Facts and Discussion Boards

There’s a great line that we often hear in newsrooms. It’s meant as a joke, but some non-newsies might wonder.

The line goes: Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.

The implication is that a reporter will ignore the facts in order to create a more interesting story, a story that will attract more readers than one based on facts.

Having become addicted to Facebook and newspaper discussion boards, I’m beginning to think the line is universal rather than limited to newsrooms. As I follow, in particular, the discussion at the sex abuse scandal connected in some way to Penn State, I marvel at the number of posts that are factually wrong. I marvel more when the originator is corrected and stands by his original posts.

The standard of proof is very low, unlike in any newsroom I ever worked in. Newsrooms, especially when working on controversial stories, have a two-source rule. You need at least two independent sources saying the same thing before you’ll consider putting the information in a story. And the sources can’t just be anybody.

There was a post the other day claiming that a certain downtown State College development project included a penthouse suite for former Penn State president Graham Spanier. I asked for a source. The originator said one of the developers told him that. Nothing on paper. Just hearsay.

A couple of weeks later Penn State, which had committed to two floors of office space (not a penthouse), backed out of the project and the Spaniers coincidentally purchased their own condo in a neighboring township.

That did not stop the posts about the penthouse.

Of course, the “facts” about Joe Paterno and what he did when informed of a former assistant’s behavior are as fluid as the Mississippi River. The ones that suit a person’s disposition toward Penn State or Paterno are the ones that get posted, followed by “corrections” from others.

I have enough examples to fill a book.

Now there’s an idea. A book.

When I see misinformation repeated on a discussion board, I am reminded of a quote attributed to Mark Twain (but which I can’t verify): Rumor is halfway around the world before truth gets out of the starting gate.

And that was before the Internet!

The Pill Girl

Nothing like open heart surgery to increase your daily intake of pills. Before I had surgery (on Halloween, no less), I was taking six pills a day, of which two were prescription drugs and the rest over the counter.

Now I take at least 15 pills a day, spread over four time slots—breakfast, lunch, dinner and bedtime. And I’m not counting the pain pill I take occasionally or the two Tylenol I took the other day to clear up a massive headache, which I now think was a cold. (It’s gone and I’m feeling much better.)

My real point in writing this is not to whine. I am grateful to be alive.
I am more grateful to my wife, Paulette, who continues to be my No. 1 nurse, although she’s been replaced (by me) as my chauffeur.

It is Paulette who oversees the pills, making sure that my pillboxes are filled correctly and reminding me to take the pills. She usually puts the appropriate pillbox next to my plate when I sit down to eat.

Frankly, I’m not sure which pill does what, but Paulette knows. In fact, when any one of my doctors asked me about pills, I point to Paulette and she answers the question. She knows the dosage and frequency much better than I.

We’ve started to give the pills names. For example, there are the P pills. I take a pill twice a day to make me pee a lot to get rid of excess fluid. When you pee, you lose potassium and so along with the pee pill, I take a potassium pill. We call those two the P bills.

We celebrated the other day when my cardiologist reduced the frequency of one of my pills. At some point, I should be back to my normal six and my pill girl can retire.

Cheers for Dr Weaver

When I was headed for 8th grade in 1957, I tried out for the football team. The first order of business was a physical. Turn your head. Cough. Turn the other way. Cough. Stethoscope on heart.


I don’t know if Dr Weaver broke the news on the spot or if I received it later, but the verdict was that I could not play football because I had an immature heart. (We won’t discuss all the other immature areas.)

The immature heart dogged me for years without resolution. In fact, whenever I got a physical, I would tell the physician about my immature heart and he would report

that he heard nothing.

One physician speculated that Dr Weaver figured I was too small to play football and the best way to ease me out of the situation was to use a medical excuse. Given my lack of athletic ability and low threshold for pain, I suspect I wouldn’t have lasted much beyond the first hit.

But in 2006 when I was getting my annual physical, my doctor said she heard something and sent me to a cardiologist. Lo and behold, the cardiologist determined that I had aortic stenosis, a fusing of the aortic valves, and that one day I would need surgery to correct the situation.

There are two ways you can get aortic stenosis. It can occur if you get rheumatic fever, which I’ve never had. Or you can be born that way. Given that my father and eldest sister had the same condition (and she died in surgery), I could say the condition ran in the family.

And so surgery looms. It’s scheduled for Oct 31 at Geisinger.

Technically, not my heart but generally it looks as though Dr Weaver was on to something. Bless him.

My Life in Print

I came up with the title for my memoirs quite awhile ago, but I put off putting anything on paper, including a simple outline. Why? To be honest, I didn’t feel like writing and I was pretty sure no one would be interested, even if I gave them a copy for free.


One day, Tom Morin, who was my typography instructor at Santa Fe Community College and who is a graphic designer, showed me how he had formatted his memoirs, and I suddenly exclaimed: I’m ripping you off! What Tom did was combine graphic elements, including photographs, with short essays to create a visually attractive book that anyone would want to read. I had a lot of material already digitized and so it was an easy step to figuring out what my topics would be.

I came up with more written material than I had originally planned on because as the book developed I realized that I had published several essays in my blog (The Spectator) and could repurpose them in my memoirs. What’s mine is mine.
***
When I was just starting out in the newspaper business, I attended the opening of a new sports activity for young people. One of the founders took over the microphone and thanked half the known universe—except the newspaper I worked for. So I cornered him and asked rather bluntly if we had not helped get this activity off the ground.

A couple of days later our publisher showed up in the newsroom and started talking about that confrontation. But he wasn’t angry; he was pleased that I had said something, even though I had confronted a local political powerhouse.

Thus, I learned something about naming names right there and so I have kept the number of names in this memoir to a minimum. It’s not because I am not grateful; it’s because I am afraid I will leave someone unmentioned—and peeved at me forever.

Trust me. If we’ve journeyed on the same trail, you were a great help to me and I appreciate it. Take your bow.

This memoir was created for my daughters and grandchildren, and I count all others who take the time to read it as great friends—or relatives.

The Land of Fees

When my wife and I were selling our house in New Mexico, the agent for the title company needed information about our mortgage so he could pay it off and close it down. But in checking on us, he discovered that we also had a home equity line of credit with the mortgage holder and he needed to close that account.

We had never drawn on the account. We paid $35 a year just to have the safety net. Fortunately, we never needed it. So imagine our surprise when we received an updated statement of closing costs hours before closing in which we were being charged $66 by Chase to end our home equity line of credit. The $66 is called the annual fee and lien release fee.

I found that unusual, given that we had paid more than $200 over the line of the line of credit just to have the line of credit and so I complained to Chase and demanded my money back. It took a couple of months, but eventually Chase turned me down and told me that it had been written into the contract we signed for the line of credit.

Who remembers what’s in a contract? Who understands them when you sign them?

Shame on me.

My new mortgage company has been after me to secure a line of credit and get one of its credit cards. Sorry, Wells Fargo, but I don’t trust you folks now that I’ve been burned by Chase.

I’m going to stick with my credit union—and this time I’m reading the fine print.

Penny Foolish

I had a pocketful of change weighing me down—dimes, nickels and pennies—the other day and I wanted a candy bar. Seeing one of my favorites from years ago, I bought a Three Musketeers bar for 79 cents, gave the checkout girl eight dimes and received a penny change.

I had reduced the change in my pocket from somewhere around 140 cents to 69 cents, including nine pennies.

I do a fairly good job of limiting the amount of change in my pocket and having more than 40 or 50 cents is a lot for me. And if I have quarters, they go into a holder in the car and are used to buy coffee or feed parking meters. But I got out of my rhythm after spending nine days in Wales, which is burdened with the currency of Great Britain.

I received so many coins in Wales that the right side of my body started to sag. Consider that in the British system, there are pennies (call pence), two pence, five pence, ten pence, twenty pence and fifty pence. We in the States can relate.

But on top of the pence, the British also have a one-pound and a two-pound coin and no comparable bills. So if your change is, say 11 pounds 15, you can get a lot of coins to wear you down. I got pretty good at knowing how many pound coins I had in my pocket so I could use them and avoid filling my pocket with more weight.

I reminded one of the Welsh woman making change for me, one who shared my unhappiness with the coins, that the Australians had gotten rid of one-pence and two-pence coins in the 1990s. In fact, it happened between visits for us and I was more than happy to discover their absence. My body didn’t sag right.

It would be nice if Great Britain and the United States reduced the number of penny ante coins in the system. I understand that it cost more to make a penny than the value of the coin. Why keep making them?

An anglophile friend of mine defend the pound coins years ago by explaining to me that they last longer than paper bills and that reduces costs. You might say that the Brits are pound wise and penny foolish. But then, we are also penny foolish. In addition to getting rid of at least the penny (if not the nickel and the dime), why not convert the dollar bill to a coin? Why stop with the dollar?

I know some people will lament the death of the penny, but I haven’t seen penny candy in a long time and penny ante poker is now at least nickel-dime if not quarter-fifty.

It’s time to move on.

Review: A Famous Dog's Life

When I took my copy of A Famous Dog’s Life into the exam room at my doctor’s in New Mexico, her nurse looked at the cover and asked: Is that the Taco Bell dog? Chihuahuas are everywhere in my neighborhood and I can’t tell one from the other.

I’m a little more in tune now, thanks to this book, by Sue Chipperton and Rennie Dyball, which was a good read and an education for me. Chipperton trains dogs—and other animals—for television commercials and movies and the Taco Bell dog, whose real name was Gidget, lived with Chipperton so the story is not only about Gidget’s role in commercials and movies, but their life together. Thus, we learn how and where they traveled, how they lived on the road and how Gidget—and other animals trained by Chipperton and friends—met a long list of movie stars, including my favorite Clint Eastwood.

As a freelance photographer, I learned a couple of things that might come in handy should someone ever ask me to shoot a portrait of her dog or cat. It all comes down to associating a desired behavior with a desired sound—and then a treat. That works on me, too.

Chipperton thanks Dyball for “suffering through my edits,” and I must commend Dyball, a former student of mine, for maintaining Chipperton’s voice throughout. It’s the mark of a good editor to let the right voice through, and in this book, the voice is true and consistent.