Ramblings of an Avid Thinker

Shutting it down...

2011-02-23T21:11:00.002-05:00

As if the two years of inactivity didn't already tell you, I'm shutting down the Ramblings of an Avid Thinker.

Primarily, this is because there are so many other places you can keep up with my thoughts:

On my Lima News blog, "Trinko Thinks So," updated every weekday at trinko.freedomblogging.com
On Facebook at facebook.com/dtrinko
On Twitter at twitter.com/dtrinko
And you can always find my latest writing or video on LimaOhio.com with a search to http://www.limaohio.com/search/?q=David+Trinko&fistype=site

Thanks for the ride and the memories on here.

Fatherly guilt

2009-02-25T20:21:00.002-05:00

Anna's back in the hospital again. Check out http://annamarietrinko.blogspot.com for the latest updates on that.

She went in there Tuesday, so it's the second night of having Jessica and Anna at the hospital and me at home with the two older girls. I'm starting to feel a lot of guilt that I want to be anywhere but where I am.

When I'm at home with the older girls, it's for the not-so-pleasant times of the day, namely the beginning and end of it. The morning routine is seldom fun. The nighttime routine can be exhausting between baths and kids who don't want to sleep.

When I'm at the hospital with Anna, I'm reminded that 5 months old isn't my ideal age for a kid, especially a sick one. I do better when I can laugh and play with a child, not try to rock her when she's been screaming for an hour.

So the guilt will hit a new level tomorrow. I'm going back to work for about five hours each day. I'm sure it's selfish, but I've convinced myself I'm better at the hospital and at home if I have some time each day not devoted to worrying about the kids. It's the same reason I think I'm a better father working than I ever would be as a stay-at-home dad: That distraction in the middle of the day keeps me fresh.

Hopefully it's the right choice. I did the same thing when Anna was first born after we got through the first couple of rough days. I haven't felt much guilt about that. I'm sure there will be people who don't understand how you can leave your sick baby in the hospital and not be there with her. I probably would be among them generally. I suppose one can only spend so many hours feeling helpless in a hospital room, wrenching your neck, your back and your emotions before you give up on it.

Apparently, ‘green’ must be the new ‘cheap’

2009-01-17T14:04:00.000-05:00

http://www.limaohio.com/articles/save_33219___article.html/don_cheap.html

David Trinko: Apparently, ‘green’ must be the new ‘cheap’

She left her bedroom light on again, along with the TV in there. It was time to talk about doing the right thing.

I brought our 7-year-old daughter back to her room and told her how important it was to turn things off when we're done with them. It's a valuable lesson she shouldn't ever forget, I said.

"Is it so we can save the planet, Daddy?" she asked.

I pondered for a second before responding, "It's so I can save a few bucks."

I'm cheap. Some people might prefer other terms, such as thrifty, frugal or fiscally responsible. But I don't mind admitting I'm just plain cheap.

My daughter's comments opened my eyes, though. I'm also green, that popular buzz-word for everything environmentally friendly.

It's not that I'm a tree-hugger or anything. The most contact I make with trees is bumping my head on branches when I mow the lawn. I'm not opposed to nature's beauty and scenic rivers or anything, either.

When I reuse a bag from the grocery store to bring my lunch to work, it's to save money, not cut back on my carbon footprint.

When I turn the water on and off when I'm brushing my teeth, it's to cut the water bill down.

When I recycle bottles and cans, it's because my town picks them up for free, so the trash doesn't count against my bag limit.

There's a simplistic beauty in it all: Doing right by the environment also does right by my wallet.

I've recycled newspapers for as long as I can remember. It's not motivated by fear that carbon dioxide will run rampant if we don't save a few trees. It's driven by knowing newsprint prices go down when there's more recycled paper available. It's a purely selfish act, really, knowing my wage is more secure when we don't spend as much on paper.

I'm able to satisfy both my cheapness and my laziness when I replace old-style light bulbs with energy efficient ones. For the price and their lifespan, I'd have to spend more on regular bulbs. Then there's the bonuses of saving money on my electric bills and spending less time on ladders.

We certainly don't have a money tree in the backyard - a fact I've made painfully aware to my daughters. If we did, it would help reduce smog and air pollution.

Until someone gives me some seeds for this type of tree, I'll continue my cheap ways. If it helps save the planet, it's a win-win. I'll happily save some green along the way.

How family holiday traditions get their start

2008-12-23T14:05:00.000-05:00

http://www.limaohio.com/articles/displays_32449___article.html/display_one.html

David Trinko: How family holiday traditions get their start

It started like any great family holiday tradition should. No one wanted to do it but Mom, and everyone was going to go. Most of all, we were going to enjoy it, whether we liked it or not.

With that in mind, the family packed into the minivan, or "The Weekender" as I like to call it, for a tour of the various Christmas lights displays near our home.

It reminded me of trips we took as kids, as Mom and Dad packed the seven of us into the ugly green van. We'd drive around nicer neighborhoods in nearby places, pointing out the fabulous and not-so-fabulous displays people placed in their yards.

No one seemed particularly excited about those trips at first. By the end of the trip, everyone felt a little more connected as a family. Some of us even dared to consider it fun.

We ran into those same issues with our own clan. If it weren't for the draw of "Bee Movie" on DVD, I'm not sure anyone would've piled into the back of The Weekender. And I convinced myself it was a worthy journalistic experience, snapping pictures and writing down addresses for our Christmas lights map on LimaOhio.com.

There's something special about seeing the elaborate displays some people put out in their yards to signify their fondness for this time of year.

Everyone has a favorite type. My wife loves the grand but simple displays, which honor the belief that less is more without actually using less. Our 7-year-old likes over-the-top displays with plenty of motion. And our 1-year-old and newborn girls like anything that won't wake them up.

As for me, I like tacky. I like over-the-top, spent-10-hours-setting-it-up, running-a-$1,000-electricity-bill displays.

It's probably personal envy. I don't have the patience or the creativity to really put up an impressive display. That, and the influence of Mrs. Trinko, explains our simple garland with white lights on our porch roof.

The 7-year-old really fought having fun on this trip, though. We wiggled along country roads with only kilowatt-fueled stars to guide us. When we found a nifty spot, we looked back at her and asked what she thought. She'd look down from her movie and tell us each display was "OK."

But the longer we drove around, the more enthusiastic that "OK" sounded. She even looked excited when we found one country display that certainly must double as a landing strip during December. By the time we headed home, she pointed out cool displays before we noticed them.

As we pulled into our driveway, I heard her shrill voice pop up from the back of the van.

"I think I like this one the best," she said.

Looking at our home and its modest display, I couldn't help but smile. Truly, our display was the best she saw. After all, it was ours, and it was home.

Then I realized she was talking about our neighbor's multicolored spectacle.

And so starts another holiday tradition: Dad assuming we're having a sentimental moment then realizing he misunderstood.

Oh my goodness! A blog entry that isn't a column

2008-12-04T14:22:00.002-05:00

It's shocking, I know, but I'm actually writing a blog entry that didn't first appear in The Lima News as my once-a-month column.
I'm finding myself with a couple days away from work, and I'm finding life at home by myself to be peaceful... for the first three hours. Then it turns boring.
It's hard to put too much effort into anything online right now, as the real-life crises of home are a distraction. It's like watching the "next week" reel at the end of an old Batman cartoon:
- Will Lissie do her math homework without a major meltdown?
- Will Jill get through the night without punching someone? [KAPOW!]
- Can Anna possibly remain happy for more than 45 minutes at a time?
Find out this and more next week...

Web site captures war memories

2008-11-10T17:10:00.002-05:00

Web site captures war memories

http://www.limaohio.com/articles/war_30673___article.html/site_web.html

Travis Buettner lost his grandfather, Ernest Wolke, in April. But on a Web site, Wolke's stories from World War II and the Korean War live on forever.

And it's all because he took the time to ask his grandfather about his military service. Now the Delphos native helps others share their war stories on a Web site, MyWarHistory.com, before they're lost forever.

"A few years ago, my grandfather had a heart attack and a few other things happened to him. He eventually got a lot better," said Buettner, a 30-year-old computer programmer living near Columbus. "I thought, ‘Now is the time for me to save his story for future generations.' Especially for younger kids in our family, there was no appreciation of what he did for this country."

On the Web site, there's a video of Wolke flipping through a scrapbook, telling a story of a daring sprint across an open field.

"You could hear them shooting at us, but you kept right on running. You couldn't stop," Wolke says in the video. "There was no place to hide. You ran until you got to the edge of town."

It's a piece of first-person history that easily could've been lost.

The sad truth is World War II veterans from the United States are dying rapidly, with more than 1,000 passing away each day, according to Department of Veterans Affairs estimates. Fewer than 2.5 million veterans remain of the 16 million who came home alive after the war ended. One prediction shows all World War II veterans gone by 2020.

That made telling the story of Wolke, who was drafted into the U.S. Army out of Kalida in 1944 and later enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1950, that much more important to tell. Buettner took great pride in showing his grandfather the finished project before Wolke's death.

"There was nothing more rewarding than completing that project before he couldn't share his information," Buettner said. "After a while, he told stories his own sons had never heard. They'd never bothered to ask."

I'm envious of Buettner, who had the foresight to write things down and capture them on video for his own memories. I vaguely recall the stories of my grandfather, Ed Trinko, with the Navy's Seabees in World War II. They're limited to stories of ripping apart cigarette butts to leave no trace and his regrets of that anchor tattoo on his arm, though. Because he's been gone for more than a decade now, I'll never have the chance to ask him for more details.

Buettner's project really started back in college at Bowling Green State University. For a class, he completed a 30-minute interview with Wolke. It was several years later before Buettner realized he could combine his two loves - history and computer programming - into one place, the Web site.

Buettner authored all 20 profiles currently on MyWarHistory.com. More than detailing military service, they show a slice of life for these brave men and women not often seen or heard. A profile of Buettner's other grandfather, Thomas Buettner, includes tales of crawling under sniper fire to get two bottles of wine each. Another one of the stories of Thomas Buettner, who still lives near Delphos, talks of looking out Hitler's huge picture window at the Eagle's Nest.

Perhaps more interesting than these stories is watching the men, now mostly in their 80s, telling the stories themselves in videos on the site.

Buettner hopes the Web site will get more participation with soldiers of all generations.

Everyone has a story to tell, even if he must be prodded to tell it. He said he noticed a reluctance to tell the stories at first.

"I remember my one grandfather saying, ‘I've spent most of the last 60 years trying to forget about all of it,'" Buettner said. "Here I am trying to get him to talk about it."

The alternative is losing those stories forever.

"Ultimately my goal would be to inspire a few people to write about their service heroes, as I term them, so their stories won't be lost forever," Buettner said.

Where’s the beef? Campaign ads tell us nothing

2008-10-13T17:02:00.001-04:00

Where’s the beef? Campaign ads tell us nothing

http://www.limaohio.com/articles/ads_29388___article.html/based_policies.html

Candidates hate it when you say you vote for them because they're the lesser of two evils.

But based on what we've seen on TV lately, it's hard to think you have any choice but evil.

One side flings a little mud about the celebrity of the other candidate. The other side rakes some muck about how the other guy will maintain the status quo. And it devolves from there.

After more than 225 years of democracy in this country, is this really the best we can do?

It's implausible that anyone could really make an informed decision based on what the candidates put forth. While there are a few ads out there spelling out beliefs and policies, those seem to find air time very late at night, when most people are dreaming more than thinking.

What's wrong with explaining your stance on Iraq? What's the trouble in helping us understand your health care policies? Is it so wrong to tell us how you'd lead us out of the present economic upheaval?

No, instead we get to hear name-calling and far-fetched efforts to link people together.
If we're to trust the ads, Barack Obama and William Ayers, one of the "Weather Underground" bombers from the 1970s, must dine together regularly to talk about how much they hate America.

If we believe everything we see on TV, John McCain and President Bush must sit around talking about policies that will help businesses and punish the little guy.

Anytime the ads bring up a vote on a particular issue, you know there must have been some pork barrel project or some extralegal language thrown in to make it objectionable.

Both campaigns will blame the media for shifting the focus away from their issues. The reality is the campaigns pay for these advertisements, which they've carefully crafted to the point they don't say anything useful at all.

It's daunting to imagine a world in which we make all of our decisions based on negative advertising.

The cola wars would definitely change if things went negative:

Pepsi: "Do you really want to gulp a soft drink that once had cocaine in it? How can you be so sure they won't put it in there again?"

Coca-Cola: "The government of India banned the import of Pepsi from 1970 to 1988. Do the folks in New Delhi know something you don't?"

It would alter the quest for the best paper towels:

Brawny: "Do you want to leave the job to Bounty's so-called ‘quicker picker-upper,' or do you want it done right?"

Bounty: "Come on. Does the Brawny guy really look like he's done any housework?"

We would roll our eyes. It's callous. It's tasteless. And it has no place in our world (except in this column to make my point).

We're intelligent beings, and we like being treated intelligently. Give us the facts, and we'll figure out what we think.

It's time the campaigns start giving us the credit we're due and the facts we need. Tell us about what you stand for, not what you stand against. Tell us what makes you the right man for the job, not what makes him the wrong one. Tell us what matters to you and how you'll do it.

I'm David Trinko, and I approved this message.

Buckeyes vs. Bobcats

2008-09-07T07:12:00.002-04:00

I took a break from our personal traumas Saturday to go to Columbus for the Ohio State vs. Ohio University football game. My wife and I got tickets to the game long before any of our Anna issues came about.
Jessica wasn't up for making the trip so far away from the hospital, so I brought Lissie instead. She had a blast. My proudest moment as a football father and a well-known cheapskate was suggesting after the halftime show that we walk around the stadium and look at the store. She said she wanted to stay in her seat and watch the game, but it was all right if I went. Obviously with a 7-year-old, I passed on that.
As for the game, I was in the awkward position of being an Ohio alum and an Ohio State fan. I tried to express that with a red and white Ohio State T-shirt and a black and green Ohio ballcap. One guy sitting next to me asked about it when he mentioned he couldn't boo OU when the Bobcats came on the field.
My answer was this: I got a degree from Ohio University, but I got a national championship in football from Ohio State.
I ended up cheering for both teams. And while I enjoyed OU holding the lead into the fourth quarter and giving the Buckeyes a good scare, I'm happy Ohio State won. I can't imagine the Buckeyes would've remained in the national championship race with a loss to a MAC team, and I don't think that one win would've propelled the Bobcats into the national title hunt, especially with the week 1 loss to Wyoming.

Hand of God touches us

2008-09-01T21:44:00.000-04:00

Column in Tuesday's The Lima News

A miracle happened last week, right here in Lima. I witnessed this miracle, and yet for some reason I'm reluctant to share it.
Perhaps it's the fear of being labeled as a fanatic. It could be the worry of exposing one of the inner truths that makes me tick. But sometimes you see something so incredible that, no matter what other people think, you have to tell them about it.
I saw the hand of God touch my newborn daughter and change her life immediately.
My loving wife delivered Anna last Wednesday night, about three weeks earlier than we'd expected. Anna immediately began having respiratory problems, which we later learned were from a disease called Persistent Pulmonary Hypertension of the Newborn. It's a disease that hits about 3 percent of premature babies, where the child essentially wants to live as if she were still in the womb instead of adapting to the outside world.
She spent most of Thursday in a stable condition as the staff at the hospital figured out what was wrong. Then Friday came, and she slowly took a turn for the worse. She began rejecting help from the ventilator.
A priest from our church visited with my wife as I grabbed lunch with some visitors. During the time I was out of the room, things went downhill quickly for Anna, and most of the staff at the special care nursery seemed focused on keeping our little bundle of joy alive. A frantic call from my wife brought me back to the nursery.
Someone suggested baptizing Anna on the spot. We agreed, and our parish priest performed the baptism in that nursery. He then gave her another sacrament, the anointing of the sick.
I didn't know it at the time, but that must have been when the miracle happened. After two days of consistently bad news, things turned. Anna began to accept the help of the ventilator. Over the next several days, most of the news has been good.
She still needs some more little miracles before we'll bring her home. She's still very sick, the doctors tell us. But I carry the words of the priest with me like a life preserver: “You have to have hope and courage.” God brings me both of them, and I'm proud Anna and the rest of the family accept the Lord's help too.
The doctor handling Anna's case noticed the rosary beads my wife carries and confided in us that it truly helped Anna's cause. Hearing him say that reaffirmed my faith during a difficult time for our family.
I wasn't planning on writing about Anna's miracle in a column. I intended to only share this story with family and close friends. Then I heard a reading during Sunday Mass from Jeremiah: “I say to myself, I will not mention him, I will speak in his name no more. But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.”
I have to tell people about this wondrous miracle. I can't hold it in anymore. It's too incredible not to share.

Our latest efforts

2008-08-30T10:18:00.002-04:00

Jessica gave birth to our newest daughter, Anna Marie Trinko, at 8:10 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2008. She's about three weeks premature, and she's requiring some extra special attention at the hospital until she masters the art of breathing.

If you'd like updates on her condition, my wife and I have taken advantage of the hospital's free Wi Fi, our laptop and endless amounts of free time between our visits to the Special Care Nursery to create a blog updating her progress. Help yourself, and please keep us in your prayers: http://annamarietrinko.blogspot.com/

Column: Anonymous letter raises issues about credibility

2008-08-26T17:02:00.002-04:00

http://www.limaohio.com/news/crish_27411___article.html/story_anonymous.html

There wasn't a story in The Lima News on Tuesday about someone questioning whether sheriff candidate Sam Crish should be eligible to run.
You're not likely to see one in this newspaper, either. We looked into it, and we didn't find anything wrong. From looking at personnel records and talking to people involved, Crish was a resident at the Bellefontaine Road address he claimed as his home on election paperwork.
You might wonder why I'm telling you about a complete and total non-story in The Lima News. Based on some of the calls I handled Tuesday, we'd dropped the most important story in Lima's history.
It all comes down to an anonymous call, an anonymous letter and a little but extremely important thing called credibility.
The people who called Tuesday heard about an anonymous four-page letter our newspaper and several other media outlets received Monday. The letter questioned if Crish really lived at the home address he used on his candidacy form, citing an Ohio law that requires a sheriff candidate live in the county for at least one year prior to the qualification date.
The story really started for us nearly a month ago, when an anonymous caller asked a similar question. So we did what we do with any accusation like this: We looked into it.
Reporter Greg Sowinski looked over the sheriff's personnel files of Crish and some other officers who allegedly lived in the house last January. He spent more than three hours looking through them, comparing dates and residences.
He found nothing to suggest Crish didn't live there last January. Then he talked to the people involved. Those stories all clicked, too. Crish used to live near Indian Lake, then he moved to a house on Bellefontaine Avenue.
We talked about it and decided it was a non-story, a journalism cliché for something that's just not that interesting. A guy living where he says he does is about as exciting a story as a guy who pours milk on his cereal every morning.
We take our credibility extremely seriously. Each of our reporters does his or her best to be certain everything they print is true, to the best of their knowledge. Given that we'd already looked into the incident and found no merit, even repeating accusations in that anonymous letter would do nothing to serve the common good.
It's the anonymous nature of the letter that concerns me. I read several anonymous letters each month and receive a handful of anonymous calls each week, asking us to look into things.
After nearly 15 years as a professional journalist, I've noticed something: Anonymous sources aren't as reliable as people willing to put their names by their words.
Quite simply, most of these accusations end up being unfounded hearsay. It's often the result of rumors and innuendo, where no one bothered to check the authenticity of the information they've repeated.
You'll notice my name and picture is on this column. I stand by it. The stories we publish from our local reporters include their names. They stand by their work. Even our editorial page has the names of the men who helped craft that opinion.
Perhaps you don't believe anything you see with my name on it. That's your right, but at least you know who wrote it.
It's a cornerstone of good journalism. You can not only evaluate whether you believe something based on your experiences with that reporter, you can also judge whether you believe it based on who they quoted.
This Crish issue came from an anonymous letter that had incorrect statements in it. I don't know the motivation of the writer, nor can I ask since I have no name, phone number or even e-mail address. I do know the goal can't be to get Crish removed from the ballot, as the deadline to protest an independent candidate's petition was May 30.
As a reporter, I never used a source unless I felt confident in their knowledge about the story. Now as an editor, I won't allow our reporters to do so.
You should expect that much out of a news-gathering organization. You should be able to trust us.

Peace of mind from inside a bathroom stall

2008-07-21T19:18:00.000-04:00

http://www.limaohio.com/articles/people_25777___article.html/restroom_time.html

Don't tell anyone, but I started writing this column from my bathroom.
I spend a lot of time in the restroom these days, and it's probably not why you think.
Lest anyone worry about my colon's health, it's just fine. The waterworks are just fine too. But I've found something while using the facilities I never noticed before.
Silence.
I find that as much as I like being a husband, a dad and a boss, sometimes you just miss that golden quiet that constantly surrounds you when you're younger.
It's harder and harder to take a deep breath and relax without some kind of interruption. At my desk at work or on the couch at home, there's always that threat of someone needing me to drop everything and come running for the crisis of the day.
That's the beauty of the bathroom. It's my fortress of solitude. No one would dare bother me in here.
The Fonz from "Happy Days" liked to ask people to step into his office, the men's restroom at Al's Diner. I, on the other hand, like people to step away from mine. I can't make a jukebox go by bumping it with my fist, either.
I always feel uncomfortable when people want to chat when they see me in the restroom at work. I've adopted this sanitary code: I try not to talk to anyone until we're both washing our hands.
Perhaps my joy at hiding in a silent stall is an indictment of how accessible people are nowadays.
If I'm within 10 feet of my desk, the ring of my phone or ding of my e-mail draw me back, no matter why I walk away.
If I'm within two floors of our children, the scream of a baby or pout of a first-grader push me into action, no matter how inconsequential her request seems.
That's the draw of the commode. It's out of hearing range from most other distractions. Most of the time, I wouldn't dare answer my cell phone from a seated position in that room.
And, most wonderfully, people feel uncomfortable interrupting your time inside a restroom. Apparently most assume you're doing more than taking a breather.
I hadn't realized how much time I spent in the downstairs bathroom of our home until our 6-year-old asked my wife if she could use "Daddy's bathroom." Apparently those five-minute visits made it mine. Perhaps she chalks it up to squatter's rights.
I love the people in my life dearly, but sometimes you just need a couple of minutes to yourself. Sometimes I'll pad out a visit to finish reading an interesting article. Sometimes I'll start writing something. Or perhaps it's just for a relaxing game of solitaire on the cell phone.
Some people solve their problems over a night's rest. I solve mine over five minutes in a restroom.
I'm not sure whoever decided the restroom was for the bladder and intestines only, anyway. I'll take my rest anyway I can get it - even if it seems like I'm flushing my free time down the toilet.

I’m not sorry, it’s going to be a girl

2008-07-07T20:16:00.000-04:00

http://www.limaohio.com/articles/little_25122___article.html/someone_girl.html
July 7, 2008 - 6:44PM
David Trinko

They look back at you as if you'd just delivered awful news. Still, they don't want to acknowledge they think it's bad news.

"Oh, well, sorry to hear that," they'll say. "You can always try again. It'll happen for you someday."

What makes it such an awkward conversation is there's no bad news. It's good news. This is what I hear when I tell people my wife's expecting another little girl.

If you're keeping score at home, the expected delivery in September will make it three little girls, no little boys at the Trinko home. And that "no little boys" part is what leaves well-intentioned family, friends and occasional strangers stammering.

To listen to them, you'd think someone was diagnosed with something heart-wrenching ... perhaps cancer, emphysema or Alzheimer's. Instead, someone's been diagnosed with two X chromosomes.

There's a stigma in the world that you can't be a happy father unless you play catch with your boy. It's impossible to be a proud papa unless someone with your name on the back of his jersey throws the winning touchdown pass. Your family's not complete unless there's someone to pass on the family name for another generation.

That stigma is ridiculous. It's also incredibly sexist to assume that having another girl in your family is some type of letdown in life.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not opposed to having boys. I wouldn't mind someone else to blame if there's a misfire on a toilet seat. I wouldn't mind saddling him for life with a last name that everyone will ask him to spell, only to hear, "Oh, just like it sounds."

I wouldn't mind a little more testosterone in our home. It's difficult being the only guy in the house, aside from our dog, who was fixed and thus only counts as half a male. A little more cheering at the TV and a little less crying wouldn't hurt my feelings.

But that's not what drives you as a father. When the woman at the obstetrician's office told us our next child was a girl, my first question said everything: "Is she healthy?"

And, yes, she is so far, which forecasts another 18 years of dance performances and playing Barbies for me.

But it doesn't mean I won't be able to enjoy watching her play in sporting events or dominating a science fair. It doesn't mean she won't be able to read, write, joke or play just the same as any boy would.

I also chuckle to myself when I hear people ask my wife if she's going to "try again to give him a boy."

It's hard not to imagine reviving a scene from "Lion King," lifting baby Simba high above Pride Rock to present him to the adoring masses. Perhaps in my case, I'd lift a baby boy high above my head in the newsroom, proclaiming him the Junior Senior Content Editor.

I also don't believe my wife and I ever discussed plans to "give her a girl." Near as I can tell, we share our children.

Besides, it's my own "fault," if you must assign fault, that it'll be a girl. Last I checked, the guy provides the X or Y chromosome. Apparently my Y's are just too wild and free to hit their targets.

I don't know that we'll be aiming for any more children in our future. We have three lovely bedrooms in the house for the children. As someone who shared a room with an older sibling until I was 15, I'd rather not put my children through that kind of torture.

I'll be the first to admit I'm seriously outnumbered and always will be. As far as I'm concerned, it's great news just knowing they'll all be healthy and happy.

Three girls will be just fine, thank you.

It’s time to mow down the real problems

2008-06-23T16:28:00.000-04:00

http://www.limaohio.com/articles/grass_24583___article.html/jail_glenn.html

It’s time to mow down the real problems
June 23, 2008 - 4:28PM
David Trinko
The hardened criminal looks over at the new guy at the Allen County Jail.
"What're you in here for?" the career crook asks.
The new guy, serving his first term in the slammer, replies simply, "Grass."
"Oh yeah? How much?" responds the long-timer.
"Six inches," answers Mr. I Didn't Mow My Lawn.
This conversation could be coming to a jail cell near you, courtesy of Lima's 6th Ward councilor, Derry Glenn. Glenn announced Friday he wants Lima to adopt a law similar to one passed in Canton.
The Canton version makes a second violation of the city's high-grass ordinance a fourth-degree misdemeanor, carrying a $250 fine and up to 30 days in jail.
It's already a no-no to blow off cutting your lawn. After getting an initial warning, offenders get a fine from $50 to $350, plus the costs of inspection. That makes a grand total of about $500, not including the city paying someone to cut your grass.
Still, Glenn seems to be playing in the high grass here. If money isn't enough incentive to get property owners to whack their weeds, is jail time going to make that much of a difference? Or, to whip out bigger words, how does criminalizing a problem solve it when monetizing doesn't?
Glenn's idea is full of shortcomings. As Amy Odum, Lima's community development director, said, the hard part is finding absent homeowners to make them responsible.
The problem gets worse as there are more and more foreclosures. Odum estimated 65 percent of the homes where she's heard complaints were vacant or abandoned.
It's also nice to see a councilor focused on an issue when there's already a law addressing it. And, oh yeah, the law can send someone to jail if necessary.
Then there's the issue of putting extra burden on an already sluggish legal system. We don't really need to fill the Allen County Jail up with people who skipped a mowing. We ought to spend our efforts on people who sell grass, as in marijuana, than the ones who're sloppy about mowing schedules.
It's also hard to get behind Glenn in deciding what the standard should be. If a home is a man's castle, he should have some voice in how high the moat is.
I know I agitate my neighbors by cutting my grass with nearly the lowest setting on the lawnmower. My grass never looks as green or as full as theirs, but I can get away with a week and a half between mowings if I must.
Quite simply, we shouldn't trample over a property owner's right.
We keep dancing around the same problems over and over. Everyone wants to live in a utopia except for the people keeping it from being one.
We want fewer drugs on the street. We want safer neighborhoods. We want the grass mowed and a picket fence on every block.
By going after the people who poorly maintain their properties, Glenn's going after the symptom, not the disease.
To accomplish these things, we simply need to be better neighbors to one another.
We had some pretty bad neighbors for a few years as I grew up. At one point, they had nearly a foot of grass in their yard.
My dad's solution to this eyesore was simple: He told me to mow down our neighbor's yard, first with a weed-whacker and then the mower. Then he told me to stick a note on their front door: "If your mower's broke, feel free to borrow ours. Or we can mow it for you."
That grass never got higher than 4 inches again. We never had to get the authorities involved. We invoked something more powerful: Community pride.
When crimes occur in Lima, police ask the community to speak up to bring people to justice.
When people are in need here, friends and neighbors come together to help, be it financially or emotionally. On any given weekend you can find a benefit dinner or auction for someone going through a tough time.
There is no power greater here than the power of the community.

Finding a reason for freakishly long arms

2008-06-09T18:43:00.001-04:00

http://www.limaohio.com/articles/arms_24063___article.html/long_freakishly.html

Finding a reason for freakishly long arms
June 9, 2008 - 6:43PM
David Trinko
My arms are freakishly long.
I can touch my knees without bending over. Long-sleeve shirts never fit right. I can't hold my wife's hand without bending my elbow.
Generally accepted knowledge says your wingspan - that distance from the tip of one middle finger to the tip of that same finger on the other outstretched arm - is roughly the same as your height.
My wingspan is 72 inches, or 6 feet. My height is 69 inches, or 5 feet 9 inches. I could never understand where those extra three inches came from.
A girl at school used to call me "Daddy Longlegs" because my arms and legs were so long and unwieldy.
Most of my woes come with clothes. At 5-9, I'm the average height of a man in the United States. Needing a 37-inch arm, however, makes finding clothes very difficult. Even when I do find them, my arms are long, not my torso. Countless shirts have pockets resting on my gut.
In high school, my older brother and I could generally wear the same long-sleeved shirts. That's awkward, since he's nearly 6 inches taller than I am.
I have a closet full of gifts from well-meaning girlfriends and family who tried to get large shirts, knowing they'd be big enough around the waist but not realizing they'd be several inches too short in the arms.
And girlfriends could be troublesome. When your arms are several inches longer than someone you're dating, it's hard to hold a hand in a movie or while you're walking.
I'm self-conscious enough about my freakishly long arms that I bend my elbows when I walk, so people can't see them dangle. When I once told a co-worker at a past job I could touch my knees without bending over, the whole office spent a week gawking at my arms as I walked by.
I could never understand why my arms were so freakishly long. It always seemed to be such a bother.
Now I think I've figured out why.
I'm rolling toward my third Father's Day as an honoree instead an adoring kid. And maybe those freakishly long arms were there for a reason all along.
While my arms are too long to hold hands with my wife without bending the elbow, they're the perfect length for taking our 6-year-old daughter for a walk through a crowded room.
They're also ideal for pulling a Crock-Pot out of the cupboard above the refrigerator when my wife requests my "monkey arms."
I can pull our baby daughter in and out of her crib without ever pushing down the crib's railing. And those same freakishly long arms can lift her near the ceiling, enjoying her giggles of delight throughout the arch upward.
Yes, my arms are freakishly long. It took a long time to figure out why. Now that I know, I wouldn't have them any other way.

It’s a dog’s life at their house

2008-05-12T19:38:00.000-04:00

http://www.limaohio.com/articles/dog_22801___article.html/name_amigo.html

Every column topic I envisioned this month would be offensive to someone.
If I wrote about my daughter's dance recital again, the evil eyes of other parents would return during next year's event. My experiences in the Cincinnati Reds' all-you-can-eat section with my father-in-law would get me killed at the next family gathering. Babbling about my frustrations at the number of graduation parties would only get me in trouble at the first one I have to attend.
So I'm playing it safe. I'm letting our 2-year-old golden retriever, Amigo, write my column for me. This should answer the critics who say any old mutt could write this stuff.
---
Woof! Bark! Grr!
I know. That's predictable. That's what you'd expect from a dog, what with my ability to chase my tail for minutes on end and patting my tail when you scratch my ears. But really, I'm an insightful pup.
Sure, I have my dog days (and afternoons). But for the most part, I have to admit the Trinkos are pretty good to me. They feed me well. They're not abusive or anything ... aside from the name.
My biggest gripe in life is being a 65-pound golden retriever with reddish hair named "Amigo."
When I hear them out yelling my name when I escape the wood fence and the electric fence, I see the neighbors looking around for a little Chihuahua. Then along I come, with my magnificent shiny coat and the energy of that Energizer bunny.
They've explained the name to enough people: They used to have a dog named Buddy who was, by all accounts, everyone's buddy. I lived with Buddy for almost a year. I liked Buddy, even if he thought I was an annoying puppy.
So when they got a second dog, the Trinkos thought it'd be cool to name their second dog Amigo. My name when I came from the litter was Frank, and now I'm Amigo. Ugh. I don't know what they'll call the next one. Comrade? Compadre? Pal? Paison? Please.
You might've noticed I mentioned escaping the wood fence and the electric fence. Their efforts to keep me confined into that quarter acre in the backyard are cute. They just don't seem to understand; a dog has to roam.
That area behind the house really confounds me. The first time I went out there, they made it clear it was my bathroom. It's great. I can find different spots in the yard to claim as my own.
So all winter long, this frozen tundra was mine. It's room to run around, chase a bird or two and dig a hole.
Now that it's nice outside, they keep sending those adorable kids out there to play. I'm learning how to share, even if those kids don't like digging holes.
It's that hole thing that seems to irritate them most. For some reason, they keep decorating my bathroom with new plants. They tried some flowers once. They even planted some tomatoes last year.
I loved the plants, particularly the way they tasted. And for some reason David yelled at me about that.
It's pretty confusing. If someone gives you a new decoration for a room in your home, you'd use it as you please. Right?
Now they've planted some kind of bush in the backyard, next to the door. It's really prickly. I don't know how I'm supposed to eat that.
I gave up on trying and started working on another hole. Then they filled that hole with another prickly plant. It's not fair. I'm not a digging machine, no matter what they call me.
So I'm going to stop digging, for now. I'll resume as soon as I think they'll stop finding those prickly plants.

My cute kid making people laugh

2008-05-03T21:24:00.003-04:00

This is one of those awful things you do to a child that they never know you've done until the damage is already done.
We made a video a few weeks ago of Jill eating. It was really just an exercise for work, so I could show the reporters how to edit interviews into a video with Moviemaker. My wife loved the finished product so much, she suggested we share it online.
So here's the link to the video, labeled simply enough "Big eating baby." And I'm sorry, Jill.
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid992329340/bclid1044486924/bctid1519727087

Nothing wrong with taking the time to play

2008-04-07T21:22:00.000-04:00

http://www.limaohio.com/story.php?IDnum=51557
Nothing wrong with taking the time to play
David Trinko - Apr. 7th, 2008
You probably rolled your eyes the first time you saw the commercial for the newfangled gaming system.
Two Japanese men roll up to the house and get out. They ring the doorbell, and when the person answers, one says, “Wii would like to play.”
Play? What a ridiculous concept.
There is money to make. There are bills to pay. There are principles to uphold.
That was my reaction — at least until I remembered how much fun play could be.
I ought to scribble somewhere (this column, perhaps) that I learned how to play again in December. It was a big month, as Santa Claus brought our family a Nintendo Wii, and our wireless provider brought me a pretty cool personal digital assistant phone. (In both cases, several hundred dollars changed hands first.)
Our 6-year-old’s face lit up when she saw the Wii the first time. If you’re not familiar with the Wii, imagine a cordless controller. Instead of pressing up and down buttons, though, you simply lift the control up and down.
The theory is it’s as if you’re operating something in the real world. When you play a baseball game, you hold the controller up just like you would an aluminum bat and swing for the fences (or a third-base dribbler, as I often hit in the real world).
Our 6-year-old daughter doesn’t like to play by herself, which is quite unfortunate because her 8-month-old sister puts the toddle in toddler. So I agreed to play with her as she tried the variety of sports games, including bowling, golf and tennis.
A strange sensation built up in my stomach as we played. No, it wasn’t indigestion. But it left my stomach jumbled like that. It kind of tickled. It made me feel younger and lighter. Then I realized what it was.
It was fun.
All too often as adults, we’re told that fun is childish. We have to put those joyous days behind us and plod onward.
Then I think about how well children work together. They resolve their differences quicker than adults. They find commonality. And, more so than not, they don’t let their judgments get in the way of a good time.
It makes you wonder why we wouldn’t endeavor to be more childlike.
I’m playing a lot these days. On that PDA, I became addicted to “Bubble Breaker,” a fun but challenging game where you try to line as many bubbles of the same color together before popping them. I’ll sneak away for a couple of minutes of silence in the restroom to see if I can top my best score in it.
Unlike most of my mental challenges, there’s a score shown on each effort. I can tell when I’m doing my best, my worst or simply my average. Fortunately or unfortunately, there’s no scoreboard overtop my desk rating my efforts in the work world.
Or perhaps I’ll try a game of “Solitaire,” which sounds much worse to say I play in the bathroom than Bubble Breaker. Come to think of it, Bubble Breaker sounds bad too.
Or maybe it’s time to play tag outside with my kids. Sometimes the giggling in the yard is mine, not the preteens’ laughter.
We threw a Frisbee around the yard over the weekend. Before long, a childhood contest of counting consecutive catches returned to my memory.
I have no actual proof, but I’m convinced playing makes you younger. It hasn’t done anything to the rapidly growing number of gray hairs on the sides (or the dwindling number of dark hairs on the top, if you’re a pessimist). But one thing’s for sure: You feel better when you take the opportunity to play.
I’m often reminded of my grandfather, who was one of the youngest old guys you’d ever meet. He offered this sage advice: You have to grow old, but you never have to grow up.

Horrible streak of illnesses leads to realizations

2008-03-10T21:20:00.000-04:00

http://www.limaohio.com/story.php?IDnum=50385
Horrible streak of illnesses leads to realizations
David Trinko - Mar. 10th, 2008
The last place in the world I want to be is the hospital — unless one of my children is there. Then it’s the only place I want to be.
For five days in the past two weeks, our 7-month old spent time hooked up to IVs and monitors at one of the local hospitals.
For five days in the past two weeks, I spent time reflecting on how completely and totally unimportant everything else was.
The good news for the youngster is she appears to be mostly healed from her brush with a nasty strain of influenza. I’m not faring so well. These are the times you realize being a father is really the most important thing you do all day long.
I don’t mean to minimize my job and chosen career (which, by the way, includes a tad more than writing this column once or twice a month). But I learned an important lesson years ago, when I was younger and cared more about my living. Even if you love your job, she cheats on you with your co-workers on the weekends.
I don’t know what it was about the job description for fatherhood that appealed to me:
“HELP WANTED: Caring man sought to provide a male role model to children. Must have capacity to love existing and future children. Fun and humor encouraged. Other duties and requirements as assigned.”
It sounded kind of easy, to be honest.
I wasn’t a father for more than a few months before I realized there’s nothing easy about it. Things that sound easy, such as getting dressed, making dinner or even getting in the car, can be an ordeal making the production of a daily newspaper seem like child’s play.
It’s that “other duties and requirements as assigned” that will tear you down. I should have read more about the benefits first:
“You must be available to work as a parent every hour of every day. While there is vacation time, it actually requires more time with your children, for them to argue and fight and make you crazy.”
Trust me, driving me crazy is a very, very short trip.
Then there’s the section on sick time.
“Sick time is available, assuming all the needs of everyone else in the house are met first.”
Two days before the baby went to the hospital, a doctor diagnosed my wife with pneumonia. Our 6-year-old had strep throat.
They required a fair amount of care as they stayed home together for most of the week. I picked up a second job that week, becoming the primary caregiver for food, care and compassion, in addition to the nine or 10 hours a day I spend at work. I’ll admit, I was better at the food part than the other two.
While running errands for them one morning, I ran into someone I knew. She kept asking if I was all right, since an infection in my throat left me barely audible and an infection in my ears left me barely able to hear.
The answer was simple, also hidden in the small print of the job description of a dad:
“There will be plenty of time for me to be sick when everyone else is healthy.”
Fortunately, everyone is healthy now. We can laugh as we tell stories of the miserable previous two weeks and wonder aloud how we made it through with everyone in the house ailing at the same time.
Now I can answer why I accepted this dad job in the first place. The wage for this job is incredible:
“The pay is all you’ll ever need. It’s a hug on a rough day. It’s a peck on the cheek when you’re feeling down. Even a simple ‘I love you Daddy’ or a grin on a baby’s face is all the compensation you’ll ever want.”

There’s nothing mini about choosing the minivan

2008-02-12T21:32:00.000-05:00

My family purchased its first minivan recently.
The sentence, as it read right there, doesn’t look nearly as daunting as the decision to buy one was. When you’re young, a car is more than a way to get around. It’s a reflection of you. And the reflection I get when I imagine driving a minivan around is more like a funhouse mirror to my still-young soul.
Reality finally set in on us, though. When I drove my wife’s car in the last six months, my knees stuck into my chest as the baby seat pushed the driver’s seat so far forward. Our dreams of driving a Mustang with the top down to the beach will have to remain dreams until the kids are grown. We needed space, and we needed it soon.
So we went to a local dealer and bought the minivan. It’s a necessary evil. Even though we have a 6-month-old now, a new sibling will join her in September.
I can hear the question already: Was it an “oopsie”? Of course not. We knew what we were doing when we drove to the dealer. We bought that minivan on purpose, even if it was against our will.
I felt the shame of a father when we started walking through the lot. An eager salesman asked what feature we most wanted in our next vehicle.
I would’ve liked to say a V-6 engine. Or maybe fuel economy. Or perhaps a cool front panel that made it look like I was piloting the space shuttle.
I didn’t get a chance. My wife blurted out the top priority first: A DVD player for the kids.
And that’s how we picked our tricked-out rectangular box on wheels. It has everything I never thought I’d need in a vehicle, such as an electronic key, powered sliding doors on each side and a side window that goes up and down.
I guess as a nonminivan driver, I’d taken windows that open and close for granted. It’s apparently not a standard feature in most minivans. Apparently, we’re quite lucky that ours do.
Unfortunately, one option we couldn’t find was our youth. For both my wife and I, the minivan was the last in the collector’s series of a Norman Rockwellesque life. We already have the four-bedroom house on the edge of town, the big backyard and those 2.2 children. Now we have the minivan.
Don’t get me wrong; we want those things that go with the “good life.” We just cherished our youth and independence so much, it’s sad when your life becomes the cliché for a family.
Each of the cars I’ve owned said something about my personality at the time. My 1978 Toyota Corolla said high school and college student struggling to get by, much less around. The 1994 Chevrolet Beretta said recent grad coming into his own but still using someone else’s cast-offs. And that 2002 Dodge Neon, my first new car, said confident man with the flash and stability of a decent and exciting job.
Now there are two cars in my name, the minivan and a middleaged man’s sedan. Neither of them says anything I predicted a car would ever say about me. They both say stable, comfortable family man doing all right for himself — and for his family.
The built-in DVD player entertains our 6-year-old daughter. The sliding doors make it easier to get our 6-month-old girl in and out, and it’ll have that same benefit when Baby No. 3 comes along. The heated seats are for my loving wife, who always feels a chill.
And it’s OK that there isn’t anything in there for me in particular. One realization I’ve had as I get older is I’m not the most important person in my life anymore. These days, I rank somewhere around No. 5. That’s a good thing. I’ve grown up enough to care about my family more than myself.
That’s not to say I’m not still a little vain about things, even the new minivan.
As I drove the minivan that first day, I told my wife how cool the front of the vehicle looked, with all its lighted gauges and touch screens. We’re talking about satellite radio, a hard drive for music and videos, everything. I’m convinced they put those gizmos in there to keep the guys feeling like they’re operating a lean, mean, high-tech driving machine.
I can feel completely cool in it, as long as I never look back.

Living life ‘on the record’ can be strange

2008-01-16T21:03:00.000-05:00

Living life ‘on the record’ can be strange

David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 01.07.2008

Our relationship seemed destined for strangeness the first time she asked me, “Is this on the record?”
Most people don’t have to answer that question on a date. It goes with the territory when you’re in the exciting and somewhat stressful world of journalism.
“On the record” is journalism talk for “it’s OK to tell everyone.” When you speak to a reporter or an editor, you run the risk of telling the whole world, if that person merely deems it important enough to tell the world.
This “on the record” question becomes more complicated each day I’m married to my wife.
I only covered one story involving Jessica when I was a reporter, and that was long before our first date. We’ve both grown to have a bit of sway in our workplaces, despite the other’s career.
Now I’m a mid-level editor at the local daily newspaper. She’s the nursing home administrator and county administrator in Putnam County, one of the nine counties we cover.
To some people, this might make us a power couple. From where I sit, it only makes a powerful headache.
There’s a perception that any time the newspaper hears about anything that happened in the county where she works, she must have leaked it to me. There’s no credit offered for the sources I developed in nearly two years working that same beat. There’s also little credit given that I still live in that county and see people daily.
There’s a sense that she tells me the county’s deepest, darkest secrets every day, and I cover them up so they’re not stressful for her. There’s no recognition that much of what we print about her bosses, the county commissioners, is less than positive about them.
I’m reminded of a question someone asked her before she received her current job: “Do you ever talk in your sleep?”
I’m also reminded of a snide remark I’ve heard both ways in the village where we live, that she works for The Lima News or that I work for the county.
This relationship makes for interesting conversations, no doubt. What most folks fail to realize is these conversations aren’t so different from the ones you have with your spouse.
We talk about the people we work with and what they’ve done to stress us out. We talk about funny things occurring in the workplace. We giggle about people who should know better when they say something out of line. It’s more gossip-driven and personality-driven than anything, just like the conversations you have with your spouse.
There are occasions when the “on the record” part comes into play. She’ll playfully ask if she’s talking to husband David or newspaper David. Occasionally I’ll jokingly query, “Can I quote you on that?”
There are times she plants an idea for a story. I’d lie if I said that never happened. It’s handy to hear how things work from the other side. It helps me direct a reporter on how or where to gather a piece of information vital to the public’s right to know how its government represents it.
I’ve never found myself hyping or silencing a story simply because she is involved. In fact, to the chagrin of my bosses, I refuse to read stories that include my wife’s name before they appear in the newspaper. I won’t say where I think a story affecting her or her bosses should appear in the newspaper.
It’s a simple thing called ethics. Ethics isn’t just my unwillingness to accept a lunch for something I cover if the public can’t get that same thing. It’s living a life that, hopefully, people will laugh if someone ever suggests I’m dishonest or unfair.
It’s accepting that I live a life that’s always on the record, even if everyone else doesn’t.

Waiting in line at Wal-Mart

2007-12-31T10:28:00.000-05:00

I was in the local Wal-Mart today, waiting in line at the express lane. The giant letters on the sign indicated it was for people with 10 items or less. Unfortunately, the woman two people in front of me apparently couldn't read, as she piled a whole cart of groceries onto the smallish table reserved for those who aren't really buying that much.

In general, I'm in favor of the limited role of government. But I'm willing to make an exception. There oughta be a law where the police can drag away people who flagrantly disregard signs like this that are designed to keep things moving. This same law should be used on people who wait until the last second to merge lane when they've closed that lane on the interstate.

Anyway, as I got to thinking about being in a busy express lane in a Wal-Mart, I recalled a funny incident from three years ago. So, for the first time in "Ramblings" history, I offer a rerun:

Sunday, January 02, 2005

In the checkout line
True story, which I found much funnier than anyone else involved: The local Wal-Mart was incredibly busy on the 31st as everyone tried to get their last-minute things for their parties. I stood in the express lane with a 12-pack of beer and a six-pack of soda in my arms. In front of me stood a couple with about 20 items they'd just put on the conveyor belt from their cart. The woman looks back at me and tells me I can set my beer in their cart while I wait. "That's OK," I responded. "I don't want you to think I can't hold my liquor."
Posted by David Trinko at 1:18 AM 0 comments

The biggest difference, this time around, is I had a bag of chicken nuggets for the 6-year-old and a box of cold medicine for my wife. Whew, I sure know how to party now.

Something to smile about

2007-12-25T22:53:00.000-05:00

The new family picture found its way around the Trinko family Christmas.

One of my sisters commented, "I've never seen David smile in a picture before."

The response was simple: "I've never been happy before."

Baby doesn’t need a new pair of shoes

2007-12-20T10:20:00.000-05:00

Baby doesn’t need a new pair of shoes
David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 12.20.2007

She’s only 4½ months old, so she hasn’t taken her first steps yet.
When she does, my daughter will have plenty of outgrown shoes she won’t be wearing.
Nineteen pairs of them, to be exact.
That’s a lot of shoes for a little girl who, until about two weeks ago, couldn’t even turn on her side alone. That’s a lot of protection for the footsies of someone who is constantly monitored throughout her days and nights. That’s a lot of untarnished rubber on sneakers that will never sneak.
And it’s a lot of wasted plastic too. A quick search on the Internet shows that baby shoes can cost up to $80 a pair.
My wife’s defense is we didn’t buy these shoes. They’re hand-me-down Robeez and Sketchers from both sides of the family. Often they were gifts to a child from someone who described the shoes with terms I reserve for the child: cute, adorable, sensible.
And they all look brand-spanking new. While someone may have worn them, no one ever had a chance to wear them out. After all, they’re baby shoes, in all their Size 1 glory.
I’m reminded of a Shania Twain song, “Shoes.” “Men are like shoes,” she repeats consistently. And while I’d generally disagree with the sentiment, it’s quite true for our baby. She doesn’t need men or shoes.
Perhaps I’m just not equipped to understand. I am, after all, just a man. While growing up, I had two kinds of shoes, “sneakers” and “church shoes.”
As I got older, we added a pair of “gym shoes” to the collection, at the urging of the school system. And typically every summer those gym shoes evolved into my “summer goofing off” shoes.
That rotation of three kinds of shoes stuck with me through college. When I graduated college, I renamed “church shoes” into “work shoes.” And “gym shoes” turned into “lawn-mowing shoes.” But they were basically the same thing.
It wasn’t until I got married that I learned I should have had two kinds of work shoes, now called “dress shoes,” in my repertoire. I don’t completely understand why, but now I wear black shoes with black or gray slacks and brown shoes for everything else. About that same time, I realized I was supposed to have belts that coordinated with the shoes.
By my count, that still leaves me well below our baby’s shoe count. And I’m in no hurry to catch up. If anything, I’d like to sneak some of these ridiculous shoes to someone who might actually wear them out, such as the family cat (if she indeed wears a Size 1).
I realize I won’t win this argument in my home or any other. I’d bet since the cavemen, there have been women talking about how cute the shoes look with a man staring at his feet and wondering why he didn’t have something covering his toes while he was out clubbing animals for food.
I can’t put my finger on what the baby shoes are supposed to do anyway. My best guess is they keep her socks from falling off.
And it keeps my wife happy — even if baby doesn’t need a new pair of shoes.

Learning what it means to be a father

2007-12-10T10:21:00.000-05:00

Learning what it means to be a father

David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 12.10.2007

The judge leaned in to me, trying to size me up instantly, and asked the crucial question: “Do you completely understand what it means to adopt this girl?”
To this moment, I’m not quite sure what it means to adopt Lissie. She certainly doesn’t. After all, this beautiful 6-year-old child has been calling me “Daddy” for a year and a half. She already told her friends her last name was Trinko, just like her mom, dad and baby sister. She kept calling Purk her “old name.”
If you asked her, it was the day she would marry her daddy. Instead of getting a ring, she’d get a nice chain with a crucifix, similar to the one she envied at her baby sister’s baptism. She knew this short event in a small courtroom was important to her family, though.
As the judge asked that vital question at the final hearing for her adoption, so many thoughts ran through my head.
It means holding her hand and giving it a gentle squeeze when an unfamiliar surrounding terrifies her.
It means listening to her tell me how much she hates me when she can’t have more M&Ms.
It means listening to her tell me how much she loves me the rest of the time.
It means helping her when she’s working on her homework, perfecting the letter P and listening to her off-key silly song about Penelope, the proud and pretty pig.
It means hearing how she wants mommy when I’m there to help her and how she wants daddy when I’m not.
It means hugging her after she falls down and bumps her knee, calming her with the soothing words of “you’re all right.”
It means learning who her friends are and knowing which ones I trust and which ones I don’t.
It means being her best friend as often as I can but being the disciplinarian when I have to be.
It means I’m not one of those stepfathers who tries to be hands-off with a child coming into the marriage.
It means telling her I love her even when I’m furious she destroyed something of mine.
It means wondering aloud how she’ll turn out some day. Given her ability to negotiate on absolutes such as bedtime, I’m betting on lawyer.
It means wondering aloud how my actions and mannerisms affect her daily.
It means smiling back when she gives me a thumbs-up after trying something new, especially since Mom doesn’t use the thumbs-up gesture.
I haven’t met a parent yet who knows exactly what it means to be the legal guardian of a child. It’s certainly a position with plenty of on-the-job training. I never could have guessed how infuriated or how mushy I could feel in the same day thanks to that angelic-looking child.
I couldn’t express all of those ideas for the judge at that time, though. Instead, I said what I’ll always say about Lissie: I love this child, and I’ll do whatever I can to take care of her until the day I die.
The judge leaned back and nodded his approval. After short conversations with my wife and Lissie alike, he signed off on the adoption.

Squeezing hands and saying goodbye

2007-11-26T13:19:00.000-05:00

Squeezing hands and saying goodbye

David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 11.26.2007
It’s really nothing more than placing one piece of skin atop another and applying pressure.
But it’s difficult to think of another human interaction with the same power as squeezing a loved one’s hand.
It means you’re safe even if you’re uncomfortable when I squeeze my daughter’s hand as we walk into unfamiliar surroundings.
It means she appreciates the care I’m giving her when our newborn squeezes my hand during a feeding.
It means there’s something funny to see but I can’t say what right now when I squeeze my wife’s hand in a crowded room.
But sometimes it just means it’s OK to say goodbye.
My grandmother, Mary Jacobs, had a rough night at a hospital about a week ago. In a misinterpretation of hospital rules, the much-loved 93-year-old matriarch of my mother’s family went without any family support in her room for one night.
Her daughters and son promised my ailing grandmother she wouldn’t be left alone again as she progressed toward death. For the remainder of her time on this Earth, someone would hold her hand.
They lived up to that promise. Each day, 24 hours a day, for nearly a week, someone held at least one of her hands. Perhaps it was one of her children or grandchildren. Perhaps it was a longtime friend. Sometimes it was someone my relatives didn’t seem to know that well, but that person felt touched enough by my grandma to visit her in her final days.
By the time I arrived at her hospital in suburban Chicago quite late Friday night, she’d been through dozens upon dozens of hands. Now unable to speak and sleeping constantly, people kept saying how unfortunate it was she couldn’t communicate anymore. But she did communicate, just as I would with my daughter or my wife in their circumstances.
When I made an uneasy joke to lighten the tension, she squeezed my hand to show her appreciation.
When I prayed with her, she squeezed my hand to show her faith.
When I talked about how hard it was to say goodbye, she squeezed my hand particularly hard. It was OK to say goodbye.
Late Saturday night, I heard the news that Mary Jacobs, better known as Grandma to dozens of lucky children including me, died. I think the woman behind the kind eyes left earlier in the day, as her hands didn’t include those communicative squeezes anymore.
Her funeral will be today, and we’ll all be there to do what grieving children and grandchildren do. Whenever I’m overcome with the grief, I’m reminded of that final squeeze of the hand. It’s the one that said it’s OK to be sad. It’s OK to miss her. But most importantly, it’s OK to say goodbye.
And it’s OK to give my own wife and children an extra squeeze or two of the hand, just to show them I care.

Hometowns change more than we care to admit

2007-11-12T13:18:00.000-05:00

Hometowns change more than we care to admit

David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 11.12.2007
For most of my life, I was convinced nothing ever changed in Arlington. Something tells me other folks think the same of their hometowns.
Arlington is a small village like so many others in the region — close-knit, focused on its school and boasting a handful of home-grown businesses.
For the first 21 years of my life, that two-stoplight town in Hancock County was home. To some degree, that friendly town with 1,351 people remains home. My parents still live in that two-story house across from the fire station. People driving by still wave when I cross the street there.
The football team’s always good. The garbage bags sit outside every Friday morning. And warm summer nights are always interrupted by children screaming as they dive into the village-run swimming pool.
There are 43 boys, freshmen through seniors, on the Red Devils’ football team this year, which is pretty impressive since there are only 87 boys in the 10th, 11th and 12th grades in the high school.
I’m beginning to wonder if nostalgia might be holding Arlington and places like it back, though.
The world does change, even if we won’t allow it in our minds.
The Ford dealership closed years ago. There’s no proof left of the old Allis-Chalmers dealer, as grass covers where those tractors once sat. The pharmacy and hardware store each moved to smaller locations.
There is progress, even in a small town.
The football team made the playoffs for the first time this year. The Red Devils are playing Ada at Lima Stadium on Saturday for the regional championship. It’s a new honor for the smallest school in Ohio to win 500 games, a new plateau for a school that ranks 31st in the state in all-time victories.
There’s finally a steady pizza place in town, as Jack-n-Do’s Pizza from Findlay settled into the north side of town.
And there’s plenty of new housing popping up all over town. Fields that once raised wheat, soybeans and corn are home to a crop of young families now.
That swimming pool with the screaming kids is different from the one I used as a youth. They completely tore it up and rebuilt it while I was at college.
Even the people running the schools change. I see from the school’s Web site that only 10 of my teachers are still out there, and I don’t recognize any of the administrators’ names. I do recognize some school board and village council members’ names, but that’s because I went to school with some of them.
I’ve been out of that “red brick prison,” as we called it, longer than I was ever in it.
There has to come a time when you realize your nostalgic view of a place isn’t necessarily reality.
I worry that a proposed new school there failed last week for this very reason.
When I heard they wanted a half-percent income tax 7.9 mill bond issue to build a new school, I’d bet I reacted the same way everyone else did. I thought, “The school’s not in that bad of shape.”
That’s how nostalgia hits you. I didn’t think about the classes in the old locker room beneath the old gym. I didn’t consider how poorly heated or cooled some of those classrooms were back in the day. Instead, I reacted with, “If it was good enough for me, it’s good enough for them.”
I didn’t react with the reality I haven’t wandered those halls in more than a dozen years.
The reality is those kids don’t attend the same school I did. They don’t live in the same town where I grew up.
In that way, Arlington is a small village like so many others in the region — full of people who won’t accept that time changes everything.

Childlike glee marks first trip to an NFL game

2007-10-09T13:17:00.000-04:00

Childlike glee marks first trip to an NFL game

David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 10.09.2007
You want your proudest moments as a parent to be something really meaningful.
You want your child to give the valedictorian’s speech at her graduation. You hope to see your boy pick up the Nobel Prize. It’d be great to see the twins work together to develop a cure for cancer.
So I’m a little embarrassed to say I’ve never been prouder of our 6-year-old daughter, Lissie, than I was when she attended her first NFL game.
She is deeply interested in “Brian.” Brian, as in Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher, is a one-name wonder in our house.
When Chicago went to the Super Bowl last season, we threw a party for the occasion. To Lissie, it was a birthday party for Brian.
When the Bears lost the Super Bowl last season, one of my wife’s co-workers gave us tissues so we could cry afterward. To Lissie, only Brian could cry with those.
When my wife and I each wore Urlacher jerseys on a recent Sunday, Lissie complained that she didn’t have one. She harassed us until she received an Urlacher jersey of her own.
Whenever the Bears are on television, she complains if the offense is on the field, since it means Brian’s on the sideline. Fortunately for her, the Bears’ offense doesn’t stay on the field very long these days.
She even told some friends at school that Brian’s her cousin. He’s not, by the way.
So when we had a chance to see a Bears game in Detroit last weekend, we knew we had to bring Brian’s biggest fan to Ford Field.
I never really envisioned taking a little girl to her first Bears game. I assumed it’d be a son. Call it a stereotype, but it’s one tried and true. I grew up with five sisters, and only one of them ever watched much football. Since I’m outnumbered three to one by women in my house, I’ll take whatever football fans I can get.
No one would ever describe me as a passionate man. I’m generally reserved and collected. I have a very laid-back way about me. Pro football is my one outlet. My wife once joked I get more excited about the Bears’ season than I did at our wedding or the birth of our newest child. In my defense, I would’ve yelled at those events if they were on a big-screen TV.
I couldn’t really figure out what Lissie thought about her first NFL game at first. She was unusually quiet. She looked around a lot but never commented on anything she saw. The noise levels seemed to unnerve her as the teams ran onto the field.
Then the Bears ran onto the field. She started jumping up and down, pointing at No. 54 and yelling, “There’s Brian! There’s Brian!” You would’ve thought Hannah Montana herself walked out of the tunnel.
She resumed her silence during the game. By the end of halftime, I was convinced she was bored out of her mind. We figured she would be, so my wife planned to take her for a walk around the concourses at the beginning of the third quarter to restock our snack supply. We’d assumed Lissie would jump at the opportunity to walk around.
That’s when she surprised us both.
“I want to stay here with Daddy and watch the game,” she said.
That was her valedictory speech, Nobel Prize and cure for cancer all wrapped into one for me. As my wife wandered away, Lissie sat on my knee and watched the game with me.
We didn’t talk much. We just watched the game unfold in front of us. I didn’t want to ruin the moment by complaining about a run up the middle on third-and-long or how the quarterbacks should stop throwing the ball to the other team in the end zone.
On the way out of Ford Field, she did something no self-respecting fan would do. Or maybe she did something every self-respecting fan should do. She waved at all the Lions fans who taunted her for wearing Brian’s No. 54 into their den. And she smiled.
I’m seeing in her the kind of passion for football and fairness that would make Brian proud. I know it made me proud.

What it means to be an American in a post 9/11 world

2007-09-11T13:16:00.000-04:00

What it means to be an American in a post 9/11 world
mailto:dtrinko@limanews.com- 09.11.2007

I’m not a true American like I was on Sept. 11, 2001, as it turns out.
You probably aren’t either, depending on who’s labeling you.
As we mark the anniversary of the deadly terrorist hijackings that put airplanes into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, this idea of “true American” seems to be on trial. Different juries offer differing verdicts.
One side argues you can’t be a true American if you’re not supporting our troops. Whatever the endeavor, we must support our troops’ continuing missions.
Another side argues you can’t be a true American unless you put the needs of families ahead of all others. If you love America, you want American soldiers to come home.
Both sides tend to throw ridiculous labels at one another, saying you’re a gun-toting conservative or give-peace-a-chance liberal.
More than anything else, they like to say they’re a true American, and anyone who disagrees is un-American or, worse yet, anti-American.
It’s this unwillingness to even listen to another side that makes me question if anyone’s a true American anymore. It seems so un-American to adopt a “my way or the highway” attitude toward anything.
You’re not entitled to your opinion the same way you were before the towers fell. You can’t disagree with the government like you did before the plane plunged into the Pentagon walls. You’re not supposed to show your dissent like you could before those heroic passengers guided that fourth plane away from its extremist mission and into the field.
I think I’m still just as much of a true American as I was on Sept. 11, 2001. I still love God, my mom and apple pie, just the same as I ever did.
You probably feel the same way. More than likely, we all do.
But that’s just not the message we seem to hear nowadays.
We’ve become less open to hearing opposing viewpoints. We’ve become more intolerant to those who think differently than we do. We’ve begun lobbing people into groups, saying their opinions don’t count if they don’t have some arbitrary opinion in common with ours.
I heard that recently from a caller who obviously disagreed with an editorial decision we’d made. He asked me if I’d served in the military. When I told him no, he blew up into a tirade about being a fat, happy liberal sitting in my comfy chair, making decisions that ruined people’s lives.
Truth be told, my chair’s not that comfortable. And most of the rest of his characterizations were off the mark too. They lacked some nuance we would’ve demanded before the terrorist attacks.
On this, the sixth anniversary of those attacks, I’ll stop for a moment of silence this morning to think about what happened, just like I have every year since it happened. I’ll think of the wasted lives who committed no crime that day, people whose only sins were to live in America and go to work that day.
I’ll pray for them and their families. I’ll also implore God to help this country remember that our differences bind us just as much as our similarities. Our disagreements are our strength. Our dialogue is our power.
That’s what makes each of us a true American.

Life’s biggest challenge is doing the little things

2007-09-07T09:00:00.000-04:00

Life’s biggest challenge is doing the little things
David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 09.07.2007
There’s a safety pin in a urinal at the office.
I’m not sure why it rests in the toilet water there or how it hasn’t flushed down the drain. I don’t know why it remains there at least six months after it arrived.
I take that second part back. I know why it’s remained; no one wants to reach into the toilet water to retrieve it and throw it away.
It really wouldn’t be that difficult for me to pick it out and toss it in the garbage can. I could wash my hands thoroughly afterward. It wouldn’t be that difficult for someone else to do it either. Yet it remains there, and the only time I think about it is when I’m doing what you do in front of a urinal.
Recently I realized how many safety pins are in the urinals of my life.
They’re these simply solved problems that never get addressed. They seem hardly worth the effort, but they bother you over time. You waste hours thinking, “I should work on that some day.”
Some just take some elbow grease. For instance, I like to keep copies of old bills. I have a good filing system, but I’m not always good at keeping up with it. If I file a bill as soon as I pay it, there’d be no hard work to it. Instead, I tend to grow piles of bills and have to take an hour to file three months’ worth of old bills. These piles of bills grow around the floor in my home office.
Others are changing your habits. We go out to eat way too often, especially considering everyone in our house save the newborn baby is a decent cook. There’s a stocked freezer and cupboard. The food’s not always that great when you hit a fast-food place, and the atmosphere will never rival gathering around our dinner table.
Another safety pin is my personal fitness. I’m fairly healthy, but I could take better care of myself. I’m not sure I like the looks of doubt when I tell people I weighed 140 pounds my senior year of high school. I could easily spend 15 minutes a day using those weights I’ve lugged from town to town over the last 10 years.
My e-mail habits are bad. I’ll receive e-mail and file it away until I have time to write a good answer. Then it may be weeks before I respond to a dear friend from college. Real friends don’t wait months before answering e-mail.
I should do more to live my faith. It’s good to go to church and try to take what you learn into your everyday life. It’s better to go out, volunteer and share your gifts with others.
I don’t see my parents enough. I moved back to Ohio to spend more time with them, yet I might not see them for a month or two in a row. I really should make that 40-minute trip at least once a month.
I should tell more people that I love them. Sure, they should know by my actions. It never hurts to say it though, and there are few things in life as sweet as hearing it.
Sometimes the easiest things to change in life become the hardest ones to do.
I seriously doubt I’ll put my hand into the urinal anytime soon. Maybe it’s best that it stays there as a reminder of all of these other safety pins in the urinals of life that need just one thing: action.

Warm and fuzzy

2007-08-20T21:42:00.001-04:00

It's beard time in the Trinko household.
With the birth of our daughter, I was able to take two and a half weeks off from work. History has shown that in two and a half weeks, I can grow a pretty full beard. So I'm doing what I can.
I've had a beard, by my count, five times before since I turned 18. The first three were in college, as I discovered what worked and what didn't. The other two were pretty long-lived ones, including one I had for nearly two years during my first tour of duty in Lima and one I grew at the end of the Savannah tenure that endured perhaps two years into my Virginia time.
Truth be told, I've probably had a beard as often as I haven't since I was 18.
There's a wildcard this year, though. I have a wife now, and she's not necessarily sold on it. She tells me it's itchy to kiss, and she's not sure she likes how old it makes me look. I counter that the brownish-red beard detracts from the gray in my sideburns.
I don't know what it is I like about having a beard. It's not that it's overly comfortable or that I'm enamored with the look. Truth be told, it's just laziness. There's something to be said about not shaving in the morning and not having anyone be any wiser about it.
We'll see whether this one survives or not. I heard someone today call it "vacation shadow," and perhaps that's all it will be. Or perhaps I'll never be clean-shaven again. The world may never know.

Football teaches what you need to know about babies

2007-08-14T21:41:00.000-04:00

Football teaches what you need to know about babies

David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 08.14.2007
High school football taught me everything I need to know about caring for a newborn baby girl.
It seems like a wild assertion, but it’s really quite true. I never would’ve guessed that those days of grunting in the summer sun would’ve led to such wisdom about swaddling and rocking a 6-pound, 14-ounce little girl to sleep. Apparently the coaches were right when they swore we learned valuable life lessons.
It started to come back to me Wednesday, when the fourth member joined Team Trinko. My mother gave instructions to one of my nieces on how to cradle the baby properly. Tuck the baby’s head into the crook of your elbow. Rest the weight of the child on your forearm. Cup your hand around the other end. Pull her in close to your body, and don’t ever let go.
It sounded all too familiar. I’d heard those same steps on how to hold onto a football without dropping it. Suddenly the voice of my high school football coach entered my head: “Trinko! If you drop that baby, the whole team’s going to have to run!”
That’s when the parallels between child-care and football really hit me. Or perhaps it was just the realization that I’m hopelessly outnumbered three-to-one by women now in our home. The only other male in the house is our dog, and he hasn’t had most of his boy parts since he was a puppy anyway.
Whatever the reason, August is a time to ramp up for football and the new baby alike in our household.
· If you want to play, you have to have the right equipment. Cribs, playpens and changing tables are absolute requirements. If you don’t have limitless energy to rock her, you need to pick up a swing (as we learned Sunday). If you’re planning for an away game, you’d better have a diaper bag packed with one complete change of clothes for each hour you’re going to be away.
· It’s all about the hydration. No one’s so tough she can do without proper hydration, especially a newborn. Gatorade’s not an option here, boys. You’d better get used to the distinct odor of Similac and Enfamil. You’ll also want to learn how to mix it in your sleep, or that 5 a.m. feeding will kill you.
· Two-a-days are where champions are made. You can try joining the team once the games begin, but you’ll be exhausted by the end of the game. If you really want to succeed, you need to suffer through every moment of two-a-days, err, the pregnancy. A screaming baby at 10 p.m. is nothing if you’ve already heard a hormonal woman question if you really loved her between bouts of sobbing. Changing a diaper in the dark is cake if you’ve already built a bassinet without directions because someone was so sure she’d never have another baby that she threw away the directions but wasn’t sure enough to throw away the bassinet.
· Save your time outs for when you really need them. I’m fortunate enough to take two and a half weeks off work to help out while my wife recovers. I’m so glad I didn’t squander my sick time on sniffles and sneezes. If I had, I would’ve missed classic moments, such as our 6-year-old trying to feed the baby or the newborn’s bowels releasing on my arm after her first bath.
· Enjoy the game. Your playing days are numbered. It won’t last forever, even if it seems endless sometimes. But these memories will stick with you for a lifetime.
You can comment on this story at www.limaohio.com.

Welcome to the world

2007-08-08T23:30:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the world, Jillian Grace Trinko, as of 1:55 p.m. Aug. 8. At 6 pounds, 14 ounces and 19 inches long, you're quite an average baby. But to your proud mom and dad, you're the most extraordinary person ever born.

Life is full of possibilities. You're never more aware of that than when you hold a newborn baby the first time.

Blue-collar workers deserve any credit they get

2007-07-31T23:29:00.000-04:00

Blue-collar workers deserve any credit they get
David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 07.31.2007
A friend of mine who works in a factory likes to tease me about the easy working conditions here at the office.
I don’t mind egging him on, talking about those days the air conditioning couldn’t keep the temperature below 80 degrees, that paper cut that stung for hours or how difficult it is to be here by 9 a.m. some days.
It’s good-natured ribbing because he and I both know the truth: Factory work makes this country what it is. It can be absolutely miserable this time of year. Anyone who clocks in and out each day to build the things we can’t live without deserves our gratitude.
Anyone who wants a white-collar job should try a blue-collar one on for size for at least one summer. It teaches you what America’s all about.
I spent my summers back in college (way back, it seems some days) working at the Whirlpool factory in Findlay. As temporary summer help, I rotated from job to job throughout the summer. Two particularly miserable jobs kept me motivated to return to college to earn my degree.
Imagine it’s 90 degrees outside on a muggy summer day. Then dream of wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. Then stand next to a furnace.
Now for the fun part: Lift one 50-pound dishwasher tub from a line coming out of the furnace, and place it on another line. Repeat … for 15 minutes at a time.
That job had its perks. Because of the heat, you got to sit and rest for 15 minutes of every hour. The rest of the time, you rotated among three jobs, which all involved lifting those dishwasher tubs.
It was still one of those jobs that reminded me it’s better to use that muscle in my head than the ones in my arms and back all day long. It ranked right up there with stacking bales of hay throughout summers in high school in terms of exhausting jobs.
The second miserable task during those summers involved the most tedious work I’ve done to this day: Cleaning spray paint nozzles on third shift.
You’d be amazed how much gunk builds up in a spray nozzle over the course of a day. So each night, after the second-shift workers went home, I was down on my knees with a wire brush, cleaning out each individual hole where paint sprayed out.
The job didn’t really take a full eight hours. If you were an ambitious college kid, you could finish in three hours. If you were a smart college kid, you could drag the work out through six or seven hours so a supervisor didn’t make you do more jobs in other areas of the factory.
Unfortunately for me, I was more ambitious than smart.
I remember talking with one of my co-workers at the time, a man in his mid-40s named Oscar. I asked him how he survived the past 20 years in the factory with another 20 on the way, knowing the job wouldn’t change.
His answer was simple: “Don’t think. It’ll make you miserable.”
I hear factories are better these days, letting the line workers make some day-to-day decisions on how to best accomplish their goals. Still, the monotony of a real factory was never for me, and I greatly prefer the word factory here.
My summers in a factory gave me a chance to see how the real America works. I know I’m not alone in my respect for the working man and woman in America. A trip around the cable TV dial shows a dozen programs highlighting how everyday people make extraordinary products.
Everyone should take the opportunity to work in a factory sometime in his or her life. It’s an eye-opening experience that makes you recognize the true value of hard work.

Playing hooky

2007-07-16T08:08:00.000-04:00

Today I'm playing hooky from work, sort of.
It's a planned day off, since I worked Saturday night. But still, it's 8 a.m. and I'm still wearing my pajamas, so it seems like something nefarious must be going on here.
It sort of reminds me of those care-free days of summer when you're in elementary or high school. You wake up when you feel like it, and you do what you feel like.
That "what you feel like" part is what amuses me. Back in those days I'd watch TV or go visit a friend. Today's list seems more like chores...
- Move a couple more items over here from the old house
- Get the computer in the basement to work with the wireless router for Internet use
- Weed-whack the yard, since only the weeds seem to be growing lately
- File old bills in the office, with the possibility of grabbing the really old bills and putting 'em in boxes.
What an exciting life I lead...

Drawing the line

2007-07-10T21:43:00.000-04:00

Maybe it's a distinction the rest of the world doesn't care about, but I like to draw a line between "work me" and "home me."
When I'm at home, I prefer to be thinking about home things, such as my family, our home, our pets.
Don't get me wrong. My job's important to me. I check my work e-mail from home at least once a day to make sure there's nothing vitally important there. But I rationalize that, saying I can do that on my time.
There are people in the world who don't understand that distinction, particularly people in the "real world" who feel connected because they know the home number or cell number for an editor at the newspaper. They feel like they can call whenever it strikes them and try to pitch a story idea.
I try to be polite. I try to be pleasant. But deep down, it irritates the heck out of me.
After all, I leave for work around 8 a.m. I get home around 7 p.m. I usually chow down my lunch in less than 10 minutes. They get a solid 10 hours out of me each day. So having to deal with this stuff at home too is quite frustrating, particularly from people in the public.
It gets harder and harder to draw the line between here and there. E-mail, cell phones and high-speed Internet make it too easy to be in contact. It seems as if part of your mind has to be in work mode all the time.
I suppose it's silly to whine about it. I should be happy I have a job that matters to someone, even if it doesn't matter that much to me sometimes. I should be happy I'm in demand.
But most of all, I should just learn to let things go, no matter how frustrated they make me.

Buddy doesn't need wings to go to heaven

2007-07-10T21:42:00.000-04:00

Buddy doesn't need wings to go to heaven
David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 07.10.2007

Last Tuesday was Buddy’s time to go, even if our 5-year-old didn’t think so.
The gray-and-white Heinz 57-variety mutt didn’t eat much dog food in his final days. He couldn’t hardly walk either. He’d had a good 15 years of life, even if the last few weeks of it were painful.
Good luck explaining that to a 5-year-old girl. Really, good luck explaining death and grief to anyone, regardless of age.
At first, our 5-year-old, Lissie, showed classic symptoms of denial. She believed Buddy would be lying on the floor next to the couch, where he loved to lounge. She expected he’d want to eat.
Then her grief turned into taunting. She started making fun of my wife and me for how we tried to explain death to her.
At first, we told her he went far away forever. In her mind, that meant we sent him 1,000 miles south. The next day, as we looked at a map on a restaurant placemat, she pointed directly at Texas and told us that was Buddy’s new home.
Then we tried telling her Buddy went to heaven. She seemed baffled by that. As she rode past our church, she asked my wife if Buddy was living there now.
Finally we tried telling her he lived in the sky, above the clouds. She informed us he didn’t have wings, so he couldn’t fly.
My wife and I commiserated at how difficult it was to explain death. We’d had enough trouble explaining life, as she anxiously awaits the birth of a little sister next month.
This “death” thing was too much for her to grasp. For nearly a week, she seemed unwilling to accept that her beloved pet was gone.
She wasn’t the only one.
I had the sad task of bringing this member of our family to the veterinarian’s office that one last time, and I had trouble accepting his fate. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t find his food dish the next morning. I got confused at night when it was time to put the dogs away; I couldn’t find the one who typically slept right behind the couch.
Our second dog, Amigo, was probably the most distraught of us all. He and Buddy didn’t get along. Buddy may have realized we bought Amigo a year ago to help ease the pain whenever Buddy passed. Whatever the reason, Amigo always liked Buddy more than Buddy liked Amigo.
Without his nemesis/best friend around, Amigo wandered around the house aimlessly. This usually rambunctious golden retriever settled down with a downtrodden look in his eyes.
We’ve all settled in for a post-Buddy life. Lissie accepts that Buddy is one of God’s dogs now, running around a big grassy field without that limp that plagued him the last year of his life. Amigo realizes he won’t hear the snarl of another dog when it’s time to go outside. And I know the dog that always curled up at my feet won’t trip me up anymore.
We learn to accept death, but I don’t know that we ever learn how to deal with it. There is no easy route for mourning. With a little time, though, we all heal.
Our recent loss reminds me how hard it can be to let go of people who mean so much to you.
While these people and pets may mean nothing to anyone else, memories of them live in our hearts and minds. We never forget.
You can comment on this story at www.limaohio.com.

The value of friendship

2007-07-01T21:40:00.000-04:00

My best friend from high school, John, called yesterday. It'd been ages since we'd talked, and I felt pretty guilty about the time apart after we chatted.
There's a tendency to say not much changed since the last time we talked. That's what I said at first. Then, as we tried to hammer out exactly how long it'd been, it became pretty clear that quite a bit had happened.
It appears October must've been the last time we talked. He didn't know my wife was pregnant. He didn't know we'd moved to a nearby town. He wasn't aware I was about halfway through the adoptions proceedings with Lissie. He really wasn't even aware I had my current job, although we'd obviously chatted several times since then. (Heck, he was in my wedding since I got this job.)
This isn't intended to slam John, by any means. Quite the contrary. It's to slam me. I've become quite the slacker about keeping in touch with people who mean something to me.
I've taken the "my wife is pregnant" excuse to put on about 15 pounds, which is probably just repressed conversations. I don't e-mail. I don't call. And when I do see people, I tend to be a bit withdrawn.
When we went to my parents' house for Father's Day, I realized we hadn't visited their home in at least three months, given the carbon-dating method of knowing when my dad installed a new fish tank.
What've I been doing in all that time? Pulling back into myself, really. I'm worried about the future of the newspaper industry and whether my ideas are enough to keep my little corner of the universe afloat. I'm concerned about the world we'll be bringing our child into. And I'm a little bit terrified if I'm ready to parent a newborn.
I'll work it all out, in due time. I usually do. I just hope once I do I can be the type of friend I've had to help pull me through my doubts and worries.

Economic censorship hurts truly free speech

2007-06-25T06:00:00.000-04:00

Economic censorship hurts truly free speech
David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 06.25.2007
Free speech may exist in our country, but money still talks here.
What exactly it says remains up in the air, but we’re heading into an era of economic censorship.
Take the example of the radio hosts for “The Opie and Anthony Show,” Gregg “Opie” Hughes, Anthony Cumia and Jim Norton. Their recent history shows the pros and cons of censorship via the flow of money.
On May 15, XM Satellite Radio yanked the comedy show off the air for 30 days. A week prior, a guest on the show, “Homeless Charlie,” described his desire to do vicious things of a sexual nature with Laura Bush, Condoleezza Rice and Queen Elizabeth. The company suggested the hosts weren’t sincere enough in an apology they offered for the homeless guest’s rant or during conversations on the air afterwards.
The Federal Communications Commission doesn’t govern satellite radio. It’s based on satellite usage and not public airways. The company hired Opie and Anthony, boasting of satellite radio’s uncensored nature. The satellite radio show allows graphic and crude behavior and language alike, pushing the envelope of taste sometimes.
To be quite clear, this wasn’t a matter of the First Amendment coming into play. It had nothing to do with FCC regulations. It’s about a company trying to protect its assets, if you know what I mean.
It appeared the company simply bent to economic pressures. It’s in the midst of trying to merge with its main competitor, Sirius. And certainly a number of people were offended by the talk of a homeless man taking certain liberties with powerful women in our world.
Opie and Anthony are probably most notorious for a radio contest in August 2002. A pair of listeners claimed to have sex in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. In the fallout, the radio team’s employer forced them to sit out of radio until their contracts expired without an audience. Certainly XM knew what it was getting when it hired the team, who focus on juvenile jokes, occasional randy conversations and sporadically thought-provoking conversations about politics and life.
As a subscriber to XM, I listen to the show on my way to work, and I enjoy the show. I don’t necessarily enjoy every second of the show, as sometimes the topics get too graphic for my tastes. The chat with the homeless man fell in that category. But I appreciated there was a place for people to listen to this, if they chose.
And there certainly is an audience for it. This is the part of economic censorship that leaves some hope.
In a Washington Times article, XM officials said the company lost nearly 5,000 subscribers after suspending the program. That’s out of 7.9 million subscribers nationwide. Still, the company must have felt some impact from that. It reached out to Opie and Anthony fans with an offer to waive a regular $14.99 reactivation fee until the end of the month.
During the radio team’s return to satellite radio June 15, Opie spoke up in favor of the fans. He said he believed they would’ve lost their jobs if it weren’t for the support of their fans and the economic pressures fans placed on the company.
This incident reminds us we live in strange times. A vocal group with the financial threat of a boycott can protest to the point speech protected by the First Amendment can get a radio host thrown off the air. That was the case with Don Imus, who referred to the Rutgers women’s basketball team with some rather derogatory terms.
It also shows the customer is still always right, as was the case with Opie and Anthony’s fans. They showed there was a demand for that brand of comedy, and the show is back now.
We’re fortunate at this newspaper, as there’s an ideological wall between our moneymaking side and our newsgathering side. Our news decisions aren’t influenced by what an advertiser wants. Advertising and the newsroom are literally on opposite sides of our building.
Still, the mass media considers the impact of what it prints or broadcasts before hitting the button. Maybe it’s an awareness of political correctness. Maybe it’s fear of economic repercussions. Whatever the reason, we think before we speak.
Ultimately, though, it falls back on the reader, listener or viewer. They must decide if they’ll be insulted, angered or wound up over anything. I worry too many people jump right to censoring when the language or ideas make them uncomfortable.
That’s where a quote widely attributed to the French philosopher Voltaire comes into play. It’s arguable whether the author, born François Marie Arouet, ever really said it or wrote it. Some attribute it to author Evelyn Beatrice Hall in a 1906 as an epitome of his attitude.
Whatever the source, the idea’s worth considering: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Perhaps it’s time for a revision to that. We can just add a few more words to the end, in much smaller type… “unless I lose too much money defending it.”
You can comment on this story at www.limaohio.com.

Gas prices make it cool to be a numbers geek

2007-06-12T00:00:00.000-04:00

Gas prices make it cool to be a numbers geek

David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 06.12.2007
By spending 42 cents Monday morning, I could’ve saved you $1.08 on your next 12-gallon tank of gas.
That’s because I found gas at $2.889 yesterday morning, nearly nine cents lower than the average in our area. That makes that extra 4.4 miles and 14 minutes on my way to work worthwhile. It would be especially comforting if all 84,500 readers got a better price on gas, since they’d save a combined $94,500.
It’s all in a day’s work for the http://www.limaohio.com/gasprices team and math geeks like me.
Like everyone else with a car, I found myself paying a lot more attention to gas prices these days. It was hard not to, especially when prices crept near $3.50 for several days.
I quickly added gas-price tracker for our Web site onto my list of things to do each day, and it gave my inner dork room to run.
Using the fastest, most direct route to work, I only pass four gas stations on my 23-mile trek from Ottawa to Lima each day. With a little bit of research, I added those 4.4 miles, those 14 minutes and another 12 gas stations to my list. And it’s truly a list, printed out each week with neat little boxes for those 16 gas stations I pass each day.
It’s really my dream job. Deep down inside, I’m a numbers geek. While most of my journalism brethren disdain math, I enjoy it. I open up Microsoft Excel on my computer before loading Word on most workdays.
I’m half convinced I spent the first eight years of my journalism career in sports simply because I enjoyed adding up rushing yards in my head during football games.
I even spent a few minutes trying to work up a formula for happiness in our family’s home. I tried to think of an inverse proportion of hours worked to number of compliments given to my wife, multiplied by the number of times our daughter shot root beer out her nose because she laughed so hard.
I couldn’t find one that worked until I found this mathematical truth: My wife’s happiness equals everybody’s happiness.
I think there’s a certain degree of math geek in most of us. As soon as we learn what greater than and less than mean, finding a bargain consumes us. Most of us will drive the extra half mile to get gas from a cheaper gas station.
That’s why so many people wonder aloud if it’s worth their while to drive to Beaverdam to save 10 cents per gallon of gas.
The answer, at current gas prices, is maybe. At the roughly 30 miles to the gallon the ol’ Sebring gets, it’s worthwhile for nine cents or more. If you have a gas-guzzler, such as my wife’s Jeep and its 20 miles to the gallon, it’d have to be 13 cents cheaper per gallon.
I warned you I was a math geek deep down inside.
It all makes me wonder why we fixate on gas prices so much. Consider my other preferred fuel, Dr Pepper.
After a little number crunching, I realized I spent $8 per gallon for Dr Pepper at the office. It was the same whether I bought 12-ounce cans or 20-ounce bottles. If I buy it in 2-liter bottles, the price drops to $4.73 per gallon. Or I can get it for a mere $4.26 per gallon by buying it in six-packs of 24-ounce bottles.
It appears milk might be the most efficient way for me to get around. I can get that for $2.59 per gallon. Something tells me most people don’t comparison shop on milk, though. When I called Wal-Mart, the woman laughed at the bizarre question before answering it.
It all offers perspective. With nearly any product, people will pay what it’s worth to them. Whether it’s $2.889 a gallon for gas, $2.59 a gallon for milk or $4.26 a gallon for Dr Pepper, you’ll buy it if you think you need it.
Occasionally you’ll reduce your consumption, but that’s the exception to the rule. You’ll pay whatever they ask for it. You can count on that.
You can comment on this story at http://www.limaohio.com.

Strange thoughts dance through your head at a recital

2007-05-08T22:20:00.000-04:00

Strange thoughts dance through your head at a recital
David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 05.08.2007
Three hours at a dance recital probably doesn’t count as culture if you snickered at it the whole time.
That thought kept going through my head Saturday as I watched little girl after little girl tap-dancing, hip-hopping and balleting her way across the stage.
Their ages ranged from 3 to 18, but really all I cared about was that one 5-year-old. There were 43 dance numbers in the show. My daughter was in one of them, which is to say she was not in 42 of them. Thus, my mind wandered.
• Does Trace Adkins mind his song “Swing,” about three men trying to pick up the same gal at a bar, being used as a line-dancing song about baseball for junior high girls?
• Does it bother a songwriter when dancers act out every lyric in a song literally?
• Which of the unenthusiastic dancers in the back row is the next YouTube hit waiting to happen? I wish I had a video camera to capture those girls with the expressionless faces and rapidly moving arms.
• How does a grandma in the audience feel when her little sunflower gyrates wildly on stage to a hip-hop song?
• What possesses a parent to yelp out “woo woo!” after the daughter finishes a routine? Does this embarrass the child? It embarrassed me, and I wasn’t even on the stage.
• They shouldn’t make the preschool kids dance in the same performance as the high school kids. It’s unfair to the parents to sit through that much dancing by someone else’s kids.
• Why don’t you notice how suggestive some song lyrics are until you’ve seen a freshman in high school dancing to them?
• I spent some time auditioning names from the program for our house’s little coming attraction, due out in August. Why are there so many ways to spell Ashley, Brittney and Jennifer?
• Is it wrong to watch dancers like you do ice skaters and hockey players, waiting for one to fall down or start a fight?
• Did someone just sneak out the backdoor as soon as his daughter’s routine ended? That doesn’t seem fair.
• Why do dance outfits cost twice as much as regular clothes when they look so cheaply made?
• Do choreographers see dance patterns the same way a great hitter sees the ball coming to the plate?
• Were people thinner back in the early 1900s? Every seat in the old auditorium seemed cramped. Come to think of it, none of them seemed that cramped when I saw a show there as a kid.
• Would more pedophiles come in to watch this if it didn’t cost $7 per seat?
• How does a mother learn the routine enough that she can wiggle in her seat with every motion, trying to urge her daughter into keeping up?
• Every little girl looks like a middle-aged burnout when you put a pound of makeup on her face and put her hair up into a bun.
• Do organizers of these types of events have the express written permission of the music companies to use the music, like you’re supposed to do before replaying a sporting event in front of a crowd?
• What are all the other fathers thinking about when their daughters aren’t on stage?
• Is someone snoring?
• Was that me snoring?
I live to tell from the experience. And really, the two and a half minutes our 5-year-old spent on stage dancing to a Winnie the Pooh song made the rest of the show palatable.
It reminded me of something important. While other people’s kids may look silly and strange, your own children always look cute. Love may be blind, but it’s just nearsighted when it comes to your kids.

Glory days weren’t so glorious after all

2007-04-10T22:20:00.000-04:00

http://www.limaohio.com/story.php?IDnum=37161&q=david%20trinko

Glory days weren’t so glorious after all

David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 04.10.2007
The scene would’ve seemed dull just 10 years ago.
It was 9:30 p.m., and I reclined on my couch. My wife’s slumbering body pinned my lap down. Our 5-year-old had been sleeping for about an hour, and Mrs. Trinko was asleep for nearly that same amount of time.
The television set clicked off, leaving only silence and time to reflect on life. We make a decent living, and there’s plenty of laughter in our home. There’s love, happiness and joy. By all accounts, life is good for us.
I started thinking about a fellow I knew, in his early 20s. He would’ve hated that scene. Silence intimidated him. He was young, and he wanted to live.
The Lima bar scene was his place in the world. Nearly every night he’d head out after work, consume a few too many alcoholic beverages and somehow stumble home. “Bud Heavy,” he’d call his drink of choice. If a bartender looked at him cross-eyed or confused, he’d clarify, “Budweiser.”
That’s how he spent his free time, drinking with a group of friends, talking about the issues of the day and arguing how the world would be different if he were in charge.
He had good friends, and there were plenty of ideas in his life. There was independence, spontaneity and thrill. By all accounts, life was good for him.
A few weeks ago, my wife and daughter were off visiting other parts of the state, leaving me free on a Tuesday night to relive that nighttime scene.
That’s when it became obvious to me that I’m the man I am now and not the man I was 10 years ago. The conversations I overheard seemed trite. The alcohol seemed like a Band-Aid on bigger problems in lives. It was a chance to vent. Once the venting was done, all that remained was a room full of emptiness for many of them.
Yet that will become a glory day for many of the people there. I think back to some of those hilarious stories you share about those days.
We had one friend who fell asleep in nearly every drinking establishment in Lima. We had another friend who eventually ended his marriage so he could have more fun. Then there was the time we left a guy behind accidentally when we were swept away for a surprise half-birthday party.
And none of us will ever forget the night we stayed up drinking all night and headed to Bob Evans at 6 a.m., only to find out it opened at 6:30 a.m. in that location. Some brave souls even tried playing golf that morning before returning to work in the afternoon.
As I look back at those fond memories, I have to wonder if I should enjoy them and be proud of them. It makes me realize what a stupid kid I was, relying on suds to help make my life seem right.
I’m no teetotaler. I still enjoy good beer and great conversation. I also realize how it could’ve easily destroyed my world if I’d ever been caught being so reckless and ridiculous. I could’ve truly hurt myself or someone else by being so dumb.
I could have ruined the life I’m living and loving now, even if I would’ve hated it then.
So here’s a word of warning to the young and bulletproof. Be careful with your lives. Every decision you make could affect your future.
Have fun, but be responsible with it. You’ll thank yourself for it, say, 10 years down the road.

Bathroom humor

2007-03-17T12:03:00.000-04:00

I was sitting in the bathroom at work earlier this week, doing what one does in a bathroom. As I looked down at my exposed leg, I noticed a scab over a wound I didn't remember suffering.
"I wonder how that happened," I wondered aloud.
"Must've been something you ate," the voice from one stall over said.

Memories really are nothing more than memories

2007-03-13T22:19:00.000-04:00

http://www.limaohio.com/story.php?IDnum=36196

Memories really are nothing more than memories
David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 03.13.2007

I just don’t remember having that much of it when I first got out of high school.
I had a little bit more when I graduated college and took my first job here in Lima. Whenever I moved, it seemed like there was a little more and a little more.
This past weekend, when I moved into the first house recorded in my name, I noticed I had a lot more of it than I’m proud to admit.
It’s not my gut, although there’s a bit more of that than I might like too. It’s stuff. It’s junk. It’s garbage I just can’t let myself throw out.
They’re silly little trinkets that have no real value whatsoever. There’s that red, plastic football from the homecoming dance my senior year. There’s that “Dream Team 1998” T-shirt I got the one year for helping compile The Lima News’ all-star team. There’s a plastic basketball from when I organized a high school basketball tournament for a newspaper in Virginia.
It’s all junk. It’s all worthless.
Still, when my wife suggested I trim back my collection of memories, I bristled. And I really don’t know why.
Do I really need to display the “110-percent award” I received in track? Sure, it’s a reminder that I tried hard my senior year. It’s also a reminder that I finished third or worse in the two-mile race dozens of times because I was slow.
What purpose does that spray-paint ocean-view from Cancun play? It was fun to watch the Mexican performer create it with flames and artistry. It was also depressing, as I went to Cancun alone because my girlfriend at the time and I broke up after I’d already purchased the tickets.
What about the softball jerseys for newspaper teams everywhere I’d worked? My claim to fame was always hitting a single to third base but outrunning the throw. Half the time, it also meant I forced out a runner at third base.
They’re all memories of who I was, both as a winner and as a loser.
I’m making plenty of memories now. I’m a husband, a father and a boss, although never two of the three to anyone. Deep down inside, I think I fear losing who I was in favor of who I’ve become.
That’s one of the challenges as an adult male in today’s world. There’s an expectation that you’ll give up some of your childish things to adopt the role society sets for you. Happily, I’ll never put my childishness behind me.
I will, however, let some of those memories become strictly memories. All of those old jerseys are gone now, but I’ll always remember the joy of outrunning a throw to first. Some of those other trinkets are stowed away in boxes now, ready to be conveniently tossed when I’m ready to forget those years. (Or ready for the David Trinko Museum, whichever comes first.)
I finally gave in when I realized junk didn't make me who I am. My reactions to events and humorous stories about them did. It’s not cutting back on who I am to let go of some of it.
Now if I can only talk my waistline into dropping some of those memories from Saturday night’s dinner.
You can comment on this story at www.limaohio.com.

Changes...

2007-03-11T21:48:00.000-04:00

Whew... I've been sloppy about keeping this blog updated. It's been a tad bit nuts around here lately.
Just by way of explanation... My wife's due in August, we just moved into a new house and work's been crazy lately. (Just visit http://www.limaohio.com/default.php?IDnum=64 to see what I'm talking about, in terms of the Bluffton bus crash.)
Anyway, among other little vows, I'm hoping to be better about this in the coming weeks. (Yeah, like long-time readers haven't seen that one before.)

Accusations of racism will chill a person

2007-02-27T21:42:00.000-05:00

They’re words that sting as badly as a hit from an aluminum bat to the funny bone: “You’re a racist.”
They’re words I’ve heard twice in my life. And they’re words that change your outlook on everything.
To clarify, each time I’ve heard those words it was because I told someone over the phone that I wouldn’t put something in the newspaper. In each case, it was something that wasn’t as newsworthy as my standards required.
I don’t know if the people on the other end of the phone line intended the line to be so brutal. That’s not the point. It still hurt.
“You’re a racist” is the death knell to the conscience of a good-hearted man with compassion for others, regardless of race or religion. It makes you question if perhaps you’ve veiled yourself to how your mind truly works.
This phrase perpetuates true racism. It generates anger. It generates self-defense. It generates a certain degree of loathing.
You start thinking about all the friends you’ve had of other ethnicities, wondering if they felt the same way.
“I’m not a racist” is a statement that, when you hear it out loud, sounds more like an admission than a defense.
Racism is treating one race differently than another. Racism is using your language differently around one group than another. Racism is thinking differently about another group.
It inevitably sounds idealistic, but there is only one race here, human. If we treat one another as such, regardless of the hues of our skins, we’ll be fine.
Black History Month ends Wednesday. I won’t debate the need for this daily reminder of how African-Americans contributed to our history, although there are issues with the month’s moniker.
The key to that phrase, though, is “our history.” It’s not black history. It’s not white history. It’s a history we share, regardless of where our ancestors were born.
Throughout this month, we’ve seen leaders talk about the “black community” here. This type of separation doesn’t benefit anyone. It pushes an us versus them mentality that is, frankly, 30 years out of date.
As the comic-strip philosopher Walt Kelly once had Pogo say, “We’ve met the enemy, and he is us.”
As long as there is a black community, a white community, a Hispanic community, an Asian community or a left-handed flautist community here, we’ll never see eye to eye. We’re one community, facing and solving our common problems together.
Sure, you must value diversity. It’s what makes America such an interesting melting pot. That’s not the same as creating division among us by accenting our differences, though. True diversity is recognizing the good in everyone.
I hope I’ll never hear those chilling words of “you’re a racist” again, but I know I will some day. It’s the nature of a job where you have to say no to people sometimes. As long as I stay true to my principles of fairness and truth, I know I won’t fall victim to actually becoming one.
I can only hope everyone else fights it too.

COLUMN: It’s finally good to be a Bears fan again

2007-02-03T09:31:00.000-05:00

From The Lima News, Feb. 1, 2007

If it’s a boy, we’re thinking about naming him Brian, after Brian Urlacher.

My wife and I both have replicas of Urlacher’s jersey, although I have trouble imagining him wearing that tight, midriff-bearing shirt she received for Christmas.

Even our 5-year-old knows that the guy with No. 54 on his back is Urlacher.

It’s safe to say our house is a Bears house as the Super Bowl comes this weekend. You’ll have to pardon my glee, but Bears’ fans haven’t had much to celebrate in, oh, 21 years.

When the Bears made their Super Bowl Shuffle video on their way to winning the Super Bowl after the 1985 regular season, I was on cloud nine. So were most of the kids in my class, who’d hopped on the bandwagon.

I recall my fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Davis, declaring the Monday after the Super Bowl that none of us would be Bears fans in 20 years.

He was wrong with me. Family ties to Chicago built that bond with the Bears, and I’ve stayed with them through tough times. There were 11 losing seasons since then, including three 4-12 campaigns. There were 11 pretty bad quarterbacks in that stretch too, including three who were so totally forgettable I had to look up their first names (Chad Hutchinson, Dave Krieg and Steve Walsh).

Twenty-one years is a really long time, even though that Super Bowl win against New England seems like yesterday for me. That Super Bowl drought is old enough to go out drinking now. It’s old enough to be a junior in college. It’s old enough to serve in the military.

My wife’s passion for the Bears is a bit newer. She never cared much for Chicago until she began watching games with me. It was one of those compromises couples make: She watches the Bears with me, and I watch “Desperate Housewives” with her.

Something magical happened with her. Most of last year, she merely watched the games. This year, she began cheering. She began yelling at the TV. She began sitting on the edge of the couch as the defense made key stops.

She also made a dream of mine come true. Even though I’d been to Chicago at least once a year nearly every year I’ve been alive, I’d never seen a game there. She surprised me with tickets around my birthday. The photograph of her and me sitting in front of Soldier Field brings back a treasured memory.

She’s been hooked on the team ever since. I’m proud to say we plan our Sundays around when the Bears play.

There’s just something alluring about those Monsters of the Midway.

I credit my grandma, who still lives near Chicago, for my fanaticism for the Bears. She’s in her mid-90s now, but she’s still sharp as the pain Peyton Manning will feel after a sack Sunday. And when the Bears are playing, you simply know you don’t call her; she’s busy watching da Bears.

At the reception for my wedding last summer, I chatted with my grandma for a bit. After we got through the pleasantries, she started our annual July conversation: How do you think the Bears will do this year?

Neither of us imagined this team would be good enough to get to the Super Bowl. After all these years of disappointment, you just stop expecting it.

I’m not expecting a win, but I’d sure like to see it. If you’re going to go to the effort of playing in the Super Bowl, you might as well win the thing. After all, it might be another 21 years of heartache before you get back there again.

Column: Staging sets up unrealistic view of home

2007-01-09T00:12:00.000-05:00

Staging sets up unrealistic view of home
BY DAVID TRINKO - Jan. 9, 2007

You never realize how small your house is until you’re ready to move.

You never realize how big it is until you’re preparing to sell it.

My wife and I recently received some exciting news that made it clear our current home was one bedroom too small. It became obvious we’d have to leave our cozy home behind.

The real estate agents stuck the sign in the front yard quickly enough, but that’s when the real work began. Selling a house is easy enough, but preparing it for sale is a literal pain in the back.

People looking for homes are often in the same predicament as my family. You look around, and you realize there isn’t enough room for all your stuff and all your family. You love your stuff. You love your family. Thus you decide to make room for both of them.

One of the real estate agents came to the same conclusion after looking around our humble abode. We have a beautiful house. We have a lot of beautiful stuff, much more beautiful stuff than the beautiful house will hold.

Thus began our journey into “staging” the house. It’s a cute term that’s very similar to how children look at divorce. Half of the stuff moves out of the house, yet you hope it gets back together with the other half some day.

Given Mrs. Trinko’s condition, she’s not that much help in moving half of our nice, heavy stuff out of the house. Our 5-year-old isn’t much help either, although she’s seen her mother in action enough to tell you when you’re about to hit a wall with a piece of furniture way too big for just one person to carry.

The idea of staging sounds simple enough. You’re removing unnecessary items from the home, so it appears much larger than it really is. It gives the illusion of space.

It also removes the illusion that a man lives there. Every piece of furniture I brought into our marriage is now residing in our garage. I’ve learned not to complain too loudly, though, as I fear I might reside there too.

I spent New Year’s Day packing up our office area, boxing up the remnants of the once-manliest room in the home. For staging purposes, it’s a computer/playroom for our daughter.

I admitted defeat about the time I plugged a Disney Princess television into the wall where my beautiful 32-inch television set used to play. You haven’t lived until you see Cinderella next to the channel number as you flip between the Gator Bowl and the Capital One Bowl. You gain a new perspective on college football when Ariel from the Little Mermaid swims across the screen as you turn up Kirk Herbstreit’s commentary on the Rose Bowl.

Eventually you get all of the useful, comfortable furniture and belongings out of the house. Your home looks the way you hope it does when company visits: Spotless, spacious and not even remotely close to how you really live.

You also realize something else … the house is huge. You don’t really need more rooms. It’s just more room for more junk to accumulate.

Still, I’ve accepted we’ll move before too long. We can’t really live like this, unless the real estate agent has some tips on staging our lives.

Until then, I know I can visit the rest of our furnishings in the garage. Some day they’ll reunite with our staged belongings in a real home again.

Reflections on fatherhood

2006-12-24T00:26:00.000-05:00

Tonight I shared some exciting news with my siblings... my wife is pregnant.

The response, albeit predictable, was a bit disappointing.

I heard from many of them that I was going to be a great father. I heard that I was loving, caring and compassionate enough to guide a child to a healthy childhood.

But that was somewhat disappointing to my ears. Perhaps the greatest success in my life so far is that Lissie, our 5-year-old, calls me "Daddy." I share no genes with Lissie. She is literally some other guy's child. But in the same token, I'm her daddy. I'm who she goes to after a nightful of tears from bad dreams. I'm who takes her to a movies when her mother's not in a spectacular mood. I'm who made her breakfast this morning.

It's not for credit that I mention these things. It's almost to defend my relationship. The natural response when it's noted she's not my daughter is "he takes good care of her." "He appears to take care of her." No. None of that's true. I love her, as I will love my potential son or daughter. I don't think any less of her because I wasn't a part of her conception. I pray she doesn't think any less of me either.

So I hope you'll forgive me if I don't respond well, if you tell me the joys of fathering a child. I accepted that when Jessica and I fell in love. I already know what it's like to be a child's father, and I wouldn't trade those "I love you daddy" comments for anything in the world.

Single father

2006-12-11T23:43:00.000-05:00

I've been a single father for about 30 hours, and I hate it.
Let me explain. My wife's out of town for a seminar in Columbus. So, while she's gone, I'm playing the role of the single father.
I can handle our 5-year-old just fine. We get along splendidly, and we've had some fun. She's finally mastered the art of playing her "War" card game, and she's got a great sense of humor.
Still, it's not the same thing as having a wife. I missed not having someone to bounce my day off of. I missed having someone who'd tell me, "You're right about that," or "Stop whining!" when I explain details of the day.
It also makes me appreciate what my wife does each day. I end up having the time to blow off steam at home and enjoy myself. I'm not seeing that same time since I'm trying to do both roles.
The real disappointment is the loneliness I feel. Aside from a few days when I went to North Carolina for work, I simply haven't been lonely since we met. I can't wait for her to get home.

My daughter's a genius

2006-12-05T21:01:00.000-05:00

I hate jigsaw puzzles.
I'm just not able to look at the missing pieces and think to myself, "That one right there will make this work just fine."
I just don't think like that. I have to look at the picture on the box and try to find a piece that's very similar to the one next to it. I have to build the outside border first. I can do a lot of things, but I just can't visualize how one abstract piece fits into that bigger picture with a jigsaw puzzle.
Lissie, on the other hand, takes after her mother. They both excel at jigsaw puzzles. They rock at them. Lissie can just pick up a piece of the puzzle and instinctively guide the piece where it needs to go. She sometimes will try to put it in upside down, but she knows where it belongs, even if there's nothing else nearby.
So aside from bragging about my brilliant family, what's my point?
Lately I've been thinking a lot about the ways different people manage different situations. What I've found is most people think their way of thinking is the only way to solve a problem. They become frustrated or angry if someone else offers a solution in a way that doesn't fit their preconceived view of the world.
There's two ways you can handle that. You can become frustrated and irritable, demanding that someone else does it exactly the way you see fit.
Or you can realize that my daughter's a genius. She finds her own way to solve a problem, and I'm proud of her for that. I'll continue to support her, however she wants to try it.

What ever happened to David's blog?

2006-11-26T01:26:00.000-05:00

We were talking about blogs at work the other day, and one of my coworkers commented, "You have a blog, don't you, David?"

I had to say I did, although I hadn't updated it in ages. And I really didn't have a good reason why I haven't.

It's not as though I've stopped observing life in the four months since I last wrote here. It's not as though my life's so busy I truly haven't had time. To be honest, it's mostly that I've gotten lazy about it.

But a couple of columns I was able to write for work this week reminded me that I do like to write. I do like to express myself. I do like to share my thoughts on the world.

So I'll try to reinvigorate this blog. Here's the real fun part for me... I don't think I'm going to tell anyone I'm doing it. So if you stumble back here again, please drop me a note to say hello and let me know I'm rebuilding this thing from scratch.

The biggest change in my life has obviously been the wedding. All went off without a major hitch. In hindsight, I'm glad everything was done the way it was done. Also in hindsight, I wish we'd gone to Vegas and done it cheaply. But that's my nature, to be cheap.

Overall, though, I am happy. And that's something I haven't been able to say for most of the years of my adult life.

Time to stand up to technology taking over your life

2006-11-26T01:25:00.000-05:00

From the Nov. 26, 2006, editions of The Lima News
The frustrated voice on the message said it all.

"I don’t know why you even bother having a cell phone if you’re not going to answer it," an old friend said.

Something about his tone made me wonder if I was mastering technology or if technology was mastering me. Perhaps it truly was my duty to flip the little black phone open every time it rumbled in my pocket.

It reminded me of a nasty e-mail from another friend. I’d gone a day or two too long before answering an e-mail, so I received a reminder about the joys of the Internet.

"E-mail is an instant form of communication," she wrote. "That means you can actually answer it as soon as you receive it."

Technology is a wonderful thing, but sometimes it’s wonderfully complicating to your life. Everything becomes so instantaneous, you miss out on the most important human decisions: the decision to deal with it later.

Every day, we divide our worlds into three categories. There are things you have to do now. There are the things you have to do later. Then there are the things you may never do (including those wedding thank you’s I’m negligently late on completing).

Technology seems to prioritize everything for us.

I don’t want to come off as a technophobe. I had an e-mail address about four years before they started becoming popular. I used to surf the Internet when it was all words and no pictures. I had my first computer when I was 8.

The more I learn about technology, though, the more I vow not to let it control my life.

I remember when our family got its first answering machine. It was such a wonderful innovation, a remarkable machine answering the phone when we couldn’t. It meant we didn’t have to camp out by the telephone all the time. It meant we’d know who wanted to be in touch with us.

Then came the cell phone, which I tried to resist as long as I could. I finally joined the mobile phone generation in 2002, long after most of my friends and family converted. It was incredible, the ability to talk to anyone, anywhere.

Somewhere along the way, though, people’s attitudes changed. We’ve changed from just wanting people to know we wish to speak with them to expecting them to be available whenever we punch their digits into the keypad.

About a year ago, a co-worker wrote a paper about the downfalls of constant communication. He interviewed me for the project, since at the time I worked from home, using cell phones, e-mails and the Internet to stay in touch with the Lima office.

His questions reminded me of the biggest difference between my life and that of my father. Whenever Dad returned home from a long day at the factory, Mom asked, "How was work?"

His answer was always the same: "Over."

It’s not so easy to say that anymore. Perhaps three times a week the antiquated Alltel phone I carry in my right pocket begins ringing as we put the little one to bed. It’s someone at the office, asking a simple enough question that requires minimal thought to answer (which is fortunate, as I have minimal thought to spare).

Technology keeps us connected constantly. Sometimes that’s a good thing, such as the daily noontime conversation with my wife, reminding me why I fight through my workday struggles. Sometimes it’s a bad thing, such as that work call interrupting a comfortable night on the couch.

I’ll respond to that e-mail from my friend. I’ll call back that other buddy. They’ll happen on my schedule, though, when I decide it’s the right time to do it. You can rest assured I’ll understand if they don’t get back to me right away.

Meaning of Turkey Day lost in the holiday rush

2006-11-22T01:24:00.000-05:00

From the Nov. 22, 2006, editions of The Lima News

The cornucopia seems rather hard to find this year.

It’s been easy to find Christmas trees, singing Santas and bows on gifts for the past month, as people warm up for the so-called "most wonderful time of the year." But the horn of plenty, that iconic horn-shaped basket filled with festive fruits associated with Thanksgiving, is nowhere to be found.

Most people know Thursday is Thanksgiving. The true meaning behind the holiday, however, seems forgotten. It’s become a day of gluttony, as we gather with family to plan our black Friday plans, not express our thanks for what we have.

Thanksgiving is perhaps the first American holiday, as the pilgrims gathered to celebrate the harvest on Dec. 4, 1619, in the Virginia Colony. They gathered with the natives there, who helped them survive the season with their knowledge of the earth.

Perhaps it says something about our nation when we largely ignore the real purpose of one of the most American of holidays. People want to race past Thanksgiving and right into the Christmas season. They’re more interested in the thanks-for-the-gift of the 25th of December than the thanks-for-everything of the fourth Thursday in November.

That’s the problem with living in one of the most prosperous nations on earth. That’s the ordeal with living in one of the most prosperous nations in the history of civilization. We’re seldom happy with what we have. We’re happier to think about what more we could have.

Perhaps it depends on the type of year someone’s had, but there seems to be a lot to be thankful for this year.

I know I’m thankful. In the past year, I’ve seen my share of good fortune.

My family now includes a wife and a daughter, both blessings I didn’t have last November.

I have a lovely home, complete with a roof over our heads and a silly knickknack with our surname next to the front door.

My industry, journalism, is heading into a strange, new world as we adapt to the Internet and what it can do to present the news.

I enjoy a rewarding job, full of challenges, successes and failures each day as we attempt to present a fair, unbiased account of our world.

I still have my hair, even if it’s turning gray on the sides a little earlier than I’d planned.

Things are going well. Even the parts of my life that seem unfulfilled still seem better than the alternative, an untimely early death.

Thanksgiving is the time to remember these things. It’s a pit stop between the insanity of taking a child trick-or-treating at the end of October and watching that child tear into gifts at the end of December.

It’s a pleasant enough idea to deserve its own holiday. It’s certainly important enough to spend five minutes to ponder what in your life deserves thanks to the deity of your choice.

Thursday is a fine opportunity to step back from the rat race of life and count your blessings. There’s a good chance you’ll find your cornucopia’s much fuller than you thought.

Trip to the dentist

2006-07-24T22:30:00.000-04:00

Here's my big, dark secret in a world full of metrosexual males who carefully craft their looks: I've never been to a dentist.

My mom says we went once when I was a little kid, but I really don't remember it. I know I certainly hadn't been to one in the 12 years I've been a full-grown adult. My attitude about doctors is generally all the same: I don't see the purpose of them unless there's something wrong.

Well, today when I got up, there was definitely something wrong. Truth be told, it'd been hurting for several days, and to a lesser extent much longer than that. My wisdom tooth on the upper right side was simply poking places it shouldn't, and the nerves left the whole right side of my face tingling.

By the time I got to work this morning, I was mumbling. (OK, more than usual.) So I called a dentist's office that said they accepted emergency cases and set up an appointment.

All told, they X-rayed my mouth and "extracted" the wisdom tooth on the top right. (I believe "extracted" to be a much too technical term for what felt like bending and twisting until it popped on its own.)

Here's the surprising part for me. I wasn't nearly as afraid as I thought I'd be. It probably helped that the wife of one of Jessica's cousins was working in the office. Perhaps it helped that I was in enough pain that I didn't care what it would've caused.

So far as I know, I didn't cry (although I did tear up a little bit when the dentist started the extraction and realized it wasn't quite numb enough yet).

Was it such a great experience I'll go every week? Probably not. Will I go back and get the other three extracted, like they recommend? I don't honestly know. The penny-pincher in me feels like waiting for another emergency.

I felt like a big, tough guy afterward, though. I went back to the office, gauze stuffed into my mouth, and tried to work. That was a swell plan until the novacane started to wear off, at which point I told the folks there I needed to head home and wail in agony in the peace of my own home.

It feels better now. Hopefully it feels even better tomorrow. And hopefully I can stop rubbing my tongue over where that tooth used to be and move on with my life.

Boiling over...

2006-07-02T21:12:00.000-04:00

I'm steamed. I'm hot. I'm boiling over...

I'm not mad, though. I'm just plain warm. I'm seeing the real downside to living with someone who prefers warmth to coolness.

The Future Mrs. Trinko and I have varying ideas on what's an appropriate temperature. She's happy around 80 (or higher). I'm happy around 73. Talk about your seven degrees of separation.

You never realize how much of a difference a couple degrees can make until you're in this situation. All through the winter, I was able to handle the differences by simply taking my coat off while we were in the car.

I've found the corrolary doesn't work in the summertime. There's really only so much you can take off before it becomes a problem. I haven't yet discovered a way to take my own skin off for the cooling effects.

I hadn't really ever thought about how different your life is with a little bit of discomfort. It makes you irritable, though. It also makes your neck sore, your head ache and the days seem endlessly frustrating.

Some day I'll understand why our temperatures are so different. In the mean time, I'll try to suffer through it with plenty of cold beverages and as good of an attitude as I can.

First Father's Day is the real gift

2006-06-13T21:55:00.000-04:00

From Wednesday's The Lima News...

Becoming a father always seemed like it was a matter of choice to me. Little did I know it wasn’t my choice; it was Lissie’s.
Lissie is 4 years old. She went that far in life without a father figure, by that man’s own choice. She grew up hearing she only had a mother, but that meant her mommy loved her twice as much.
It’s an awkward situation when you fall in love with a single mother with a young daughter. You’re not just wooing one woman; you’re wooing two.
After my future wife, Jessica, and I finished our first magical date, we quickly set a second date for the following night. Jessica asked if it would be all right to bring her daughter, and I eagerly agreed. After all, how could I get to know her without getting to know her daughter?
That second date with Jessica, or the first with Lissie, was difficult. This blonde-haired 4-year-old didn’t trust men. She wasn’t sure why her mom wanted me to come along. Still, we headed out to Suter’s Cornfield Maze near Pandora.
Throughout the trip between rows of corn, I kept making silly faces at Lissie, trying to make her laugh. Whenever Lissie began giggling, Jessica looked over at me and I’d stop. By the time she’d giggled for three more hours and finished a plateful of chicken tenders, Lissie declared, “You’re silly, David.”
Over the course of the months since then, the bond tightened between Jessica and me, to the point we realized we needed to spend the rest of our lives together. Lissie was a tougher sell.
You can’t just tell a child to love you, and you can’t just say you love them. You have to show them every day with your concern for their welfare, your willingness to listen to them and your eagerness for them to succeed.
You can do all those things to the best of your ability and still remain just a familiar face in the child’s life, though.
When we announced our engagement to her family, one of Lissie’s cousins announced, “You’re getting a daddy, Lissie!” But to Lissie, I remained merely David.
Jessica and I vowed we would never force the daddy issue with Lissie. If she wanted to call me that special name we reserve for just one man in our lives, that would be wonderful. If she spent the rest of her life calling me by my given name, that was fine too.
She started by calling me daddy behind my back at her day care. She would talk about how her mommy or her daddy would pick her up from “school” that day. She would talk about where her mommy and daddy took her that weekend or what fun she had playing with them.
To my face, though, I remained David to her. As each day passed, I longed to hear that term more and more. I finally did when I expected those words the least.
With family throughout the area, we spend many weekend nights driving home after her bedtime. I’ll usually carry her up to her room and put her to sleep once she falls deep asleep on us.
Like I always had, I lifted her out of the car and put her small chin on my shoulder. Her arms wrapped around my neck a little tighter than usual as I walked her in the house and up the stairs.
Before I laid her on her bed and pulled the Strawberry Shortcake blanket overtop her, she squeezed me tightly, looked at me with those little blue eyes and whispered, “I love you, Daddy.”
She’ll still go back and forth, calling me daddy when she’s appreciative or really wants some-thing or David when she wants to frustrate me. But I know deep inside what role she wants me to play in her life.
Some day soon, I hope to adopt Lissie so she can truly and legally be my daughter. Still, Sun-day marks my first Father’s Day.
It wasn’t my choice to be Lissie’s father; it was hers. It’s a gift I’ll continue to treasure for the rest of my days.

Better things to do

2006-06-04T19:35:00.000-04:00

Long before your rusted chains
Busted walls and barbed wire cage
Tried to hold me down
Time was just a fist of change
Tossed in the water just in case
You ever came around

I could lose myself
I could curse like hell
But I’ve lost the will to even try
If you ever doubt listen to the sound
No lies
No, no, no
This is my last goodbye.
-"Last Goodbye," Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band

This song used to represent my thoughts about very overwhelming topics in my life, such as an ex-girlfriend or a job that didn't work out so well. With those parts of my life now going quite well, it's time to use it on smaller details of my life.

There are some groups and organizations I've belonged to for as long as I could remember. I'm not sure I ever really enjoyed belonging to them, but I belonged to them for years simply because I had the year before too. I'm sure it all came down to this basic idea: I didn't have anything better to do.

Now I'm finding I have a lot of better things to do. So I'm applying some of that Kenny Wayne Shepherd genius to those aspects of my life. If you don't enjoy something or don't get any sort of value out of it, don't do it. Nothing's worth the frustration just for the sake of doing it.

I'll be curious to see how well I apply this to those frustrating parts of my life where I've wasted literally hundreds of hours for very minimal joy or gain. I'm looking forward to spending that time doing things I really enjoy, such as spending it with my new and loving family.

Father's Day

2006-05-29T23:09:00.000-04:00

Her favorite episode on the Wallace & Gromit DVD is the one about the sheep. You have to skip forward to the fourth track to get to it.
She loves it when you blow up your cheeks really big, let her poke you in the face and wiggle your face back and forth as if you've popped a balloon.
When she's a little bit tired, she'll fight to have mom bring her upstairs. If she's absolutely exhausted, she'll let you carry her up there instead, clinging to you as tightly as she does that blue blanket she loves. You can change her clothes, and she'll seem absolutely out of it. But before you walk out of the room, she'll look up at you, half-asleep, and say, "I love you, Daddy."
These are the moments in the life of a father. I'd really never known much about them. I'd been young and single and painfully oblivious to it all. I never recognized the value in being so important to any one person.
That all changed when I fell in love with Jessica and, by extension, with Lissie. I've become Daddy to someone in the past year.
So I've built up a little bit of anger and resentment toward the man we jokingly call "The Donor" around our house. He called up late last week, saying he wanted to see "her." He wanted to see his daughter. I'm not even sure he knows her name or that she prefers Lissie to Elisabeth.
He never sat through her dance recital. He never held her close and rocked her when she was crying with a boo-boo. He never had to tell her she couldn't have dessert without at least trying the vegetables on our plate.
Truth be told, he hasn't done anything in the last four and a half years for this darling child. And now he wants to be her dad.
I totally understand his urge to be a part of her life. I feel it stronger and stronger every day. Each hug, each kiss on the cheek reinforces what I'd been missing for all those years.
What I don't understand is his feeling on entitlement. He abandoned her and her mom those years ago by refusing to contribute emotionally or financially. He stayed out of her life for all that time.
Now another man comes along who loves and cares for the both of them deeply. She calls out to him, "Hi Daddy" when I return home from work. She'll sit quietly at my office when we need her to do that.
That isn't something that was given to me. It was something that I've earned. I've earned her love. I've earned the right to be called Daddy. We were very careful not to ever introduce that word into her vocabulary. We didn't want her to use it if she didn't feel it. But in the past two to three months, she's said it in such a convincing and wonderful way, I'd be crazy not to soak up its sentiment. She still drops in the occasional David, but her preference is obviously Dad.
And now some other guy, absent for all that time, wants this perfect life of mine.
Perhaps I'm just being selfish. Maybe I can't imagine sharing that distinction with someone else. Maybe I'm afraid she'll like the other guy better if she ever had the chance to know him.
Mostly, though, I think I've learned the responsibility that comes with being a father. It's not just offering the genetics of life. It's offering the wisdom of your experiences. It's offering the courage of your convictions. And most of the time, it's a matter of setting aside your own needs to take care of hers.
It makes me so angry that he'd try calling out of the blue, demanding to come back into her life. It makes me want to lash out violently. It makes me want to cry. It makes me want to hide off in a corner so Lissie can't see that I'm bothered by all this.
But then another lesson comes to mind about being a father: Most importantly, it means being there for her, no matter what. So I'll continue on this uncertain path with one thing in mind; she needs me, and I need her. If that's not what being a father is about, it should be.

The dance recital

2006-05-13T21:15:00.000-04:00

I've discovered the most terrifying thing in the world... I'm getting old.

It shouldn't be much of a surprise, given the grays developing on the sides of my head. I just never realized it as much as today, when I went to a dance recital for Lissie.

Generally speaking, this would be something I should've loved. You have athletic high school girls in skimpy outfits gyrating. Heck, seeing it in words sounds wonderful to any red-blooded American male.

Instead, I found it sickening. With every tap dance, jazz or hip-hop routine, I found myself thinking, "They don't need to shake like that," or "That's just too much cleavage shaking," or "What are they training for? Work in a strip club?"

It's a disappointing day for a man to realize you're sickened by what once made you very, very happy.

I know exactly why that's the case, though. In every dance outfit, I envisioned our little 4-year-old Lissie in their place. And I quite simply don't want Lissie to learn how to dance like she belongs on Coyote Ugly.

So, as much as it kills me to say it, if she's going to stay in dance classes... I hope she sticks with ballet.

Comic relief

2006-04-09T22:30:00.000-04:00

I'm finding a new role in my life. Of all things, I'm providing the comic relief.

Jess was "strongly recommending" I make an entry onto our wedding blog site, mentioned elsewhere in this blog. She said she needed something on there from me, since I served as "comic relief" on that site.

I might be comic relief in her life, but most people never get a chance to see that side of me. I'm often reminded of something a girl in high school said to me on graduation day: "I never knew you were funny. If I did, I might've talked to you more."

For some reason, I've never been that comfortable letting people see my silly side. I don't know if it's some sort of deep-seeded fear of not being taken seriously or what.

Yesterday Jessica's mom and sister were here for a bit when they returned with Jessica from Columbus. All of a sudden, her niece Emma asked me if I liked spaghetti. The adults said, "Yeah, let's hear your Mr. T."

Lissie, our 4-year-old, and I have several silly games we play with one another, usually involving me making silly voices. One of those is when I act like Mr. T, the gold chained macho man from the 1980s series "The A Team." And for some reason, Lissie loves to hear me say, "I pity the fool who asks me if I like spaghetti. Mr. T HATES the spaghetti."

It's one thing to be silly in front of a child, but you feel REALLY silly doing that same impression in front of adults who, up to that point in time, probably respected you.

But it reminds me of a more valid point: I'll be embarassing Lissie for the rest of her life. It's time I get used to the humility aspect of it now.

Bigger and better things

2006-03-27T23:30:00.000-05:00

I'm taking the week off for vacation. We don't have too much exciting stuff planned to do; Jessica and I both need the time to relax a bit, get some work done around the house and get ahead on wedding planning. (Feel free to visit the wedding blog at http://jessica-david-wedding.blogspot.com/.)

When I get back, I'm in for a new challenge. I'm returning to the ranks of management, where I'm paid more for people I work with to dislike me. I'll be supervising our reporters as the Senior Content Editor, planning out our printed coverage as well as our online coverage.

Online coverage remains one of the great mysteries of newspapers. Generally speaking, newspaper reporters and editors are terrified the Web is going to make them obsolete. That's probably a true statement one day, but we should embrace it.

I become somewhat concerned though that some newspapers might try to be everything to everyone. One example is trying to become a repository for some of those silly movies we all like to look at on the Net. While I'm glad there's that sort of thing on the Net (look at this blog... I love that stuff...), I'm worried about newspapers and newspaper Web sites losing that seriousness that separates them from the competition.

I think it's important to have fun with your words; don't get me wrong with that. But ultimately, news is the job at hand. You have to do your best to make the world make sense to people.

I'd be delighted to come back in a few days and see a healthy batch of comments about what a newspaper Web site ought to be. Knock me out with great ideas.

A Meditation on the Speed Limit

2006-03-01T17:00:00.000-05:00

An interesting video link was forwarded to me by a friend, which could just as easily be labeled "Civil Obedience... What happens when people obey the law." Check out the five-minute video here.

The setup is basically this. A bunch of college kids are driving on Interstate 285 in Atlanta and show what happens to traffic if all of them actually drove the speed limit, 55. These kids lined up on all four lanes of traffic, holding everyone to the speed limit (aside from a few aggressive drivers who make fools of themselves in the videos).

I drive a fair amount of time and genuinely enjoy the experience. I'm probably described as a "plus-five guy," as I'll go about five miles per hour over the speed limit. I've often wondered how much more smoothly everything would go if we all drove the speed limit, and this offered an interesting perspective on it.

The video reminded me of one of my biggest annoyances while driving. I hate it when the signs warn you everything merges into one lane, yet there's some imbecile who waits until the last 25 feet to make the merge. I always merge early and tend to let people merge into my lane ahead of me, so long as they plan ahead a little.

I theorize that there would be no backup whatsoever if everyone drove like I did. The line always gets backed up from people having to slow down for the last-minute planners getting over at the very end.

'Cohabitation'

2006-02-26T21:09:00.000-05:00

For the first time in my life, I'm outwardly doing something that I know parts of the world disapproves of. (Aside from those moments when my nose is stuffed and I pick.)

I'm cohabitating with a woman.

I moved into my future wife's house over the past weekend. All my belongings are now here, and I have my own space set aside for an office in the house.

I know certain elements of society don't like the idea of cohabitation. Truth be told, I'm probably a member of that section. It rushes things along. It takes away some of the necessity of marriage.

Here's my excuse. 1. I'm already engaged to the woman. 2. We have a date set for that wedding. 3. We're very happy spending time together. 4. It's somewhat economic, as the money we're not spending on my rent and utilities is being fairly directly spent on our wedding expenses.

It also makes me wonder about something of a technicality. Does God bless your union on the day you go into His house and make it official? Or does He bless it on the day you pray to him for guidance and he gives you the nod that yes, you are intended to spend your life with this wonderful woman?

I wondered about this last point as Jessica and I waded through our pre-marriage all-day seminar. Most of the people in the room were already living together, and we didn't hear the typical "you shouldn't do that" you might expect from a Catholic wedding. Instead, we heard support, which baffled me on some levels and elated me on others.

Off the market

2006-01-24T22:21:00.000-05:00

After shopping around for the better part of 30 years, I’ve finally found what I was looking for.
Her name’s Jessica. She’s wonderful, and she knows it. I had to come up with a way to remind her that’s how I felt, too.
So I bought her a ring.
It’s a big, honkin’ ring, which can cut glass or a frisky fiancé’s left temple. And I’ve never been happier in my life.
At the risk of sounding sentimental, I’d like to share our story about Jan. 14, 2006.
Jessica and I headed to Holmes County, home of the Amish and little else, for a well-earned weekend getaway. Lissie, her 4-year-old daughter, stayed with Jess’s sister, and all was set for a nice weekend. Her employees chipped in for a gift certificate for most of our stay.
It would’ve been nice, but it needed to be perfect. I upgraded from a regular room to an “executive suite,” which was really quite sweet, with a fireplace, Jacuzzi and a 32-inch TV we didn’t watch all that much.
Saturday itself was nice. We went to a woodcutting museum, where it was warm, and enough sweets shops to give someone a cavity. Then we went out for a simple enough dinner at Der Fuhrer, err, Der Dutchman, restaurant where we exchanged pleasantries.
Here’s a little insight I have after the fact. I was nervous all day long, knowing what was going to happen, so I channeled that nervous energy into humor. Apparently I was pissing Jess off, but she was good enough to never tell me that.
After dinner, we returned to our oasis, the room. She wanted to check in with her sister to see how Lissie was doing. I wanted her to not do that. She won. I’ll get used to that.
Once she sat down to relax by the fire finally, I turned on the ol’ CD player to crank out a few tunes I’d put together.
First song… Billy Joel’s “Tell Her About It.”
Second song… James Taylor’s “How Sweet It Is.”
At this point, I went to a cupboard in the room and pulled out a box of chocolates from county-renowned chocolatier Christie Tabler, who’d delighted us with fudge in the past.
Jessica opened the box of chocolates. She saw the somewhat large white box in the center. She uttered the words every man wants to hear… “What is THIS?”
I told her to open it. She figured out what it was when she took off the top and saw a beautiful Mohogany jewelry box. Ring size, in fact.
She started crying. Whether or not I did is not terribly relevant to this story. (But I’m enough of a man to admit I did, for about 10 seconds or 10 minutes, depending on who you ask.)
I read her a little ditty I’d scribbled down to describe how I felt about her and Lissie in my life:

BEAUTIFUL
Jessica, you’re a beautiful person.
Your beauty isn’t just what people see from the outside. Sure, you have a radiant smile, dazzling eyes and immaculately soft curves.
That’s not why I love you, though. I see a beauty inside you that changed my life.
It’s evident as you calmly dress Lissie in the mornings despite her cries for more sleep.
It’s obvious in your reverence as I look down the pew at the two of you in church.
It’s apparent in your work, as you use compassion and determination to do the right thing.
You have a beautiful way of thinking about the world that’s clinical, cynical and cheerful, all in one.
I see that beauty in you, and I’m grateful God put us together.
I have little to offer you, yet it’s everything to me. I offer you my heart. I offer you my love. I offer you a beautiful life together.
Will you marry me?

She didn’t really answer. Maybe she did. It was hard to make anything out through all the blubbering, half hers, half mine. I just know that before the end of the song, “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You),” she stuck her hand out for me to place the ring on the appropriate finger.
Being a stickler for tradition, and understanding the legality that if it’s a “gift” instead of a “proposal” I can never get it back, even if she says no, I said, “I don’t want to be a stickler, but I’m going to need to an answer.”
She said yes. She got the ring, and I got the best thing to ever happen in my life.
Third song… “You Say It Best (When You Say Nothing At All)” by Allison Kraus
That’s our song. We slow danced to it, and there was a magic there that even a man of many words such as myself can’t describe.
Fourth song… “Amazed” by Lonestar.
Fifth song… “Make You Feel My Love” by Garth Brooks.
Sixth song… “Thank You” by Dido.
That one would’ve been embarrassing to hear if she said no. “I want to thank you for giving me the best day of my life”…
Seventh song… “Ice Cream” by Sarah McLachlan.
What can I say, “Your love is better than ice cream” just seemed appropriate.
Eighth song… “Lucky One” by Amy Grant.
Ninth song… “Wonderful Tonight” by Eric Clapton.
I just can’t burn a CD without Clapton.
Tenth song: “Open Arms” by Journey.
She’s got a thing for Journey. Sensitive men pick up on things like that.
Final song: “Unanswered Prayers” by Garth Brooks.
I’m not the biggest Garth fan in the world, but I can appreciate meaningful lyrics when I hear them. When I hear the line toward the end that says, “As we walked away, I looked at my wife, and then and there I thanked the good Lord for the things in my life,” my eyes tear up at realizing I have something that good.

I could tell you about the rest of the night, but then I’d have to start taking credit card numbers and verifying ages, and that’s not what this blog’s about. [Just kidding, Mom. We sat around and read the Bible.]
The date’s set for July 29 at a location already determined, but I’d hate to publicize it here because we’re already trying to figure out how to pay for 300 people we barely can stand to eat and drink at our expense.
Just kidding; we’ll be happy to have everyone there, so long as they give us at least $17 worth of gifts per person who will be eating and drinking on our dime.
Jessica wanted to chip in. She said we’ll have the most beautiful, amazing wedding that’s ever been pulled off in six months. She’s almost as good at qualifying things as I am, which is obviously part of the charm for me.

All kidding aside, for the time being at least, I’m happy to share my happiness with friends and strangers alike. For the last 10 years or so, I wondered if that perfect love was something you only find in sappy movies and catchy songs. Now I don’t have to wonder anymore. I can understand the pain and disappointment I’ve felt earlier in my dating years… they merely set me up for extreme joy I’m experiencing, waiting for the perfect woman for me.

Santa suits can show true meaning of season

2005-12-15T07:00:00.000-05:00

Column published in The Lima News, 12-17-05
Thank goodness for the innocent belief of children this time of year.
Only they have the love in their hearts to see the true meaning in Christmas when they see a Santa Claus on every corner.
If you spend any time walking through a mall this time of year, and most of us must at some point, you realize how hard it is to avoid ol’ St. Nick. He peaks out from nearly every advertisement. He hawks toys at the toy store as easily as spatulas at the home goods one.
And they all look different.
You’d think that would be confusing to a young child. A 4-year-old child runs only to the arms of her mother, after all, and can cer-tainly tell the difference between one old man claiming to be Father Christmas and the next.
Somehow they see behind the different facial features. They ignore a real beard vs. a fake beard. They don’t care if he has blue eyes or brown. He can be black as easily as white or any other shade in between.
That’s not what the children see.
They see generosity.
They see compassion.
They see love.
In short, they see God.
It’s not popular to say you see God nowadays. There’s a tendency to substitute out the word “Christmas” and use “holidays” instead, for fear of offending a non-Christian religion.
Most major religions acknowledge there probably was a Jesus Christ, though. Those same religions generally acknowledge He was a good person and something of a prophet. Acting like Him isn’t the worst idea in the world, no matter what your ideas might be of the Christian religions.
Which brings us back to Santa Claus or whatever other term you might like for the guy in the big red suit. His heritage generally traces back to St. Nicholas, the bishop of Myra in Asia Minor, in what is now Turkey. He supposedly came from a wealthy family but gave all his money to the poor.
The Dutch introduced the red suit with their Sinterklaas, who wore a red bishop’s costume including the large cap.
Over time, society transformed him into a jolly old elf who kindly delivers toys to all the good boys and girls in the world.
Some see a Santa on every corner as a sign secularism and sacrilege somehow took over the spirit of the Christmas season. Certainly the season took on a more economic tone than originally planned, but the basis remains love and charity for your fellow man.
If anything, the Santas on every corner prove the true meaning of the season is as pure now as it was when a baby laid in a manger some 2,000-plus years ago, if only to those who realize the power of the jolly old elf.
Children universally love him, and they know the importance of believing in Santa Claus. Even the ones who run and scream from him understand what he stands for; his presence just somehow terrifies them.
They know they’re seeing generosity, compassion and love personified in every face. They’re seeing God in every face. They under-stand the overwhelming concept of omnipresence unflinchingly.
We spend so much time teaching our children what’s wrong or what’s right. Now is a good time to start learning from them.

Modern-day nomads find their way home

2005-12-07T19:00:00.000-05:00

Column published in The Lima News, 12-7-05
They wander from place to place, trying to make the most from the places they stay.
They may keep some communications with their homelands, by phone, e-mail or letters. They go off on their own, trying to make the most of their lives and find fulfillment.
They are the modern-day nomads. Instead of living off the land for as long as they can and moving, though, they live off a job and an area as long as they can until restlessness and homesickness drive them onward.
Author Steven K. Roberts calls them “technomads,” a nomadic person who remains connected through communications media. The rest of society may call them sisters, cousins or friends. Another term may be simply graduates.
There’s a constant concern about “brain drain” in this area. People wonder aloud what future their children might have, as there aren’t so many entry-level positions here for a well-educated student as there are well-educated students. They’ll go off to college, only to find they’re overqualified for most of the jobs where they were born. They’ll find seemingly far-off places to work in engineering, law or some other seemingly exotic profession.
The good news is it’s merely seemingly. In reality, the nomadic lifestyle seems to be quite temporary. As the clichés scream, there’s no place like home. These nomads do find their way back to a place they’ll call home.
You can drink the sweet tea and listen to the men howl about “them Dawgs” (the Georgia ones) in Savannah while admiring the ar-chitecture in the Civil War-era buildings downtown.
You can roam up and down the beautiful Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, sipping on the wines from the local vineyards and enjoying the breathtaking view of the bluish mountains leaping from the ground.
You can soak up the big-city life outside Columbus, traveling to Polaris for good shopping and food or heading to the old Horseshoe to watch the Buckeyes beat Michigan.
You can go all over the country and experience new and different things. Even the modern-day nomad feels the urge to find a place to call home, though.
That’s how it is for so many people of the 30-something generation, those folks too young to be X but not quite hip enough to be Y. You want to spread your wings and fly, and you do so for years and years. Eventually, though, that empty nest beckons you back.
You find yourself missing the little things in life. There’s no replacement for the loving hug of a young niece or nephew. Few things calm you as much as your father telling the car repair won’t be that expensive as he glances down on the engine. No feeling quite compares to the memories flowing back when you drive past your grandparents’ former home.
These things draw young, talented people back to this marvelous section of Ohio, whether you call it Northwest Ohio or West Cen-tral Ohio. This is home for many of us. There’s a comfortable feeling from knowing the back ways to your favorite places. There’s warmth in the memories from seeing the restaurant from your first date.
You can’t market these traits or put them on a postcard, for they’re as varied as the population here.
These memories and these warm feelings are just what it takes to bring a nomad back home. It may take four years of wandering, or it may take a lifetime of wandering, but eventually we all find our way back to where we belong.

Repentant Solich?

2005-12-01T09:33:00.000-05:00

Those T-shirts always made me laugh at my alma mater of Ohio University in Athens: "We're a drinking town with a football problem."

Who knew those two paths would ever cross so meagerly? Ohio football coach Frank Solich pleaded no contest to drunken driving on Monday after being found slumped over the wheel of the complimentary Nissan he drives, with the vehicle in drive, pointing the wrong way down a one-way street. See the Associated Press story.

The 61-year-old coach admitted on Tuesday he made a mistake. Perhaps it's just my word-aholism, but something about the sentence structure bothers me from this quote reported by Jason Arkley of the Athens Messenger:

“I would like to extend that apology, certainly because of the trouble and embarrassment that I’ve put many people in, including myself,” said a solemn-looking Solich, reading from a hand-written note. “I would like to apologize to all those associated with Ohio University. I would also like to apologize to the people of the Athens community. I would like to apologize to my coaches, their families, the players and their families.”

"I would like" is the part that bothers me. There is a not-so-subtle difference between telling your loved one "I'd like to apologize" and "I'm sorry." One is saying you will do it. The other is asking for forgiveness.

Athens has a unique culture that's admittedly very alcohol-driven. Yeah, it's ranked as the No. 2 party school in the country by the Princeton Review. Back in my days there, it constantly made top five on a number of lists. For a decent slice-of-life about this, check of this article by Joe Arnold of the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette.

The administration there seems to want to connect Solich to their efforts to correct this trend. They want him to become active in some intelligent drinking campaigns. (Advice for the coach... Tell them not to leave the car in drive while facing the wrong way down a one-way street.)

Truth be told, the kids are smarter than the coach on this count. Anyone who ever lived in Athens will tell you that you don't drive to the bars uptown. You walk. He certainly could've made the trip from uptown to his office at Peden Stadium with a minimum amount of hassle. It's not like he doesn't have a parking space in town.

I'm not going to come down from Mount Olympus on Frank Solich. I see a lot of sportswriters are cracking the whip at the university for not being harder on him, possibly firing him. I've been out drinking with enough sportswriters to know they've done the same thing. I've gotten behind the wheel after having a beer or two too many myself.

Besides, I like what Solich did for the program. He got me excited enough to buy season tickets. I had a great time watching competitive games for three of the five home games, including a shockingly thrilling win against a then-top 25 Pittsburgh squad.

Honestly, I don't think drinking is such a horrible thing, when kept under control. I haven't seen people coming out of the woodwork to say Solich had a real drinking problem. It sounds like he had one bad night where he did something stupid. I imagine the Nebraska administration has had a couple of those nights since essentially dumping Solich to get Bill Callahan. (Tom Osborne he's not.)

The real key is to learn and forgive. The man made a mistake. No one should hold anything over his head. We should merely take this as a reminder to be careful and smarter when we consume ourselves.

That's the only way the city of Athens, Ohio, can strip itself of the title of a "drinking town with a football problem."

Good-luck charm

2005-11-28T07:48:00.000-05:00

My favorite NFL team, the Chicago Bears, extended their winning streak to seven games with a 13-10 win against Tampa Bay on Sunday.

It's a remarkable winning streak that puts the Bears up with the second-best record in the NFC at 8-3, and they lead the NFC North. They haven't lost since a 20-10 loss at Cleveland on Oct. 9.

Or, as I like to think of it, my favorite team hasn't lost since my first date with Jessica on Oct. 14. Apparently the stars are aligned for my happiness via my lady friend and my favorite football team. How's that for miracles?

What's most impressive about this connection is I'm not the one who realized it. Jessica mentioned it when she heard the Bears' streak was at seven wins in a row. We're joking that the Bears will probably only lose now on weekends where we've had some sort of tiff. So here's hoping the Bears never lose another game again.

Revisiting the man in the mirror

2005-11-16T00:14:00.000-05:00

My 30th birthday came and went a couple weeks ago. I kept thinking about how I'd commemorate the occasion on the blog, what life-changing revelations I could share. Then I remembered something I wrote to mark my last big occasion, college graduation. [See "Some college lessons shouldn't be learned," The Post, 5-22-1997]

At the time, I was 21 years old and preparing to graduate from college. Little did I know I had three and a half years in Lima, failed journeys to Savannah and Delaware and a delightful three years in Northern Virginia ahead of me. I just wanted whatever I thought might make me happy.

What might I say to that man in the mirror today? What wisdom could I pass along to the 21-year-old me, whose legacy left at OU was a "mythical, wise-cracking, cynical shell of a man"?

Don't change for anyone.

That man tried too hard to turn into someone else, someone more acceptable by his peers. Bits of pieces of his true self remained there, no doubt. But the modern me spent much of his 20s recapturing the 1994 self, with his idealism, his occasional charm, his friendly awkwardness. I've realized it's OK to not fit into a group.

I've also realized wonderful friends last a lifetime, so long as you put the effort into keeping them. Sometimes I've failed at this, but the really good ones will always welcome you back.

Most of all, and oddly enough most recently, I've discovered there's a person out there who will love you for exactly who you are. The path to find that person can be challenging and frustrating. You'll give up several times between here and there. Once you find her, though, never let her go. Soulmates are hard to come by, and the best you can do is try to show her every day just how much she means to you.

It's funny how your perceptions of a milestone can change on a dime. A month and a half ago, I was dreading 30 like the plague. College had been about finding out who I was. The 20s had been about refining who I was. The 30s looked like a desperate era of loneliness and mourning that things didn't work out as you'd planned.

Now I have a better understanding of the purpose for my 30s. I'll spend each day trying to share more of myself with the people I care about.

A line from that 1997 column caught my attention again: "The only goal in his life is to be missed when he is gone." That's just as true now as it was when it was written some eight years ago, yet its meaning is so different now. At that point, it was superficial, wanting to be missed for my work accomplishments. Now it has meaning. Now I want to be missed for who I am and how I've affected the lives around me.

I'm off to a good start, and I'm looking forward to making the most of this new decade of life.

Blog comments spam

2005-10-30T04:09:00.000-05:00

Apparently no place is sacred from spam.

I've seen three "comments" recently on here that turned out to be 100 percent spam, and I don't mean that meaty sandwich stuff you get from a can. It's a little bit frustrating, and I'm not entirely sure what to do about it.

Apparently I'm not alone, though. One man suggests following these links but not buying anything there.

It's somewhat interesting to read about. I enjoyed reading this link, Spamalot as a Blogosphere Epidemic. It estimates as much as 50 percent of comments may be spam.

I have the option of turning comments off or making it so I have to approve them before they hit the Web site. I've activated the "word verification," one of those annoying things where you have to type what combination of letters you see in order to keep the bad guys out.

I'm certainly in favor of freedom of speech, but I have my doubts whether these unprovoked spam attacks really qualify as that in this little corner of the universe.

Perfect

2005-10-15T01:31:00.000-04:00

The single kiss set off the most amazing chain of reactions.

Typically the mind only thinks of two or three things, and they're generally pretty ordinary. But with that one kiss, the imagination begins wandering so rapidly.

In a matter of a tenth of a second, the past, the future and the present all mingle. You start to think about everything that could happen.

Most of all, you feel that rare combination of happiness and optimism. It's a feeling I hope to experience more in the not-so-distant future.

Maturing or mellowing

2005-10-13T08:07:00.000-04:00

A real man often finds his best moments in his worst moments. A terribly frustrating set of events has me wondering if I'm maturing or mellowing, not that either would be terribly bad.

On Tuesday, a company from Dallas closed its deal on the large, empty factory in Ottawa. I had the head's up this was happening and worked through the appropriate channels to get a one-one-one, face-to-face interview with the manager of the LLC doing the deal about 10 minutes after he signed everything. Knowing this was a big deal for the community and a likely A1 story, I lined up a photographer, giving them all the relevant information about the company, the guy, etc. Unfortunately, I did not give the relevant information that we were the only ones who knew about this.

By some strange coincidence, one of the local TV stations happened to be in Ottawa this same Tuesday afternoon, standing in front of an office on Main Street not too far from where the photographer and I would meet the Dallas big-shot. When our photography intern arrived and saw them standing there, they asked why she was in town. She assumed ishe assumed they were there for the same purpose and mentioned the story, essentially handing a big, breaking story to our competition.

One of my sources called to tell me about this before I arrived and put our photographer on the phone. She was devastated. She felt horrible for what she'd accidentally done.

Back in a day not so long ago, I would've torn her apart. I've made people cry when they've worked with me before. I can take things very seriously and not always be that considerate.

Now, though, I think that might just be a different version of me. As much to my surprise as anyone else's, I tried to comfort her. I told her not to worry about it; that we'd do a better job on it than TV would. I told her the best way to rebound from this was to get some incredible photographs to illustrate the story.

Yesterday one of my sources who saw this commended me for how I handled it. He said he wasn't sure he would've been so understanding. And, truth be told, I wouldn't have been just a few years ago.

Tuesday could have been one of my worst moments. I could have launched into an understandable tirade and really made a fool of myself. Instead, I showed a side of myself I hope to see even more often in the future.

I do have a life

2005-09-23T14:15:00.000-04:00

It just occurred to me that I've been writing a bit more about work lately than I once did. It made me question whether I had a life outside of work or not.

I do. It's pretty fruitful. It's pretty interesting. There's a lot going on with it. I just haven't felt the urge to vent about it on here.

That's probably a good thing, since I'm now aware there are more people reading this who might've been a part of that "life" thing in the past month or two who probably would rather not read about my thinking in some decisions, i.e. the decision to break up with a girl I'd been seeing for almost a month. Some things are probably best left unsaid.

Says the guy who wants people to tell him everything. I'm such a hypocrite sometimes.

Hatcing another pun-laden story

2005-09-23T14:06:00.000-04:00

I went back to the pun factory the other day as the infamous chicken citation case came to a close. See "Judge cracks egg-cruciating controversy," or, as the headline in the newspaper said, "Judge cries fowl, dismisses nuisance case."
This story churned up something of an interesting debate in my mind. How much should you count on your local newspaper to entertain you? Is it possible to entertain and inform at the same time? Is it ethical?

These are intriguing questions. My thought is that you can't make fun of a story unless someone on either side is willing to do so too. In this case, people on both sides understand it's a silly thing about which to fight. There are larger, more important issues in the world.

But at its heart, it's a story that applies to everyone... What can you do with your own property? What rights do you give up to be a good neighbor? What rights do a village or city have to control what you do with your private property?

Personally, I'm glad I went the pun route. For one, I don't get to be funny in print very often ever since I moved out of sports. For two, I think the silliness of the writing made people read all the way through and think about the issues. If I'd played it straight, I really doubt it ever would've gotten as much statewide attention as it did.

And really, isn't making people want to read the story and learn about their world my job? If it takes a chicken pun or two to do it, so be it.

Protecting the innocent

2005-09-21T00:01:00.000-04:00

Covering trials strikes me as one of the public services a newspaper serves for its readers. We'll keep people abreast of what's happening in their communities, so they can be aware of the dangers and threats around them.

For the first time today, I heard my publication's name directly mentioned in a court proceeding, in a rather unflattering way. It involved a mother whose husband raped their eldest child repeatedly over a four-year period, which made for three days of absolutely stomach-turning testimony late last month.

The mother, while giving a victim impact statement, brought up our paper's coverage of the trial as part of the harassment and trouble her husband's actions caused. She sent a similar letter to the editor of our newspaper about two weeks ago, criticizing our callous coverage of the event and suggesting we should have either skipped the trial or covered it without identifying her husband to "protect the innocent."

The theory is, in a small county like this, that people know one another's parents. While we never used the girl's name (she's still a minor, mind you), using her father's name and address identified her to her peers. She believed we were heartless people who couldn't resist the attention-grabbing story and selling papers.

This bothered me, and still does, for a variety of reasons. Rape is very disturbing to hear about in graphic detail, whether you know the victim or not. It didn't help that this girl had the same name as one of my nieces. I literally had trouble sleeping the week of that trial, and the girl's impact statement nearly brought me to tears as she talked about refusing to give a victim impact statement and instead wanted to give a "survivor impact statement." (And, for those who know me, moving me to tears is not easy.)

I also don't see the sense in protecting the identity of the defendant. He's been convicted of gruesome, horrid acts. There's no reason he should be protected from them.

I understand being angry and confused and perhaps embarassed about this incident. But rape is one of the few crimes in America where we still seem to hold the victim accountable somehow. I don't see how we can ever break through that belief until we begin standing up with the victims and reminding people that they're not guilty of anything. They ARE victims. They deserve the same respect as a victim of a theft, a murder or any other type of assault would get.

Another issue involving this case made it a bit ironic to me. The girl saw an episode of Oprah about rape which helped motivate her to tell someone about what her dad did. Now her family complained about her story coming out at well. I can only hope that her courage can lead to another girl's courage to help end a similar situation. If that happens, I'll proudly accept any insults the family cares to heave at the heartless and thoughtless media coverage.

I'm not dead... promise

2005-09-20T23:48:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I've posted. It's not so much that nothing's happened... in fact, quite a bit has. It's just been difficult to find the time -- and energy -- to opine in here. I'll try to be better.

Teach the world to 'chill'?

2005-08-07T00:24:00.000-04:00

"I'd like to teach the world to chill, take time to stop and smile / I'd like to buy the world a Coke and chill with it awhile."

I heard these lyrics tonight during an advertisement prior to a movie. I shall save the rant about advertisements before movies, which I paid to enter, at another time. For the time being, though, I'd like to stand up and say I'm sick of the whole retro movement, especially if they're going to ruin it for the benefit of promoting something called "Coke Zero," which is roughly the amount of interest I have in this product.

Obviously these lyrics harken back to the "Hilltop" scene Coke made famous in 1971. It came at a time when the world had some unifying to do, and it involved people who looked vastly different, standing next to each other. They sang about wanting to teach the world to sing and live in perfect harmony in a time that was less than harmonious.

Now they're talking about the need to "chill," which, as far as I understand it, means doing absolutely nothing and being happy about it. I'm not against chilling, but I do hate it when we try so hard to harken back to something from a previous generation that we'll rewrite perfectly good songs. What happened to original thoughts?

Of course, since I'm ripping on original thoughts, I might as well rip on myself. I found the following other bloggers who wanted to talk about the Coke chill maneuver:
Philadelphia: Teach the World to Sing
Teaching the World to Sing
G-Love Teaches the World to Chill
Adland
Partially True Adventures of High Adventure

I suppose you get the idea. Now it's time for me to chill, man. Teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony is so 70s. I need my me time.

Bad judgments

2005-07-27T03:17:00.000-04:00

Tonight I went out with some friends who appeared to need a little prompting to improve their social standings. In each case, a male friend offered some intrigue to a lady in the establishment where we imbibed. In each case, I offered suggestions to help.

Case 1: Gentleman who broke up with his long-time girlfriend. Advice: If you're ready, get back on that horse. Talk to that girl who intrigues you. Ignored the advice the first time. Later changed his goal to a different young lady, who happily talked to him for nearly half an hour. Conversation later ended with this woman hanging on another guy. Declared a failure.

Case 2: Gentleman who showed some interest in a female anchor(ette?) of a local TV station. Gentleman spoke with her earlier in the evening, and she seemed engaged. Encouraged the gentleman to be mroe aggressive in his pursuit. Later ended with him asking her out, to hear "no." Declared a failure.

Case 3: Gentleman who showed some interest in a woman within our group. Gentleman truly missed his opportunity several months ago. Encouraged the gentleman to pursue this option in particular, in part because of indirect ramifications from Case 1. He did speak with her, but he didn't offer a full-go effort. Declared a draw.

So tonight, I feel somewhat responsible for three friends feeling worse than they had to, in part because they went after things. What's odd about this is I often try to convince myself I should pursue possibilities that a nagging voice in my head says might be unattainable.

Nagging voice in my head: 3. David: 0.

Aren't I punny?

2005-07-19T22:43:00.000-04:00

Every so often, you run across a news story that permits some silliness and cleverness.

Such is the case when you're writing a story about someone challenging a chicken citation in a small town.

To save yourself the trouble of looking, the following puns were abused:
- fowl mood
- playing chicken
- fine feathered friends
- felt plucky
- hen-pecked
- place to roost
- hatched a theory
- crack open their arguments
- egg on their faces

It might not be the most pun-ridden writing I've ever done. I still attribute that to another story about a girls basketball team in Bluffton that arranged ducks in the coach's yard the night before games. But it's close, and it's gotten some chuckles in my neighborhood.

Pickup lines

2005-07-13T23:56:00.000-04:00

While surfing the Web tonight, I stopped by "The Most Complete and Most Useless Collection of Pick-Up Lines." I was looking for some ideas... err, entertainment.

This amusing little Web site lists all of the bad pickup lines ever used. It also has categories claiming successes. You take it for what it's worth.

Here are a few that amused me:
- Rejection can lead to emotional stress for both parties involved and emotional stress can lead to physical complications such as headaches, ulcers, cancerous tumors, and even death! So for my health and yours, JUST SAY YES!
- Be unique and different, say yes.
- Help the homeless. Take me home with you.
- Pardon me miss, I seem to have lost my phone number, could I borrow yours?
- Are you accepting applications for your fan club?

As for me, well, I've never tried using a pickup line before. Given my fine record of success, maybe I shold try.

Downside of working at home

2005-07-12T15:14:00.000-04:00

Most of the week, I have the pleasure of doing my job from home. It just makes sense, since I live in the area I cover for the newspaper. It's easier to do a good job if you're actually in the place you cover, since you'll see people and things as they happen.

I've discovered the downside in the last few hot afternoons. When you come back home and go to the fridge to get an icy cold beverage... it's awful hard to look at the beer and say "no." It ends up being the same little dance each day. I'll be back here around 3:30 or 4 with a bit of a thirst. I'll look in the fridge. I know the pop's up top in my fridge and the beer's on the bottom shelf. Still, I'll look down there. Then I'll look at the clock on the microwave and think, "Shoot. I'm still on the clock. No beer for now."

So I guess when it comes right down to it, the downside of working at home is I can't drink alcohol while I'm on the clock. I'm guessing I'd have that problem in the office too...

Lazy or philanthropic?

2005-07-07T14:29:00.000-04:00

Now that I'm living closer to my family again, I've started taking advantage of it. I've begun hiring my nieces to come to my apartment and clean for me.

This past weekend, I had two of them, Katie and Desirae, over to work their magic. They're both in their early teens, and they're excited to make $20 for stuff they're supposed to do at home anyway.

When the proposition started a few weeks ago with Katie, I thought I was just being a wizz-bang uncle. I would've loved the opportunity to earn some cash when I was that age, and for the amount of work they're doing, they're making a little over $6 an hour.

Then lately I just started wondering... am I just lazy?

I'm sticking with philanthropic.

You and your beautiful soul

2005-06-30T09:18:00.000-04:00

There are still good people out there, those people who are thoughtful and selfless. You forget that sometimes, as you deal with person after person with agendas and motives they keep hidden just below the surface.

Take the story of Krystal Byrne, a local 19-year-old woman with leukemia. I think most people could understand if she were a little selfish, with life or death on the line. Instead, this is what she said:
---
Krystal Byrne recognized the odds of finding a donor were slim. Out of 6 million people in the national bone marrow registry, she didn’t positively match with anyone. She remained optimistic as another friendly stranger walked through the door, eager to be tested.

“Whether they’re saving my life or someone else’s, someone in this building will be a hero to someone,” she said.
---
Every so often, even a cynical, sarcastic old goat like me can be reminded that angels still walk among us.

Credits...

2005-06-02T22:00:00.000-04:00

I was watching "Field of Dreams" on TV tonight. It's one of those movies that grabs me whenever I see it on TV, with the mysticism, the dreaming, the idealism. It's all very powerful to something inside of me.

I saw a joke in there tonight I never noticed before.

In the closing credits, the last acting credit went to "The Voice"... as "Himself."

Made me chuckle. Obviously I'm not the first to notice, and there's some special DVD "Easter Egg" with it, described here.

Three Doors Down

2005-05-22T00:32:00.000-04:00

Recently discovered that "Three Doors Down" isn't just the name of a band... it's also the worst possible way to move.

My brother, his fiancee and her kids are moving down the street from one home to another. In general, you might expect a short move to be an easier move for the hired guns, such as myself, to move items.

In general, that might be true. But there are some things you might not think about relocating unless you were only moving a few doors down. Take, for instance, a treated-lumber jungle gym for the kids.

It was a thing of beauty, and I'm sure the children loved it. But that puppy was heavy. We tore it down into several pieces, yet it still wore us down.

I have a feeling my arms are going to be sore for a number of days from when we tried to detach the wood holding the swings from the remainder of this piece of playground equipment. It was easy to hold it up... until it became detached, at which point you realize just how heavy-duty this thing must've been.

But, to put a smiley face on the whole day, everything that needed moved got moved... I fulfilled my brotherly duty of helping out... and I got a free sandwich out of the deal. All in all, not a horrible way to spend a Saturday.

Ice cream topping

2005-05-08T19:33:00.000-04:00

Here's the culinary tip of the day...

Try putting granola on top of your ice cream. Especially if you have a plainer ice cream, such as vanilla or butter pecan or something down that line, the granola really adds something. You get that crunchiness, plus some great flavor from the honey-toasted oats, crunch from the nuts and the added benefit of some raisins.

I decline to answer how many other bizarre foods I've poured on top of ice cream before discovering one that tastes great.

Silly site of the day

2005-05-06T16:36:00.000-04:00

In the course of perfectly legitimate work travels on the Internet, sometimes I find amusing little Web sites I believe the world must enjoy.

Click on Make-A-Flake to discover one such site.

On this site, you take an ordinary piece of fictitious paper and cut out chunks to make your very own snowflake. It's pretty cool for those of us who could never cut straight enough to do a good job or unfold ours.

You can see my offering on there. According to the Web site, "You're flake #7637172." I try not to take that as a personal insult, that the Web called me a flake...

I'm a pony

2005-05-04T23:04:00.000-04:00

Sometimes simple wordplay makes me say and do amazingly silly things.

I'm suffering from a bit of laryngitis today. I'm generally feeling OK, just my voice is considerably softer and occasionally higher pitched than usual.

I went to the grocery store today. As I checked out, the cashier asked me how I was today.

"I'm a pony today," I responded in a gravely voice punctuated by its softness.

She gave me the strangest look a Wal-Mart cashier probably ever gave a customer. To answer her baffled look, I smiled.

"I'm a little hoarse today."

She just rolled her eyes.

'You care'

2005-04-25T00:18:00.000-04:00

Compliments don't usually go to my head, but I heard one tonight that touched pretty deeply.

My niece, Katie, asked me tonight if I'd be her sponsor for confirmation next spring. I asked her why she chose me, and she said, "Because you care." I asked her what she thinks I care about, and she rattled off a list... about church, about my family, about her.

That's some compliment, when you think about it. Never mind the fact she's asking me to help her on that personal journey from being a child in the Catholic church to being an adult. Just to hear someone recognize that you care is something undescribable. I often pray for the guidance to do the right thing and to follow the path God sets before me. To hear a 14-year-old say she notices it, that's wonderful. To hear her say she thinks that makes me suitable to help her, that's even better.

We all hear compliments each day. I liked your story. You look nice today. I appreciate how hard you work. You offer a different perspective on things. You liven things up around here. You get the idea. I'm not sure I'll ever hear a better one than "you care."

Give Benedict a chance

2005-04-23T00:14:00.000-04:00

Many more liberal Catholics keep ripping apart the College of Cardinals' selection of Joseph Ratzinger as the replacement as pope for the recently departed John Paul II. To them, I say this: Give Pope Benedict XVI a chance.

I don't know any more or less about him than anyone else does. But I do know the faith teaches us to give people a chance before we judge them.

Yes, he was a part of the Hitler Youth movement in Germany as a child. Like all German children at the time, he didn't have much of a choice. The financial implications for a child's parents were unbearable.

Yes, he was the "enforcer" as the head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. Less than 100 years ago, that organization was called the Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition, one with a dark past.

It was his job, his role to staunchly defend the Catholic faith. That's what that office does, rely on him to conservatively examine church teachings and offer opinions on issues of the day. That doesn't necessarily mean that's how he thinks the church should run, or that he'd turn a deaf ear to God if asked to change anything. It merely means that's what he used to do.

It saddens me to see a universally loved and appreciated figure such as Pope John Paul II, only to have his replacement lambasted by critics already. If he does something that offends you, then it's your right to nit-pick. Thus far, he seems to be doing and saying all the right things, from his promise to keep open relations with the Jewish church to his meek and humble approach to being the 265th pope.

Give him a chance. Judge not, lest ye be judged.

Mapping to the power of X

2005-04-08T01:46:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I stumble upon things I find really cool on the Internet, and I like to share those findings with the world at large... which probably already knows about it, merely confirming my own un-hipness.

So tonight's "you probably already know about this, but..." site is Google maps. Before you say you've seen Mapquest and understand how those work, I advise you look at this map for Wrigley Field in Chicago.

It actually shows you a satellite view of whatever you're looking at. It's somewhere between really cool and really creepy, as you can do this to some extent for any map in the world.

It also has typical road maps too, and the ability to search for stuff. It really flies on my cable modem connection; I make no promises for the dial-up crowd.

This thing reminds me a lot of those government spy thrillers, where they're zooming in on the bad guy, screen by screen, until they can see him. Except they don't have zooms that close... yet.

A Good Shepherd

2005-04-03T23:34:00.000-04:00

A number of priests and church officials took the occasion of Pope John Paul II's death as an opportunity to tag "the Great" onto his name as a sign of respect for his actions.

To me, nothing speaks better of him than to call him a good shepherd. (THE Good Shepherd, of course, would be Jesus.) He showed us all how to be.

With the Pope's death came many, many reports about his life. The most telling, I think, is the story of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who shot the Pope on May 13, 1981. See Pope's forgiveness of Agca provided a powerful example.

The most amazing thing I've ever seen a man do was forgive. Pope John Paul II met with Mehmet Ali Agca two years after the assassination attempt and forgave him. He blessed him and forgave him.

What an incredible lesson for us all to learn from this truly holy man. He forgave the very man who tried to take his life. If anyone ever followed the gospel about forgiving someone, this Pope did.

How many gripes live on for too long in your life? How many people do you need to forgive? How much capacity for love is there in your heart?

The Pope provided his church and the world a moral compass. The Pontiff didn't change his opinions to suit the time or the place. There were no situational ethics for John Paul II, only right and wrong, good and evil. I already miss the absoluteness he provided in a world that occasionally feels bankrupt of morality.

I won't claim to speak for Catholics everywhere, nor will I claim to speak for Americans everywhere. People do have their disagreements with the church. But for this much there can be no disagreement: Pope John Paul II was a good, loving man, and we all should thank God for the time we could follow this good shepherd.

Safe driving

2005-04-01T00:15:00.000-05:00

I stayed late at my parents' house while visiting Thursday night, getting the typical "be careful" from my mom as I left.

"Don't worry," I responded. "At this hour, all that's out there at this hour are narcoleptics and drunks. I'm neither, so I should have an advantage against them."

Looking for a male-to-male SVGA cable

2005-03-23T23:49:00.000-05:00

I am a geek.

Whew. I feel a lot better getting that off my chest.

I spent my Sunday wandering through the aisles of the Lucas County Recreation Center looking for a monitor switch and a male-to-male SVGA cable. Those were parts I'd convinced myself I needed so I could really get into my hobby of taking apart old computers and salvaging the good parts. The trouble generally is you end up having several boxes open at the same time and hate swapping the monitor from one to the other.

I warned you I was a geek.

It's an interesting experience, though, walking through the aisles at a Ham Fest, named as such because a ham radio club sponsored it. My dad genuinely wanted to look at the ham radio stuff, and I preferred looking at the computer parts.

Here's the point to make from this experience: You don't have any junk. You only have things that someone else might want. It was amusing to see all these old parts I'd long since thrown out laying on people's tables, hoping someone would pay $2 for an old 586 processor chip or $1 for a gender-changing DB25 gadget.

I really did warn you I was a geek.

Just to clear up that gender-changing thing, and also the title of this entry... You can't say electronics folks don't have an imagination. Think of a cable that hooks to your computer. One half has the pins that stick out. That's the male side. Then think of where it plugs into. That's the female side. Those wild, wacky engineers...

Ice Classic 2005!

2005-03-18T23:31:00.000-05:00

I looked out on the ice and leaned to the guy next to me, saying, "I won't tell anyone you were here if you don't tell anyone I was here."

That's the short version of how I'd describe Ice Classic 2005, a skating show I witnessed Friday with people I know who I won't identify because of the above-stated agreement. (I'm backdating this entry.) The theme of this was "On the Town," where they pretended to go to different venues in a city that must not have been Findlay, given the salsa club, ballet and the paparazi they described.

There are many things that would probably be cool if you bring your children. This would probably be one of them. Like many uncommon experiences, it was interesting for about an hour. As someone who can't even roller skate without planting myself into a tree, you must marvel at the grace of young people who can do so many incredible things.

I'm not a parent, though, and before long I turned into that annoying guy who makes wisecracks about everything I see.

Two things were genuinely entertaining: They had this professional guy who realized ice skating could be funny. So he dressed up like Cartman from South Park and sang along as Cartman performed "Sailing." Hilarious. Later in the show, he did a pretty amusing routine based on Richard Simmons' "Sweating to the Oldies." Also amusing.

There are other things that were funny that probably weren't to those involved. Kids falling on the ice shouldn't be hilarious. I'll submit this, though: If you're going to charge me $8 to show off how well you can stay upright, I reserve the right to laugh when you can't.

The greatest of these mishaps came during the ballet portion, when they performed an abbreviated "Sleeping Beauty." The king and queen laid Sleeping Beauty to rest on a bench near the curtain. A little later, the girl playing the fairy tried skating backwards toward the exit, falling over the bench and the beauty. They quickly moved the bench and Sleeping Beauty about three feet to the side so it wouldn't happen again.

I like to find morals to the story in any life situation, so here's the one I discovered: Be sure to look where you're going. You never know when there might be a princess under a sleeping spell near the exit.

Finding your way

2005-03-10T23:26:00.000-05:00

The snow began piling up on the road again tonight, challenging the drivers to do their best to stay on the right path.

A funny trend happens when the heavy downfall is fresh, before a plow can come by to show the way. Each person follows the tracks set forth ahead of them, hopeful they lead to the destination. Each person prays the person in front knows where to go and how to get there, even though the odds are just as good they could lead you into a ditch.

Every so often, I like to look up from the path set before me and look at my guides. While you drive, you can see the mailboxes on the side of the rural roads, reminding you where the road should take you. Often you'll think you're safely in your own lane, doing what you must do, when you'll look up at the mailboxes and realize you're dangerously close to straying left of center.

How often do we all do this in our lives? How often do we stare at the path ahead of us and blindly follow it without thinking about where it goes or who put it there before us? How often do we look up to our guideposts on either side to remind ourselves to stay centered?

Must be doing something right

2005-03-06T00:59:00.000-05:00

A couple days ago, I got off the phone at work with someone who wasn't too happy about some of the reporting I've been doing lately. This whole CIC thing has some people pretty worked up. This guy told me I'd better be careful, since people (including him) were looking for reasons to get me fired.

About five minutes later, our editor walked back to my desk and congratulated me on the job I've been doing. He told me he'll be putting a bonus in my paycheck and to keep up the good work.

A day later, I spent about 10 minutes on the phone with a man who told me I was "a great American and a patriot" for these same stories that the other guy told me I should be fired for writing.

I figure you must be doing something right when you can elicit that strong of feelings from both sides on any issue. Really it's the best compliment a journalist can get.

Another way of looking at it came from a source, who hasn't been too thrilled with some of the things I've written lately. He told me the other day, "I don't like what you've been writing, but it's always been accurate and unbiased. So I have to give you that much."

I had some concerns when I got out of sports and back into news that I might not be able to do the "hard" stories. Apparently I worried for nothing. Now I'll just have to see if I can keep my job long enough to do something that matters...

Just to clarify: I'm not worried about losing my job. I'm mostly flattered that my ability to uncover some level of truth is enough to make people wish I'd go away. My boss asked me to document these "threats," just in case, but I'll just tuck them away as backhanded compliments instead.

Truth, justice and the American way

2005-02-23T22:18:00.000-05:00

I'm feeling like I did something important today. In the grand scheme of things, all I did was cause a headache for some people who were going to circumvent the Ohio Open Meetings Act. But I still feel like I did something that mattered. I'll paste my story since it's not on our Web site quite yet.

BREAKOUT:
ON THE WEB
To read about the Ohio Sunshine Laws, go to http://www.ag.state.oh.us/online_publications/2004_yellow_book.pdf. Find valid reasons for executive sessions under the Open Meetings Act in “Seven Different Types of Executive Sessions.”

Headline: CIC members decline discussion in open meeting

By DAVID TRINKO
dtrinko@limanews.com
419-993-2098

OTTAWA — Board members for the Putnam County Community Improvement Corp. came to the commissioners’ office to chat Wednesday.
They weren’t so eager to have the public hear what they had to say, though.
“If we can’t keep it out of the newspaper, I’ll say we need to cancel the meeting,” CIC President Stan Schneck said.
Schneck, Edna Michel and Jim Russell walked out of a scheduled meeting Wednesday after the commissioners declined to go into executive session to discuss the county’s issues with the CIC, which it dropped as the county’s economic coordinator last summer.
Executive sessions legally exclude the public from proceedings, but the situation must meet one of seven specific standards. The Public Records Act and found in Attorney General Jim Petro’s “An Ohio Sunshine Laws Update 2004 Edition” describes its proper use.
The CIC has two pending lawsuits against the county commissioners, both scheduled for their first court appearances in early March.
In the past month, the commissioners met to discuss CIC-related topics eight different times with members of the business community or the CIC itself, according to the commissioners’ meeting calendar. They entered into executive session four times, using the topic “conference with attorney for public body to discuss pending or imminent court action.”
In each of those executive sessions, the commissioners’ attorney, Prosecutor Gary Lammers, joined the group in executive session. Lammers was out of the county Wednesday.
“We’d need Gary to discuss pending or imminent lawsuits,” Commissioner Vincent Schroeder said. “That doesn’t mean we can’t still speak like we’ve been doing though.”
Schneck said he worried about derailing the discussion by conducting it in an open meeting.
“I’m not prepared to discuss anything then,” he said. “I don’t think we’re to the point I want it in the newspapers. Until we work out some things, it’s all just discussion.”
The penalty for an illegal executive session includes invalidating the decisions made in a session or even removal of an officeholder.
“If you read through these, there’s nothing that really applies with negotiations with an organization outside of this office,” Schroeder said.
Commissioner Tom Price added, “We just don’t want to do anything wrong.”
Discussions between the county government and the CIC appear to be moving along well.
During a meeting Tuesday night, CIC Director Martin Kuhlman and new Putnam County Economic Development Coordinator Lee Schroeder expressed optimism they could find “middle ground” in developing a new standard form for enterprise zone agreements. Leipsic officials voiced concerns about some of the language.
Schneck expressed disappointment while commending the recent steps toward resolving the sides’ differences.
“We made so many gigantic steps forward,” Schneck said. “This is going to cause us to go backwards. Time is of an essence. Because of this glitch, it’s delaying things.”

Ugh

2005-02-22T01:43:00.000-05:00

I don't do "sick" very well. I've never been one to take a day off from school, or from work, or from life, or from anyplace, really. I generally like to keep doing whatever I should be doing, no matter how miserable I might feel.

That's been difficult the last two days, though, as I suffer through this same rotten cold everyone else in Ohio seems to have right now. Just 10 or 15 minutes of walking around at a time leaves me feeling genuinely exhausted. I took nearly six hours' worth of naps today after sleeping for nearly 11 hours last night. Even for a man who admits he likes sleep, that's a lot.

The hardest part is admitting some microscopic organism can get the best of you. It's hard 'fessing up that clogged sinuses can wipe out you balance and leave you weak in the knees. It stinks admitting you're not up to full capacity.

It does make you appreciate your body more, though. Feeling so achy and sore and stiff reminds me that I should take better advantage of my flexibility and balance when I'ma ble. I should enjoy the ability to run around and have fun. I should enjoy the ability to run up and down the stairs without getting completely exhausted.

All that having been said, it's been nearly an hour since my most recent nap attempt, and I'm exhausted. Time to hit the hay again, in hopes of health when I revive.