As many of you know, Dave died a couple of weeks ago. He was not the most colorful character, but he had as much true character as anyone I've ever known.

Steve! It's great to hear from you. Life certainly has taken us all in many different directions.

I'm glad to hear that your eyesight is better (and I'm glad it still was good when you used to propel yourself across the newsroom in your office chair, usually with a phone to each ear. Otherwise there might be several of us missing toes now ...).

Please stay in touch and take care.

Ken

I have enjoyed reading about some of you I know and worked with and newcomers. I feel very old now as I remember my first encounter with Dan Tolva was when I photographed him with his horn for the Columbian, while was a student at the School for the Blind. Speaking of that, I had to close my detective agency when my eye sight got so bad I could not read the tag on the car ahead of me that I was surveilling. Got that fixed, thank God. Anyway, I am retired with Diane in St. Petersburg.

Steve Small

Of course I know who shot the photo. I was the only editor who felt we should not run it. Jack Campbell, of course, decide it should be page one.
SS

Just when you think it can't get any worse for our friends still toiling for the paper, there's this: http://www.columbian.com/article/20090406/NEWS02/904069980.

My first visit to Vancouver in five years began ominously.

Along Sixth Street, the cardrooms and flophouses just memories now. In their place is urban decay that reminded me of growing up in Detroit. That’s surely not the impression Vancouver wants to give visitors arriving at the snazzy new Hilton.

I don’t really know how snazzy the Hilton is, because my eye was drawn instead to the monstrosity across the street: A parking garage topped with hideous HVAC devices. I’m reminded of the movie “Brazil” and its omnipresent wiring, symbols of a society rushing ahead without a vision of how growth and change can be assimilated with humanity.

By that point, had I not been eagerly arriving for Lisa and Mike’s wedding, I might have turned and fled. Had I done so, I would have missed more than a ceremony. I also would have missed the magnificent new Esther Short Park hidden behind the comical HVAC Towers. I saw the early stages of the renovation and expected the result to be beautiful, but I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. It’s a masterpiece.

There’s one major problem. Someone put a hulking tombstone of a building across from the park. It’s the newly old Columbian building, a perfectly bland and boring metaphor for what the paper has become. Like the paper, it’s not ugly or bad; it’s just a cookie cutter replica of countless buildings next to faceless suburban malls across the country. From the outside it gives me no reason to want to venture inside.

Of course I couldn’t venture inside anyway on this cold and rainy Saturday. The building, and the streets around it, were dead. I was able to stop my car on Sixth Street to look, knowing there was no danger of obstructing traffic.

I rolled down the window and could hear only the pages of a discarded newspaper dancing like tumbleweeds in the swirling wind of the vestibule. I had seen enough. I moved on down Sixth, past the roundabout and toward the old-new-again building and another trip down Metaphor Lane.

Metaphor Lane, which I believe to still officially bear the name Sixth Street, has very long blocks. Urban planners like very short blocks, because they give you many ways and many reasons to explore a neighborhood, taking you in directions you might not have known you wanted to go.

Not so here. The Columbian property, with its bland parking lot and vacated streets, sent me far out of my way, into the bleak ruins of the old mill. This property is not at all welcoming, either, but worse yet it’s a huge obstacle in the way of Vancouver’s progress. It took me so far out of my way that I almost didn’t have time to find Kazoodles.

How sad that would have been. Because after you circle the sad remains of The Crossing and of The Columbian, Eighth Street has a new urban flair. It’s where I found Kazoodles. Unlike my trip thus far, the store was full of vibrant life. From the seemingly deserted streets, a constant stream of shoppers filled the store.

Bob was there and greeted me with a warmth that belied the five years since we had seen each other and the many more since we really knew each other well. Mary obviously didn’t remember me, yet welcomed me as though  I was a fast friend.

Suddenly the bad memories of my last years at the paper were erased. I was transported back in time to the truly good old days of what was once a truly great newspaper.

I walked back out into the rain, past the beautiful park. There were signs even here of a darker past: police cars and an ambulance were dealing with a sick transient, but still things seemed happy.

Until I looked across the park to a faceless brown edifice. In the empty windows I could see the “Available” sins pleading for someone to bring the building to life. Scanning the building from this perspective I could see the dark signs proclaiming “The Columbian.”

There were no signs of life. From here I couldn’t even see those ghostly newspaper pages dancing in the wind.

All I could see was a tombstone for an old friend, once so full of life.

Vicki asked what became of all the archives she and Konnie and Susan an Diane and Dareth and others so lovingly maintained for all those many years. I wonder, too.

The library went digital in 1994, so I hope those records are safe. I have no clue what happened to the paper archives. Our crew guarded them like treasure until I left in 2004, but I don't know what has happened since.

I have advocated for newspapers to recognize their archives for what they are: just about the only proprietary asset they have that's still worth a damn (http://www.whapwhap.com/?p=50), but to no avail. Nationwide, newspaper librarians are a defeated, discouraged bunch (well, really there aren't enough left to constitute a "bunch").

The Bum has been busy purging itself of corporate and community memory since, oh, let's grab an arbitrary date and say about 1996-97. The purge, which certainly is not unique to the Voice of the 'Couve, mostly is designed to save money. I think there's an element of sub-conscious jealousy involved, too. Managers who have left a record of failure don't like to have a much happier past thrown in their faces. Better to let people think misery is inevitable, I suppose ...

I remember Dan Tolva and I got a ride up to see Mount St. Helens after the eruption. I really didn't know what Dan would see, but he got to sit up front beside the pilot.

Remember when we all ran out to Evergreen Airport to watch Steve Small try to land in a plane but the wheels wouldn't come down?

OK, so he's both.

No, I take that back. From the day I walked into The Columbian in 1980 until the day I left, Dan was never anything but a great friend. He could have been more. A mentor or a trusted associate perhaps. But I never could get past that whole friendship thing.

I wish I could have, so I could say he was an inspiration, a teacher, a role model, something.

But, sadly, no. Just a friend.

Oh yeah, and a studmuffin. I don't even know what that means. You have to ask his daughter ...

Don Chandler shared with me the news that Dan has retired. Not by choice, apparently, but because he had to.

I could write for days about my admiration for Dan, but I'm just one of his countless admirers.

I'll post some stories, but only if the rest of you do, too.