At this point, I’m not sure exactly when ActionNW was launched as weekly tabloid insert focusing on outdoors activities and opportunities, everything from hiking and camping to hunting and fishing and rodeos and travel, especially daytrips.
I do know that it soon became one of my responsibilities at the paper, Noted on 10:III:77, eight months after my arrival, “ActionNW preprinted today — I finally changed the format, raw-wraps [ragged right] and quote-outs. Oxford rules atop the pp. A cram-jam job that worked, and I’m happy.”
Obviously, we weren’t doing a lot of discussion before each edition. It really was seat-of-the-pants, like so much American journalism.
Over time, it would become the closest I would have to running a magazine … I took some inspiration from the Sunday Herald Tribune’s New York section. Yes, the Sunday magazine continues long after the newspaper itself folded.
I also found a letter of recommendation I wrote for a photojournalist buddy: “He sets high standards for himself and uses his art as a means of maintaining a state of constant discovery about life itself. As a result, he has deep influence on many of his colleagues.” Little would I know the eventual downfall …
Goz, bringing in a Time magazine review to Wren, pointed out: journalists as novelists seem to lack plumage. They cannot make their sentences dance, they cannot make them spin with magic.
Sounds like so many of the rejections I’ve been collecting.
James Michael Gosney, 79, died Nov 7, 2017. He was a sportswriter we tasked with the lead stories in ActionNW before giving him a daily column he used to profile everyday locals …
~*~
Noted on 30:VI:77, full moon: Maurie retired today — reception party at the office, surprise party later — new suit, everything like a high school graduation …
Officially, he was news editor of the afternoon edition … died March 16, ’92, in Yakima nursing home, I find now …
A sweet guy, as I recall … pretty much semi-retired already …
Was this another opening for me?
[How much I was oblivious to what was popping up around me or my threat to others and their existing order.]
So during this stretch I had Mondays off … allowing me an “outdoors day” free of the weekend crowds …
In mid-August: With a Wednesday off work, I slept till 11. Who needs 11 hours sleep? I had set the alarm for 6.
Wednesday, I shift back to two weeks of night labor, wondering how Tippet will accept my presence over him …
Friday night, after work, stopped at the Lewisville (a log cabin tavern) for a pitcher with Whiz and Jeff. Goz dropped in after a glut-out on escargot and Reisling. He and I talked out back till 3:30 under half moon and clouds after the tavern closed. He wondered about the value of it all, “Am I a good writer?” Answering himself, no, but later, yes, reflecting on the joy he’d given old men with one piece.
“Hooper, he was a good editor. Could really make a piece sparkle. But you, Mr. Hodson, have a touch that may be better.”
~*~
How many times have I not done something because I know from news stories how dangerous the time/place/action is?
How much have I never done because I was doing my job instead?
~*~
A really bad night at the office, when Macknicki and I were suddenly far behind after the new copy courier had dumped all of the UPI perforated tapes because the machine had gone bad. Perton swearing he’d never seen things so bad, copy piled up, etc.
Yes, I was dead when Kitty came home and was pissed I slept late the next morning.
Notes of frustration, having to cover for Mrs. Stone plus a farm tab on top of what was already too much …
~*~
22 Nov., morning, I note working two weeks of day slot (the afternoon edition), which even means getting Thanksgiving Day off … (Hurray!)
And then our HR administrator noticed Mrs. Stone was 15 minutes late the day she “fell” … um …
[slackers]. And thus to can or ax a bounder can become natural, to make the forest come to climax or to fulfill its own — to bump them off keeps the youngest saplings from starving.
16:XII: Worked night shift, came home, my wife within, the little house seemed so sad, even from the distance.
At work, two-paragraph story, conductor Thomas Schipper had died, of cancer, age 47. I had almost played his recording of Rossini’s Stabet Mater today as a requiem for Nosmo. How strange.
~*~
Gil’s leaving, for Woodbury, NJ, and a daily of his own, yet our sense of loss and reassurance, Whiz and me.
Gil telling me how Kent’s a bit afraid of me, thinks I’m unpredictable, too independent for his taste — how the back shop claims I’m indecisive (what I get for being considerate of them).
~*~
From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.
Jnana's Red Barn 