But at some point this year, Kimberly-Clark decided to make the tall, roughly 280-count boxes of tissues I’ve bought since time immemorial … extinct, apparently.

Now don’t get me wrong – I don’t spend all my life blowing my nose or wiping away tears or picking up messes. But … I don’t like it when a company messes with my routines and makes me change out tissue boxes more often in various places around the house.

I have no clue why they did this, but all of a sudden, within a few weeks or months time, at every store I went to, they had just … vanished. Replaced in most stores by more house-brand rougher-on-nose tissues.

I was miffed enough to try to reach them through social media. Posted a note and evrything, and … no reply at all. (Maybe I’ll try the 800 no. on the bottom of the box – what, only weekdays 8a-4p CT? – if only to ask the logical question … why? A paper shortage? Slow sales?)

Ever have something you’ve bought as long as you remember, a daily staple of live just … vanish without a word? It’s ridiculous.

Another grand example – white sauce powdered mix (not the yucky canned stuff). Deb uses it for the sauce for a recipe we call ‘Eggs on a Cloud,’ a yummy dish from McCall’s Cooking School, a series of colorful recipe sheets and binder series from about the time we got married in the early ’80s.

For a long time, no problem finding them. Now, go ahead, check the sauce aisle. Hey Knorr, where the heck do you keep the stuff now? Or did you stop making it in favor of the fifth variant of teriyaki, BBQ or other sauces/gravies?

Little things, to be sure. But they add up, I tell you!

I guess it’s sort of like the notion that just when you  really fall in love with a TV show, they cancel it.

And don’t get me started about The Beatles and a decade (the ’70s) or two wasted waiting for ‘the next Beatles.” When we knew well and good there wouldn’t be one.

(Now there’s a left turn in conversation eh? Well that’s just the way I think;-)

As usual.

See, I tend to start thinking that this blog must have Finely Crafted, Very Important Things.

Otherwise it’s ‘Dear Diary, today I went to the grocery store….”

So rather than small news, I offer no news.

Because I’m too busy with “real news.”

Bleh.

So I’ll try to break that infernal habit and … just say it’s been a busy 4 months since I last talked here.

My eldest brother, Dave, came to town and … without bothering you with all the mess, let’s just say it’s been an unexpected … adventure. Some rewards but bizarre twists and turns and headaches.

He had a stroke in late September, but is doing better now, at a local assisted-living center. Driving them crazy a bit with his ways (don’t I know it), but … I love to make him laugh. I see a bit of my late brother Pete, and hear our late father’s laugh.

I’m easily prone to melancholy (I found a 1985 bottle of window cleaner and thought back and … almost went to tears. Over window cleaner.) So I thought I’d wait to blog until the situation family-wise resolved itself.

Like they ever really do in a neat package. This ain’t (yes, I said ain’t) no movie.

I will always try to make things enjoyable. Like the recommendation of the Nook Tablet from Barnes and Noble. Also sold at other stores that are hyping the only slightly cheaper Amazon Kindle Fire. Nook is better, but spring the extra $50 for the latest, not last year’s model. It’s worth it.

What a wonderful way to read my Time, Newsweek, Readers Digest, The Atlantic and great books like “The End of Business as Usual” by Brian Solis (I could link this but hey, you have Google too;-) or one I stumbled on thanks to WordPress, ‘Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds” by Scott Berkun. Check ‘em out and get to thinking of new things. What fun. 

(Ooh, WordPress has moved up the simple scale even farther, with live preview no less. Coolness.)

Anyhoo, thank you for reading this, and you have a wonderful, semi-stress-free, healthy holiday season.

I’ll blog more, I promise. And one way to do that is to give myself a 10-minute limit for typing so I don’t think I have to Tell Something Monumental. I post lots of links to things I find interesting on my Facebook page, but … blogging has its own nice lil benefits.

I’ll try not to be a stranger;-)

All of the above is winning in our latest KTVZ.COM Poll about folks’ prime emotions regarding the awful display of partisan bickering amid the debt crisis on Capitol Hill.

How do we break the seemingly endless, for-sure vicious downward spiral of juvenile finger-pointing, breast-beating and general lack of maturity in our politics?

As usual for a reporter, I don’t have the answers. But also like any good reporter, I want to at least help make sure we’re asking the right questions. That we’re not framing the issue the way the partisans on either side of the fight want us to. To at least open the mind to some different thoughts of our own, not those the folks who trout out selected red herrings want us to react – of pure emotion rather than logic.

Some of what’s below is no doubt from the Department of Redundancy Department. And I have little doubt that some will “see through” (heh) my fervent desires and brand me as a naive Pollyanna who loves the idea of a group hug and “Kumbaya,” who doesn’t understand how politics “really” works, etc. I know all the platitudes: “Those who stand for nothing will fall for anything,” “moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue,” etc.

Amazing how we’ve allowed “compromise,” “negotiation” and “moderation” to become dirty words in the eyes, minds and even hearts of too many. That it seems many would rather see the country devolve into civil war than “give an inch” on their “principles.”

Anyway, I pounded this out the other morning after another of those chain-letter e-mails with a pledge to “save our country” made the rounds. If you agree with much of it, great. If it makes your blood boil in “he just doesn’t get it!” fashion, oh well. But it’s from my heart AND my head, and … hope it strikes a chord or two:

A Pledge to Reject the ‘Blame Society’

1. I will not re-circulate every e-mail suggestion for ‘fixing’ Congress – or anything else – knowing that simple answers are for simpletons and emotionally based, feel-good wholesale changes usually are proposals that at least have unconsidered tradeoffs and downsides — not to mention being “dead on arrival” politically.

2. I will honor the Founding Fathers and their wisdom, but not believe they were ‘literalists’ whose every word, deed and writing was to remain unchanged forever more. They did not envision our world, and while their founding principles should always be embraced, to not advance or change to reflect today’s realities would be like hewing to every element of the Old Testament, literally.

3. I will reject extremism in ALL its forms, and will be wary of anyone who claims to have a corner on “the truth you won’t hear anywhere else,” because I know they are appealing to my heart and spleen and asking those to overrule my head, and they want me to believe “our side” has all the answers and good folks, and “their side” is wrong and dumb and evil, their every idea is to be rejected without consideration, etc.

4. I will encourage our elected and appointed leaders to truly consider ALL good ideas – even those from the other side of the aisle – and in tough times to resist engaging in the “he started it!” kindergarten whines that we all should have left behind in kindergarten.

5. I will point out cognitive dissonance whenever and wherever I see it, knowing that while all of us would like to have our cake, eat it too, not get fat and have someone else pay the bill, I left the world of fairytales behind at a young age and should not return to it in my adulthood.

6. I will stop letting anecdotal awfulness — the $1,000 hammer, the wayward cop brought up on charges – color my perception of my government, which like any large enterprise with a huge customer base will never please everyone, and who really does only one thing badly in widespread fashion — getting the message out of the simple, good things it does every day. It will remain in damaging paralysis when those seeking to bring it down or get their person/party in are allowed to paint government as evil personified. Government is a reflection of us and our strengths and weaknesses, and to assign it larger blame – or credit – than it deserves just makes it harder to get anything good done.

7. I will reject extreme “throw the bums out” term limits for what they are – a bid by those driven by anger, vengeance or political opportunism to turn from career politicians to perpetually amateur politicians who can be even more manipulated by career bureaucrats who really pull the gears of government, and lobbyists who are looking out for their companies’ and causes’ self-interests. As they should.

8. I will embrace true negotiation and compromise – not on principles, but on policies – and always call on our elected and appointed leaders to be specific about what they would do and have done, rather than waste our valuable time telling us all the bad things about their foes. Tell us why you are good, not why your foe is bad, because we have a brain and can judge and choose and remember all by ourselves, and the personal attacks and negativity say more about you than it does them. I will ask our leaders to be specific, be detailed and be honest about your proposals, and don’t appeal solely to our emotions or misguided wish for simple answers to complicated problems.

9. I will not  blame every bad thing that happens in my life or the world on our president or Congress (or local elected officials for that matter) and will not give them credit for every good thing, either. Much – in fact, most – of your life is beyond their control, thankfully.

10. I will not take comfort or joy in my foes’ failures or tragedies, will reject the notion that civil war or Judgement Day are things to eagerly anticipate (because our side will be proven right and the others will “get theirs”), and will try to walk a mile in my opponents’ shoes whenever possible. Because the only way to advance as a community, nation and people is to move forward together and leave the bickering for the 5-year-olds in the back seat on a long vacation ride. And just like then, I will be the parent, and when the ‘stop touching me!’ and ‘he started it!’ whines come from the ‘children’ in our ride toward the future, we will be the parent, and say, ‘I don’t care who started it — I’m finishing it!’ And I will cling fervently to the belief, hope and prayer that such a mindset truly is our only hope of peace and progress.

But five years later, I was working beside the man who named him. A man you’ve never known, but who was a funny, gentle man and a heck of a good reporter at United Press International in Portland.

His name: Clyde Jabin. And he was on duty the late-November night in 1971 when Cooper — shown on the passenger list as Dan Cooper — demanded all that money and two parachutes, and … well, the rest of the story is pretty well known.

What’s not as well known is how “Dan” became “D.B.”

In a time when wire services were the principal method of news disseminated far and wide, long before the Web etc., UPI was the David to the mighty non-profit Associated Press, which meant we had to outhustle the AP folks every day, running for our survival.

Anyhoo, as my mentor and friend, the bureau manager at the time, Billy Joe McFarland re-related for no doubt the umpteenth time on an e-mail list many of us former Unipressers are part of, Clyde was on the phone with an FBI agent and taking down the hijacker’s name. He apparently asked, on hearing the name, “D as in dog, or B as in Boy?” or somesuch. Whatever the answer was over that phone line, he typed both initials, and it went from notes to article to the wire (still sent to newsrooms around the world by clattering teletypes – remind me to tell you the “joy” of changing those ribbons some time) – and into history.

Just about every article that noted the two names over the decades has practically sneered at how the mistake became “fact,” through an “error” by UPI.

Anyone who’s worked in a wire service and has churned out the tons of articles we have (and they still do) knows that being your own editor is a tightwire without a safety net that can leave you swinging in the wind at times.

But from all I remember of the kind, gentle Clyde Jabin from the years I knew him, he didn’t let his unfortunate small role in history make him angry or bitter. He laughed it off, because, after all, to err is human, etc.

To make history with a mistake is far from unique. But Clyde, who died several years back in a tragic car crash, was just one of the memorable characters at UPI who I’ll always remember for their competitive spirit, the place where more than anyplace else you just had to keep running at a steady pace to keep up with all the stories to write and chores to perform (typing up the midday markets, changing the paper and those dang ribbons, answering calls of every kind – hmm, still do that, and it’s still as fun at times and exasperating at others;-)

That competitive drive and enthusiasm instilled at a young age has stood me in good stead, as it did this week when I got a neat little award from my boss at work. (I Facebooked it and was humbled by the outpouring of congrats).

I’ve made far more than my share of typos and mistakes in my writing over the years. Fortunately, it’s been a pretty small percentage of the number of stories that have been pounded out on this keyboard or that.

But I’d like to dedicate a little piece of that clear plastic award to Clyde and all the fine folks who have helped me and put up with me in all those years in journalism. I’d like to think Clyde is some place special now, where he got an exclusive interview with the real ‘Dan Cooper,’ who told him:

“Just call me D.B. – everybody does, thanks to you.”

And much like kids, sometimes my words and articles do me proud, and other times they turn on me, when I haven’t given them the time and attention they deserve. Fortunately, with words, there can be do-overs of sorts, but on the Net, older versions can live on, so it pays to be careful;-)

I also think of the younger folks I work with – whom I see, alas, far more than my real family, living in other areas – as the people I can affect and influence into the future, bit by bit, answering their questions, editing their scripts (sometimes over-editing, for sure) and just generally showing an insane work ethic and things like that, that hopefully can rub off on them in positive ways as they make their own lives and careers happen.

So through a LinkedIn post I found this - the Tao of Journalism pledge - and it was so nice to see others in this media-blaming, government-blaming world try to find a common set of principles that are simple, not high-falutin and easy to understand. Honesty, transparency, accuracy – the things I cling to, to get by on a harried news day – all summed up nicely.

I hope things like that catch fire, and as I’ve written many a time, that we move beyond the Blame Society and the finger-pointing to find all things we do agree on.

America doesn’t stand for your side ‘winning.’ but listening to the other side, incorporating its best ideas and coming together to move forward. If that sounds like a blowhard politician, so be it. If we lived up to such a mission, rather than paying it lip service, maybe we’d get something done rather than simply know who to blame for what isn’t getting done.

Those who feed on fear, hate and divisiveness don’t deserve your time or attention.  The trolls who grab the microphone to, in essence, spit on those who provides it should be called out for what they are. Those who believe their political side, their view are the One True Way for a perfect society are misleading themselves and being used.

In My Humble Opinion.

Yep, if all of us only hated those who are filled with hate, we wouldn’t have a kumbaya Utopia – ain’t gonna happen – but at least we could have civil, rational discussions about very tough problems.

There I go again, off on the same ol’ tangent. Oh well, even if no one (or few) are listening, it feels good to state it.

Maybe one day there’ll be THAT kind of political movement, and we can get over the idea that any one politician will transform society. It’ll have to be us. And that’s a good thing.

It’s quite cute. But it does take a bit getting used to the smaller screen and the half-sized shift key.

It’s under 3 lbs and sure … handy.

Then today, looking at the BB online circular (they are closed for Easter Sunday) I saw… a full-sized, HP dual-core (AMD) laptop for… $349. All five reviews so far are five-star (hey, this one was 4.7 stars on average so not bad;-)

So now I get to decide whether to go back and ask to swap or not. At least put my fingers on the other one, or … keep this? I don’t want cute, I want productive. And at max 2GB of memory here, what are the odds of bumping into that, doing what I do? I’m not sure, but typing this post here shows I can sure type fast on this lil guy I call Blue Max (for its blue lid, and in honor of Eugene Kaza, our band teacher at John Adams HS in Portland, and his electric blue violin — he played in the Oregon Symphony, no less.)

But as always, I digress. (Wow, unplug the AC and the screen is half as bright – maybe THAT’s why the power lasts longer, too.) I’ll try to be objective, weigh the pros and cons and … the feel of the choice.

I think one pro for the smaller machine is maybe I’ll take it more places – and blog more often. But my 6-year-old laptop was getting pretty wheezy, so either way, I’m blessed, thanks to my sweet wife and place I work, for being able to do this upgrade, whichever path I take. So a double thanks;-)

Ted Taylor, our 6pm show producer, saw my jaw drop to the floor when I entered the newsroom and he said that.

Thus began a mad scramble to get a phone-recording system running so we could talk – and we did, for almost a half-hour.

I’ve written all about that at the Website but one thing Stephen – we’re not close friends, but we’ve talked over the years – wanted me to know, about why he called me.

This Bend developer who’d been shot five (or is it six?) times by his wife – and lived, and is still with her – had been back in Bend and able to speak since mid-October.

Why hadn’t he talked to any reporters? Because not a single one called him to ask if he’d talk!

Seriously. I mean, he could be fibbing, but why fib about that?

I know reporters have this all-too-often reputation of rushing up to someone who’s house is burning down, sticking a microphone and camera in their face and saying “how do you feel watching your life ruined?”

Or something like that.

But the words “sensitive” and “journalist” are not mutually exclusive.

This was just a very vivid reminder that we should never, ever assume someone does NOT want to talk. And should always make the attempt. The worst that can happen is screamed obscenities in your ear and a hang-up on the other end of the phone line.

I think I’ve quoted the grizzled old editor’s line here before: “If your mother says she loves ya, check it out!”

Point being, it’s worth those hang-ups for the one time someone says, “Finally, I’ve been waiting for someone to ask me!”

But that has to be the first time I can recall in a local, high-profile story that someone, after months of waiting for someone to call them, called me. I’m sure glad it was me, of course, and the final chapter of this somewhat bizarre tale has yet to play itself out. But as I approach 20 years in Central Oregon, sometimes just being here the longest (and trying my hardest always to get it right while getting it first, and trying to be fair and accurate) can bring good stories my way. and I’m grateful for that.

AP quoted NPR and CNN (if I remember correctly) in reporting an Arizona congresswoman’s death after a mass shooting.

She did not.

No doubt, there will be mass dissection of how the mega-error happened, but what will be just as sadly interesting is how, 30 years after the Reagan assassination try and AP’s in-error report of James Brady’s death (I worked for UPI, which got it right), such a rare, major human breaking-news error is still possible — but that the world of the Internet spreads the error far and wide in milliseconds.

Drat. Humans will make mistakes, and communication errors will exist as long as there are humans.

But the much greater speed of today’s communication networks means even more care and caution must be used before unsubstantiated info is spread around the globe.

Whatever the specifics may be, this will be another excuse to blame the media as sloppy and reckless. When really, all we are is … human.

Mistakes are big or small. This one is very big, and very sad, and … never 100 percent preventable. But boy do we have to keep trying.

On the one hand, it’s ‘exciting’ and energizing to have breaking news to cover, in an area where we blessedly have relatively little major crime, etc. compared to bigger cities.

Still, it can be frustrating when people think we make every decision based on whose lives we can invade or pain we can exploit.

It’s not true, but to be defensive in such situations only makes a difficult situation worse.

When someone dies in an awful way, we need to try to tell how they died – but more importantly, how they lived.

We don’t, contrary to the critics’ claims, go ringing up or knocking on the door of every crime victim, stick a camera and mike in their face and say, ‘How do you feel?”

The worst calls I’ve ever made are to folks in pain. I always hope and pray a family friend or representative will answer the phone, that those dealing with tragedy have been helped by others who are taking our inevitable calls for a photo, word of a fund in their name, etc.

A Bend man died this week in an example of the awfully named term, ‘Freak accident’ – a tree slammed down on the van in which he was sleeping. A Roseburg TV station kindly shared photos clearly taken hours after the discovery (tree was off the van and cut up etc.)

Still, it was shocking. Not graphic or lurid, but jolting.

We used the photos. A few close friends asked ‘have you no shame,’ etc.

After a day, I removed the photos from our front page. I can always see both sides of these things. The image was known, and to put his smiling face there again seemed right, and we followed with another story talking to friends about how he lived.

Then there’s the awful possible murder-suicide in Bend.

Facebook has two sides for people – the private one only friends can see, and the public one anyone can see using a search box.

We found two heartbreakingly normal photos of the family on the mother’s and father’s Facebook pages.

We used them and soon heard from a very upset family member.

I tried, best I could, not to get defensive, and to explain why we felt they were OK and even good to use – again, as I say, to show how folks live, not just how they die.

It didn’t end with a slammed-down phone, so I should be grateful.

But then came the note today, saying “shame on you” and asking why we felt it was OK to put the photos (and names – hey, we waited almost a full day to use the names, when property tax records indicated the homeowners and the paper felt fine running that right away – we waited until police issued the names to be sure family members were notified first.)

But Facebook is a public source of info, and we wanted to share MORE than names – to tell who these people are. In the immediate aftermath of tragedy, that is a very difficult time to glean those details, and we’re more successful in some cases than others.

But I hope that, God forbid, I ever face such a tragedy, I’ll understand why the media is doing what it’s doing – unless we/they cross the line, and then I also hope I’d make my point without lashing out. But it’s human, and we all are that.

We don’t revel in others’ pain, nor wish to intrude on a family’s grief. I have been deleting many comments that go too far in supposition or worse (man, there are some scary folks out there). But … it’s tough, and we have to try to be both sensitive and consistent. I hope and pray most folks understand that.

The ‘right’ to use info or a photo or the like doesn’t always clash with the issue of ‘rightness’ (propriety), but it can. Just now, police passed along the family’s request to remove info gleaned from public Facebook pages from the story. They are distraught, but I can’t help thinking they have far bigger things to be distraught about.

These were not damning or in any way negative pieces of information about the family – in fact, they were heartbreakingly normal and upbeat. But of course, I removed them, after touching base with the news director on his call on the issue.

But as I said, it’s ‘right’ vs. ‘rightness.’ Tough balancing act for all concerned in such terrible cases.

May you never be in such a situation – but may you also think about it whenever you make info publicly available, intentionally or otherwise. As society and the definition of privacy evolves, maybe, just maybe it’ll be less of an issue. I’m not expecting it, though.

Why do so many sites do as this one does http://www.regrettheerror.com/2010/12/03/they-sullied-his-good-name/#disqus_thread and www.poynter.org – and go with gray or worse, light gray on white type?

It CAN’T be just I who has to squint to read the words displayed like that. Whatever happened to good ol’ black on white? (A related issue is – why do so many make the type too small – but I can tell you, black on white type is a LOT more readable than gray on white, at ANY type size!)
Anyone have a clue where this trend began, and how we can reverse it, for the sake of all of our eyesight?

PS – Found this lil forum thread on the topic, so I’m not alone, yay! http://acapella.harmony-central.com/showthread.php?2259365-Why-Do-Web-Designers-use-Light-Gray-Type-on-a-White-Background