I write on the walls with pictures. Looking at the wall behind me I have probably over 100 images from a beloved building we worked in for decades that was sold and was to be torn down. In those last days, people took to writing on the walls, leaving messages that captured the meaning and times of the building and what was done there.

I wish I had taken the time to capture each one. I was just going around snapping a few memories of what once was a bustling place of thousands. And now it’s just a memory. But those pictures I have arranged to make into something else are ones of many writing on the walls. No longer dust in a landfill, they have life. Now if I can just decide on what I want to make with them.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve seen a lot of industries that have had writing on the walls and then they are gone. Like the Newseum below, gone from our collective history. I’m so glad I got a chance to go there before it closed.

The writing on the wall is there for all of us eventually. But I’m still alive and kicking and I’ll keep cranking out what I can to fill my walls and others. This reminds me, I have to find a place with old office partitions for sale that I can use to display some of my work. I’m pretty sure I’m exceeding the usable wall space already.

That won’t stop me from printing. I just fired it up so let me get some production in progress. Be well all.

Random Thoughts of the Day

• I’m about to overdose on College Basketball this weekend.
• Momentos make me smile.
• Worry can be disabling emotion.
• Time to eat well for a few days.

Ink – No not the tattoo kind. The kind a printer would tell you he bleeds when cut. When I first started in the newspaper industry I had the opportunity to work in the pressroom for a while. My main department was engraving but the press crew was either short or behind most of the time so it looked like an interesting toy to learn. And what a toy it was. An old 9-unit Goss Suburban web offset press. 4 units on one end and 5 on the other, folder in the middle.

Presses back in the 60s and 70s were machines that you crawled up on and in between most of the time. Not like the modern console controls of current technology. Days when the press was stopped to change rolls of paper. Days when you had plate changes. When manual ink adjustments were made while it was running and you were kneeling or hanging on a side rail and step making adjustments. Brake controls were by hand. Roll changes were by brute force.

But before you got to any of the fun stuff you had to “fly papers.” In addition to the dirty work, cleanup, and washdown, you had to learn to fly papers and be good at it. This involved two people, one standing on each side of the conveyor leaning over and scooping up papers as they came off the press in increments of 25 or 50 depending on the size of the paper. You would then turn quickly to a small table behind you to “jog” papers. Getting them perfectly aligned, turn pick up the next batch, jog and then stack on top of the previous stack and put that on a skid before you have to grab the next batch.

If I remember correctly when they were in a hurry which seemed to be all the time the press top speed was around 18,000 copies per hour. That’s about 300 a minute. So between 2 people you were picking up 6 bundles a minute, jogging and stacking. Sometimes you just had one person on the conveyor. And when I say conveyer it was about knee high and only about 8 feet long so it was constantly bending over to pick up papers and presses didn’t stop because you had a kink in your back or any other reason than a web break, roll change or end of the run.

Those were some fun days. That plant in Ellicott City on Main Street is where offices of the Times papers and presses were. They ended a long time ago and now I’m wondering which year I’ll see most newspaper printing cease completely.

Random Thoughts of the Day

• Thinking about priorities a few times a day helps the day along in a better way.
• How well do we really even know those closest to us?
• Isn’t it ironic that medical bills will kill you?
• If you’re always working harder to know those closest to you, that is a special thing because we all change over time.
• I hate acknowledging that there are just a lot more bad people in the world than I thought.

Some old members of Patuxent Publishing Company/Times Newspapers gathered today at the old Flier build in Columbia for a clandestine meeting/reunion. Seeing many old faces, some of which I didn’t recognize immediately was great. It’s been 2-3 decades and sometimes 4 since some had seen each other. There were a few of us present who started in the 70s.

Of course, I see a lot of them still regularly. One of my best friends, in fact, we started working together in 1980 and have become brothers. Another group I meet with for breakfast about every month or two. Covid did impact us for a bit but we still Zoomed.

This day reminded me of good times. Of laughter and fun together in a small community newspaper group that flourished and faded after many decades of success. There is very little community journalism anymore. And at the same time, more of it but weeding it out isn’t a pleasant chore. Plus the fact-checking or second read and confirming facts/statements from people isn’t there.

No single person or small team can give you the breadth of coverage a community newspaper could. Sports, education, local government, crime, features, business, arts, movies, food, and more all in one place. That kind of product no longer exists in many communities. Advertising moved on to other mediums and that life support system that sustains the staff to bring you all the local news is gone from the print media for the most part. And if something does remain, the remnants of the Howard County Times or Columbia Flier or Catonsville/Arbutus papers are a good example of papers that are shells of themselves and eventually too costly to continue.

Each organization has its own website or newsletter or podcast or Instagram. I remember the days when people would walk into the office on Main Street in Ellicott City and request photos of their kid hitting in little league and meeting another neighbor who was getting a few extra copies of the paper because it listed the school’s graduation roster and people used to send papers to relatives with their kid’s names in them.

But back to the people meeting today. If you are ever lucky enough to work in an organization that is blessed with a lot of special people working very hard together who like to have a good time and lots of laughs while doing it. That is a special thing and I heard that from a lot of people who worked there today. And that was my experience and many others. And therefore the bond of that shared experience binds this group of former employees.

Some of it I think is attributed to the length of time a lot of us spent together—decades in a fair amount of cases. And in a medium-sized company, you still get to know a good number of people pretty well. Some very well and some into lifelong relationships that are carried on decades after working together.

After so much time has passed many have relocated and moved but still stay in touch via Facebook and loved seeing pictures. Also as time has passed some well-loved people have passed on. One big one was just this week. And he is the type of man who would have been at this event and loved it.

There were people there I hired decades ago. I’m really proud of how a lot of them carried on their careers. It was great seeing where people had traveled professionally after working together. Some had actually reunited in the same companies many years later.

I also realized a few things today. I let a few relationships lapse that I hope to do a better job at keeping in touch with in the future. I already keep in touch with a number of people who couldn’t make it that day regularly but I also need to do more in making that more frequent.

I doubt this will be the last gathering. I think the group will actually expand in the future. It was a nice flashback to a wonderful period of time and events on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

Random Thoughts of the Day

• Owning a home is a second full-time job unless you can pay someone else to take care of it.
• I feel incomplete, I missed seeing my grandchild this week.
• Ah, the weekly battle with Mother Nature begins again.
• Today I’m glad I live in the state of Maryland.

It could be a year or slightly more of full-time, and maybe a few more months after that or none of part-time. The days of working for someone else will be over. I’ve been really excited about that time, but at moments I do get a little scared.

Is the timing right? Will we have enough? How will it be going from private insurance to Medicare and all the add ons needed? Will my better half kill me being around the house all the time? Will I become lazy? Will I lose that mental sharpness that my job keeps me at?

Will I suffer withdrawal from that daily newspaper excitement my job brings in an industry I’ve worked the last 46 years in? Certainly, the work relationships will change but will they also survive. I’ve worked mainly for 2 companies in those decades. I have some wonderful friendships from each to this day.

In some ways retiring from my industry will be a double-edged sword. I love the prestige of working for what I believe to be excellent journalistic institutions on local, national, and international levels. I feel honored to have been supporting their efforts and the people that make such wonderful contributions to inform, enlighten, educate, make you think, laugh and cry. And so much more. They help you understand issues and to explain and find ways out of very difficult and complex problems that face both our local communities and the world overall. Is there success at every turn they take, no but tell me something else in the world that is perfect?

From the first day in it, I was addicted to the newspaper business. It’s been a very fun, stressful, rewarding, enlightening, educational, and joyous experience. Did I bitch about it along the way, hell yeah, every job has its ups and downs, good and bad management cycles, opportunities taken and some passed. But I know I will miss it.

For the majority of my professional life, I have been on-call. That will also be something to adapt to. Will I suddenly feel no longer needed? Hell NO. It will be great. I’ll just hand my on-call schedule over to my kids to make for me when they need help with my grandchildren.

And then the time adjustment. As Keith Jackson (old football announcer) would say, Whoa Nellieeeee. I keep the most insane hours now. Will I adjust and go back to a life that others consider normal or will I be pulling a few all-nighters a week as I do now and on other days starting before sunrise?

All kinds of questions about change. Not any minor change either. Two of my best friends will be working another year or two probably after I retire. I’ll have to resist my urge to tease them about having to go to work. Then again I plan on being very busy so I probably won’t even think of it. Well yeah, maybe a few digs here and there will come.

Oh yeah, I forgot to elaborate on the other side of that double-edged sword. Like I said it’s been a wonderful career. Throughout it, the feeling was an asset to the community. Yes, people have always felt differently about opinion sections and politics. Some to the point of being mad and making threats. But those were the exceptions. But most thought it an honest endeavor.

Now it’s serious and growing worse. I do know significant steps for security started 6-7 years ago and haven’t lessened. When a President comes out and calls your industry “the enemy of the American people” it kind of puts you in a difficult position because a lot of people interpret comments like that literally. And to be totally honest I haven’t felt too comfortable in the last few years because of people’s hostility.

So for the first time ever I’m careful about sharing where I work when I meet people. I don’t wear my free company swag as much outside. And that is kind of weird. But it’s a changing world. Who knows, maybe this simple blog will incite someone. I hope not. But it is a chance now when you express any opinion.

So with the time remaining, I’m going to try and savor the final few curves (months/years) in the roller coaster. I’m going to try to pass on what knowledge I haven’t yet. I’m going to look around, shake some hands, give a few strong hugs and express thanks to some key people for the opportunities and joy of working with them.

And on that last day, I think I’ll make a zig-zag home. I’ll leave my current downtown office, I’ll stop by the old Post location at 15th street NW. Then over to the printing plant in Springfield Va and on the way back a stop by Tysons Corner where the old data center used to be. Maybe a ride further west where the current one is. Over to College Park where the old printing plant once was. I’ll swing by the Flier building in Columbia, and then to Ellicott City where I started at 18 years old at the TImes building on Main Street. I’ll walk down to the bottom of the hill to the old stone building just before you cross the bridge when 3 of us started a newspaper from scratch.

Each location holds many special people and many special memories. One day you’re leaving high school wondering what you want to do, what you want to be and you blink your eyes, and you’re in eyeshot of the finish line. But it’s time to explore a career I thought about having before I embarked on one in Newspapers. But as the bumper sticker says below says, I will ALWAYS Love the smell of newsprint in the morning.

Random Thoughts of the Day

• There is no time at day or night that a cold Coke doesn’t taste good.
• Sometimes when I look back now I wonder how I kept so many phone numbers of people in my head before smartphones came out.
• Like a bear who came out of hibernation early, I have an attitude about the cold today.
• I really dislike spiders. And I belive they know it.
• I’m starting to get concerned about the number of memorial mass cards I’m finding in my office.

Well my weekend has started and life is returning to what it should be. Time with family and friends. Maybe some good meals and rest. Some time for personal challenges and accomplishments. Time to regain sanity. Time to avoid the roads choked with traffic. Time to stop and take a shot of a pond. And hopefully time to do many more post.

Off Cars Mill Rd.
Photo by Mike Hartley

For this coming week will be insanity at the job that pays the bills. Because I work in the daily newspaper business and this election as most do, is sort of getting a lot of attention. So regardless of the outcome its going to be a busy time. Lots of angst among everyone inside those publishing halls. I always considered this odd. Especially working for a daily paper.

Yeah its an incredibly visible and important day. But its the daily publishing thing that is important to me. Publishing each day is the commitment. So I’ve always thought of it as you’re a success or failure based on accomplishing it every day. And when you do it 365 a year, you get like a professional athlete. You don’t get to high on the victories (the success of each day) and you don’t dwell in the defeats (when significant problems affect deadlines). And I have been lucky enough as some of my old-time co-workers would say “no failures on my watch.” Someday when I retire I hope I can say that all was well on my watch also over many decades.

So while others do a lot of hand wringing and worrying, it’s just another day in the middle of another tough week. And when I get home Monday and Wednesday nights, I’ll be just as proud as getting those print editions and digital news out as I will of getting the Election day edition out on Tuesday night.

It’s entertaining to watch the young ones in the industry and the excitement in them for big news days. I hope they stick around for the long-term and get many under their belts. Only that way can you appreciate the efforts of many people over many big events and sit back with calm and watch it all go down again.

For any day can be the biggest news day. When I came to work on 9/11 I didn’t know that day would turn into a 24 hour day and months of brutal days that followed. People making newspapers on December 7th didn’t know that morning would change the world for them. For myself I look forward to the day that headlines read, world leaders work for peace. Or maybe cure for cancer discovered. Wouldn’t it be nice to see an article about our government doing something positive that everyone could get behind.

Perspective is a very nice thing. But it seems to only come with age and experience. Oh don’t get me wrong. Many of those youngsters are smarter and wiser in the technology than I am. But most of them are one trick pony’s. Hell most of them have probably never even seen a newspaper press or worked on one. I suspect none have ever delivered a paper in the dead of winter. Most have never worked in the many areas that make up a newspaper publishing operation.

The days of wearing multiple hats are long past. The days of working your way up through the ranks are gone. But I believe a lot of that made organizations like that special places to work and grow as both a person and professional. But given the financial pressures of most publishing firms people are being asked to do much more or have many skills. So maybe the cycle is returning again.

As I was standing in Barnes and Noble the other day I looked down and saw this display sign. NewsStand used to be something that was celebrated. Where people exchanged greetings, shared thoughts and picked up their favorite reading material. Wow, how it has changed and nothing has changed. We love to read and see and consume. Just the way we get it is changing. Of course it’s advancing how, what and how fast we can see and instantly comment or form opinion or worse yet judgement on.

What once was the neighborhood of a few is now the land of the many.
Photo by Mike Hartley

You know I’m not sure if it’s the technology that gets the award for changing the face of publishing. I think it’s the experience every individual had when they realized they could be their own little publishing firm and how much fun it was. Whether it be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or WordPress/Tumblr or any one of a number of versions of those category leaders. Or even your own website. It gets in your blood. I remember when people would come to our local newspaper offices for tours. I found it exciting to see people so impressed with the technology or the big steel in the press-room or in how the gallies of type came out of the processors. You could take them to the make up area and see them wanting to pick up the pieces (ads, copy, pictures, rules, borders) to see if they could do one of those puzzles.

There were letters to the Editors. (Letters “not email”) were sent in with praise or threats, people drove to the office to pick up reprints of photos or plates of the page their story was on. Sometimes the whole family would come or the whole team and coach to pick them up. It must be like today when you get followers and comments/likes on a post. The difference is in this world the connections are mostly electronic. Those face to face meetings can happen through local events for the online community or bloggers/photogs and writers but nothing like the old days.

Everyone has a camera now. Back in the day if you saw a guy walk on the field with one lens a foot long another camera over the shoulder and a tripod you knew your local community photo was at the game. Now news organizations are stripped so thin they can’t send a photog to the games like they used to. Hell most don’t even employee Photographers in any large capacity anymore.

The tools that had been the province of News organizations like professional photographers with costly cameras, reporters using terminals tied to a front end system that cost a fortune, video and sound equipment only a network supported TV news operation had were now in all our hands with very good quality for a fraction of the cost. All of a sudden each of us could do the same thing large organizations had been doing for decades pretty much without competition. Because instead of sending a physical product we send bits of information. Of course none of us online wanna be publishers are capable of printing a million papers tomorrow when the Internet goes down.

And think of how few blogs and other publishing tools are free of FACT CHECKING or for that matter Spell Checking. Publishing is built on trust. Its built on honesty. It’s build on a foundation of many people usually working for a common goal. It’s a business when people pull together in a crisis. I was at the Washington Post on 9/11 and while everyone else was leaving town in an unseen before evacuation. People stayed at work to get the infrastructure geared up or were rushing in and out to get the news for others to consume.

So I try to emulate that kind of spirit and the basic is being here each day. Doing more each day. Making this a better read and visually pleasing each day. For I’m in it for the long haul till these nimble little fingers no longer work or I can’t find a speech to type translator that is effective or I can’t upload a photo or video any longer.

Random Thoughts for Monday August 24th 2015

• You can’t here the crickets unless you open your windows. That is, unless one got in your house.
• Only a hammock can bring my back rest. Now how to fit one in the bedroom. Well maybe I can put it up in the corner of the basement.
• You can’t underestimate the strength you can get from friends.
• I’m still giddy that the University of Maryland basketball team preseason ranking is as high as #1. I must get some tickets for a few games this year.
• Congrats to my daughter and future daughter in-law on the first week of school starting. If you know these two, your children would be very lucky to have them as teachers.
• I’m tired, but I have so much to do.