Gheorghe Explains: The Desertification of American News

Our man in the Outer Banks is dropping science this morning, and he ain't all that happy about it. Dave Fairbank laments the decline of the small-town news, a phenomenon that means "...residents in communities, hundreds of communities, even thousands, in this country have limited, very limited access to the sort of news and information that's been the lifeblood of our democracy, everything from when and where to vote, to topics such as education, health, emergency and safety information that we need," according to  University of North Carolina professor Penny Abernathy. Your assignment, cub reporters and G:TB readers, is to read this paean to what was and should be and come up with solutions in the comments. Crowdsourced community soul restoration, what we do best around here.

It’s no secret that the news business isn’t awash in good fortune these days. Journalists are routinely harassed, jailed and even killed by authoritarian regimes. Newspapers all over the country are hemorrhaging readers, advertising and staff. Meanwhile, our oaf-in-chief continually uses the media as a punching bag and prop at his rallies, making it increasingly perilous to simply gather and present information.

On a personal level, my old shop appears to have invited the vultures through the front door, which worries me greatly about friends and former colleagues. No telling how it will play out, but recent history is not encouraging.

The hedge fund Alden Global Capital recently bought into Tribune Publishing, becoming the
company’s largest shareholder at 25.2 percent. Tribune Publishing oversees some sizable, respected papers, among them the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel, and Hartford Courant. The company also owns small-to-mid size papers such as the Newport News (Va.) Daily Press, where I spent 30 years, and recent acquisition the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot.

Alden already controls dozens of newspapers and is the largest shareholder (50.1 percent) in a company called Digital First Media, whose stable of papers includes the Denver Post, the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer-Press and San Jose Mercury News. Alden’s stewardship has been disastrous for most of its newspaper properties. For example, when it bought into DFM in 2012 through 2017, staff at the St. Paul paper shrank from 259 to 109, in San Jose from 158 to 92, and in Denver’s newsroom from 184 to 85. In several small-to-medium DFM papers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Michigan, staff was cut by more than 70 percent during that five-year span. Cuts in Denver sparked an open revolt, with the paper printing a handful of critical op-ed pieces and demanding that Alden sell to local interests. The outcry generated national attention, but in the end Alden made more cuts, citing the need to meet specific profit margins.

Alden is by no means the only outfit engaging in such practices, but is among the most egregious. Media consolidation has been going on for quite a while, as companies such as Tribune, GateHouse, Gannett, McClatchy and Media General attempt to make money, or at least stem losses, in a business world gone digital. According to the Boston Globe, 65 percent of newspaper jobs were lost between 1990 and 2016, a greater decline than coal mining and iron and steel mill work. Newspapers shuttered in the past decade include Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, Tucson Citizen, Tampa Tribune, Cincinnati Post and Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. More than 1,400 towns and cities across the country have lost newspapers in the past 15 years, according to data compiled by the University of North Carolina, expanding what observers call news “desertification” – areas not served by daily journalists.

Hedge funds don’t buy into newspapers because of some streak of civic responsibility, but because they see an opportunity to make a bunch of money relatively quickly. Newspapers represent a “distressed” business and therefore provide a relatively cheap buy-in, whether it be from market forces or current ownership looking for an escape hatch and sizable payout on their way out the door. If a newspaper or chain can gain financial traction, fine, and the hedge fund can profit from that. If it continues to flounder, the hedge fund often cuts expenses – usually in the form of workers – and extracts as much profit as possible before dumping and moving on.

Newspapers used to be family owned, and corporate and classified ad revenue made those families tidy sums. It wasn’t unusual for newspapers to have profit margins of 15-20 percent, or higher. Those profits turned newspapers into investments, and gradually they were run by business people, not newspaper people. When the Internet started siphoning off advertising, profit margins dropped. In response, bosses did what’s done at other businesses – cut expenses. But you can only depreciate office furniture, computers and cameras so much. The big expense is people, often reporters and editors.

I’ve argued for years that newspapers aren’t like other businesses. They’re more like public trusts than for-profit endeavors. Cut staff at many businesses and there may be alternative paths to success – technology, automation, retrenching. Cut staff at a newspaper, however, and stuff goes uncovered. Local government, cops and courts, business deals, construction and infrastructure contracts, never mind sports and entertainment and personalities. Nobody’s watching. Nobody has time. I endured a fair share of layoffs, early buyouts and staff cuts, along with the accompanying meetings and memos in which the message was “do more with less” and “work smarter, not harder.” I’m here to tell you that where news gathering is concerned, it’s damn near impossible to build greater efficiency into the process. No one does more with less, you only do less with less.

Major metropolitan areas are better equipped to deal with the shrinking newspaper field. There are generally more outlets for news, and a greater probability of a segment of engaged citizenry. But it’s the small and medium-sized towns and cities that suffer most when newspapers shrink or die. The local paper is often the only outlet for news, the sole watchdog on abuse and injustice and a community’s shared experience.

I have no idea how Alden’s tenure will affect my friends and former co-workers in Newport News and Norfolk. I would like to think that they’re far enough down the food chain to grant them some reprieve from the butcher’s knife. Both shops have been through several rounds of cuts and layoffs through the years, so little fat remains. But given the bloodless chase for profits and satisfied investors, nothing would surprise me.

Chronicles of an Aging Gheorghie: Bar Tabs and Boat Drinks

A bit of consumer advocacy from our friend in OBX, which may well explain how we manage to rack up $700 bar tabs when we're in his neck of the woods. And the wisdom at the end is worth noting, though I suspect we all fall on the right side of that advice.

A brief tale of fading memory, camaraderie and small business accommodation that may resonate with those who age, who drink and who visit this outpost:

Several weeks back, a buddy and I met one afternoon at a local watering hole that shall go nameless, but rhymes with “Shmortuga’s Fly.” We sat at the bar and were there between two and three hours. We had a few beers apiece, we each had a meal, and at the end I ordered some takeout to carry home for the missus. I put the bill on my card, my buddy gave me cash, and off we went.

Fast-forward a couple weeks, and the charge on my credit card statement for that day was considerably higher than I remembered. There were no shots, no swag, no round of drinks for the bar. Of course, I didn’t keep the receipt to check against the statement, ‘cause I don’t need any more small pieces of paper in my orbit (Is that a thing? Do people keep receipts for a month to check against their credit card bill?).

Texted my buddy and asked if he remembered the total. He did not, but said it seemed high. Told him that I didn’t know if I had any recourse, since I didn’t have a receipt. Coincidentally, he owned a restaurant/bar in the Maryland D.C. suburbs for 25 years and said that most joints keep a record of credit card transactions, and certainly for the past month.

So, I drove to Shmortuga’s and talked to a manager. Wasn’t demanding or accusatory, but wrote out the date and the details as I remembered, and asked if they could research it. She was very polite and said it might be a few days, but they’d look into it.

A couple days pass, and into my inbox pop several texts. The first says, the bill looks right, with a screen shot of our order. Several more beers than I recalled, an appetizer we split that I didn’t remember, and I put the tip on the card, when I thought I left cash. Another text came in a little later with a screen shot of the card charge for the exact amount, complete with my illegible signature.
I texted back and thanked her for checking. Told her this is what happens when you’re old and you have a few beers and your memory’s shot. She said, no problem, we’re at the beach, it happens all the time, and thanks for my business.

I’ve heard a few anecdotes here of groups getting doctored bar bills – an extra pitcher that wasn’t ordered, an upsell on drinks (“when you asked for a tall one, I thought that meant you wanted a double”). For the most part, folks here play it straight. The Shmortuga’s manager assured me a couple times that they don’t do business that way. Told her, I’m not suggesting that you do; I might have mis-remembered, folks make honest mistakes, but just take a look if you can.

My takeaway is that my mind is an unreliable bookkeeper when out drinking and eating – during and after. Catawba White Zombie Ale on draft is a little pricier than you think. The bill is whatever it says it is, so just pay the damn thing and don’t waste my or any overworked manager’s time. And don’t let any of it deter you from visiting a little corner we’ll just call the Shmouter Blanks.

G:TBook Review

Courtesy of our OBX correspondent, a thoughtful review of what appears to be provocative and complex argument about the very future of the human race. My take? We're all fucked, but some of us will pass on in time to not really have to worry about it. That's not sardonic flippancy. It's what I actually believe. Maybe our ancestors will get lucky.

Author and activist Bill McKibben has banged the drum about climate change and inequality for 30 years. He’s stood on glaciers and visited remote villages where electricity is a rumor. He’s met with Silicon Valley executives and with subsistence level farmers.

McKibben’s latest book, Falter, treads familiar ground, but he asks a larger question: Has the human game begun to play itself out? He cites the twin perils of unchecked climate change and artificial intelligence as potentially altering human existence irrevocably moving forward.

He cites science, history, personal reporting and anecdotes and plenty of outside sources. There’s ample gloom and doom, but he also offers suggestions for how we might still walk back from the brink. For its weighty subject matter, it’s an interesting, breezy, almost conversational 256-page read.

As he wrote at the beginning of the book: “A writer doesn’t owe a reader hope – the only obligation is honesty – but I want those who pick up this volume to know that its author lives in a state of engagement, not despair. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have bothered writing what follows.”

Income inequality, McKibben writes, means that increasingly few people are making more and larger decisions about everyone else. Rising seas and expanding areas of drought mean that “the size of the board on which we’re playing will get smaller.”

He writes about a Randian, libertarian streak that has taken over the upper levels of the conservative movement for the past 40 years, from Reagan, Thatcher, the Bush presidencies, the Koch brothers, and now Trump. A triumph of the individual and the idea that a person’s value is measured by what they produce and what they earn, and that society and the collective are for suckers and mooches.

The oil companies, McKibben writes, were doing their own research about the possible damage from increased carbon dioxide levels as far back as the 1970s and essentially buried the findings. “Global warming is the ultimate problem for oil companies,” he writes, “because oil causes it, and it’s the ultimate problem for government haters because without government intervention you can’t solve it. Those twin existential threats, to cash and to worldview, meant that there was never any shortage of resources for the task of denying climate change.”

One of McKibben’s favorite words in the book is “leverage” – the outsized influence a small group of individuals or one industry wields. “The politics of one country for one 50-year period will have rewritten the geological history and crimped the human game,” he writes. “That’s what leverage looks like.”

The end of the human race, or our best hope for the future?
Discuss.

He also worries about artificial intelligence that smarts its way beyond our ability to control it. He writes that we may not be far away from the possibility of producing designer babies, who are smarter and stronger and better. Since that won’t be cheap, he says such a development could exacerbate inequality. And given the rapid rate of technological improvement, wouldn’t each batch of designer humans essentially become second-rate and less after a short time? If outcomes are programmed into people, doesn’t that diminish the human experience?

McKibben also writes that an inordinate number of powerful people in Silicon Valley are freaked out by death (who knew?), or rather obsessed with the idea of prolonging their own lives. There’s no shortage of start-ups involving new drugs or cryogenics or tech implants. An exceptionally smart gent named Ray Kurzweil, who’s the director of engineering at Google and who McKibben is fond of, hopes to live long enough so that nanobots can fix his aging cells and extend his life, or perhaps connect his brain to the cloud so that it may be implanted elsewhere and effectively live forever.

“The technologists at some level value individual humans too much,” he writes, “they value humanness far too little.”

But there’s hope, McKibben writes at the end of the book. It takes the form of solar panels and the non-violent protest movement. Solar panels can produce power cheaply and efficiently, particularly in places where there is none, such as African villages. Solar power can supplement and eventually replace fossil fuels, creating jobs and decreasing costs along the way. McKibben also takes heart from the non-violent movement, which helped turn the tide for women’s suffrage in this country, Indian independence under Gandhi, civil rights and gay marriage.

It won’t be easy, McKibben writes. Much damage has been done and we’re already a long way down the road. Many forces and much money are aligned against changing the status quo. But it’s possible and vital.

“The libertarian ideal of individual autonomy, which to one extent or another every modern human understands and cherishes,” he writes, “runs aground when the stakes get as high as ecological hell or human meaninglessness.”

Regardless of your politics, it’s a worthy read.

Chronicles of an Aging Gheorghie: Musical Memories

Our man in the OBX returns with a cool retrospective on his music collection, yesterday and today:

When the missus and I downsized in preparation for our move almost four years ago, one of my least pleasant chores was purging my music collection. Growing up and starting work in the 1970s and ‘80s, I used an inordinate amount of disposable income to buy music. I owned 400-plus albums and another couple hundred CDs, after they supplanted albums.

All of the music had made seven previous moves with me, but we were relocating to a house that was almost one-third smaller. Our new house didn’t have the storage space, and my old-school, component stereo system – receiver, turntable, CD player, cassette deck, two speakers – was in rapidly declining health. The layout of the living space in the new house didn’t quite lend itself to a replacement stereo system, either, and I entertained vague notions of updating my music collection with streaming services and Bluetooth speakers and whatnot.

I saved a few albums for sentimental reasons and stuffed them into a cedar chest with old photos and assorted flotsam and jetsam. Most of the remaining albums I carried to a used record store in Norfolk called Skinnie’s, where the owner, a fellow named Steve, said he was interested. My albums were weighted heavily toward blues, jazz and ‘60s and ‘70s soul music, with a sprinkling of rock, alternative and what’s now called Americana. I brought in armloads of albums and Steve began to thumb through them. He looked up at one point, a little sheepish, and said, I can’t come close to paying you what they’re worth. I told him, no worries, that I was moving, had no place to put them, and pay me what you can. I told him I was happy they were with someone who appreciated them, whether he squirreled them away for himself or sold them all to customers who would want them. When I made a second music drop several days later, I drew some satisfaction from the fact that Steve had used my records as the foundation for a separate blues bin, and that the jazz discs had greatly enhanced that section of the store.

I saved a greater portion of my CDs – easier to store – and play them on a modest, little component system my wife kept and that sits on a corner table. As for updating and replacing the music I purged, well, a combination of laziness and techno-aversion prevailed. Shoot, I lean on the G:TB community and this site to keep me marginally current and to remind me of music I’ve forgotten.

Fast-forward to Christmas 2018. My wife and I keep gift giving with each other to a minimum, since we don’t need to further clutter our space with more stuff. But this Christmas, Suzanne brought out a box about two feet square and a foot high. She came across it while shopping for something else and decided to take a flier – a Victrola turntable, with self-contained speakers, an old-school radio dial and Bluetooth capabilities. Nothing fancy and relatively inexpensive. She kept some albums that she bought and thought it would be a kick to be able to play hers, as well as mine.

We bought a small table for the Victrola to sit on and carved out a space in the living area. I fished our albums out of the cedar chest – I’m not sure we’d opened it since we moved – and was jazzed to see that I’d saved more records than I remembered. A decent sampling of my old collection. Once or twice a week, we’ll crank up the turntable and play an album or two. Always makes me smile.
(Brief aside: digitizing voices, sounds and instrumentation and delivering tunes via electronic devices seems perfectly logical to me; but embedding music into the narrow grooves of a thin, round piece of vinyl and transmitting it through a stylus as it spins?!? That’s some goddamned wizardry.)

Records, and by extension, turntables appear to be making a comeback. Well, probably not a comeback. More like they climbed off life support and are now resting comfortably in an assisted-living facility outside Princeton, N.J. According to an October 2018 story on the music site Auxoro, vinyl purchases plummeted from a peak of 340 million people who bought records in 1978, to only 4.9 million people in 1991. Fewer than 900,000 albums were bought in 2006, according to the Record Industry Association of America, but in 2017, that number jumped to 14.3 million. Analysts think the number approached 20 million last year and believe that sales are likely higher, since the RIAA tracks only new record purchases and not used albums or indie-store traffic. A local music store here on the Outer Banks sells albums. The Barnes & Noble in Newport News, Va., sells records, as well, and not just remastered classics like the Beatles or Led Zeppelin or Aretha, but I saw the Lumineers and Panic! At the Disco. B&N also has a fair online album catalog.

Turntable purchases, according to a statistical aggregate site, jumped from 49,000 in 2012 to 67,000 in 2017. A high-end turntable manufacturer based in the Czech Republic, SEV Litovel, saw its production jump from 32,000 in 2009 to 125,000 in 2016 and spent $7 million on a new plant and expanded staff to meet demand. You can spend anywhere from $50-$60 to upwards of $10,000 on a turntable.

To be sure, records are a niche market, for oldsters such as myself who can’t give up the ghost, for audiophiles with deep pockets who regard music and its presentation as aural experience akin to art galleries, even for curious Millenials and GenXers who are intrigued by album art or liner notes or just the opportunity to hold onto a functioning piece of history. I believe that museums ought to have an exhibit, alongside the pioneers in covered wagons and Native-American villages, of a guy with shaggy hair and bell bottoms leaning over a turntable to place the needle on a record, with posters of Diana Ross and Carlos Santana on the walls behind him.

Today’s technology makes music access and storage so much more convenient and efficient and sensible. I begrudge no one’s attempts to streamline their existence. Hell, I should do more of it, myself. But a little impracticality and inconvenience helps keep you honest. And if there’s music at the end of the process, so much the better.

The Twelve Days of Gheorghemas: Day Six

On the Sixth Day of Gheorghemas, Big Gheorghe Gave to Me

Six decades of Fairbank
Five bits and bobs
Four reasons to save 68 CDs
Three balls a-rainin'
Two more automotive wormhole websites
And a bald guy and some random hor-seys

In the spirit of the holiday, at least our little holiday, here's a remembrance that hits on the things that matter to Gheorghies of all ages, courtesy of FOG:TB Dave Fairbank. May we all spend our time focusing on this stuff, and not the batshittery whirling around us at seemingly unstoppable pace.

At least once a day, I stop and give thanks for the life I lead and the place I live. I am grateful and blessed beyond anything I imagined as a younger man. I have a permanent address in one of my favorite places on Earth – or at least as permanent as possible in a time of climate change, rising seas, and a thin-skinned, lying kleptocrat with access to the nuclear codes. It’s because of four people: my wife, my parents and my maternal grandmother. They’re the reason I am who and where I am, and why I’m in the next chapter of my life, even if I haven’t yet figured out what that entails.

Bob and Ruth

Start with my folks. Bob and Ruth were Bawl’mer natives who met after World War II and married in 1950, eventually moving to the wilderness south of Annapolis, where my sister and I grew up. Bob was a businessman who passed along none of those genes to his son. He was good-natured, slow to anger, and patient to a fault.

By the time he reached my age, Bob had raised two kids, helped build a small business, and founded a youth athletic association so that his rag-armed, no-hit offspring and his schoolmates would have an outlet. He served on business and civic boards and was respected in the community. Me, I wrote about Chuck Swenson, collected Muddy Waters albums, and trained our dog to sit.

Ruth quit work to raise my sister and me, and to keep house. She was quieter and more reserved than Bob, but she laughed often, joked that she could have been a barfly in another life, and possessed strength and toughness that I saw as I grew older. She likely inherited those qualities from her mother, a flinty, demanding woman who divorced her husband in the 1930s and raised two children on her own.

Bonnie loved her family and baked exceptionally mediocre chocolate cakes. She was as private as a Swiss bank vault, to the point that even my mother and uncle knew few details of her life and affairs. She worked as a secretary for decades and lived modestly, scrimping and saving and investing. When she passed away at 93, to the family’s astonishment she had amassed an estate of well over six figures.

Bob would have embraced me going into business at the company he helped run, but he never pushed me. In fact, he and my mother always encouraged my sister and me to pursue our own interests. Find something you enjoy, he often said, because then it doesn’t feel like work.

Bob passed away in 2006, Ruth four years later. I tell people that Bob had a great run and a shitty ending. His death was due to Alzheimer’s, a damnable condition that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. His decline was heartbreaking, particularly for my mother, who watched the man she knew and loved fade away over several years. He didn’t recognize any of us in the final months of his life and needed assistance for the simplest tasks.

(Back, L-R) Brother-law Bill, sister Sandy, Bonnie, Suzanne, FOGTB Dave
(Front, L-R), Ruth, Bob

Ruth contracted cancer a couple of years after Bob died. She endured chemotherapy and radiation treatments that my sister and I could tell kicked her ass, but rarely complained. The treatments didn’t erase the cancer, but she wanted no part of a second round. Where Bob’s decline was gradual, Ruth’s was precipitous. She went from home to hospital to hospice in a matter of days. She passed away exactly one year after my wife’s mother died. Jan. 13 isn’t a great day for us.

Suzanne and I met at the newspaper where we worked. We’ve been married 20 years and together for 25. She has an empathetic heart, an infectious laugh and a keen B.S. detector, valuable given the amount of dumbassery to which she’s subjected under our roof. We’ve been coming to the Outer Banks for years, first separately, then together. We entertained vague notions of relocating here, but nothing concrete.

Ruth knew of our affection for the OBX and told us repeatedly, during Bob’s decline: Don’t wait; if there’s something you want to do or a place you want to go, don’t wait because nothing’s guaranteed. She regretted that she and Bob held off on travel plans, and then his condition made them impossible. After Ruth passed, with her advice ringing in our ears and a few extra dollars available, we scraped together enough for a downpayment on a house at the beach. We scooted to the place often for brief stints, but our relocation timetable remained fluid. When Suzanne took a buyout during one of the paper’s purges and mutations, that indirectly began turning wheels. She worked part-time while I remained at the paper. I might have continued slogging along, chronicling various Tribesters, Monarchs and Pirates, but Suzanne prodded just enough to make me reconsider. I decided 30 years was enough, and if we were going to do it, giddyup.

With a small cushion and no definite plan, we took the leap two years ago, believing (hoping?) we’d figure it out once we arrived. We’ve discovered that the Outer Banks is a beautiful, unforgiving place whose year ‘round population is comprised of hardy souls with useful skills – and me. Suzanne landed a full-time gig (Yay! Bennies!), which has allowed me to freelance and to undergo doctors’ visits and medical procedures that haven’t broken the bank. I don’t tell her often enough how grateful and fortunate I am that she’s carrying more of the load, a shortcoming I will address going forward.
I don’t know what the next phase looks like for me, but I do know that gratitude will be a regular part of the journey. Too often, we didn’t thank those who made our lives and opportunities possible until after they were gone. Too often, we don’t tell those who shape our lives now how important they are. In challenging times, it’s the most human thing we can do.

Chronicles of an Aging Gheorghie Meets Greasetruck (Eventually): The A-Fib Blues

Our man at the beach returns with another cautionary tale about growing old, getting medical tape stuck to groin-area hair, and surgical adventure. This time with a twist, as sedation met inspiration. Today's post is the first of a multi-parter, wherein Fairbank writes lyrics for a different Dave to set to music and record. Stay tuned.

I’ve been saddled with heart arrhythmia, specifically atrial fibrillation, for several years. It’s not constant, it doesn’t limit activity or exercise, and I rarely feel it. Still, if left untreated, it increases the risk of stroke, heart attack and other unpleasant outcomes. I’ve come to think of my heart as a family, where three or four responsible, hard-working siblings will eventually be brought down by the alcoholic brother with a couple of priors who can’t hold a job.

Which is how I found myself recently at the Norfolk Heart Hospital for Round 2 of Fun With Catheters and Electrically Charged Wires. Not to denigrate the good folks at the hospital, who are wizards that perform daily damn miracles, and in my experience, are uniformly engaging and of good cheer.

Atrial flutter and fibrillation can be treated with medicines or surgery. One isn’t superior to the others, and is often a personal choice. Meds treat the symptoms. The more invasive procedure, an ablation, is the only option that offers the chance of a permanent fix. An ablation consists of inserting a catheter into a vein in your groin area and sliding it north several inches through your hip. A small wire is snaked through the catheter, into your heart and deadens the area causing the faulty electrical impulses responsible for the arrhythmia.

Am I the only one that thinks A-Fib looks like Gonzo?

I had an ablation done 18 months prior, but that didn’t take. Further testing determined that the offending area this time was in a different heart chamber. The success rate for that particular procedure isn’t as high as the electro-cardiologist would like – 75 to 80 percent. But again, it provided the only chance at a fix, and beat the prospect of a lifetime of blood thinners and heart regulating meds. The procedure required catheters in each groin, a smaller one on the left side to check the previous ablation, and a larger one up the right side to address the current fib. The doc said afterward that early indications are that this one will take, though only time will tell whether I’m part of 3 in 4 or the less fortunate 1 in 4. After an overnight stay for observation, I was home the next day. I’m padding around for a few days, and peeling off the tape and dressings from around the groin incisions was a special moment.

Sometimes, discomfort and adversity inspire creativity. Or in my case, a frivolous diversion. With apologies to Muddy Waters and Lightnin’ Hopkins, here’s a traditional style, slow blues number I wrote while laying in my hospital bed as the anesthesia wore off and I stared at my IVs and heart monitor.

                                                                A-Fib Blues
Gypsy woman told me
You won’t stammer or stutter
But you’re gonna have
An atrial flutter

Heart can’t tell
A saint from a sinner
But you’ll need a beta blocker
And a big ol’ blood thinner

Won’t do no good
To wail and shout
Just avoid sharp objects
And try not to bleed out

CHORUS
Talked to the cardiologist
He gave me the news
Son, your heart’s quiverin’
You got them a-fib blues

They see this condition
All over the nation
Doc recommended
A cardiac ablation

Pretty little nurses
Gonna tend to your groin
And you don’t even have to
Give ‘em no coin

Needles and tubes stickin’ in
Guaranteed not to please ya
But you’ll catch a break
When you’re under anesthesia

They snip pulmonary vessels
And cauterize nerves
I said, please, please doctor
Don’t let your hand swerve

CHORUS
Talked to the cardiologist
He gave me the news
Son, your heart’s just a quiverin’
You got them a-fib blues

Recovery ain’t bad
Body’s a little off
But whatever you do
Don’t sneeze and don’t cough

Doc thinks it’s fixed
Don’t believe he’s a faker
Just hoping to avoid
Getting a pacemaker

CHORUS
Talked to the electro-cardiologist
He gave me the news
Son, your heart’s quiverin’
You got them a-fib blues
Son, your heart’s not deliverin’
You got them atrial fibrillation bluuuues

Chronicles of an Aging Gheorghie: Dog Bites Man

As a veteran newsman, Dave Fairbank knows the oldest story in the book - dog bites man pieces don't sell. Dog bites kid, though, that's a horse of a different color. 

My dog’s morning constitutional is usually a routine, welcome exercise. Gets us both out of bed. Clears the cobwebs. Makes sure he’s still the master of all he surveys. Reminds me who actually runs the show. Except when we’re at a public campground, with kids and other dogs and a million new sights and smells. Then it’s jarring and potentially terrifying and what little control I believe I have is out the window. Yeah, pretty relaxing.

We spent the weekend at the KOA just outside Williamsburg on a getaway with friends. We rented camping cabins – “glamping” in the outdoors vernacular – because we all like creature comforts, and the fact that our dog tethered to a tent and a traditional, no-frills campsite is untenable.

Not that he’s a bad dog. On the contrary, he’s a pretty sweet-natured fellow, a 25-pound crotch-seeking missile of cocker spaniel-poodle mix named Nappy. But he’s a little neurotic and territorial and possessive. He fancies himself an alpha dog, but that’s an act. While probably not an omega dog, he’s more like an upsilon or maybe a chi. He gets along with people better than with other dogs. He’s given to brief bursts of energy and enthusiasm, followed by lengthy periods of sloth, much like his doggie daddy.

Which brings us to Sunday morning, following an evening of eating, drinking and general goofballery, and dragging myself out of bed for the morning’s unexpected and unwanted adrenalin rush.

I’m walking him up a hill when he spies another dog maybe 50 yards away being walked by his owner in our direction. He starts barking, because that’s what he does when he sees other dogs. Ahead of them, bounding rapidly down the hill toward us, are two young boys who appear to be brothers and are all about my dog, and apparently, all dogs.

“Can we see your dog? Can we see your dog? We have a dog, too,” says the older of the two, who looks to be 7 or 8 years old.

I say, sure, while I pull him up close on my left side and try to get him to quit barking at the other dog. The younger brother stands to my right and starts telling me about their dog. While I’m watching and listening to him, the older brother moves in close to Nappy. Suddenly, I feel the leash jerk and out of the corner of my left eye, I see the older brother leaning in to try to hug Nappy, and Nappy lunge forward.

The kid recoils and slaps his hand over his right cheekbone and says in shock, “He bit me. Your dog bit me.”

Oh fuck. I immediately envision blood and bite marks and scars and pissed-off parents who want to kick my ass and have my dog put down and tetanus shots and lawsuits and Lord knows what else. Dogfight at the KOA Corral. Or something like that.

I’m sorry, I say, I’m sorry. He doesn’t know you. He didn’t know you were just being friendly. The kid’s hand is still covering his cheekbone. Are you OK, I say, can I see where he bit you? The kid takes his hand away, and there’s a tiny pink mark on his cheekbone. I lean down closely to look. No blood, no broken skin. Nappy just nipped at the kid when his face got too close and he reached for him.

By this time, the kids’ dad finally catches up, with their dog alongside, and is about 15 feet away. I say, hey, I’m really sorry, but I didn’t see your son get that close to my dog, he can be a little skittish around strangers, and probably three or four more, I’m sorrys.

The guy earns the Chill Dad of the Week Award. He shakes his head, says don’t worry about it. He says something about their dog and how the kids hug him all the time, and they know better than to run up to strange dogs. He tells his son to come see him so he can look at where Nappy nipped at him. Says, you’re OK and go see your mother. Kid runs off toward their cabin.

Meanwhile, the younger brother is standing there the entire time. Dad says to him, what do we do if we want to see other dogs? We have to ask permission. Younger brother looks at Dad, looks at me, asks can I see him? I say OK, but hold out your hand first. Kid holds out his hand, Nappy sniffs it, isn’t interested. I tell Chill Dad again, I’m really sorry. He shakes his head, resigned look on his face, says don’t worry about it. They know better.

Meantime, Nappy still hasn’t evacuated yet, and I haul him in the opposite direction of the other folks’ cabin. He drops a hand-warmer and we quickly circle back to our cabin. I glance over at their cabin and I see Mom on the front porch swing in some state of agitation – gesturing, pointing, head bobbing, arms moving up and down. Dad’s standing in front of her, chill and still, dog on leash at his side. We scoot inside and I fully expect a knock on the door at any moment.

Doesn’t happen. I feed the dog and climb back into bed to try to sleep a little more. That doesn’t happen, either. I’m wide slam awake and still expecting a visit from Mom or Dad. Nappy, meanwhile, goes sideways and sleeps off breakfast until everybody starts moving.

I find out later that our friends, who also brought their dog and were in a nearby cabin, had a similar run in with the same kids. Our buddy takes his dog for a walk. The kids rush the dog and want to pet him and get close. His dog, a rescue who’s quieter and younger than ours, just kinda cowers behind him. We depart without further incident or confrontation.

To all of you who juggle kids, pets, and kids and pets, you have my undying respect.

Chronicles of an Aging Gheorghie: Memory Lane, Bubbachuck-style

The latest from Dave Fairbank takes those of us who grew up in Virginia and/or spent any time near the Peninsula on a journey back in time. Most of us were too dumb and/or lazy to realize that we could've driven 20 minutes to see one of the greatest athletes of all time do his thing.

I’m reminded of my advancing age regularly, in ways large and small. Failing hearing, inability to pull a name I know, celebrity I’ve never heard of, random ache, technology advance that leaves me flummoxed. (Editor’s Note: I don’t know whether it was me or Fairbank who wrote this opening sentence, because it’s as true for me as it is for him.) The most recent came this week in a newspaper column from longtime compadre and fellow keyboard jockey David Teel, writing about Allen Iverson and the prep all-star hoops game he hosted in Hampton Roads last night.

A paragraph midway through the piece began, “Iverson, 41, said he’s always amazed when younger people approach him in airports, restaurants and hotels.”

Allen Iverson, age 41? Can’t be right. Wasn’t it just the other day that I was chasing his spindly ass all over the Virginia Peninsula? Or watching him careen through Georgetown and the NBA? In 30 years as a newspaper hack in Newport News, Va., I was fortunate to see an absurd amount of homegrown talent. Alonzo Mourning, Pernell “Sweetpea” Whitaker, Michael Vick, LaShawn Merritt, Percy Harvin, Aaron Brooks, Ronald Curry, J.R. Reid, Joe Smith, Terry Kirby, Chris Slade, baseball’s Upton brothers. Dozens just below them in ability. But Iverson remains the damnedest athlete I’ve ever seen.

The first time I saw Iverson was in a summer league game run by local AAU hoops impresario Boo Williams. It was the summer between his freshman and sophomore years in high school. Local basketball types said I needed to check out this guard from Bethel High. One evening I ventured to Hampton and the outdoor courts where Boo used to stage league games. I settled onto the metal bleachers, one of several dozen people in attendance, and located Iverson.

Holy shit. The kid was a lightning bolt, a revelation. He was impossibly skinny – 5-10, 5-11, maybe 150 pounds. His team pressed on defense. Or maybe it was just him. He harassed the dribbler, then when the kid picked up his dribble and tried to pass cross court, Iverson darted back, rose up as if he were levitating and intercepted the pass. Scooted downcourt and laid it in. He got from Point A to Point B and covered ground more quickly than anybody I’d ever seen. A 15- , 16-year-old kid. Honestly, you couldn’t take your eyes off him. I’m sure I sat there with my mouth hanging open for the next 45 minutes.

The legend only grew from there. Bethel basketball game became events. People lined up to get inside. Folks were turned away and I’m certain that fire codes were obliterated by the crowds that did manage to get inside Bethel’s gym. They started holding games at the Hampton University gym, Holland Hall, which held a couple thousand people, because it was a bigger venue. They held games periodically at the Hampton Coliseum, an 8,000-seat barn, and thousands attended. Guaranteed draws: The Dead, Phish, and Allen Iverson.

Iverson was virtually unguardable in high school. He was quicker, faster and more fearless than anyone lined up against him. He got anywhere he wanted on the court. Even in AAU and summer ball, when teammates and opponents were better and often national-caliber, he was nearly always the best player on the floor. His running mate at Bethel was a kid named Tony Rutland, an excellent player himself who had a solid career at Wake Forest. A couple times a game, they would run a backdoor play where Rutland on the perimeter threw an alley-oop pass and Iverson dunked effortlessly. Bethel won a state championship in 1993 with Iverson, Rutland and a handful of role players.



This was months after Bethel won a state football championship, with Iverson at quarterback and defensive back. That’s the thing most folks don’t know or don’t remember. He was an amazing football player in high school. As difficult as it was to corral him on a basketball court, imagine him on a football field. He wasn’t a great passer, but he was practically impossible to tackle. He rarely absorbed a solid shot, he extended plays and he was a nightmare for opposing defenses. The late Joe Paterno, pre-Jerry Sandusky scandal, routinely attended coaches’ clinics in Virginia and had some success recruiting top-shelf prospects in the state. I asked him once, years later, about some of the best prospects he’d seen, and the first person he brought up was Iverson, who he said would have been a terrific college football player.



Iverson didn’t have a senior year in high school. He was convicted for his part in a bowling alley brawl in Hampton in 1993. He did time at a local work farm before former governor Doug Wilder commuted his sentence. It’s hard to convey how polarizing a figure he was at that time, in our little corner of the world. Some viewed him as a victim, others as a thug. Not much middle ground.

Anyway, Iverson did the alternative school thing to graduate high school (a different post all its own), and wound up at Georgetown with John Thompson. His college debut was Nov. 27, 1994, versus defending national champ Arkansas in Memphis. He made only 5 of 18 shots and committed eight turnovers against the Razorbacks’ 40 Minutes of Hell defense. But coach Nolan Richardson was sold.

“I ain’t never seen anything like that in my life,” Richardson said that day. “I’ve been to three calf shows, nine horse ropings, … I even saw Elvis once. But I ain’t never seen anyone do what Iverson does. We doubled him, trapped him and he broke it. I’ve never seen anyone that quick with the basketball.”

Iverson became an All American and went on to be the No. 1 NBA draft choice in 1996. He was Rookie of the Year and 2001 MVP, when he dragged a mediocre Sixers team to the NBA finals. He was unapologetic and indomitable. There’s a famous Sports Illustrated cover of him – scowling, shirtless, tatted up, hair in cornrows, holding two flower bouquets, with the title “Love Story”, about how he and his notoriously demanding coach, Larry Brown, finally started to get along. Guessing that David Stern and the NBA office weren’t thrilled with the image, but that was Iverson.

He scored more than 24,000 points and averaged 26.7 points per game for his career, despite barely scraping 6-feet and weighing a buck-sixty-five. He is arguably, pound-for-pound, the greatest scoring guard in NBA history. He was rightly inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame last year, first ballot.

And now he’s 41 – he’ll be 42 in June – and inspiring a new generation of players, who hear tales from their dads and uncles and dig up his videos on YouTube. That’s the thing about Iverson. Words don’t do him justice. You had to see him. The quickness, the speed, the fierceness, the passion, the will. There was no one like him. There may not be another.

Still, Allen Iverson. Forty-one? Man, we’re gettin’ old.

GTB Special Correspondent: Chronicles of an Aging Gheorghie

In the last installment of what's rapidly becoming the best recurring bit in G:TB history, Dave Fairbank coined the phrase 'Lindsay Graham Dance Party', and told of the atrial flutter his physicians sought to correct. Turns out the first efforts didn't take, so if at first you don't succeed...I guess you get your groin shaved. I'll let @fairbankobx explain.

Let me begin with praise for medical talent and progress, and by saying that nothing prepares you for the day quite like an early morning groin shave. 

Not the top of Dave Fairbank's penis

People gripe about access and cost and availability of health care, with plenty of justification. But if you’re fortunate enough to make it into the pipeline, it can be nothing short of incredible.

I was wheeled into an operating room at Norfolk Heart Hospital at 9 a.m. for a cardiac ablation, a procedure designed to return my heart to its normal rhythm. Seventy-five minutes later, they were done. By 11 a.m., I was awake in a recovery room. Three hours later, I walked a lap around the floor of the cardiac wing. I probably could have done so earlier. They discharged me before 3 o’clock, and I was home by dark.

Doctors inserted catheters into veins on each side of my groin and snaked them two feet into my heart. They identified the bad electrical circuitry and deadened it. They removed the catheters, leaving only two tiny puncture openings. All without killing me or my heart doing the Mother Popcorn or even the briefest interruption of service.

I moved gingerly in the hours afterward, but basically had no pain. Pulling off the tape and gauze around my groin the next day was the most painful part of the entire ordeal.

In today’s cardiac medicine, this is considered a fairly routine procedure, with an absurdly high rate of success. My doc told me: If you’re going to have a heart condition, this is the one to have.

Fucking amazing.

The last time I posted, I had just gone through a less invasive procedure to correct an atrial flutter. It was a variation of what I believe is known in rendition circles as the Iraqi Jump Start. The electrical shock worked initially, but it didn’t hold. A follow-up visit revealed that the flutter had returned.

I had a consultation with an electro-cardio specialist, an engaging 40-something chap whose name was misspelled on the office outer door, but in 10 years said that he never insisted that they correct it.

From the printout of my EKG, he said that he was 95 percent certain where the arrhythmia originated – in the passageway wall between my left atrium and left ventricle, the upper and lower heart chambers. He was at least that certain that he could correct it, and that the fix would be permanent.

Which is how I came to be at the Norfolk Heart Hospital at dawn on a recent morning. When I was escorted into a room to prep for surgery, a nurse instructed me to strip naked, put on one of those hospital gowns that provide full moon shots from behind, and lie on the bed. A second nurse came in, and the two inserted an IV in each arm for the anesthesiologist.

There are terrible tattoos, and then there's this

The second nurse sat down alongside the bed. She pulled out a small razor and said it was time to shave me. She wadded up the gown around the package, exposing my upper leg, and began to shave.

Me: This is why you got into nursing, isn’t it? Saving lives, shaving groins.

Nurse: I love shaving. You see my name is Lorrie. That’s short for Lorena.

Laughter all around.

Me: Yeah, but she didn’t shave, she chopped. I hope you’re better than that.

Nurse: Oh, I am, honey.

Thus began an exchange among the three of us about Lorena Bobbitt, her motives and whether she did any jail time for her butchery on hubby John.

Properly shaved, they wheeled me into an operating room. The anesthesiologist quickly ran through what he was going to do and asked if I understood. I said sure, but it was all kind of an anxious blur at that point. I said to him: Anesthesiologists throw the best parties, don’t they? He said, of course, but not for the reasons you might think.

I scooted from the gurney onto the operating table and apologized in advance for any flatulence or other discharges during the procedure.

Anesthesiologist: What, did you eat beans yesterday? That wasn’t very considerate.

Me: No, not at all. Had a normal meal last night. But I’m a 57-year-old guy and there’s no telling what I might expel when I’m unconscious. Just letting you know.

Shortly thereafter, boom, I was out. I awoke a couple hours later, a little groggy, but intact. My throat was the most uncomfortable part. They intubated me in the O.R., in order to snake a camera down my throat and check my heart for clots or other abnormalities before the procedure. My throat was pretty raw for a day and I sounded like the Men’s Wearhouse guy, George Zimmer (“You’re going to like the way your heart beats, I guarantee it.”).

I had to lay still for the next couple of hours, while nurses monitored vital signs and made sure my groin didn’t bleed. The doc told my wife shortly afterward that the procedure had gone even more smoothly than he anticipated and came to the recovery room and told me the same thing, just before he was scheduled to perform another ablation. During my original consultation, he said that he’d done almost 1,000 of them.

A few days later, I’m pretty much back to normal. I am grateful and blessed beyond words. An itchy groin reminds me that amid the conflict and nastiness and general dumbassery to which we are routinely exposed, there are smart, talented people who perform the extraordinary on a daily basis. 

May we all have such itchy groin moments.

Chronicles of an Aging Gheorghie: The Heart Wants What It Wants

This is actually post-retirement Dave Fairbank

I’m back in rhythm, or at least my heart is. The rest of me remains beat and rhythm challenged as ever, my affection for George Clinton and ‘70s era funk and soul notwithstanding.

Following an outpatient hospital visit that included a sizeable memory gap, my heart was shocked back in line and now pumps away like a little metronome. I’m told it was routine and not terribly dramatic, which I would argue is the case involving other people’s hearts.

This all started several weeks ago when a physical exam revealed something called an atrial flutter. My heart was beating out of rhythm, increasing the risk of clots and strokes and various unpleasant outcomes.

I showed up at the local hospital bright and early, because the staff had to get to the Halloween party upstairs. They first did a transesophogeal echocardiography test, basically an ultrasound where a tube is inserted down your throat so that a clearer photo of your heart chambers and valves can be taken. If no clots are found, they perform an electrical cardioversion: a small jolt to try to get the heart back in rhythm. They attached two oblong patches, one to my chest, the other to my side, hooked up to, I think the technical term for it is, a contraption.

I was given a two drug combo of Versed and Fentanyl. Versed induces sleep and relaxation, and is an anti-anxiety drug that can cause loss of memory during traumatic experiences, which would be helpful for Kansas football fans and many 7th-graders. Fentanyl is a narcotic and heavy duty pain reliever.

In combination, the drugs are supposed to produce something called conscious sedation or “twilight sleep,” where you feel nothing but can follow directions and believe that Kristen Stewart is a capable actress. They worked as advertised. I was out. Gone. I recall nothing. There were a half-dozen people in the room with me before the procedure. When I woke up, maybe 60-75 minutes later, there was just a very pleasant cardio nurse to monitor me. I assume there’s a photo in the nurses’ break room of ferrets eating Fig Newtons off of my lifeless torso, with the staff mugging it up in the background.

I was a little groggy when I awoke, but lucid enough to ask how the procedure went. The nurse said it went well. No clots in the chambers or valves. They performed one jolt, and the heart responded. 

Sweet.

Honestly, the most unpleasant part of the entire procedure was a nurse depressing my tongue into gag territory and spraying a foul, metallic-tasting local anesthetic into the back of my throat, multiple times, to deaden the area for when they inserted the tube. Afterward, my throat didn’t feel bad, just a bit raw. All in all, the entire ordeal was about as seamless as it gets, for a major organ and electrical charges.

I went home and slept for a couple hours, apparently mindless of the dog barking. I’ve felt fine since. Hell, I felt fine before, unaware of my condition and the associated risks.

Though my heart is back in rhythm, the procedure doesn’t come with a warranty. There’s no guarantee that it won’t lapse back into arrhythmia at some point. I’ll go back for regular checkups and EKGs and such. In the meantime, they said live your life, do what you normally do. If you experience any chest pains or dizziness or symptoms associated with a heart flutter or fibrillation, come see us.

I was advised not to take drugs or medicines that stimulate the heart. No cocaine, amphetamines, diet pills, caffeine or nicotine. Sure, it’s easy to cut back on Diet Coke and the occasional Jagerbomb, but when you take away a man’s Adderal and Benzedrine, well, now you’re making it tough.