, I might even have time to blog ...
Here's what was going on tonight in The Newsroom: My favorite story we were working was the one about the 23-cent pizza sale going on at 86 Papa John outlets dotted around the Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo and Youngstown areas.
Bruce Bishop, our always photographer and sometimes reporter, wrote a short story based on what he saw when he went to one of the two Papa John's closest to us on Detroit Road in Westlake to take photos about 3 this afternoon.
When Jason Hawk, our night police reporter, got in, he updated the story and filed it around 6. At that time, the manager of nine Cleveland-area P.J.s said they had enough pizza makings to go the duration -- which was supposed to be 12:30 Friday morning.
Well, guess what? They didn't. Both the Westlake and North Olmsted P.J.s stopped answering their phones before 9 p.m. and reporter Cindy Leise, who stopped in for a late night pizza snack after shopping in North Olmsted, called us with an update just before 10 p.m.
"The cops just came by and told us all to go home," she said. "And, we heard the Westlake one is closed, too."
So I pulled the story off the page and gave it back to Jason for an update. It changed considerably with the thrust now being that they ran out of pizzas before hungry LeBron fans ran out of the desire for them.
We also were finally able to report that it looks as if the victim of Tuesday's heinous abduction and shooting at the Carlisle Reservation will probably be paralyzed from the wound to her back.
We had known and reported that the bullet hit close to her spine but we were not able to get the family to tell us any more. But they told the sheriff's department and that's who we are attributing it to in tomorrow's story.
The Cavs game was on the TV out in the newsroom and although I can't see it and can hardly hear it from my office, I can usually hear hoopin' and hollerin' coming from the sports desk.
But not tonight.
"The Cavs lost?" I asked Assistant Sports Editor Scott Petrak.
"They got killed," he said.
And other than that, it was a pretty quiet night.
Unless, of course, you count the unannounced visit from our former co-worker Matt Westerhold, who is now the managing editor of The Sandusky Register.
And, if you think there are sordid tales here in Lorain County, you should hear what goes on in Sandusky.

The calm before the storm

2008-03-04T13:32:00.002-05:00

Well, it's election day in the newsroom -- and it's the deadest place you have ever seen.
And there's nothing comforting about a quiet newsroom. It's unnatural.
It's supposed to be filled with chaos and chatter and people running around and squabbling, er, discussing.
The few people who are actually working the day shift -- we need all the troops we can muster tonight when the results start pouring in -- are out and about, checking out polling places and police stations.
So far, so good.
Meanwhile, I'm just here waiting for all hell to break loose.
Editors will start coming in about dinner time, reporters an hour or so later. They'll try to get as much of their assigned stories written as they can (the background on candidates or issues) and then "top" them with the results when they come in.
While the Internet and its continuous stream of information has taken some of the fun out of elections for us, I think tonight will have its own magic.
For we, like the rest of you, will be on the edge of our seats waiting to see who won the Democratic presidential race.
Want to share how you voted? I'd love to hear.
It'll give me something to do until the floodgates open.

Earth to Earthlink customers

2008-02-11T16:03:00.000-05:00

Just a note to any of you who send e-mail through Earthlink.
You can talk to us, but we can't talk to you.
Yes, it's true. We -- The Chronicle -- have been blocked by the Earthlink blocker.
Our IT department has tried repeatedly to get us off the Earthlink spam list.
I even tried again this morning with a live-chat person.

Anyway, if you are an Earthlink customer and haven't gotten a reply from us, it's not because we don't want to answer you.
It's because your e-mail agent won't let us get to you.

School is closed, no, open, no, closed ...

2008-02-11T15:05:00.000-05:00

School closings.
Seems easy enough information to obtain, doesn't it?
It's NOT!
Finding out if your school is open seems like something you should be able to get from the local paper, right?
Well, we think so, too.
We usually have to call every district and ask "Have you closed school for tomorrow?"
Seems inefficient. We are trying to set up some sort of system so the schools will automatically inform us.
This is what happened early this morning: Bruce Bishop, our chief photographer and Web site guru, wanted to post school closings online. It was 2:50 a.m.
He looked first to WEOL, the AM radio station owned by the same company that owns The Chronicle. The radio's Web site had nothing. We found out later that the radio posts its school closings around 6 a.m. (That's what I get for having a night-owl instead of early-bird Web guy, I guess.)
When we had spoken to Lorain County Community College at about 11 p.m. Sunday night, the campus was going to remain open. But that decision changed in the morning.
Long story longer, we are doing our best to try to get you the most accurate information on school closings first. I wanted you to know that.
And if anybody has a suggestion on how we might do that more efficiently, I'd love to hear it.

Hurka recipe

2008-02-09T21:11:00.000-05:00

If you have come here looking for the hurka recipe I wrote about in my Feb. 4 Chronicle column, you can get it here.

Good luck, all you little hurka makers.

Hey, it's Lorain, not Low-rain

2008-01-29T13:46:00.000-05:00

I live in Lorain.
And I work in Elyria.
That means that every day when I come to work, I cross over the Great Divide -- Route 254.
And I've heard from both sides of that Great Divide.
Elyria people call Lorain "Thugville."
And Lorain people call Elyria "Cowtown."
My Elyria co-workers are always saying things such as: "Aren't you afraid to go home?"
No.
Or "Is that city completely out of control?"
No.
Or "How can you live there?"
I like living there.
Even though there have been a dozen unsolved armed robberies in Lorain since the first of the year.
I want to know what gives?
Who are these gun-totin' robbers?
Are they kids? Where do kids get guns?
Why are they doing this?
Is it because they see others getting away with it?
Is it because they need drug money?
Or do they need money to pay their mortgage or buy their kids medicine?
At least one of these robberies was solved. The one that involved the killing of a man, who by all reports, was one of the gentlest, kindest people in Lorain.
Jose Gonzalez Sr., the grocer who managed to keep his little corner store operating in these tough times. The man who forgave money owed. The man always willing to help someone out.
To that arrest, we should tip our hats to the Lorain police officers who hunted him down.
But what about all the other robbers? How can they be caught?
Help me have something to say when someone says something bad about Lorain.

A blizzard of replies

2008-01-23T16:29:00.000-05:00

We've been asking readers to give us their storm stories from the Blizzard of '78 -- and here we are digging out from under a pile of responses.
It is great to have readers interact with us. I think you'll enjoy reading about babies being born, weddings being performed and lots of digging out in our packages of blizzard stories on Sunday.
If you haven't sent us your story, we're still prepared for a late flurry. But send them by Thursday noon.

If only civilized society was a little more civil

2007-12-04T18:06:00.000-05:00

Being in the news business means having to deal with the underbelly of the human race.
And I'm not talking about murderers and rapists.
I'm talking about people who weren't paying attention when their parents were teaching them manners.
I'm talking about people who call the newsroom to scream (and that is no exaggeration) profanities about something we did or didn't write.
Here's what happened today:
We had a story in the paper about an Elyria truck driver who was killed in an accident.
It's tough getting details about a fatal car accident.
It's even tougher getting details about the person who was killed.
On deadline. When no or few family phone numbers are listed.
Well, our reporter, Steve Szucs, got the details of the crash.
But he was determined to get more, to tell the whole story -- of not just the accident itself but of the man who lost his life in it.
Steve got lucky. He went through the phone book, dialing numbers until he found the victim's aunt.
She seemed close to the victim. She was broken up about his death. She had a photograph of him that she gave us to put in the paper.
And she told us he didn't have any kids.
Well, guess what? It turns out the victim had a son, a 10-year-old son.
How did we find that out?
By someone who called this morning after reading the story to tell us how incompetent we were.
By someone else who called to tell us to get out stories straight.
And by a dozen other people with similar sentiments -- none of them, to my knowledge, family of the victim.
And finally, in the capper this evening, by a woman who called us every name in the book with f'ing as an adjective for each of those names.
Who ARE these people?
They walk among us.
Let's just hope they aren't walking behind us down a dark alley.

By the way, we made plans to recify our error after the very first phone call.
While we feel bad about the error, frankly, I don't know how we could have done anything differently. Or if we will do anything differently next time.

Soon you'll call -- and someone will answer

2007-12-03T18:33:00.000-05:00

Guess where I'm going tomorrow?
To training for our new phone system.
Yes, soon, very soon, you will be able to reach us on our phones again.
Or at least leave us voicemail.
For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, we have had only a very limited number of phones since the roof leaked over our phone-room months ago.
Worse, we have had no voicemail.
If you've tried unsuccessfully to reach any of us recently, you know how frustrating it can be.
Imagine how things have been on our end. I have a cell phone and that is the number I list in the paper. That one I pick up. That one takes voicemail.
But sometimes people call my old number, the land line.
Which rings on a phone across the room, a phone that also rings a couple other numbers. Sometimes I get up to answer it and sometimes I don't (sorry).
But soon (I've been assured), there will be a phone on every desk.
A phone that works.

Gay guy furious we reported he was HIV-positive

2007-12-03T17:34:00.000-05:00

I got an e-mail today from a very angry man who is HIV-positive.
He was mad because we put his name in a story.
"He had no right to disclose legally protected information," he wrote about our reporter.
Then the HIV-positive man demanded I fire the reporter and advised me to contact our lawyer.
Well, here's the problem. I don't think we did anything wrong.
You see, we included his name in the story because his mother was talking about him during an event to mark World AIDS Day. We covered the event.
What his mother said was compelling: She said she had trouble dealing with it when her son told her 15 years ago that he and his partner were HIV positive. She also said she was shunned by some of her friends.
"I couldn't believe it. I walked out of the room. I couldn't talk to him that day," she said. "I had to learn to love him, accept him and not point any fingers."
We named her and her son in the story because she named her and her son at the event.
I e-mailed the son a response to his note.
"At the event, several people spoke about their loved ones," I wrote. "Our reporter wrote down what was said at the public gathering and then wrote a story about it.
"If I was at a public event such as that – and I am a longtime journalist – I would assume that anybody whose name is mentioned has given the person mentioning it permission to do so. Why would a reporter think otherwise?"
The son phoned me before he got the e-mail.
The only non-hostile word he spoke was "Hello, my name is ..."
And then he started yelling. Not a good approach when you are trying to get a point across.
And then he called me "sweetie." Not a good thing to call a stranger you are trying to convince of anything.
Then he called the reporter the OTHER f-word, the racial slur for homosexuals.
I threatened to hang up on him and he settled down.
He asked to have his name pulled from the story that was online.
I agreed to do it -- without reservation. I understand the situation it put him in.
I also understand that when we cover an event or a meeting, it is our job simply to report what we saw and heard there.
And the more specific we can get, the better.

Even more trash talk in Lorain

2007-11-08T15:51:00.000-05:00

The phone rang today.
It was Helen Goldberg, a 90-year-old resident of Lorain's 1st Ward who calls me occasionally.
"I have a good idea for a story," she said.
"Write about what's going on with the trash pickup in Lorain."
Yee-ouch.
We have been writing that story for a long time now and yet sharp-as-a-tack loyal reader Helen has looked right over it -- or has not understood a word we have written.
Chuck Camera, street supervisor, told me after I talked to Helen yesterday that it isn't a fair program for Lorain, the city with a lot of renters (landlords evict them and pile all their belongings in the street) and streets lined with parked cars (so the automated arms on the garbage cans can't get at the bins).
He estimated that of the 22,000 households in Lorain, only 13,000 to 16,000 pay to have their trash picked up.
What about the other 6,000 to 9,000 people?
They either live in apartments and use the apartment Dumpsters or they throw it anywhere they can find -- including the middle of the street, Chuck said.
After I taked to Chuck, I asked our courts and county reporter, Brad Dicken, to write a trash story explaining what's going on but with a bit more of a human angle.
"Talk to the people," I said, "not just the bureaucrats."
Brad told me that the pilot program Lorain is being asked to join is for only two years and 900 households.
After those two years, Lorain can keep doing what it's doing, convert the whole city to the new program or dump the program all together.
If it dumps the program all together, its grant money from the Lorain County Solid Waste Commission would drop minimally (from $250,000 to $225,000), Brad told me.
So, I think that's a small price to pay for a greener planet.
Well, at least a greener county.

(By the way, if you don't understand what's going on either, you're in good company. Lorain Mayor-elect Tony Krasienko was quoted in our story today as saying, "We still never got a complete answer on everything. It's still a little fuzzy.")

Sorting through the trash (collecting)

2007-11-06T13:54:00.000-05:00

As a person who faithfully recycles, I was a little dismayed to find out the only thing that stood between me and a healthier planet were six city councilmen in Lorain who last night voted no on "pay as you throw."
For those of you who have been living in a Dumpster for the past few months, "pay as you throw" is a program (being pushed by the Lorain County Solid Waste Policy Committee) in which households are limited to the amount of trash they can put on the curb.
The common way to do this is to give every household two containers. One for trash and one for recylables. The theory behind this is that people trying to save space in their limited trash bin will throw recyclables in the other one, where they belong -- instead of between the coffee grounds and banana peels in the garbage.
Sounds like an idea that should have no opposition, right?
Well, it did. In Lorain. Where I live. The city council vote was 3-6 against the program.
Lorain has to approve it by Wednesday in order for the county to get $1.5 million in recycling incentives.
How could they do this, I thought ... when every other city in Lorain County has approved it?
And then I got this interesting e-mail from Rocky in LaGrange where "pay as you throw" has already been implemented:

"i am a resident of lagrange and have been on the "pay as you throw" program for a few months now. i have received zero cost reduction, actually my last bill went up and i am giving less trash. not to mention i no longer have the ability to throw away large objects or construction material, unless i rent or borrow a truck to load up and take into town to designated area which allows you to throw away such items. i live outside the city and i am truly considering dropping my trash pick-up completely and just burning everything i can and dropping what i can't off at the designated area when needed. to me lorain did the right thing. the program needs to revised to accommodate their issues, but also issues they have not brought up. the designated dumping area needs to be dropped. a monthly or bimonthly or quarterly pick-up for large items and construction material at our residence would be a better solution. also the price needs to go down for people to accept this. throwing away less trash and recycling more should mean we pay less. i am 100% behind the decision that was made in lorain, things need to be improved drastically in my opinion.
also i wish the other city councils would have been as smart as the lorain council in trying to get this program improved before implementing it!
kudos to lorain!"

And now I'm all confused. You mean the trash collectors will never take that old couch or that broken lawn chair if you put them out on the treelawn?
Well, shoot, sometimes you have stuff that won't fit in a garbage can but I don't want to have to haul it to a dump. It's tough enough to do that with tree branches.
And for all this inconvenience -- and the number of trash collectors it should eliminate -- I should see cheaper bills.
We have to do some more reporting on this story, I think.
The only problem is I won't know before I go to the polls today whether to reward or punish those Lorain politicians who voted down the program.

Countdown to elections

2007-11-05T17:45:00.001-05:00

There is a lot of last-minute scrambling in the newsroom on the day before elections.
We got our manifest for Wednesday's paper this afternoon. (You know the newsroom gets to fill around the ads, not the other way around, right?)
We usually have an entire section of the paper designated for election results -- but not this year. They are installing a new press and until it is fully functional, we can only get four sections in the paper.
It's true, sometimes you get a paper with more than four sections but that only means some of those were printed ahead of time and then stuffed into the paper (as was our 44-page election preview). Kind of tough to do that on deadline, though, so the election "section" will actually be the back of the A section. Hope it's easy for you to navigate.
We've talked a little about what will go on Page 1 on Wednesday. Like I said in a previous post, we like the county sales tax hike and the Lorain and Elyria mayoral elections for Page 1. But we also like any upsets, any unseated incumbents. They'll be considered for the front page, too.
We also plan for photos and -- much to the dismay of our chief photographer, Bruce Bishop -- we set up assignments for just about everyone since we don't know who the winners will be. He'll bring in his entire crew to help out election night.
Almost everyone in the newsroom will shift their hours to work Tuesday night. There will be a skeleton staff around during the day in case any other news breaks. We've always joked that election day would be a good day for a criminal to rob a bank -- at least as far as newspapers are concerned. I think the police are still at full shift that day.
But I'll be in early and take a break in the afternoon before coming back for all the excitement.
Our Gal Friday, metro desk assistant Paulanne Oakes, always makes sure everyone in the newsroom has plenty to eat on election night. She plans and cooks and orders and no one ever goes home hungry.
Exhausted, yes, but not hungry.

Nobody's perfect -- especially around elections

2007-11-02T14:59:00.000-04:00

I walked into the office Thursday and all hell had broken loose.
Everyone in the newsroom -- all six of them at that point -- had logged one complaint or another about our Special Election Section that had come out in that day's paper.
Ooh, that hurts.
There are not words to describe how tough it is to put out one of those election guides -- especially when we have to gather information on 60-plus races involving some 300 candidates.
There are no big, flashy races coming up Tuesday -- my apologies to Bill Grace and John Romoser and Bonnie Ivancic and everyone else who is slighted by that comment.
The race we are looking at for the top of Page 1 the day after the elections is the countywide 0.25 percent sales tax increase. That is what we see as our biggest election story.
Oh, and any incumbent mayor getting unseated. Those stories will get prominent play, too.
Oh, and the school issues -- such as the 4.99-mill bond issue in North Ridgeville.
Oh, and the 0.25 percent income tax increase in Avon to build a YMCA rec center.
And that about sums up why it is such a bear to mold an election into something our readers can -- and want to -- read. Nothing is that important and everything is very important.
Christina Jolliffe, the metro editor, is point person at election time. She is the epitome of organization (God love her) and manages to keep everything straight.
We decided for this year's election preview to give all the candidates the same questions to answer. We thought that would give voters the most accurate picture of the differences between the candidates.
And for the most part, it worked out. The races were divvied up between the reporters (God love them) who managed to quiz the candidates while maintaining their already big workloads.
I say it worked "for the most part" because some of the complaints were "you didn't run everything I said."
Well, here's the deal. We only have so much room. We -- news editor Ben Nagy, that is -- had to do some creative cramming to get all the information we had into the 44 pages allotted to us for the section.
Ben figured out how everything would fit. We decided it would be more useful to readers to group cities -- for instance, all the races in Amherst -- rather than topics -- for instance, all the school board races. Ben and his copy editors had four days to do this.
We checked it and checked it and checked it again, Ben graciously fixing all the problems we found.
But, as usual, we did not get it absolutely perfect. (I actually think it might be the quest for that elusive perfection that keeps journalists coming to work everyday.)
We left out some photos (they were misplaced in our electronic archive) and we misspelled one candidate's name (sorry Bob Slovak, candidate in North Ridgeville's First Ward).
But, I think we now have everything straightened out and we can relax.
Until Tuesday night, that is.

How could Sabrina get kicked off?

2007-10-31T12:21:00.000-04:00

Before I start ranting about "Dancing with the Stars," I guess I better 'fess up to watching it.
I tried not to get hooked but it's pretty hard.
Go ahead, I dare you, try to watch it for only one dance.
Wait, no sense watching it now.
The best dancer got booted from the show, Sabrina Bryan of the girl band, "Cheetah Girls."
Here's the deal for the uninitiated: Celebrities are paired with professional dancers and each week one couple is eliminated based on how the judges vote on the show and how the viewers vote -- over the phone and online -- in the half-hour after the show.
Usually, the couple that gets the boot is the couple that should get the boot. As there are fewer and fewer contenders, better and better dancers get kicked off. But, up until last night, it has always seemed to me that the weakest of the remaining got kicked off.
But after what happened last night with Sabrina, it seems that was just because we have been lucky up to this point.
There are some major problems with the voting.
First, the show's judges do not hold all contestants to the same standards. Wayne Newton was an original member of this year's show. What he had to do to get a "7" from the judges is nothing like what Sabrina Bryan had to do to get a "7."
In the show that led to her ouster, Sabrina got pretty low marks for an almost perfect performance.
Not fair.
Then, although the audience has a half hour to vote after the show, I defy you to try to cast the seven votes allowed to you. It is impossible to get through on the phone. Hang up that option.
But it is also nearly impossible to get onto the Web site to vote because it is experiencing so much traffic.
Some of the comments burning up online fan sites the day after blame Sabrina's defeat on people not voting because she was so good, they didn't feel the need to cast their vote. She was a lock.
Guess not.
I don't know about you but I want the most talented person to win a talent contest.
If that's what "Dancing with the Stars" is all about, they need to fix their voting procedure.
Still on the show is Jane Seymour. Not for anything, and God love her, she's even older than me, BUT she isn't as good as Sabrina Bryan -- by a long shot. Perhaps more Dr. Quinn fans watch the show than Cheetah Girls fans but that shouldn't keep the best dancer from winning.
A lot of people are saying they are done watching the show.
I'm not ready to say that but it sure has lost a lot of its magic as far as I'm concerned.

Daniel visits his mother

2007-10-26T15:00:00.000-04:00

Daniel Petric, the 16-year-old son of a pastor, accused of killing his mother and shooting his father, was granted private visitation at his mother's casket today.
His attorney had asked the court if Daniel could have a furlough to go to the funeral on Saturday. Instead, private visitation was granted.
We went to cover the private visitation but by the time we got there, the van that had brought Daniel from the detention home was pulling away.
We have been given permission by the family to cover the funeral tomorrow so you can read about the ending of a tragic story in Sunday's Chronicle.

Wait, it's not the same old Lorain ... maybe

2007-10-25T18:59:00.000-04:00

In the last blog item, I was lamenting the loss of what I thought was a new and improved working relationship with the mayor of Lorain.
When John Romoser was appointed to the seat Craig Foltin vacated in August, we all breathed a sigh of relief.
We couldn't catch a break -- or a fair shot at the news -- with Mayor Foltin.
But with a new mayor, we thought we would be back on even footing.
And then, we read -- in the other paper -- about Mike Kobylka leaving the safety-service director post, a story we knew about but were holding up on reporting as a courtesy.
Shoot, still getting shafted by the mayor's office.
But wait.
I got a call from Mayor Romoser today. He assured me that he is not like Craig Foltin.
"I don't know what happened. There was a breakdown in communication.
"I thought Mike had already called Adam (Wright, our Lorain reporter)," Romoser said.
"I never intended to shut you guys out," he said.
OK, I'll buy it. Anyone can make a mistake.
But this is the one and only "breakdown in communication" excuse that I will believe.
Because, as George Bush would say, "There's an old saying in Tennessee ... I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee ... that says, fool me once, shame on ... shame on you. Fool me ... oh, you can't get fooled again."

Same old, same old in Lorain

2007-10-24T11:55:00.000-04:00

So we here at The Chronicle were all hoping that when Craig Foltin left office, it was the end of an era -- an era of getting our clock cleaned by the other paper on Lorain stories.
It was no secret that Foltin had no use for us and therefore spoon-fed all Lorain scoops to the other paper, leaving us -- time and time again -- running to catch up.
And now it appears the new mayor is up to the same old game.
You may have heard -- or read in the other paper -- that Lorain Safety Service Director Mike Kobylka is quitting to take another job.
Well, guess what? We have known about this for a little while but were honoring a promise we made to hold up on it until the job deal was finalized.
So, imagine our surprise when we opened the other paper this morning and there was the story. Silly, silly us.
Here. We. Go. Again.
The scuttlebutt on the street is that newly appointed mayor John Romoser urged/ordered/demanded that the other paper get the story first supposedly to get in the good graces of the hometown paper.
Hmmm. That's a little puzzling to me because the other paper has already endorsed his November opponent, Tony Krasienko. We haven't endorsed anyone.
Yet.

How we found out about the gun threat

2007-10-23T16:13:00.000-04:00

This afternoon we got a tip that Daniel Petric, the 16-year-old accused of killing his mother and shooting his father, had been in trouble before.
He brought a gun to school, the tipster told me.
That was a little puzzling because we were told by the schools yesterday that he had been home-schooled until recently. This gun incident supposedly happened two years ago.
We didn't think we would have much luck getting information from the school -- and not because they told us something different yesterday. We thought we would get stymied by privacy issues.
"How about the police?" reporter Shawn Foucher said. "If he brought a gun to school, there should be a police report."
Isn't it great to be surrounded by resourceful news people?
Sure enough, Shawn got the Wellington police to provide us with a police report.
The incident, as you probably read on our Web site, actually happened four years ago ... and he didn't bring a gun, according to the police report, he threatened to bring a gun.
The home-schooled allegation? We're still trying to get to the bottom of that.
But the anonymous tipster did set us on a path of discovery and for that I'd like to thank him or her.
And if you see something or hear something about anything you think could be newsworthy, please let us know.
If there is something there, we'll track it down.

What does a teenage murder suspect look like?

2007-10-22T16:11:00.000-04:00

Here is a picture of Daniel Petric, 16, who today was charged with murder and attempted murder in the shootings of his parents.
A picture of the back of Daniel Petric, that is.
We fought all morning today, with the help of our lawyer, to be allowed to take his photo at today's hearing. Daniel, according to police, is the only suspect in the shootings of his parents, the Rev. Mark and Sue Petric.
This afternoon's hearing was at the detention home where he is being held.
Our argument to take his photo was based on court rulings giving us the right to have a photographer at such hearings.
The court's argument against allowing us to take his photo was that the suspect is a juvenile who has not yet been charged.
He's a juvenile, yes, but he was charged at the hearing -- with murder and attempted murder. His mother is dead and his father is in critical condition.
In the end, we were allowed to shoot him from the back ... no photos that can identify him.
But we are not done fighting.
We believe we have the right to photograph a person charged with killing his or her parents -- regardless of age -- because we believe our readers have the right to see the face of the person charged with such a crime. What he looks like is part of the story.

Indians at bottom of totem pole

2007-10-18T14:26:00.001-04:00

The Indians have been the underdogs the entire American League series — and that’s OK.
But now, the Tribe is up 3-1 going into tonight’s game — which will be played on its home field with its ace on the mound — and it is still the underdog.
Everyone from the ESPN "Sports Center" gang to the Vegas oddsmakers are giving the edge to Boston in Game 5 tonight.
How can that be? What does Cleveland have to do to get a little respect around here?

L.A. crash scary but not surprising

2007-10-15T12:30:00.000-04:00

I was throwing clothes into my suitcase and watching the local news Saturday morning in Burbank, Calif.
The TV news guy was talking about an accident in an underpass on an interstate.
He cut to a film clip of the crash.
A ball of flames filled the screen. Every once in awhile the flames would lap and you could see a truck cab.
The TV news guy didn't know how many people were dead or injured. In fact, he didn't even know how many vehicles were involved in the crash that happened around 11 p.m. Friday.
Then the camera was back on the news guy in the studio and he was very seriously telling viewers that rain-slicked roads can be slippery and cars often cut off semi-truck drivers.
He said it is hard for the semi drivers to brake without losing control of their rigs.
So, please, he implored viewers, don't cut off big trucks on rain-slicked highways.
Oh, yeah, I'm sure Los Angeles drivers will heed that request.
Cars cut off everyone there. I found that out during last week's business trip. It seems other drivers are never going fast enough.
In tie-ups when cars are at a dead stop, drivers honk.
If you are waiting for oncoming cars to go by before making a lefthand turn, drivers honk.
Cars clog the streets and highways and drivers honk and drive dangerously.
I'm surprised there aren't more horrific crashes in southern California.
You probably read about Friday's fiery accident on I-5 north of Los Angeles. According to information in today's Los Angeles Times, at least three people are dead and at least five big rigs and multiple cars were involved.
There is a company in Grafton called Introtech Crash Reconstruction. Its employees go out to crash sites to try to figure out how they happened.
Dale Dent, chief of operations for the company, said it won't be involved in the California crash. Introtech works mostly in Ohio and rarely in other states.
He did say however that a crash in which all the vehicles are burned up, as this one was, will be very hard to reconstruct.
"All the evidence is gone," he said. "Evidence from the roadway is gone. Evidence from the vehicles is gone.
"If they are able to put together what happened, it will take a very long time," Dent said.
The California interstate, I-5, remained closed around the crash site this morning sending drivers scurrying to find alternate routes to work.
I can't imagine the honking that is generating.

Black, white -- and read all over

2007-09-28T17:45:00.001-04:00

You have probably read the stories we've been running about a black teenager getting beat up by the two men on the north side of Elyria.
If not, here's the story: 17-year-old Travis Noble was walking on Metcalf Road last Friday night when some white kids called him a racial slur (yes, THE hate-filled racial slur). Travis ran toward the other teens but apparently thought better than to start a fight, turned to walk away and they smacked him on the head. He fought back -- and ended up with a broken jaw. His white adversaries, 21-year-old James Machovina of North Pasadena Avenue and Kenneth Tackett II of Grafton ended up with felony assault charges.
We ran the story Sept. 27.
Why did we run the story six days after it happened? Because that's when we found out about it. Every single day, sometimes twice a day, we check the police reports at the police station. This report was not in the pile. We found out about it because someone called to tell us about it. Then we looked into it. Then the police gave us the information. Then we ran the story.
We did not hold back the information because it was a white-on-black crime.
We did not run the photo of the charged guy small because he was white.
We would not have run the photo of the charged guy big if he would have been black.
Here's the deal: We are not racist. Seriously. We newspaper people live in a black and white world -- figuratively and literally.
Last I looked there were 19 comments on the first story we posted.
We heard from the kind and the hateful, the wise and the ignorant.
But this sentence written by one reader was my favorite: "I am appalled, sick to my stomach and my heart is aching. I have no answers. These are our children … Black, White and Brown!!!!"
If only that were the sentence we were all scrambling to write.

The judge and the belt

2007-08-22T14:28:00.000-04:00

Here's the story:
An 8-year-old boy has red marks across his back made by a belt.
(The photo at right, taken by the police sometime after the beating, shows the marks on the boy's back.)
A teacher sees these marks and reports it to authorities.
The boy's father, a 28-year-old Lorain man, is charged.
Lorain County Common Pleas Court Judge James Burge clears the man of wrongdoing.
The prosecution, Burge told our reporter, failed to prove the necessary element of the crime — that the 8-year-old boy had suffered serious physical harm and that the punishment was excessive.
I guess "excessive" is the key word here.
Burge said the marks looked worse than they were.
“Cosmetically they were bad, but I didn’t see any deep tissue problems,” he said. “I didn’t see bruises. I saw red marks. I didn’t see any welts where the skin was raised.”
Yep, "excessive" is definitely the key word.
While Burge said he probably would not have done what this father did, he said he is in favor of corporal punishment.
“I think that we would have far fewer juveniles in the system if their parents and teachers could correct them,” he said.
Most of us in the newsroom were shocked that a dad would do such a thing to a child -- and a judge would think it's OK.
But comments to the story posted on our Website this morning show that readers agree with the dad and the judge.
"If parents didn’t have to worry about going to jail for wooping the kids butt then I believe many more would and there would be a little respect in these kids. Also PLEASE get it back in the schools," writes Steve D.
Well, my kids are out of school but if they weren't, I wouldn't want no wooping of them there.
Meanwhile, Becky writes, "WE ALL WANT RESPECTFUL CHILDREN, NO ONE WANTS TO SPANK THEIR CHILD, BUT IF THE NEED PRESENTS ITSELF WHAT ARE WE TO DO? CALL THE POLICE BECAUSE THEY ARENT CONTROLLABLE, OR BEAT THAT ASS? I’LL TAKE THE LATTER, AND BEAT THAT ASS!"
What can I say to that?
What can I say to any of this?

Just what is good, clean fun?

2007-08-21T17:45:00.001-04:00

I opened up the paper this morning and there -- across the top of a photo of comedian Bill Engvall -- was a headline that said: "Good, clean fun at the Fair."
I read the accompanying story. I like Bill Engvall. I mean I like Bill Engvall as part of the "Blue Collar Comedy Tour." (The one I like best is Ron White but that doesn't really matter to this story.)
Bill Engvall, the story began, lived up to his reputation as "a clean and family-friendly funnyman." There was some yada yada and then, toward the end of the story, the writer detailed the jokes Engvall had told Monday night at the Fair. They were about, among other things, constipation and diarrhea, getting a cramp during sex, flatulence and Viagara (including the downside of a man's 36-hour arousal).
None of this crude, bathroom, junior-high humor offends me particularly but I did wonder how it could be categorized as "good, clean fun."
I was able -- through the wonders of modern technology -- to find not only the original version of the story but also a couple other versions along the way to the final edit that appeared in the paper.
It seemed to me that all that was missing was a good strong paragraph to explain things -- the kind of good, strong paragraph I found had ended up on the editing room floor.
The original story had contained a paragraph that said, "Arguably the cleanest funnyman among his "Blue Collar Comedy" brethren -- Jeff Foxworthy, Ron White and Larry the Cable Guy -- the Arizona native (Engvall) doesn't use f-bombs or expletives to punctuate his material. He doesn't need to. Instead, he uses something far more shocking: Real life."
So there you have it.
Good, clean fun.
Relatively.

Here a chick, there a chick in Key West

2007-08-14T13:50:00.000-04:00

Well, just got back from a whirlwind vacation to Key West.
I wrote a column about a restaurant called "Blue Heaven," an eclectic eatery with a tie-dyed hippie kind of feel.
My column was about searching for a table in the outdoor seating area in 95-degree heat and 95 percent humidity. Yes, the question you ask is valid: "Who in their right mind goes to Key West in August?" Since it was my husband and me, I guess the operative words are "right mind."
Anyway, in the column I didn't mention the chickens that eat with you at Blue Heaven.
Not the chickens in the caesar salads or on the restaurant's scrumptious chicken sandwiches. No, I didn't talk about the live chickens that wander around the tables begging for scraps like very skittish little feathered dogs.
You see, there are a lot of chickens roaming around the Key West. They stomp around flower beds, mill around in front of restaurants, lead their chicks across courtyards and run across the streets.
But, by far, the largest concentration of roosters and chickens I saw there was on the outdoor patio at Blue Heaven.
And it wasn't until an e-mailer brought to my attention the fact that I wrote a column about the Blue Heaven without mentioning the winged dinner companions that I realized what an inaccurate picture I painted of the place.
For that I am truly sorry.
I think the reason I may have put those birds out of my mind is that I happened to order one of their famous caesar salads -- with chicken.
Needless to say I had a hard time eating it, looking at the grilled bird atop my greens and wondering if yesterday it had been walking around on the ground with its buddies begging for food from diners.

Talk about not telling the whole story ...

2007-07-24T17:51:00.000-04:00

Remember that story last week about Joel Covender, the man whose stepchildren are recanting their reports of molestation that sent him to prison for 11 years?
Well, when we were writing that story, we ran Covender's name through our files looking for past stories we had written about him.
We found a story from March 1996, the same year he went on trial for his alleged sex crimes.
Except the story we found had nothing to do with sex or molestation.
It was about a house that Covender and then-wife, April, were renting on Tenney Avenue in Amherst. The Covenders were fighting with their landlord about repairs to the home.
The 1996 story made absolutely no reference to sex charges even though it was written at the same time Covender was headed to trial.
How could we not have known about this man's background? Don't we have access to those court records?
I asked Brad Dicken, our court reporter, and Julie Wallace, our asst. managing editor who is a former court reporter.
"There are just too many indictments," Julie told me. "We can't cover them all."
Brad agreed. He said 30-40 grand jury indictments are put out twice a week.
Hmm. It seems to me those names should be getting in the paper somewhere. We are trying to figure out how to do that.
In the meantime, I'd like to apologize 11 years later for not telling the full story in that 1996 tenant-landlord story. We didn't tell the whole story because we didn't know the whole story.
And I know the sex allegations had nothing to do with Covender's fight with the landlord. But it seems as if not mentioning it was like it would be if we wrote a story today about Michael Vick's football prowess without mentioning that he is under indictment in a dog-fighting case.

A not-so-fun number game

2007-07-23T15:48:00.000-04:00

When Lorain Schools first announced impending layoffs, the number was 246.
When the ax fell officially Friday, it was 243. However, the way we understand it, not all of those 243 were among the original 246.
We have been desperately trying to find out what that means from Lorain schools and its spokesman.
Trying being the operative word.
Despite several calls Friday and a couple today, we still cannot get a hold of anyone who has the answer. The schools' spokesman is out of the office until Wednesday.
Were there 100 teachers jumping for joy Friday because their jobs were spared -- and, of course, conversely 100 teachers jolted by getting laid off without notice?
We got the "official" list and ran it both in print and online. But we have been unable to get our hands on the list of teachers who got the original letters.
Just wondering who -- if anyone -- knows?

Siento mucho

2007-07-16T13:34:00.000-04:00

Yes, we knew that Sammy De Leon Y Su Orquestra was playing at the Sacred Heart Festival when we snapped his picture Sunday night.

Well, I knew at least. I'm a big Sammy De Leon fan. I've seen him at Oakwood Park and I've seen him at the Executive Caterers of Landerhaven.

And I saw him Sunday night at the annual festival of Sammy and pastillios on Pearl Avenue.

So, if we knew he was at Sacred Heart and I'm a big fan, why did we run in the paper that he was playing at St. Mary's?

I hang my head in shame.

It was just one of those mistakes that newspapers make and regret. Human error.

Sorry, Sammy.

We want your comments!

2007-07-16T13:09:00.000-04:00

We report the news; now you tell us what you think about it.

We have recently enabled the function that allows readers to comment on all stories posted on our Web site.

So, go ahead. Tell us what you think -- about the stories themselves or our reporting of them.

All we ask is that you have the same courtesy you would have addressing the issue with someone in person ... OK, OK, at least as much courtesy as you would have talking about it on the phone.

You are still welcome to discuss the issue anonymously, too. Just "e-mail the managing editor about this story" and I will see your comments but they won't be posted on the Web site.

Moving heaven and earth to get information

2007-07-13T18:31:00.000-04:00

There are eight million stories in the Naked City and at least as many in Lorain.
Too bad they are buried under, urrrrrg, very large, urrrrrg, rocks.
It's been my experience that the most trusted politicians and officials are those who are the most transparent. But when they act as if they have something to hide, we can't help thinking that they do.
In Lorain, we've always been stonewalled by the Foltin administration. That's a given.
But now, it's the schools, too.
One of our reporters, Bette Pearce -- a woman who has been working on newspapers for almost 40 (!) years and knows the difference between private and public meetings -- went to the Lorain Board of Education meeting Thursday night.
(By the way, she was curiously the only reporter there.)
The agenda for the meeting said the board would be going into executive session. However, it did not specify what the board would be discussing. You see, there are only a handful of topics that are allowed by law to be discussed in private by elected officials. Everything else must be discussed in public.
Bette was unable to find out what was being discussed in private and reported as much.
So, today we get a call from the schools' spokesman. He called not Bette but another reporter. (We call that "reporter shopping.") The spokesman was hopping mad. He said the reason for the private meeting was spelled out in a press release. He demanded a correction.
He also said that if Bette had been to the meeting on time -- she said she was 5 minutes late -- she would have heard it.
All I can say about all this is "Now, COME on!"
Because the reason was stated in a press release, it didn't need to be on the agenda?
What about the people at meeting who didn't get a press release, the regular old citizens?
Reporters are not the enemy. We have no axes to grind, no heroes to champion, no agendas. Period.
We are adults with a job to do who waste a lot of time playing childish games.
Sometimes I feel as if some officials think that if they wear us down, we will go away.
Well, if it isn't clear by now, I'll say to those people: You can wear us down, you can tire us out but we won't go away.
If you're getting paid with public money, then you need to be accountable to that public.
Daggone it.

Covering graduations

2007-06-04T14:53:00.000-04:00

Ben Norris, our summer intern from Phoenix, arrived in the newsroom at 2 p.m. Friday.
Five hours later, he was covering Midview High School's graduation.
Ben, a student at Northern Arizona University, and Rania Shakkour, a graduate of Amherst Steele and a junior at the University of Dayton, have been up to their tassels in area high school graduations.
You see, I insisted we continue covering graduation ceremonies with reporters even though the metro editor wanted to stop doing so. She wanted us to send photographers only. Take pictures, skip the stories is what se wanted to do.
"I don't have anybody to do them," she told me.
"Maybe the interns could help out," I replied.
To say she took me up on that is an understatement. The interns are not only helping out, they are doing most of them.
After covering Midview on Friday, Ben covered Firelands on Saturday and then Avon on Sunday.
I talked to him Sunday afternoon.
"You doing OK, Ben? Have you been able to find all the schools? Sorry about the baptism by fire."
"Oh, no, I'm fine. I'm getting used to finding ways to write them all differently," he told me.
And then today, I talked to Rania. She's not only from the area, she started her internship a few weeks ago. I wasn't nearly as worried about her. So I teased her.
"Hey, Ben," I said over her head, "I hear Rania likes doing graduation stories so much that she wants all of yours."
"Oh, no, not me," she said good-naturedly. "I'm counting down the number I have left ... "

Do you think the stories about area high school graduations are valuable or do you think, like our metro editor, that a photo would be sufficient?
It's a lot of work getting them all covered. Our competition doesn't do it.
Should we bag it next year?

Flag flak wearin' me down

2007-06-04T14:19:00.001-04:00

E-mails dripping with venom -- red, white and blue venom, that is -- continue to trickle in a week after we ran an American flag in the paper on Memorial Day.

It ran in a classified advertising section that contained memoriams. In case you didn't see it, it looked like the one hanging on the Pentagon in the picture at right. It had the stars in the upper left-hand corner.

Some emails have accused us of being unpatriotic but most have accused us of being just plain stupid.

I'm the first to admit that we do some dumb things occasionally but the way we ran this flag wasn't one of them.

The flag we ran is meant to be hung vertically and, according to flag etiquette rules, "When displayed either horizontally or vertically against a wall, the union should be uppermost and to the flag's own right, that is, to the observer's left. When displayed in a window it should be displayed in the same way, that is with the union or blue field to the left of the observer in the street."

And that is exactly what we did.

Anyway, if anyone asks you (as they click their tongue) if you saw the way the Chronicle ran the American flag on Memorial Day, please tell them what I have just told you.

And next time, I think we will run the flag as it is traditionally seen: horizontally.

(Geez. It's been a long time since I posted something new here.

If you've been hanging with me, thanks.)

Mobsters on our minds

2007-05-14T17:45:00.000-04:00

We're working hard as usual in the newsroom this afternoon.
That is, until the next person comes in and starts talking about last night's episode of "The Sopranos."
Are you watching?
What do you think is going to happen at the end? There are only three more episodes.
I don't want to spoil it for anyone but I'm sure if you have read this far you are interested enough to have watched and know that Christopher is dead.
Poor Chris. Suffocated because Tony was pinching shut his not-so-little nostrils after the two were in a car crash.
I think the series will end with Tony in a heap, a mere jelly mountain of this former self. He'll be depressed and insane and grieving over A.J., who will either kill himself or get killed.
Tony could take out Paulie before that -- oh, and Phil Leotardo, too.
Carmella? I can't figure out what they are going to do with her.
What do you guys think of my scenario?
A lot of people think Tony's going to turn state's evidence but that ending's a little too wimpy for me.

A new day dawns in Elyria

2007-05-08T23:39:00.000-04:00

It's a little before midnight on election night in the newsroom.
Elyria voters not only passed the school levy, they passed it in a landslide.
Most of us couldn't be more surprised.
We've been reading the letters to the editor. People continued to complain about Elyria West. People continued to complain about higher taxes. People continued to accuse teachers and school administrators of having some sort of agenda.
It looked like it was going down for sure.
But, in hindsight, it looks as if the complainers were in the minority.
The rest of Elyria, the community that Elyria Schools Supt. Paul Rigda said he "couldn't be more proud of," went to the polls and voted for what was best for the city and its children.
While most in the newsroom were pessimistic, not all were. In fact, Shawn Foucher, the reporter who has been covering the levy campaign thought it would pass.
So did long-time reporter Cindy Leise. In fact, Cindy was offering up bets this week.
No one took her up on it.
I called my husband, who is a teacher at Cascade Elementary, tonight when the results came in.
"It passed!" I told him.
"The levy passed? Really?" he said.
"Everybody is going to be in such a good mood at school tomorrow," he said.
I think that beam on Rigda's face will be mirrored in a lot of faces tomorrow.
Congratulations, Elyria.
You made a lot of people happy.

Old school

2007-05-07T13:28:00.000-04:00

OK, so tomorrow's the big day.
Will the residents of Elyria vote to replace their falling down high school -- with the help of about $23 million from the state?
I don't think it's going to happen.
The talk on the street, the letters to the editor all lead me to believe that Elyrians do not think a new high school is important to their city and to their kids.
What? Is it about money?
The state is kicking in 40 percent and even that can't convince voters.
The levy is expected to cost the owners of a $100,000 house $103 a year.
That's $8.58 a month. What will $8.58 buy? Two meals at McDonalds, maybe three at Taco Bell. Two packs of cigarettes.
If it's not about money, then what?
Elyria West?
Give.
Me.
A.
Break.
Anyway, I'm just hoping voters surprise me tomorrow.
I'm hoping people in Elyria do care about their kids and their town and care about the way others see them.
But I can't help thinking the rhythm-challenged Billy Ray Cyrus has more of a shot on "Dancing with the Stars" than a new high school has in Elyria.

Goodbye, June

2007-04-26T14:15:00.000-04:00

My mother-in-law died Friday.
Poor June. She has been bed-ridden for more than a year. She has been in hospice since mid-January and she had not eaten or spoken in two weeks. She was so sick for so long.
And yet, we were totally unprepared for her death.
The hospice worker told us that was not unusual but you know how it is with those hospice workers. They are truly the kindest people on the earth and I suspect sometimes they say things that make you feel better even if what they are saying is not exactly the absolute truth.
On Thursday, we were told that although her health continues to decline, her vital signs are still (relatively, I guess) good.
So I thought it was OK that I went to the conference in St. Louis as planned.
I got on a plane just after noon on Friday. Around 4 p.m., my husband called and told me his mother had taken a turn for the worse. At 8 p.m., he called to tell me she had died.
I knew that would happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. Everybody says that. But I really did know it would happen. My husband and I have sort of put our lives on hold for a year. He didn't want to be far in case anything happened. And yet, nothing had happened in more than a year so when this conference -- about online news -- came up, I decided it was time.
Time to go.
And then I got the phone call.
I ducked out of the conference and got a plane home on Saturday.
We had her funeral on Monday.
I'm not sure if this all makes me a grown-up but my husband and I have had to do a lot of grown-up things in the past few months. And, just when I think we are doing OK, another decision has to be made.
My mother asked us what we were going to do with the ashes.
Ashes?!? Don't they just keep them? They give them to us? Will they just keep them? What should we do with them?
See? A person has it under control and then, something else comes up.
Maybe there is no such thing as a "grown-up." Maybe we all just wing it. Maybe we all pretend we know what we are doing when we have to make tough life decisions.
Do you think?
I bet I know who does know. A hospice worker. I think I'll go find one to ask.

Our kids are being gunned down

2007-04-16T12:40:00.000-04:00

The first report we got this morning was one dead and 17 hurt and then all of a sudden 21 are dead. 21 college students. What a terrible tragedy.
What the parents of students at Virginia Tech must be going through.
What has this world come to?
Our kids aren't safe in a college classroom. How can they be safe anywhere?
I wonder about the layout of Virginia Tech. Is it a very big school? Where was this building? Was it easily accessible to the public? Did someone walk in off the street or was it a student?
I don't know about you but I always felt safe when I was in college. Shoot, I felt safe walking the streets in the middle of the night. Now kids -- my kids -- aren't even safe in a classroom.
What can we do about it?

Harvey saw it coming

2007-03-28T18:29:00.000-04:00

I got back from lunch today and there was a folded up note on my desk.
It was from Harvey Gittler, our, a-hem, somewhat liberal columnist.
He scribbled a note to me: "Who sounded the first warning about the Midway Mall?" and attached it to a copy of a column he wrote Aug. 16, 2004.
The headline is "Midway Mall is changing."
He begins the column writing about 1968, when he came to the area. Midway Mall was brand-spanking new and taking business from struggling downtown Elyria merchants, if not taking the businesses themselves. Penney's and Sears had left Broad Street for the mall.
And then the mall was expanded and stores -- such as Wal-Mart and Circuit City -- sprouted around its periphery.
"What I still stubbornly call the Midway Mall is changing in character," Harvey wrote in 2004.
While the four anchor stores remained, only a couple other original stores were still there.
Harvey counted 12 (12!) jewelry stores, a sword and knife emporium, two stores near Kaufmann's that had merchandise he couldn't even describe and nine sports stores. In addition, there were 10 boarded-up stores and one boarded-up restaurant in the Food Court.
The mall and its youth-oriented retail shops had become a mecca for teens.
"What is there for my wife and me -- mature shoppers that we are?" Harvey wrote.
"The mall she is a changin'. What has brought on these changes I can't say. It might have been the Wal-Mart just across the street; it could be changing tastes, or a changing customer base. Of course, Internet shopping certainly has shifted our shopping habits.
"The Old Gray Mall, she ain't what she used to be," Harvey wrote.
That was almost three years ago.
So, tell us, Harvey, what do you have to say now (other than "I told you so")?
What is going to happen to our Old Gray Mall?

The first to get booted from "Dancing"

2007-03-28T12:19:00.000-04:00

Billy Ray "Never Did Ballroom Dancing in My Life" Cyrus and Miss USA Barbie got to stay but model Paulina Porizkova got booted off last night in the first elimination on "Dancing with the Stars."
While it hardly seems fair, it's understandable.
Billy Ray can thank his lucky star -- his daughter Miley, known to Disney Channel watchers (and their parents) as Hannah Montana. The wildly popular show is about a preteen -- Miley -- who is a pop star but lives a secret life as a regular old girl. And Billy Ray plays her fish-out-of-water country singer dad from Tennessee who has to adjust to life in Malibu.
Fish out of water, flopping around on the dance floor -- see the parallel?
But the survival of Miss USA Shandi "Mugs at the Camera at Every Opportunity" Finnessey isn't as easy to understand.
Yeah, but, don't spend too much time thinking about it because I'm pretty sure she'll be the next to go.
The judges don't seem to like Leeza Gibbons much but she's got a lot of class and most likely a pretty good fan base between 1. people over 50 who thinks she looks pretty darn good and 2. people who still remember her from "Entertainment Tonight."
I think she has a couple more weeks in her, anyway.
I still like Laila Ali -- the boxing daughter of Muhammed -- for the win. She's got the personality that Miss USA wishes she had. She gives me someone to root for.
But I ask my husband at least twice during every show, "Does she really let people punch her in that pretty face?"
Now that's the hardest to believe of anything.

Dancing with the Stars

2007-03-20T09:35:00.000-04:00

The hugely popular dance show was pretty bizarre as it kicked off its first season Monday night.
Heather Mills, Paul McCartney's ex, is one of the contestants and she has an artificial leg. I'm not sure why she agreed to do the show but I would hope it is because she wants to be a role model for others with disabilities. But the show -- and ABC -- sure didn't help her do that.
I should have seen in coming in the commercials that were airing before the show premiered -- the ones that showed an endless supply of pre-shoed artificial limbs. It was as if ABC was telling viewers to watch to see if something bad would happen. Seems a little tacky to me.
On the show, she danced OK, I guess. But there is something about her that has nothing to do with her legs. She's not very engaging. She certainly doesn't have the personality of Emmitt Smith, last season's winner.
The contestant with personality is Laila Ali, the boxing daughter of Muhammad. She is my early favorite to win it all.
The most abysmal was Billy Ray Cyrus whose performance judge Bruno likened to "a crazy bear lost in a swamp." I can't say it much better than that.
A close most-abysmal second was Miss USA 2004 Shandi Finnessey. Between all her awkward dance steps she managed to flash huge fake grins at the camera. She might be the first one booted off.
On the other hand, I predict Olympic gold medalist speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno to be in the Final Four and maybe even take a dancing gold. He needs some practice but it's pretty clear he's got what it takes -- even with his less-than-classy 18-year-old professional dance partner Julianne.
The "best dress" of the competition was worn by professional dancer Edyta Sliwinska. It was like a pink bikini with a ruffled half-skirt. She danced with John Ratzenberger -- Cliff Clavin from "Cheers" -- who was tapped to take the place of the Sopranos' Vincent Pastore who dropped out because the practice was too grueling. Hmmm. Guess that makes the name of his character on the Sopranos pretty appropriate. Cliff, er, John wasn't too shabby.
This season's charming athlete is former Houston Rocket Clyde Drexler, who at 6-foot-7 and 44 years of age, could very well glide his way into the hearts of the judges and the audience. He's a longshot to win but it's a possibility.
So those were the highlights -- and lowlights -- as I saw them. What did you think?

Gone but not forgotten

2007-03-16T14:39:00.000-04:00

It was a sad week at The Chronicle. We buried our co-worker Jeff Mohrman who died of brain cancer at 43. If you haven't seen the online memoriam for him, you really should check it out. You'll get a picture of who this guy was. He was a genuinely nice human being and so very proud to be a reporter. At the funeral home, pictures of Jeff covering stories were posted in prominent places around the room.
The tornado that danced through Elyria this week, picking up roofs but not harming anyone, was a fitting sendoff. Jeff was our go-to guy when it came to weather stories. He loved to write them and would often cruise around the radar weather sites and give us updates of approaching bad weather.
There is nothing we can do to match the sendoff Mother Nature gave him but I speak for the entire newsroom when I say we were glad we knew him. We'll miss you, Jeff.

Looking for a copy editor

2007-03-12T09:21:00.000-04:00

I know this isn't the want ads but, hey, I'm still trying to figure out exactly what a blog is ...
We are looking for a copy editor.
This is the first cut: If you don't know what a copy editor is, you probably are not qualified.
I'm really not being mean or a smart aleck ... that's just the case.
You have to be able to edit copy, write headlines and paginate pages.
Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE to have all of you extremely intelligent people who read anything and everything you can get your hands on working here.
But the fact of the matter is: It's not just about finding errors in copy. Doing pagination has become a tremendous part of the job.
If you are interested, please let me know. We don't pay a lot. We work hard. But it is a great profession and we have a lot of fun (most days).

So, I can't just hang up without telling you a story, a true story ...
I got an e-mail last week from a recent college graduate. She was looking for a job as a reporter.
I wrote back, telling her that I don't expect to have a reporter opening anytime soon; in fact, I was not even allowed to replace the last reporter who left.
However, I told the recent grad, I do have a copy editor job opening. Would you be interested?
"Oh, yes!" she told me. "I would be very interested.
"In fact, I just took a copy editing coarse ... "
Ah, so close and yet so far. She got the "copy editing" right, it was the COURSE she had trouble with.
Too bad only game show hosts get to have buzzers.

What people are saying about the new Web site

2007-03-09T17:40:00.000-05:00

I have to tell you, I got a lot of comments on our new site. Most of them were favorable and many offered really good criticisms.
Thanks to everyone who wrote -- and called, too.
Please keep me posted. We want it to be the best newspaper site in the history of the world. OK, well how about: We want it to be your FAVORITE newspaper Web site.
We have taken care of some of the glitches and are working on the rest.
Anyway, thought you'd be interested in seeing what some of the people are saying -- and you are still invited to weigh in. (I'm leaving out the names but if you want people to know you were responsible for any of these, please leave a comment.)

"The Chronicle “on Demand” ad on the website looks really bad. It looks like it’s the wrong size."

"I didn' t see today's date on the new web site."
Note: It has been or will be added.

"Your new website is impressive. My wife likes to sit down at night and read your paper, but I like to read this when I get to work. The videos are a great addition. "

"I did see the dates are updated on the obits ---- but I don't
like the way they are displayed. I don't think all the info
is listed about the person."

"Good stuff , as always CT is ahead of the game."

"Truthfully, I liked the previous website, where you had a brief description under each local news story listed, for example."

"I would most definitely like to see the Community Links link return to this new look web site. I used it quite a bit."
Note: It has been or will be put under the "Miscellaneous" tab.

"I miss seeing your logo and date as the web site opens. I also liked the sentence or two along with each local headline (Those are the ones I read the most often.) which make it easier to determine if this is an article with new information that I want to delve deeper into."

"So far I love the new website. I even like it better than the Journal's site.
Why is it that you no longer post pictures in your obituary column? If it is in the newspaper why can't it also be online?
I live in Florida 4 months every year and count on your online paper to give me the latest news."

"Well, I just sent you an email commenting on how I like your new website when I ran into my first problem. I tried to forward an email to a friend and it keeps coming back Fatal error."
Note: This should have been resolved.

"Great job on the new web site. It looks neat and very organized. Congratulations, it's something you can be proud of."

"I like the new site. It's nice to see a truly custom site and not a shared site like The Journal uses.
Some thoughts:
For the videos you should let users know they will taken out of the chronicle site. Could confuse users. You may want to consider embedding the videos within your site.
Also the font I think could be a little heavier seems a little more spaced out than it needs to be.
And the orange arrows to the left of each article are a little too similar to RSS feeds (unless they are RSS feeds).

"I absolutely LOVE the new web site! As important to me as the news of home is, the photographs are very special too. Sometimes they'll jog a memory of a place I'd forgotten all about or help me to visualize where the article is taking place. The slideshow is wonderful! Thank you for the improvements...it's great. "

"I want to THANK YOU for the new web design – a great improvement – still a “few” glitches with type sizes (WHY are the by-lines larger than the HEADLINES, I wonder??) (...) as far as navigation of your site – generally, “good” with ONE exception – the OBITS – It was HELPFUL to have a listing of names which may be scrolled FASTER than the brief paragraphs, but I can also see the usefulness of the paragraphs, too. So it takes a few seconds longer to make sure that all my friends and relatives are STILL ALIVE. No matter.
One more thing: the ads in the right-hand column seem INTRUSIVE – of course, I realize that’s the whole PURPOSE of ads, but there needs to be better “margin control” since the text of the news stories seems to be jammed into the column of ads – just an esthetic thing for me, perhaps."

"Yesterday(3/8) couldn't get the site to do anything after it appeared on the screen. Today I read some obits. that I hope were todays. Backed up one step and was on the home page that was dated the 5th, but it had your posting and that was dated today (3/9 ). And the obits that were on the page, I couldn't pull them up either. I'm confused. HELP! Oh, one more thing, while reading the obits. they just disappeared, coming back after a long pause. Best of luck with the new site, hope you can debug it soon."
Note: I think you were trying to get in during the conversion process. You should not be having the same problems today.

Stop the bomb threats

2007-03-08T18:26:00.000-05:00

What's going on with all the bomb threats at the schools?
And, more importantly, how can we stop it?
In the old days, when there were only one or two a year, the newspaper ignored them. Our thinking was that the kids were doing it for publicity so we just wouldn't give it to them.
But now, when there are two or more in a day, we feel we have to cover them. Our thinking has changed from don't give the kids publicity to give the exasperated school officials and police publicity to stop them.
Lisa Roberson is reporting in tomorrow's Chronicle that the schools and police are looking to the community to help. They are at the end of their rope.
The harsh punishment given these kids doesn't seem to be a deterrent. Shoot, I really don't get that. If I was 12 and knew I'd get kicked out of school for a year if I phoned in a bomb threat, there's no way I would do it. My parents would have killed me.
Where are the parents, by the way? They haven't instilled enough fear in their kids to keep them from doing something so stupid?
We have got to stop this from happening.
The other students have got to be getting pretty tired of it themselves. At Elyria High, the students are sent to one of four "shelters" to wait out the school search. By the time they get back to school, I'm sure they are cold and peeved or too wound up to get back into their studies.
So talk to your kids. Convince them it is not cool.
Maybe they'll pass it on to their friends.

Oh, by the way, we asked the Associated Press if it is having reports of this kind of thing going on anywhere else in the state. Nope, only here. What does that say for us? We can't control our kids? I'm ashamed -- how about you?

The story behind the story with Foltin

2007-02-22T19:15:00.000-05:00

Craig Foltin will not talk to us.
Now that he has announced he will not be seeking re-election, I think it is OK that I tell you that.
It isn't that he hangs up on us when we call or walks the other direction when he sees us coming. I mean he's pleasant enough. He just won't give us any news.
It's true; we have managed to cover the City of Lorain for years without the cooperation of the mayor and if you think that's an easy thing to do, I have to tell you that it's not.
You see, Mayor Foltin does not like what has been written about him on the editorial pages of The Chronicle.
But here's the thing, my staff in the newsroom has absolutely nothing to do with what is opined about on our editorial pages. Nothing.
We really do try our very best to just report the facts -- as objectively as humanly possible.
I have tried to explain that to Mayor Foltin many times. He does not seem to care.
Here is what happened this week. Mayor Foltin told our Lorain reporter, Adam Wright, that he wanted to apologize "in advance" because he would be giving The Other Paper -- but not us -- information for a good story later in the week.
What?!?!?!
Poor Adam. He spent the rest of that day on the phone calling everyone he knew in Lorain to ask what Foltin could be talking about. No one knew.
Then we found out.
On Wednesday, in huge type across the front of The Other Paper, the headline screamed, "Foltin says he won't run for re-election."
So, yes you read it there first. It pains me to say those words. We do not like to get beat by The Other Paper but, hey, they are spoon-fed, we are starved. What are we supposed to do?
When there was talk of putting an Indian casino in Lorain, we -- using our reporting ingenuity -- found out about a "secret" meeting between Lorain County movers and shakers and the folks from the Indian tribe. It was at the Holiday Inn in Elyria.
We attended and even though Mayor Foltin would not talk to us and hustled the casino people away whenever we got near them, we got a story.
We were so proud of ourselves. We thought we found out about a secret meeting that The Other Paper did not. No one from that paper was there.
Our excitement lasted about 12 hours.
The next morning, when we opened The Other Paper, we were shocked to see that their entire front page was taken up with a story about the casino plan, a much more thorough story than we were able to get.
It was immediately clear to us how it happened.
The photo that accompanied their story -- of Mayor Foltin and the casino people -- was clearly taken in The Other Paper's newsroom! In other words, The Other Paper wasn't at the secret meeting because it didn't have to be. It already had the story. The mayor had hand-delivered it to them earlier that day.
We felt as if we got punched in the gut.
Now that we know there will be a new mayor in Lorain (we know it because we read it in The Other Paper), we are keeping our fingers crossed he or she will treat us fairly.
That's really all we ask.

The worse the weather, the kinder the people

2007-02-14T13:11:00.000-05:00

Julie Wallace, Chronicle assistant managing editor, gives some encouragement to her rescuers. Her car was stuck until Chronicle photographer Bruce Bishop (taking the photo) happened by -- with his tow rope.

The weather story for today is about what's left in the wake of the storm -- the bitterly cold wind and the drifts.
But perhaps the biggest story is the one about the kindness of people who are willing to help out those who are stuck or stranded.
Bruce Bishop, our chief photographer and videographer, drives some big old manly Ford SUV. I called him this morning when I couldn't get my Maxima out of the driveway.
"Bruce, please come get me," I asked him.
He was at my house in less than a half-hour.
That was Kindness No. 1.
As we were getting off I-90 at Route 57, we passed a car stuck in a drift on the off-ramp. Bruce backed up his man-car, rolled down the window and asked the young couple inside if they needed some help getting out.
"I have a tow rope," he told them.
"That would be great," the driver said.
Bruce climbed out into the cold and attached his tow rope to their back bumper and his front bumper. And then he backed up.
Voila. The car was out of the snow bank. Bruce undid the ropes and as the driver was saying thanks, Bruce was urging him to subscribe to The Chronicle. "Only $37 a year for new subscribers," he told him.
Kindness No. 2 -- and slick newspaper selling, also.
Later, cruising around looking for pictures of the storm on the city's north side, Bruce passed a house where a car was stuck in the driveway. He looked again. Hey, that's Julie Wallace, he realized. Julie is our assistant managing editor and she got stuck on her way into work.
Bruce pulled her out.
Kindness No. 3.
And he's the only guy I know out and about with a 4WD and a tow rope. I know there have to be many others out there.
Me and my Maxima, speaking for every other person who drives a not-so-good-in-the-snow-pretty-car, want to say, "Thank-you, 4WD and SUV owners with big hearts."
Where would we be without you?
Stuck, that's where we'd be.
Oh, and cold. Very cold.

Roads were best in Elyria Township

2007-02-13T20:59:00.000-05:00

This is how I found the roads after I left The Chronicle office in downtown Elyria at about 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, heading to my house in the northwest corner of Lorain.
Downtown Elyria: The roads were bad despite having the buildings to block the wind. It was hard to make turns around corners, especially at Third and East avenues because there was so much snow piled up there.
Gateway Boulevard: Not quite as much snow piled up as downtown but it was still hard to see where the lanes of the road were.
Route 57: The Worst! I had to try to find the "ruts" in the snow to make my way.
Midway Boulevard and Griswold Road: The snow blowing across made them tough to navigate.
Lake Avenue: The best stretch of my travels. If this is Elyria Township's responsibility, I give it the Golden Snowflake for great work in an impossible situation.
Route 254: Not as good as Lake Avenue but not bad.
Route 2: Pretty deserted in that stretch between Route 58 and Oak Point Road. I didn't have to navigate in the ruts as on Route 57 but it was difficult to see the edge of the road -- and the blowing snow didn't help.
Oak Point Road: The Worst II! -- The snow was halfway up my tires in spots. Good thing my car has some oomph or I'd still be stuck there.
The best part of the evening is I lived to tell you about it -- and, in case you haven't been out to see for yourself, take it from me: Stay inside.

Anna Nicole Smith is dead

2007-02-08T18:06:00.000-05:00

Click here to see the video blog

... and then send your comments.

Doggin' the groundhog

2007-02-02T08:16:00.000-05:00

I trudged into the newsroom yesterday morning and, as soon as I rounded the corner toward my office, Bruce Bishop, our chief photographer/Internet trailblazer, said, "Hey, Patti, I have an idea.
"I want to go to Gobbler's Knob."
I just looked at him.
"Punxsutawny," he said.
For the uninitiated -- or those of you who don't like Bill Murray -- that's the Pennsylvania town where the groundhog Phil is asked every year on Feb. 2 to predict the end of winter.
"Sure," I said. "You don't have anything else to do?"
He assured me he had everything under control -- and Bruce is one of the good ones. When he tells me he has everything under control, I know I can believe him.
"Well, shoot, get going," I told him.
By about 4 yesterday afternoon, Bruce was trolling the town, located in the hills of Pennsylvania about 80 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, looking for something he could write about on the eve of Phil's appearance.
He called at regular intervals as he was driving and once he got there to keep us posted.
One time, he said, "EVERYTHING is groundhog ... Groundhog Car Wash, Groundhog Plaza. The basketball team is the Woodchucks."
And then, just after 5 p.m. came the breathless call. "You would not believe what I have! I found Phil's handler and he's making an appearance for a bunch of people from Ohio. I'm going to go. It is very cool. I'll send back pictures and write a story."
And that's how we ended up with Groundhog Day coverage in the paper today -- ON Groundhog Day. Most other papers won't have anything about it until tomorrow.
Hope you liked our coverage. Please excuse us if we overdid it -- we were just SO excited, we couldn't help ourselves. Plus, it was just plain fun.
Oh, by the way, Punxsutawny Phil did NOT see his shadow. That means spring can't be too far away. Hmmm, perhaps that was Phil's gift to his new buddy, Bruce ...

Is there a doctor in the house?

2007-01-30T09:38:00.000-05:00

The words "I was sick" are kind of like the words "it got lost in the mail."
No one believes you.
Well, except your mom, of course.
But I'm going to try it anyway: The reason I didn't write a column this week is that I was sick.
I really was.
That's one nasty bug that's going around.
As I sit here Day 3 of this flu trying to get my act together enough to go to the office, I was wondering if there is something I could be doing, could have done to get better faster.
Anybody have any surefire remedies? (All they have to do is work half the time to be considered "surefire" by me!)
Thanks.
Also, are a lot of people out there sick?

Sit down (and don't kick my seat)

2007-01-24T12:00:00.000-05:00

Click here for a video introduction to this story.

I can't believe that the parents who were kicked off a plane because their out-of-control 3-year-old was throwing a tantrum and wouldn't sit in her seat are actually ANGRY at the airline.
Talk about entitlement. Have you ever sat on a plane next to an out-of-control toddler or had one kick the back of your seat for hours?
Hey, I'm a mom. I know kids. I would never get angry if it was an infant crying. Little babies don't know any better; all they know is that they are miserable.
But, come on, a 3-year-old should be able to be told she has to sit in her seat or the airplane can't take off.
Do you know the story I'm talking about? A Boston couple was headed home from Fort Myers on AirTran Airways Jan. 14.
The plane sat at the gate for 15 minutes while the parents tried to get little Elly to stop climbing under the seat and pounding on them.
Finally, enough was enough.
"The flight was already delayed 15 minutes and in fairness to the other 112 passengers on the plane, the crew made an operational decision to remove the family," AirTran spokeswoman Judy Graham-Weaver said.
The parents wanted to hold their daughter but were told no because FAA rules specify children age 2 and older must have their own seat and be strapped in before takeoff.
Even though the airline made the family get off that particular flight, it reimbursed the cost of their tickets AND offered them three roundtrip tickets anywhere the airline flies.
Know that the parents' response was? They said they are never flying AirTran again.
I say now that we know little Elly won't be on board, AirTran is definitely the way to go.

Decisions, decisions

2007-01-23T18:50:00.000-05:00

We learned about a woman who fell into the cold lake water from a pier in Sandusky.
The woman just happened to be from Elyria.
AND, she just happened to be trying to go to the bathroom when she fell in (her companion told police).
We also had her name.
We thought we had two choices: Either use her name and not the fact that she was trying to pee when she went in OR tell the gory details and leave out her name.
We opted for the name and not the details.
Did we make the right decision?
(We did say it was 2:40 a.m. so readers could probably figure out that she most likely was not returning from the grocery store when she fell in.)

An angel with a stop sign

2007-01-17T14:47:00.000-05:00

Oakwood Elementary crossing guard Frances Glinsey helps Rod Pereyra, 12, Derrick Stephenson, 12, and his brother Tyler, 12, across the street. Glinsey has been a crossing guard at the school for years and has become a favorite of the students.

I was walking out the back door of the newspaper office this afternoon when I saw an SUV pull into and out of a handicapped parking spot.
A woman climbed out and shut the door.
"He got a ticket for parking in a handicapped spot and he'll never do it again," the woman told me as she pointed to the man in the SUV.
Then she turned her attention back to me. She held up a piece of paper she had in her hand, "Where do I take a write-up?"
"A write-up? What kind of a write-up?"I asked her.
"They told me to bring it here," she said.
Here we go.
"They? They who?" By this time I knew she was the kind of person I could tease and she wouldn't get angry about it.
So we danced around the English language a little longer and I finally figured out who she was and at whose behest she was bringing us a "write-up."
Her name is Frances Glinsey and she has been a crossing guard at Oakwood School for years. She's not just a crossing guard, she's a beloved crossing guard and she was here to deliver a hand-written note signed "Parents and Kids and Oakwood Staff." It said in part:

"All the kids feel loved and safe going to school. We feel the Lord has sent Mrs. G our way and we are not going to give her up. Mrs. G is the nicest, friendliest and has gloves for kids who need them and gives out surprises throughout the year. We love the peace she brings to all of us and the love and care to our kids. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts."

In the short time I spoke with Mrs. Glinsey, it was easy to see why she would move parents to write such a heartfelt note. She was just a sweet, unassuming woman with a great sense of humor.

Be an editor -- how to follow Buckeyes

2007-01-09T09:26:00.000-05:00

Every once in a while I scrunch up my forehead and shake my head -- whenever I think about the show put on by the Buckeyes last night. What WAS that? Sheesh. Troy the Timid couldn't get the ball to a receiver if his life depended on it.
Anyway, what is there left to say or to tell readers in tomorrow's paper? What would you like to read about the game -- or have you had enough?

One more sports question (Yes, I know this isn't a sports blurb but I can't help myself ... I live in an all-male, er, all-sportsfan household) ... Do you think Mark McGwire belongs in the baseball hall of fame? Was his refusal to answer steroid question enough to keep him out? Maybe that wasn't an admission of guilt, maybe he just didn't want to implicate his buds.

Hot on the trail of Brown and the Buckeyes

2007-01-03T17:09:00.000-05:00

We're like CNN here today. We have correspondents all over the country. Reporter Joe Medici and photographer Jason Miller are in Wash., D.C., to watch Sherrod Brown turn from a congressman into a senator. Joe and Jason rode along with Sherrod Brown supporters who left on a bus from LCCC this morning. On tap tonight -- the eve of Sherrod's oath-taking -- is an intimate dinner party replete with fine china and linen tablecloths -- for, oh, about 650 people. We'll be there until Sherrod's people kick us out. (We've already been warned that the "Media" won't be welcome the whole evening.) Tomorrow, we'll be there for the swearing-in of Senator Brown. I told Joe to give us all the details, take us all to Washington with him. (That's when he told me about the fine china and the linen tablecloths.) I can't wait to see what he turns up.
While Joe and Jason keep an eye on Sherrod in Washington, Chris Assenheimer is keeping an eye on those unbeaten Buckeyes in Arizona. Chris will be sending back dispatches starting the moment he gets off the plane -- whenever that is. Chris, like everyone else I know who has flown in the last few weeks, has been delayed. He was delayed in Cleveland, then he was delayed on his connector out of Houston. But he promises to send us at least a glimpse of the Buckeye party-in-the-desert tonight.
Please let me know if there is anything this genuine (sheepskinned) Ohio State Buckeye can have her roving reporters -- in either camp -- find out for you. I can't guarantee they'll get an audience with Coach Tressel, but, hey, anything's possible.

Be an editor Part II

2006-12-29T14:54:00.000-05:00

You have probably heard that the cartoonist who does Fox Trot is stopping production of his daily comic -- he'll continue to do Sunday strips.
Anyway, I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO PUT IN THERE.
Of course, it's too late for you guys to help me with this particular strip (I wish I would have thought to ask you earlier) because it ends tomorrow.
However, the comics pages are pretty fluid. I can remove and replace strips at will -- IF I'm ready to be pummeled. Because, you see, every strip has its fans -- and even if I think it is lame or has run its course, I get letters of complaint if anything changes on those pages.
So, you comic junkies, are there any strips you read elsewhere, you'd like to see in The Chronicle?
Let me know.

Merry Christmas everyone

2006-12-25T20:15:00.000-05:00

So, I know the "just settled in for a long winter's nap" line is about Christmas Eve but -- at least at our house -- the line is so much more appropriate for Christmas Day. We ate and then laid around watching "Cars." I bought it for my little boy (who's 20!). Now it's time for a snooze. What do most people do when Mass is over, the presents are opened and the leftovers are all in the fridge? Are we the only lazy people?
By the way, if you saw the bizarre weather map in the Chronicle today -- sorry about that. Someone (ME) should have called Accuweather and told them we had an early deadline last night. It didn't come in time for our deadline.
The resourceful news editor, Dan Shortridge, (who found a weather map to get in there) tried to cheer me up. After I apologized for failing to make sure he would get the weather map by Christmas Eve deadline, he said, "It wasn't that bad ... the forecast was just the same old yada yada it's been, rain and above-average temps."
It is great to have smart people in the newsroom who can punt when they are up against it. I appreciate them every day.
Have a good night. Hope everyone got everything they wished for from Santa.

What will they build at Ford?

2006-12-19T13:27:00.000-05:00

Has anyone heard what they plan to put on the Lorain Ford site?
Can it possibly be another industrial park? They can't fill the ones they have, can they?

I think it would be a great place for an OUTLET MALL. That site seems like exactly the kind of place they put those outlet malls ... right off a highway but sort of in the middle of nowhere.
They seem to do pretty good business although I don't know if that would translate to revenue for the city.

In trouble again

2006-12-19T08:59:00.000-05:00

How about what happened with Michael Ross?!?!

Six (five and a half, really) shopping days left

2006-12-18T09:45:00.000-05:00

OK, this is it -- coming down the stretch before Christmas.
I have about 25 percent of my Christmas shopping done.
Of course, I have hard-to-find items on wish-lists from my boys, things like a throwback Browns hooded jersey. Type those four words into Google and you always get three out of four. Know what I mean? Like I found lots of 1.Throwback 2. Browns 3. Sweatshirts -- minus the hood. Or I found lots of 1. Browns 2. Hooded 3. Sweatshirts -- minus the throwback.
It's like a huge game this Internet shopping but I guess it beats walking around store after store and mall after mall.
I know, I know, that's the "fun" of Christmas. Well, maybe it would be IF THERE WERE 30 HOURS IN EVERY DAY or if I didn't have to do time-wasting things like ... ummm, SLEEPING!
Wonder how others are making out finding what they need -- at a fair price -- this year.
Oh, BTW, I DID find eventually find my 1. Throwback 2. Browns 3. Hooded 4. Sweatshirt! It has a picture of the elf guy on it. That was almost as thrilling as a Browns win!

He's caving a little

2006-12-15T18:59:00.000-05:00

We were out with Keith McGuckin today as he was putting up Part II of his holiday window display in Wellington -- a gay snowman -- and he said that if he gets a lot of negative feedback about the gingerbread Nazi display over the weekend, he may take it down. He says he doesn't understand the flap. You can listen to him in his own words in a video on the ct newsroom blog

Cookie monsters or not?

2006-12-15T12:45:00.000-05:00

They kicked Keith McGuckin and his swastika-swathed gingerbread man out of Oberlin so McGuckin took his show down the road -- to Wellington -- where a won't-give-us-his-name storefront owner allowed him to set up his display.
Did you see the picture of the display in the paper? If not, here it is.
Do you think McGuckin is doing this for publicity or is he truly an artist in search of artistic freedom? Boy, try to write that sentence in an unbiased way! Seriously, I don't know the answer to the question myself. I really don't want you to think I'm trying to persuade you one way or the other.
All I know is that when his cookie creatures got booted out of Oberlin, the story was all over the world -- literally. I found it on U.K. and Australian newspaper Web sites. I guess that means the story is news ... or does it?
We had a newsroom battle at the Chronicle last night (wish you could have been there) about where to put the story in the paper. The opinion in the newsroom was HEAVILY in favor of putting in on the front page -- but it wasn't to be.
Maybe, Mr. McGuckin, if you are reading this ... you can tell us yourself just exactly what you are up to.

Smoking in the bars

2006-12-14T17:52:00.000-05:00

So what's with all this smokin' in the bars?
It's i-l-l-e-g-a-l. Don't people know that?
Ohio voters banned smoking in just about every place except the far corner of your basement and yet, go into just about any bar and chances are good you'll be able to bum a cigarette from the guy (or girl) sitting next to you.
Conscious objectors, that's what the bar owners are.
A guy who owns a bar in Cleveland was on NPR this morning and he said there is no way he's putting away his ashtrays because in the bar a couple doors down, people are smoking.
I'll lose business, he said.
So, the deal is: There's this law but there are no enforcers.
Hmmm. Think about that ... if no one was going to nail you for speeding, would you obey the posted limit? Shoot, I wouldn't.
Are they smoking in the bars you've been in since the law went into effect?
Is that OK with you?
Let me know.

Be an editor

2006-12-11T14:00:00.000-05:00

Friday night, Julie Wallace, our new assistant managing editor, was editing stories when she swiveled around in her chair and said to me, "Patti, did you see this Off-the-Beat item? The one about the girl standing in the cold? I think you oughta take a look at it."
Off-the-Beat is a column that we run Saturdays in the print edition of The Chronicle. It's a spot where reporters can tell readers about the fun, funny or bizarre things they ran across during their week covering the mean streets of Lorain County.
Well, it seems some of those streets are a little meaner than others for what Julie wanted me to see was the report of a 15-year-old girl made to stand out in the cold wearing a reindeer nose and antlers AND a placard around her neck that said, "I'm a liar."
The teen told our reporter (her quote was in the story), "I'm embarassed. I want to go in the house. I need to stop lying and behave myself."
Her father told our reporter (his quote also was in the story), "I want the attention for people to see her so maybe next time she'll know better."
Well, we decided not to run it.
We really didn't see the news value of heaping more humiliation on an already humiliated teenage girl. It just didn't feel right to us.
What do you think?
Is it news? Would you have run the story? The picture?
And, why or why not?

Flood aftermath

2006-12-04T15:46:00.000-05:00

Wow. There are a lot of people angry about the flooding in Lorain.
Getting water in your basement is bad enough but when it's sewer water, it is almost too much to take.
Does anyone know how many homes on the west side of Lorain were affected? We are trying to figure that out but the city doesn't even know.
I actually live in that area myself but my home wasn't affected. I'm not sure why ... maybe my home is up higher.
Let me know if you or someone you know had raw sewage backing up into his or her home -- and what they are doing about it.
Also, do you think the City of Lorain should be responsible for the cost of the cleanup?

The changing shape of news

2006-11-30T18:37:00.000-05:00

All of us in the newspaper business have no idea what the future holds. The Internet has become such an important part of everyone's life ... What do we do? What should we do? How do we survive?
Well, seems that it's not just newspapers that are trying to figure it out. It's TV and radio, too.
I went to the City Club in Cleveland this afternoon for a lunch program on "News Media Newly Delivered." On the panel were Tom O'Hara, the managing editor of The Plain Dealer; Mike McCormick, news director of WKYC-TV3; and Darren Toms, director of news programming for Clear Channel radio in Cleveland.
All those news deliverers used to have their own niche -- newspapers had printed stories, TV had video, radio had audio -- but now everybody is doing everything.
Also, we used to do battle with one another. Now we are cooperating. It is a strange new world.
What do you think? How can we keep people reading the paper as well as the Internet?
You guys know as much as we know -- and probably more.
Let me know if you have any ideas.

A devil of a cook

2006-11-27T12:26:00.000-05:00

So what did you do the night before Thanksgiving?
Me? I went to the airport to pick up my older son who found a cheap last-minute flight from Orlando. The catch is it wasn’t into Cleveland. It was into Akron – one hour and 10 minutes from our house.
Anyway, we didn’t get home from the airport until after midnight.
I was beat so I went to bed but my husband, who always has much more holiday spirit than I do, went to the Giant Eagle to get an angel food cake. He wanted to make a trifle.
I had already looked for an angel food cake at two other grocery stores. All gone.
When did angel food become such a popular Thanksgiving item? What happened to pumpkin pie?
Well, the 24-hour Giant Eagle didn’t have any angel food cakes, either. He bought a mix.
I found out all of this when he got home and woke me up.
“Hey, think I can use this to bake an angel food cake?” he asked as he handed me a hard plastic pan shaped exactly like an angel food cake pan with a cylinder in the middle.
I took it from him and looked at the bottom. M-E-L-A-M-I-N-E was printed there.
“I guess so,” I said. “It looks like a cake pan. What else could it be?” (I found that out later, by the way.)
So, he took back his pan and went downstairs to bake. I went back to sleep.
The cake came out great and the pan did, too. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that probably wasn’t what that pan was meant for.
I hunted around through the pile of booklets and papers left for us by the previous homeowners. On the cover of one of them, I spotted the pan, which wasn’t a pan at all.
It was a mixing bowl that was to be used with the NuTone Food Center – the blender thing in my counter.
The instructions say, “The bowl rests on a turntable connected directly to the power unit. The motor, not the beater, turns the bowl. While the bowl revolves automatically, the beater turns in the opposite direction.”
So the cylinder in the “angel food pan” was actually the portal for the beaters. Hmm.
When my husband found out about this, he said, “Geesh. It’s a good thing I didn’t burn the house down.”
Can melamine burn? I couldn’t find the answer online.
Hope you had a good Thanksgiving. Any weird stories? Or more importantly -- any good trifle recipes?