Missing ‘Time on the Water’

Several men wet their lines in the Fox River near Slade Avenue Park in Elgin, Illinois, as the sun sets on July 9, 2014. | Credit: Ted Schnell

Sometimes the things that matter require sacrifice.

Some may scoff, but I have found that fishing is a spiritual activity in many respects.

Just as water is a focal point for life, a lake or river that is habitable to fish and other aquatic life is a focal point for the beauty of God’s creation. The reflections and the motion of the waves have an allure that is almost hypnotic, demanding inward reflection that can bring clarity to clouded thoughts, peace to troubled minds, comfort to broken hearts. Such is has been my experience when fishing, times I have used as much as for prayer as for pleasure.

I have not been fishing since late summer or fall in 2010, just a few scant months before my first layoff in late 2010.

Wildwood Revisited: We've Changed Along with Our Fields of Dreams

A white-tail deer pauses beneath a willow tree that stands in a pasture area that once was home to a large pond in Burnidge Forest Preserve, west of Elgin, Illinois, on Thursday, July 3, 2014. | Credit: Ted Schnell

Childhood friends reunite after nearly four decades

The 1989 film Field of Dreams starred Kevin Costner as an Iowa farmer who follows the mantra, “If you build it, he will come,” building a baseball field amid his crop of corn, ultimately to recapture a piece of his childhood with his father.

Twenty-five years after that film’s release, three friends returned to their fields of dreams — the former pastures and farmland now known as Burnidge Forest Preserve, west of Elgin, Illinois. We had no need to build anything, for the fields in which we played and formulated our dreams for the future are still there.

Granted, things have changed. Thick brush and small woods of 30- to 40-year-old oaks, shagbark hickory and myriad other trees now cover the slopes of gentle hillsides once covered with waist-high grass that rolled like waves on a breezy day.

Growing up in Wildwood

Burnidge Forest Preserve once was a largely grassy pastureland that was the playground upon which my neighbors and I played. | Ted Schnell

Former neighbor's death  recalls a great place to grow up, a remarkable legacy 

The legacy you leave behind is reflected, I think, in the quality of the people who loved you, knew you, respected you.

I write this not as I look back on my own life per se, although I find myself doing that a fair amount these days. I am at an age when men often do look back. I weight my failings against my accomplishment, all the while wondering such things as:

• Have I changed the world as I once imagined I could?
• What kind of legacy will I leave?
• In a hundred years, will the way I lived, loved, worked, and believed have any relevance to anyone?

Ultimately, I suppose, it boils down to, “Will I have made a difference?”

I ponder these things once again just a day after attending a wake on Tuesday afternoon, May 27, 2014, for Phyllis O’Rourke, a St. Charles woman and former longtime Elgin resident.

Maligned media, Part 2: The truth will out, but it can take time

Sometimes they shoot the messenger.

It’s an expression related to the idea of killing off the bearer of unwelcome tidings — as if the messenger really is to blame for unwanted or bad news.

To be clear, as I noted in Maligned media, Part 1 of this missive, sometimes the negative perception of the media is justified, such

Looking back, moving ahead

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They were the dog days of summer, when the Midwest heat and humidity wring the sweat out of you with nary a move.

We lived several miles west of Elgin at the time in a small subdivision called Wildwood Valley. It was the early 1970s, and this little tract just off Coombs Road and a little north of Highland Avenue still was considered “the country.”

Elgin layoffs a tough story to write

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You cannot cover the evolution of a city budget with a $13 million hole in it and not expect to write about the consequences down the road.

I was born and raised in Elgin, Ill., and when I left for my first newspaper job in Rawlins, Wyo., in late 1983, I vowed I would return only as a visitor. That changed in 1994 — some would call it fate, I would call it God’s will — when I applied for a position with The Courier-News. There is much more to that story, but I will save it for another time.

2011's been a turkey, but ...

Still thankful, despite job status

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A year ago, I was thanking God that I had escaped yet another brutal round of layoffs as Sun-Times Media continued the draconian downsizing which I ultimately believe will prove fatal — if not to the entire company, then at least to its neglected suburban holdings.

Feeling squirrelly after attack

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I’d known from the start of the week that Wednesday was going to be a challenge. I was not particularly dreading it — in fact, I was looking forward to seeing how well I would handle it.

 

But some things you just don’t see coming.

Can peeves really be pets?

Some things that can serve to annoy copy editors

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A former copy editor colleague of mine recently started a Facebook thread bemoaning some of his pet peeves of misused words in the English language. I joined in the thread — we share some of the same irritants.

Fessin’ up: Addressing mistakes

Mistakes are not acceptable when they are avoidable.

This was a lesson I had pounded in to me repeatedly when I was news editor in the early 1990s at one of Wyoming’s then two capital city newspapers.

I worked there in a pressure cooker environment – I enjoyed the work thoroughly, despite the intensity and workload. There was very little time to stop to think through the course of the 90 mph night. We rushed through everything. I starting using the term “spray-and-pray editing” to describe our work.

Hoping for light at end of tunnel

There have been some recent developments I find encouraging after nearly six months on the unemployment, although I’ve had one part-time digital reporting job at BocaJump.com since January.

I have been particularly grateful for that one as it allowed me to work again with Mike Bailey, a great newsman and former managing editor of The Courier-News in Elgin, Ill., my hometown. I grew up reading The Courier, The Chicago Tribune, and for a while, the Chicago Daily News, which my Dad subscribed to until it folded in March 1978, nearly a year after I’d graduated high school.

Newer media raise old questions on ethics

Social media is having a broad impact in so many ways, not the least of which is journalism, my specialty for many years.

What started with such Web innovations as Myspace and grew to include Facebook, Twitter and many more, essentially allow people to interact, often in real team, using Internet-based and frequently mobile technology.

There are many great things about social media. People can post messages to each other or for common consumption. The can promote their blogs or the stories they have written or the photos they have taken. They can market products and ideas. But social media also can be a goldmine of real-time reactions to breaking news.

Digital journalist: Having fun again

It's been a busy week, much of it spent scurrying about, meeting municipal officials, attending a city press briefing and then live-blogging during a forum on Elgin's form of government. In between times, I ran about looking for -- and after the third stop, finding -- a digital voice recorder with a USB port, a couple of notebooks and a satchel to carry around a Netbook.

The digital recorder was it's own little adventure. Back in the day, reporters either relied solely on notes or used a clunky tape recorder that you were lucky if you could get it into a coat pocket. Later there were microcassette recorders, a smaller, slimmed-down version of the standard cassette recorder that still was large-ish but easier to carry around.

But the digital recorders today are far smaller and far more advanced -- the USB port gives me the option of downloading an interview into my computer, where I can edit it into sound bites to accompany stories online.

Time out for thanks: Back to (part-time) work

This journey into what for me has been the uncharted waters of unemployment has not been without its shares of heartache and disappointment, the most recent of which has been a case of the shingles I wrote about earlier this week.

But as I also pointed out earlier this week, there have been some very positive developments along the way as well, as well as one particularly amusing one (see the short sidebar at the end of this posting).

And of course one of the greatest blessings to come out of this has been the words of encouragement I have received from people of all walks of life and from all over the country. Some I have known in person, others I have come to know through their blogs or their tweets.

But today I am particularly reveling in the joys of friendships built over the years as a part of my career. Of the many phone calls I made or received after I was laid off by Sun-Times Media on Dec. 2, two stand out at the moment.