The first big hello

The blur was hard to make out. It looked like a kidney bean with a big dot on one end of it – the right eye of my unborn child.
Karla and I had our first ultrasound today, and she is nearly seven weeks into her pregnancy. At the doctor’s office, we were ushered into a dimly lit beige room that seemed to be intentionally over-soothing. I admit, I got off easy on this visit: I wasn’t the one with my pants off getting probed in a very private place with the technological descendant of the sonar seen in every cheesy World War II movie that resides in my brain. No, I was sitting comfortably in a well-stuffed chair reading an issue of Men’s Health. A flat screen monitor on the counter in front of me splayed out a dazzling array of electronic lines that were hard to read. Then, a black comma shape popped out of the monochrome confusion. It was the nutrient sack for a developing fetus.
It was a strange feeling to be watching a real-time television broadcast from the womb. I thought back to what it must have been like years ago, when a parent’s first glimpse of a baby came after it wiggled its way down the chute. I liked this private showing. My wife and I squeezed hands as the woman operating the machine typed the word “baby” near a grey mass. This shows you how small it is now. It reminded me of the type of thing I’d see on documentaries about shipwrecks, where the side-scan sonar picks out a lump out of the mud and somehow researchers are able to determine that it’s the Titanic. Our lump wasn’t a shipwreck, but it had the whole “precious cargo” theme in common with one.
The nurse changed tactics at this point, picking up a foot long grey scanner that looked like a wand massager I’d see sitting at a Brookstone store.
“Don’t worry,” she cheerfully said. “Only the first two inches go in.”
Somehow, this was less than comforting to my wife.
A brownish, sepia-toned picture replaced the gray of the ultrasound, which was more 3D than the other image. In the course of being probed (a polite way to put it), the nurse managed to pick out a lump in the chaos that I realized was our unborn child. I realized it was our child when I saw the familiar shape of a big head with a dot in the middle of it. It was an eye. At that moment, we bonded. I felt as though I was reaching out through the ether, through the electronic wire, and connecting with the small life form growing by the day in my wife’s belly. It’s not big, coming in at 3.5 centimeters, but it’s getting bigger as time goes on. I found myself wondering how many times I would catch that eye during the course of the next part of our lives. I wondered how many times I would see it cry; I wondered how many times I would see it narrow in anger. I wondered how many times I would be able to see the sparkle of wonder that can make children the joy they are. I wondered what color the eyes were.
Soon enough, the probing was over, and we were given two printouts of the baby. It’s strange to call it that now. Having seen it, I can find nothing else suitable to call it. Although I greatly overestimate its development and ability, I do not underestimate its importance, or the impact it’s going to have on both of our lives.
We went out to lunch together, and held hands while waiting in line at our local Panera. For now, our secret is tiny, growing by the day and completely exhausting my wife. But soon, the whole world will find out and share in the joy we’ve so far kept under wraps. Soon – as in our Dec. 18 due date. It is during times like this that the scales and shackles of the world fall away in the glorious realization of what’s truly important in life. It’s about love – and what that love is capable of creating. Personally, I can’t wait.

MEAT!!!!

Well, I broke yesterday, and it was absolutely delicious.

I've been sick for the past five days. In spite of antibiotics, I still feel like junk. I've been in and out of work all week, and the only thing that increased as my illness went on was my craving for meat. Now, for those of you who don't know, I haven't eaten meat in three months. I decided, after years of considering, to try vegetarianism. There are merits to being a vegetarian. For one, the grocery bills are a lot cheaper. However, my experiment only made me realize that meat is something the human body isn't meant to be without. My idealism, however motivated, probably can't undo the sheer realities of millions of years of evolution.

My meat craving reached its peak during a staff meeting yesterday, when the empty stomach and head cold worked together to erode whatever resistance remained to my idealistic and completely voluntary fight. When I left the office, I did the first thing that came to mind: I went to McDonalds, and bought a Quarter Pounder. You know what? It was the best meal I've had in a long time. I was almost afraid to eat it when I got it out of the box. I'd forgotten how hefty those things were - it felt remarkably heavy in my hands, especially after a diet of beans and rice. As I took the first bite, I was struck by how normal it all seemed: there was no hesitation, no funny taste or moment of Zen. If I hadn't known better, this could have been an every day happening. I sucked that burger down in about a minute and a half, and was immediately satisfied.

When I called my mom to tell her about this, she laughed for a good 20 seconds straight. I had to laugh, too. I knew this would happen. Of all things, that damned clown Ronald McDonald ended up being my downfall. All of that Happy Meal marketing back in the 80s paid off; they were the first place I turned after my meat-sobriety came to a voluntary and delicious end.

It was an interesting experiment - but I don't think I will bee repeating it anytime soon. For one, I'm not some rabid firebrand of an idealist. Besides, I don't drink very often, and don't smoke anymore. You know who else didn't eat meat, rarely drank and never smoked? Yeah. Hitler. I'd rather avoid the Hitler diet, thanks. Besides, not eating meat was really, well, boring. There's a reason that the human body craves meat - it provides nutrients and tastes good. I'm all for people being idealistic, but the more I look at it, the more I think meat is simply a part of life.

This isn't to say I've learned nothing from my experience. Now, I've learned to value whatever meat I eat as something that came from a living creature. Also, meat isn't something I can live without - but it's not something I think needs to be eaten every day. There are plenty of reasons to limit it as part of a diet. I heard on the radio yesterday that Chinese children are experiencing an obesity epidemic much like our own because they are eating meat every day for the first time in their lives (because their parents can afford it now). Meat served our ancestors well; it kept them alive in a rather difficult existence. This, however, isn't OUR existence. Now, with a sedentary lifestyle, people don't need the caloric benefits of meat because they don't require the same energy. It's an interesting change - our environment has changed from the one our ancestors were evolved to suit.

Enough of this heady talk - I'd like some fries with my reconversion.

Five Years On

Five years ago today, despite desperate nighttime prayers for peace, the war in Iraq became a reality.

The days and weeks in the run-up to the first missile strikes built a steady pressure among the students on the college campus I was living on. It seemed more likely with each passing day that our country was on a path to another war. My political stance was naïve at best; I took President George W. Bush at his word, despite my misgivings about a war that had the potential to ravage the best of my generation. The fear was omnipresent, stoked by what seemed a constant barrage of ominous sounding phrases like “weapons of mass destruction” and “fighting them there instead of here.” After all, we “didn’t want the smoking gun to come in the form of a mushroom cloud,” the administration line went. Besides, Saddam had ties to Al Qaeda, it was claimed. The case for war, CIA Chief George Tenet said, was “a slam dunk.” I tried to believe all that was being said, but in my heart, I was worried.

March 20 began as many days did: I woke up in the top bunk of my room and wished I were somewhere else. St. Cloud was a decent town, but as the “old man out” (coming in to the freshman dorms at the wise age of 22), it was difficult to make meaningful connections with the children around me. However, this day held the promise of something different. I’d recently reconnected with a girl I’d gone to high school with. She was working at the student newspaper as a receptionist, and after weeks of flirting, I’d asked her out for coffee. My anticipation grew with each passing hour. When the date finally came, it was less than pleasant. She spent most of her time talking about this guy she’d been dating, building metaphorical walls topped with emotional razor wire. I felt like a failure. My only date in months had been a complete disaster, and as I walked home by myself, my anger only grew. It was a dark and overcast night, the kind where the sky is light orange-pink from the streetlights below it. It seemed murky and menacing – which mirrored the way I felt this girl had interpreted me. I walked for miles beneath the jaded and indifferent clouds.

Upon my return, I stomped into the student lobby, and could tell immediately something important was happening. It was that same sort of hush that overcame the student commons on 9/11, when we watched the buildings come down over…and over…and over. It was the kind of silence that made people question their own significance in the world. As a student journalist, I was almost thankful for this distraction: far be it for me to mope, I had something important to do. I grabbed my supplies, and got to work.

“The war in Iraq began about 8:30 p.m. last night, with air strikes on Baghdad. Students at SCSU seemed almost oblivious to the fact that their country was at war, with TV rooms remaining empty and people going on with business as usual.But the ones who were watching TV seemed both worried and apprehensive, even though this event was expected to happen anytime after the Wednesday evening deadline Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was given to leave Iraq or face U.S. military action.

"Obviously I'm worried about my parents, because I don't want anything to happen to them," said Megan LaChance, SCSU first year student, "but at the same time I think the Iraqi people should be free because (Saddam Hussein) is so oppressive. At the same time I think we're going about it the wrong way, because from what it seems so far, it's all about Bush and trying to get back for what his father did. He's basically fighting his father's war."

Kara Hjelle, also in her first year at SCSU, was living in Saudi Arabia during the first war. She had a rather unique perspective on the events.

"I remember the bomb craters and the damage from the bombs," she recalled of the first Gulf War. Hjelle went on to say that she had an uncle who was in the Middle East in combat.

Most of the students University Chronicle interviewed were too young to remember the first Gulf War in January 1991 or the images from television the first night of the war. For those who did remember, last night's imagery brought back memories."

I remember the nighttime gunfire," said Dave Mallman, an SCSU sophomore. The night gunfire to which Mallman is referring was broadcast during the first night of the war, taken by a night vision camera, of the anti-aircraft fire over the city of Baghdad.

Students also seemed to speak of the actions approvingly, as if they were just glad to have a clear course of action in front of them.

"I think we're finally doing it," said Steve Mages, another first year student. "We've been waiting for them to go in and get Saddam. I'm just glad they are finally going in there and taking care of stuff. It's cool."Dave Jones, another freshman, said that he "hoped we wouldn't go to war, but it's happening and there's nothing we can do. Now we just have to support the troops."

When asked whether or not having so much information was a good thing, most of those interviewed said that they approved of knowing what was going on. Others spoke that our enemies could use this information against our own forces, but most simply liked to know what was going on.

"I like the coverage and everything, but I don't think they should capitalize on it so much," Jones said. "It's not a good thing, and it's like their exploiting it I like the information, but I hope it doesn't get too graphic."

When I called my editor, I was brimming with pride. I felt as though I’d hopped on the pulse of the student community and done a good job of getting it on paper. I took a photograph a man watching a television shot of a mission being fired from a U.S. Navy warship, and it ran on the front page of the next issue of the newspaper. It’s moments like this where an old saying about journalism being “a front row to history” certainly seemed true.For the first few weeks, the war was on everyone’s minds. The television in my dorm room was turned to news channels nearly all of the time it was on.

In a way, the war coverage provided the background to normal college life. Footage of ground forces running into Baghdad turned into the background for studying for a science test. President Bush’s “Top Gun” style landing on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln took place on a sunny day when I was packing up my room to go home for the summer. Standing in front of a banner that read, “Mission Accomplished,” Bush said “major combat operations” had come to an end. That day was May 1, 2003. Soon, I was back home, my media awareness fading into oblivion as the dorm room cable television feed grew more and more distant with each passing day. The war still made news, but it wasn’t the top story anymore. After what seemed like an easy victory, many people I knew simply grew tired of it, and wished it would end so the troops could come back home.

Over the course of five years, much has changed. Weapons of mass destruction were never found. The Al Qaeda connections simply didn’t exist (proven as early as 2004: “Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed,” Washington Post, June 17, 2004). Whether or not the troop surge is working depends greatly on whom you ask. The war has been eclipsed by the economy as the main issue for the upcoming election. It should not be forgotten; separated from opinions regarding the administration that sent them there, the troops who have fought it deserve to be remembered and respected for their service. Despite the ups and downs of the past five years, the notion of their honor remains a steadfast constant.

Slipping the Surly Bonds of Earth...

A few weeks ago, I slipped the surly bonds of Earth and touched the face of God.
It started as a simple assignment for the newspaper: go over to a local flight school, interview a trainer and a student, and write a little business story for next week’s issue. This original assignment went out the window pretty quickly with five simple and casually dropped words: “Hey, interested in going up?”
Go up? Me?
I’ve been in airplanes plenty of times - but nothing like the small Cessna 172 I shortly found myself strapped into. For all of its capabilities, the interior is much like that of a 1983 Toyota: plastic, plastic and more plastic. The seats moved forward and back, just like in a car, and the seatbelts we used to strap ourselves in were nearly identical to those used for common land-bound travel. Outside of that, everything was different. The dash was full of lights, dials and switches. My vision grew fuzzy at the sight of all of the strange words and phrases arrayed in front of me. The control yoke was simple to find, as was the throttle. After that, everything else was as good as my best guess.
Barry, the instructor, had been flying for nearly six years. As we slapped on our radio headsets, our voices crackled to life on the unreal sounding intercom system. Somehow, everything sounds vaguely Hollywoodish coming over an intercom system. Soon, the engine was started, and I was guiding the airplane down the taxiway. I used my feet to steer, something make difficult by the bouncing excitement in both my kneecaps. Did Barry know I had precisely no experience in this? That the closest I came to flying most days was by picking up a model on my desk and making airplane noises? He must have known – he didn’t even flinch as we wiggled our way down to the end of the field. We stopped and ran through a pre-flight checklist. Once finished, I wiggled the airplane down the main runway. We stopped again, staring down the wide maw of the painted landing strip before me.
I took a deep breath - this was the now-or-never point. The decision I made in the next 15 seconds could be the difference between writing my story or becoming the subject of one with a title like “Mediocre reporter killed in small plane crash.” I briefly thought of calling my wife. I wondered what my editor would think. My inner monologue was disjointed at best: “Is this a conflict of interest? Probably not; they didn’t get you out here with the promise of a free ride. Did I leave the iron on? I wonder how the dog is.” Without much further reflection from my then-useless pulp of a brain, I pushed the throttle all the way in, and we bounded gaily down the runway.
There’s nothing really like taking off in a small plane. All I can compare it to is that first time a motorcyclist drives on the freeway. There are many exhilarating things going on, like realizing how fast you are going. At the same time, there are many terrifying things going on, like realizing how fast you are going, and just how fragile your bones would be in the event of a terrifying crash. “I am going to die,” I clearly remember thinking as we shot down the runway, “and there’s not going to be enough left of me to bury after I fly through that prop.” In those moments, I visualized the Devil chasing me.
And then, as soon as it began, it was over. Our cannonball trajectory was breathlessly, beautifully upwards, onwards in every which way but down. My stomach did slow backflips as we gained meters with each second the nose pointed upwards. It was the most exhilarating feeling I’ve ever felt. It was as if I were made of pure momentum, unstoppable even by the fickle confines of gravity. The sheer terror of 10 second ago was long gone. I leveled the aircraft out, and drank in the view of the city I spend more time in than anyplace else besides home. Lakeville unfolded before me like a tidy and well-drawn map. The snow on the ground made every color jump out in crisp clear relief. Up here, 1,500 feet above City Hall, above the School Board Offices, above the Planning Commission meetings, everything seemed peaceful, making the complaints existing back on terra firma seem petty and useless. It was, to a fractional degree, the same sort of feeling the astronauts get when they look back down on the Earth and realize we’re all on the same planet.
My hands grew sweaty as the plastic yoke got warmer iron grip. Barry and I chitchatted about his upcoming wedding, what made him want to fly, the time I flew upside down, etc. Barring the wings above our head and the occasional blast from a crosswind, it was as if we were sitting in an easy chair. The Cessna was easy to control, and responded to my every touch. If I wanted to turn left, it jumped to do so. If I wanted to turn right, it did the same. In short, it was a tool that allowed to become a modern day Icarus, only with a (hopefully) happy ending.
When the time came to land, we pulled around towards the back end of the runway. Barry cut the throttle, and we lurched to what seemed like a halt. For a few brief seconds, it seemed as though we weren’t moving at all. I expected us to sink like a stone, but we kept going. For some insane reason, Barry decided to let me land the plane (with plenty of instruction). This was where I got worried. I began to remember all of those times playing the “Top Gun” video game at home. Landing was the problem then, too; I remember more times than not seeing my little airplane go right past the aircraft carrier and crash into the digital sea. This Cessna in my hands was real. There would be no digital afterlife if I crashed. The throttle went down again. The ground seemed to rush up at us like it was going out of style, and the visions of the newspaper headlines upon my demise (“Local writer decapitated in small airport horror”) came back into my head. The feet slipped by: 20, 15, 10, 5, 0. Somehow, I managed to land the plane. Barry piped up on the intercom.
“Hey, you want to go around again?”
The nausea in my stomach answered for me: not a chance. I felt lunch begin to bubble and percolate in the depths of my innards, and wisely decided that I’d had enough flying (and landing for one day). We taxied over to the office, and cut the engine. It’s hard to describe the silence that overtook the cockpit after that. Even with ear protection, the small engine had made a heck of a racket. I asked Barry how I did. He said I’d done well, except for flaring for landing 15 feet above the runway. I’m not even sure what he meant, but I was so glad to be alive I didn’t care. I staggered into the doorframe when I entered the office, unsure of where my feet were. I left the office a half hour before a mere mortal, and came back, well, a mere mortal. As interesting as my experience was, I’m not sure how much hot-dogging I’ll be doing on the flight line. When it comes down to it, I think I enjoy the safety of reading about flying possibly more than the actual flying itself.

Biased? Who isn't?

“It’s the liberal media’s fault.”
If I had a dollar for every time I heard this, I wouldn’t have to write for a newspaper for a living. It’s an easy complaint to make – especially when news is reported that is perhaps unsettling or contrary to expectations. However, a blanket statement like this simply isn’t true. FOX News and the New York Post are perfect examples of this.
After years of dwelling "within the beast," I've found the best way to be informed is to get information from a variety of sources. Every day, I check: CNN, BBC, Spiegel (a German news magazine – it’s amazing what the European press can get away with. It makes our system look tame. They can print color photos of war casualties, not to mention nudity), New York Post (they write the best headlines), and the Weekly Standard (possibly the most conservative publication in America - funded by FOX News head Rupert Murdoch).
Any news reporting, despite best efforts, has bias within it. It's something humans cannot avoid. Everyone, despite their best efforts, has experience and opinions. One way to alleviate this is to get news from multiple sources and get "both sides of the picture." It takes time - which is why not many people I know care enough to do it. Most people are happy looking at one source and then blaming the entire media system for bias.
So long as the news is reported by humans, (which, the last time I checked, is the case) there will be bias within it. This is unavoidable, as all humans have a whole lifetime of preferences, experiences and memories from which to base what goes and what doesn’t. For example, if Coke and Pepsi submit press releases on the same day, it’s natural to assume that subliminal preferences will have something to do with choosing which one gets done first. Most journalists I know try to adhere to the idea of “objectivity,” which is the basic idea of not passing judgment either way and going into a story with an open and undecided mind. However, not all journalists adhere to this noble principal.
I’ve learned the hard way about bias. In one college story I wrote about a war protest, I included a line about Republican counter-protesters being nothing more than “a source of amusement.” This, as far as I could tell from the reaction of the war protesters, was true. However, I did not mention that in the article, and did not attribute the statement to any source other than my own opinion. I rightly got called out on the carpet for this. Another occasion where a reader accused me of having a bias was during a town hall meeting a few years ago, where the majority of the people commenting from my coverage area had more liberal sentiments than conservative ones. My mistake was not in reporting this the way I saw it, as it was a factual representation of what I witnessed; my mistake was not saying something along the lines of, “Overall, liberal and conservative comments were about even.”
Fighting bias is much harder than it seems. Our audiences think this is simply a matter of “telling the truth,” which sounds good, but is harder to do in actual practice. What a person determines to be true or false depends greatly on his or her own point of view. In my experience, people like to blame the media for telling them things that either make them uncomfortable or clash with the way they view things "really are." This includes from Global Warming (a favorite target of conservative news outlets) to the Global War on Terror. What is truth? What is falsehood? At this point, it boils down to a philosophical interpretation more than a logical debate.
Yes, bias is ingrained in journalism. It’s something inherent, however muted, in any statement, grandiose or banal, that a human being makes. Bias is journalism's ugly stepbrother, locked in a tower but occasionally escaping and wreaking havoc – perhaps a reminder that the media, the body of which is made up by a human population just as fallible as any other, is sometimes not the flawless machine is strives to be.