Published 9-28-08
in Longmont Times-Call

DEMOCRATS IGNORE
OWN ETHICS LAPSES

When the Democrats took over the U.S. House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised ethical purity. Well, Tom Delay (R-Texas) was sacked when he was indicted (not convicted) on charges of violating campaign finance laws, but still sitting is William Jefferson (D-Louisiana), who is under indictment on charges of racketeering, soliciting bribes, wire-fraud, obstruction of justice and money-laundering. He is the chap whose freezer yielded a cool $90,000 in cash.

And now, according to The New York Times, Charles Rangel (D-New York), chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee which writes the income tax code, “has earned rental income from a villa he has owned in the Dominican Republic since 1988, but never reported it on his federal or state tax returns.” The Times headline read, “Rangel Failed to Report $75,000 in Income.” Pelosi says the Democratic controlled House Ethics Committee “will look into it”--much like they’re looking into Jefferson’s activities, no doubt.

Closer to home, Democratic 4th Congressional District candidate Betsy Markey is having big trouble explaining her involvement in a company that depends heavily on contracts with federal agencies, while at the same time she was serving as an aide to U.S. Senator Ken Salazar. The Denver Post reported, “Markey’s signed financial disclosures list the Maryland-based Syscom among her assets and say she held a director’s position between Jan. 1, 2006 and May 15, 2008. For part of that time she also served as Salazar’s regional director.” The headline over the Rocky Mountain News report read: “Public filings contradict Markey’s words.” To which her campaign staff replied, in effect, that if anything is wrong, it was just an “oversight.” But that’s precisely the excuse Rangel’s high-profile lawyer Lanny Davis is already using.

It makes no sense to me to add another “insider” to Washington. I’m voting for Marilyn Musgrave.
P.

MY FELLOW CITIZENS
BEWARE OF REFERENDUM O

They can’t take that away from us, but they’re trying.

In this context, the “they” refers mostly to public officials whose ox has been gored via the initiative process (as in TABOR), and the “that” identifies our right to petition our state government for whatever reason we see fit, as guaranteed by the First Amendment, securing the winning result in the state Constitution to keep the politicians at bay. Occasionally, the judiciary steps in afterwards and decides what’s “fit,” but mostly keeps its hands off.

Denouncing Colorado as a stomping ground for citizen initiatives, they have floated Referendum O seeking, for one thing, to sharply increase the number of signatures required to put initiated laws on the ballot. They want to fix it so that only the special interest groups (think tanks, unions, 501s) will be able to file initiatives because they will have the money and power to organize petition drives to collect signatures, no matter the number. If the news media want to promote participatory democracy, then disempowering the grassroots is not the way to go.

So they throw us a bone called “initiated statutes” which are good for five years. What a sham. They must be kidding.

Long ballot? County officials can speed up voting by setting up more polling places. People who intend to continue governing themselves must take the time to do so.
P.

Letter published in
the Rocky Mountain News
August 27, 2008

MUSGRAVE IS RIGHT

ABOUT DRILLING
      Judging from the initial flood of letters to the editor aimed at unseating 4th District Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, maybe the attacks by her adversaries will rise above the sewer this time around proving they are indeed intelligent enough to engage in rhetoric without using dog excrement for emphasis. Let’s hope so.
      Musgrave is on the right side of the oil-drilling issue and a separate poll shows 67 percent of Coloradans agree. But that probably won’t stop Colorado’s liberal cabal of the two Salazars, Udall, DeGette and Ritter from trying to stifle all of our state’s fossil fuel development to please their special-interest groups who have taken over the government, while we ordinary citizens and the state’s economy are second thoughts.
      As for Musgrave’s new opponent, she may or may not be qualified. What is relevant is that it makes no sense to seat more Democrats in a Congress whose crowning achievement during its two-year term was proposing over 1,900 resolutions. That shows you how much they care about the price of gasoline.
      No wonder Musgrave and her fellow Republicans were unable to summon Speaker Pelosi back from her vacation so the House could consider relaxing oil-drilling restrictions to smooth the transition between oil and yet-to-be developed energy.

      Acting on all of those resolutions had simply worn her out.
      I’m voting for Musgrave.
P.

Letter published in

The Denver Post

8-02-08

BEWARE OF THE EFFECTS

OF A FEDERAL SHIELD LAW

     Your 7-26-08 editorial “Federal shield law necessary” wrongly promotes the idea that all newspapers deserve special protection when choosing which government secrets to keep or print. Too many indulge in biased politics to be trusted, e.g., The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

     As a longtime newsperson I say, beware of a Beltway shield law -- for whatever privilege Congress bestows, it can license, regulate, tweak, or use as a weapon. Requesting a federal shield law to protect a reportorial practice that the watchdogs themselves are no longer willing to defend on principle (by going to jail if necessary) does not speak well of a fearless free press, and it sends the wrong message to the public.
     The First Amendment specifically protects the press from government interference. The legal profession received no similar mention in the Constitution, yet lawyers are free to enjoy attorney-client secrecy as they go about their work — but not reporters?
     Colorado has a fairly good shield law, but unlike the First Amendment, it must include caveats, one of which is that a newsperson does not have to disclose a source “unless the information cannot reasonably be obtained by any other means.” New York Times reporter Judith Miller of Libby-trial fame arguably could not have been saved from jail under Colorado’s shield law either.

P.

Letter published in

Longmont Times-Call, 8-1-08

MALL NEEDS GROCER,

GROCER NEEDS MALL

        With all due respect to those in the public and private sectors who deal closely with Longmont’s planning and economic development, it seems to me that two headlines on the front page of the 7-24-08 Times-Call reflect a possibly missed opportunity. One announced the “complicated” mall plan being put on hold; the other, “Natural grocer eyeing Hover.” Why can’t they get together?
       From a planning standpoint, the mall needs a natural foods outlet to attract shoppers, and the grocer needs the mall traffic. It looks like a winner—for the grocer, the mall owner, and the city treasury.
      Of course, the grocer is free to settle on the announced Hover site. But a far-better accommodation of vehicular traffic than what is currently available along there will have to be made because of the poor access to and from Hover Street. Mitigate traffic, join the mall lineup.
       Also, I wish whoever is riding the TIF horse around town would dismount and send that critter out to pasture because Tax Increment Financing—although legal—is unfair to the taxpayers. A legacy of LBJ’s “Great Society,” TIF allows public money (taxes) to be diverted to help pay for privately owned urban renewal projects.
      Talk of using TIF to help pay for renovating the mall has calmed a bit, but I see where the Longmont Downtown Development Authority is now toying with the idea of using Tax Increment Financing to start a façade improvement program. Naturally, the same question regarding TIF arises: who makes up for the tax money that will be diverted from the city of Longmont into this program until it is finished? In times of budget shortfall, the city may have trouble replacing diverted TIF revenues and the choices are limited: increase other fees and-or taxes, cut programs, or both.

P.

Letter to Longmont Times-Call
Published 7-15-08

MEDIA BIASED, GULLIBLE

     “Woman ticketed outside McCain event.” (T-C p. A5, 7-9-08). So went the blazing headline over another non-news story carried by most of the gullible media describing the “terrible abuse” political activists may be subjected to when their disruptive acts are noticed, they refuse to cooperate, and are turned away or arrested—as they should be. This time it was liberal activist Carol Kreck, an ex-newspaper reporter, who got caught trying to bring a “McCain=Bush” sign into a McCain meeting, where all signs had been declared off-limits beforehand. (Try taking an Obama=Carter sign into the Pepsi Center during the Democratic National Convention and see how far your First Amendment rights go.)

     This latest act is almost a carbon copy of a put-up job carried out against President Bush in 2005 by three Denver-area liberal activists who attempted to disrupt one of his rare meetings in Colorado and got caught on their way in. Some in the media sympathized with them for weeks afterward, and their lawsuit as far as I know still drags on, clogging-up an already overloaded judicial system.
     Talk about a biased media, Bob Schaffer who is running for the U.S. Senate certainly has his work cut out for him, as attempts are being made in news reports to envision him as some sort of a criminal for having been employed in the oil industry. We all cannot make a living arranging pack trips into the wilderness, tramping over the tundra. Some of us have to work at real jobs.
P.

SOME FLIP-FLOPPING IN LONGMONT
     In national politics it’s called flip-flopping. I don’t know how else to describe Longmont mayor pro-tem Karen Benker’s change of attitude toward the tax issues that surrounded the proposed LifeBridge Church annexation, and now her eagerness to divert city tax revenues into renovating a shopping mall—of all things. On one hand, she used to worry that the church-area’s proposed retail businesses might escape from paying their fair share of taxes into the city treasury (an unfounded fear), but now she apparently has no problem with supporting the Tax Increment Financing gimmick that would allow the mall owner to tap into the city’s tax revenue stream to help pay for renovating his property. Are we Longmont taxpayers to believe that this TIF money which won’t be flowing into the city treasury will never be missed?
     The questions seem endless and the investment of public money brings them into sharper focus. Under TIF, will the mall feature a new anchor store and if so, who will it be? Why did perfectly good stores such as Penney’s and Woodley’s leave Twin Peaks? They moved into other commercial areas (created without TIF subsidies, by the way) and are still generating tax revenues for our city.   How fair is it to these stores and all the other non-TIF businesses around town, to see a TIF-subsidized shopping mall bringing in competing stores?
     Leave the TIF subsidy out of the equation. Encourage the mall owner to bring in whatever mix of boutiques, major and minor outlets, cinema rooms, food stations and whatever else that is appropriate and he can afford, on his own terms.
     That’s the fair way.
P.

FIRE THE CRITIC!

     One would think that, if a newspaper were serious about self-examining its content and performance, it would look to someone with hard newspaper experience to serve as ombudsman--the longer and more diversified background in that field, the better. Just because someone writes well and calls himself or herself a journalist, or is knowledgeable in other subjects such as legal matters or public relations, that does not automatically qualify one to be an authority on newspapers.
     But that’s what we readers of the press are presently stuck with in the current version of the ombudsman column published weekly in the Rocky Mountain News. Titled On the Media, an expert on legal issues represents the conservative side of the political spectrum on one Saturday; an expert in public relations champions the liberal side the next Saturday. As far as I know, neither has had any on-the-job experience in the newspaper field.
     To its credit, after the Joint Operating Agreement with The Denver Post went into effect in 2002, the Rocky has tried to maintain a weekly ombudsman-type column. Carried over from the Post and devoted not only to critique its own news content but that of the Post and occasionally Denver’s electronic media as well, the column was fairly interesting for a while. But it wasn’t long until journalism professor Michael Tracey of the University of Colorado got hold of it and turned it into a liberal festival.
    The Rocky let Tracey go and brought in public relations whiz Jason Salzman to represent the liberal side. Salzman’s lack of newspaper experience is telling. He suggests in his latest column (7/5/08) that, since a potty-mouth word or two has slipped through, the Rocky should relax its moral standards and start printing more of the late George Carlin’s Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.
    Like Lenny Bruce's vulgarisms, there’s a time and place for the regular use of these “fringe words.” But it’s not in a family newspaper that’s welcomed into one’s home.
P.

WWII RELOCATION CAMP AT GRANADA REVISITED
(In response to an article in the Rocky Mountain News, 7-4-08)

      Certainly and especially by hindsight, no one can be proud of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s order at the start of World War II to evacuate everyone of Japanese descent from the west coast to inland relocation centers, one of which was built at Granada, Colorado (Amache). He was only reflecting the mood of many Americans “to do whatever is necessary to save our country.” As a 15-year-old at the time living in Calhan, Colorado, I was aware of that feeling.
      Having lost so heavily at Pearl Harbor, there was a belief that we would soon be invaded. The angst that gripped America was heightened by the shocking news that on June 21, 1942 an Imperial Japanese Navy submarine shelled the U.S. Army’s Fort Stevens coastal defenses on the Oregon side of the mouth of the Columbia River with no return of fire. (historylink.org).
     Proving that the few coastal defenses we did have in place were woefully vulnerable, coupled with the belief that the penetrating warship may have received semaphore navigation signals from shore, this first attack on mainland American soil since 1812 no doubt sped up the opening of Colorado’s relocation camp. According to the 1945 Colorado Yearbook, 192 men, 19 women and one infant arrived on August 29, 1942 from the Merced, California center. This initial group was composed of hospital attendants, mess-hall workers, clerks and skilled mechanics. Amache’s total population in 1944 was 5,892.
     The state yearbook says the Granada center--enclosed by barbed wire and guarded by 90 soldiers from Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, in compliance with War Department standards--was located on a tract of 10,960 acres with more than 200 units surrounded by irrigated agricultural land for use by the evacuees. They had their own stores, a school, a hospital, and were self-governing. Evacuees who swore their allegiance to the United States after their standing had been found satisfactory were released to locate in Colorado.
      Life was not easy for them and Gov. Ralph Carr was correct in sympathizing with these evacuees,. Still there were only two true concentration camps in Colorado during the war; one was at Trinidad where 4,000 troops from Rommel’s Afrika Corps were held, the other was at Greeley.
     The Amache experience is a blot on our country’s history but by and large the people of Colorado and the nation for that matter had no more control over creating it than our Japanese friends who were forced to live there did in creating their native country’s attack on Pearl Harbor, a blot on their history.
     Why can’t we just all forgive and forget?
P.

COLORADO POLITICS

      Attempts by biased players in the news media to remove the Boulder connect from Rep. Mark Udall’s campaign for the U.S. Senate are just too brazen to go unnoticed. Examples: Much of a full-page, pro-Udall campaign story in the May 27 Rocky Mountain News dwelled on his “correct” address, followed by Denver Post columnist Ed Quillen’s “me too” remarks on June 1.
     A genuine career politician from a family dynasty, Udall proudly claimed far-left Boulder as his hometown when he first ran to serve the 2nd District in the U.S. House of Representatives, but now that he must seek votes from out around the state, of course, he’s never heard of the place.
     Instead of reporters presenting clever analogies about his dual address (Boulder/suburb Eldorado Springs) to help cover his tracks, the voters might appreciate seeing more about the Congressman’s authorship of legislation and his voting record during his lackadaisical 10 years in office. Other than voting the strict party line set by MoveOn.org, writing a resolution rebuking a talk-show host, and chairing a committee that rarely meets and serving on another, there doesn’t seem to be much activity.
     Why has Udall been rated “F” by the NRA on Second Amendment issues, and why did he score so poorly with the National Taxpayers Union?
     In a current TV ad, Udall boasts that he’s really going to do something about solving the energy crisis. With his party in control of the do-nothing 110th Congress, what has he been waiting for?
P.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE PRESS

     Have Denver’s major newspapers abandoned Colorado’s conservatives? This is not a plea to turn bad news into good news; it is about the growing anti-conservative approach to news coverage in The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News. Beyond in-house editorials, little choice remains between the two publications.
     Almost any public figure that espouses political or social conservatism is apt to be fair game for hostile reporting in either paper. (Jon Caldara, James Dobson and Rep. Tom Tancredo come to mind.)
     Reporters who cover Republicans are apt to import comments from left-leaning political scientists, usually of the academe; rarely do similar comments from right-leaning sources appear in stories about Democrats. How “analyses” are allowed to run any place outside the opinion page(s) is manipulative journalism.
     Both papers are bad about running anticonservative “ghost quotes” that often appear in wire copy. Associated Press senior writers David Espo and Ron Fournier, both remnants of Florida’s hanging-chad anti-Bush fame, are masters in using this “speaking on condition of anonymity” gimmick.
     One bright aspect of the Rocky: Vincent Carroll still has charge of the editorials and the ancillary commentary. While conservatives can rely on locals Carroll and columnist Mike Rosen to make sense, running amok are leftist columnists such as CU law professor Paul Campos and renown entertainer Garrison Keillor, he of nonprofit PBR fame and fortune who slams conservatives at least once in every offering. Then there is columnist Nat Hentoff’s eternal obsession with waterboarding, as he ignores the Islamic extremists who do flout the Geneva Conventions big-time. (This is America, Mr. Hentoff, and nobody has been suicide-bombed at Guantanamo.)
     The Post’s editorial page has improved under Dan Haley, gaining back some of the fairness Sue O’Brien always showed, but it boasts only one quasi-Republican, Bob Ewegen, who rarely has seen a Democratic tax increase or liberal policy he didn’t like. A bone has been thrown to right-wing writer John Andrews, but mainstay conservative columnist Al Knight apparently has been dispatched to outer Slobovia. And of course, the Post still periodically runs a column by Gail Schoettler, even after she was flagged ethically for accompanying her husband on several exotic excursions at taxpayer expense.
     In the Rocky’s news pages, Mike Littwin makes his living eviscerating conservatives, while the Post finally had the courtesy to replace its “Littwin” version (Spencer) with a moderate writer, David Harsanyi.
    The overwhelming majority of the American press including Denver’s two big dailies seem to enjoy driving conservatives away. I cannot believe this is a good way to win advertisers and subscribers, and the ongoing results are very telling.

PC

LETTER TO EDITOR

Published 5-17-07 Daily Camera

THE MIGHTY WOPBURGER

      Bugdust, Longjack, Ginger Rabbits, Joe the Wop, Chooch, Squeaky, the list goes on and on. 

      Those were just a few of the delightful nicknames of some wonderful Italians I knew in Louisville when I published the newspaper there, 1965-98. Had thought-policeman James Gambino been around, he could’ve drawn enormous amounts of attention to himself by correcting all of those friendly “insults.” So it’s probably just as well he attacked only the name of a sandwich made out of two pieces of Italian bread (or a hamburger bun if you wish), a flat cake of fried sausage, and a slice of mozzarella.)
     Still, the Rocky Mountain News spared no detail in building a thunderous case denigrating the historic Blue Parrot’s traditional offering. An ethnic expert in Washington D.C. was called in, and further we got to read about the arm-twisting by a Boulder Valley School District official who was pressured by Gambino to boycott Colacci’s wholesale spaghetti sauce (which incidentally is a separate business from the restaurant) over the offending sandwich. Now that is piling on—an insult that I say is far worse than the naming of a mere sandwich.
     Alas, what am I to do now when I want "woptoast" served with my breakfast eggs and sausage at the Blue Parrot? I guess I can always whisper my order into the waitperson’s ear. But only after looking around to see who’s spying on us.
     Don’t let the do-gooders obliterate the wopburger.
P.

LETTER TO EDITOR
7-27-07
KILLING WESTERN SLOPE ECONOMY
     There has to be a balance.
     Mineral extraction has long been an important contributor to the economy of Rio Blanco, Moffat and Garfield counties in northwestern Colorado, yet here we have a team of powerful Democrats--Sen. Ken Salazar, U.S. Reps Mark Udall and John Salazar and Gov. Bill Ritter—trying to halt drilling on the Roan Plateau and now in the Vermillion Basin. Opened in 1902 and expanded in the late 1940's, if drilling in that region has seriously disrupted the environment or interfered with the hunting, angling and backpacking pastimes of the able-bodied, then the state ought to have tapped its severance-tax reserves to mitigate the “damage” insofar as possible. What’s happened to all the hundreds of millions in those funds collected from energy production?
      Abandoning these fields will force alternatives, all right, such as windmill generators whose towers and propellers--unlike oil rigs--will remain long afterward to blight the landscape and kill the birds.
      Sen. Salazar blocked the Administration’s nominee to head the Bureau of Land Management because BLM denied Ritter another 120 days to “study” (polite word for neuter) the Roan Plan. Udall and J. Salazar tried to cut off BLM funding related to oil leasing there, hoping to stop it that way, but failed.
     The global-warming religion has mesmerized three once-moderate Colorado Democrats. Boulder’s Udall reflects his leftist constituency, but it’s too bad K. Salazar, J. Salazar and Ritter did not reveal while campaigning that they really don’t give a diddly-squat about preserving Colorado’s diverse economy.
     If these Democrats do succeed in shutting down drilling in northwestern Colorado, and it looks like they will, I suppose the county commissioners there can just go out and put on a new tax to make up the revenue loss. The people, in desperation, would just about have to vote “yes.”

PC

Letter sent to Longmont Times-Call
2-27-07 and published

Apparently Boulder County’s Parks and Open Space rangers have so little to do that the county commissioners have empowered them to write parking tickets. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not “for” illegal parking. I’m against the authoritarian attitude that currently engulfs our county government. Until the Boulder County Parks and Open Space Department establishes adequate on-site parking so the people can enjoy these public places without being hassled over parking, then a short delay for a deputy sheriff to write a parking ticket seems reasonable. With Boulder County contracting out police protection to the town of Superior (pop. 12,000), and providing 24/7 service to unincorporated Niwot (pop. 4,100), apparently there is no shortage of sheriff’s personnel, equipment or county money, so the wait shouldn’t be too long.

 
Other authoritarian acts of note lately by the commissioners:

--Issued $29 million in Certificates of Participation to construct the new Open Space/County Garage building just west of Longmont. All legal, this loophole allows the politicians to put the people in debt without holding an election.

--Using our hard-earned tax dollars to pursue an anti-religion lawsuit against a Niwot church that’s trying to exercise its First Amendment rights to serve its congregation by expanding its facilities.

 
--Using Boulder County open space tax-funds to play around with land-use projects in Weld County.

--Throwing $700,000 into a Web-based land-use tracking system to tighten the bureaucratic noose on every square inch of private property in rural Boulder County. What the commissioners don’t buy for open space, they are going to manage with an iron hand.  

Lastly, a “thank you” to the Longmont Daily Times-Call for stepping up its coverage of our Boulder County government. With one political party totally in charge and no debates, the need for more sunshine is critical.

Percy Conarroe

Contemporary history

PERSONAL LETTER TO ASNE
Re: Magazine Publisher’s Column 9-01-06--

     The American Society of Newspaper Editors is not doing itself proud by defending newspaper publishers who reveal our nation’s wartime espionage techniques.

     Advance units of the Islamic jihad drew us into this war by a series of provocations heightened by the killing of 3,000 innocent Americans on our soil. Despite the fact that we attacked no one, we are in a war that we cannot “talk” away and we must win it.
     The worst part of the offending news media’s “tell all” attitude is its deleterious effect on troop morale. I cannot imagine that it’s good news for our fighters to know that some newspapers back home, such as The New York Times, are making their role more difficult by describing in detail our government’s efforts to monitor the enemy’s finances and communications. ASNE’s plea--and that of others—aimed at protecting our constitutional rights is well taken and understandable. However, there is a time for everything and the proper time to get all frothed-up over these alleged constitutional “abuses” would be to find that, after the violence perpetrated against us is over, they’re still in effect.

     I have every confidence that our nation’s methods of espionage including warrant-less wiretapping will only be temporary, are necessary and appropriate in this age of sophisticated communications, and pose no threat to our everlasting personal freedom.

     The overriding danger is that if we do not convincingly win the war in Iraq, there is the strong possibility that if Iran develops nuclear weapons, which appears imminent, and the jihadists who think nothing of cutting off people’s heads and randomly blowing up innocent people--even their own--in order to advance their ideology get hold of nuke bombs, our American dream including our revered constitution could be glories of the past.
     We must outsmart our adversaries, not ourselves.
P.

LAST REMNANTS OF BYGONE ERA IN TYPESETTING

       (Originally published in the Colorado Editor, in-house journal of Colorado Press Association.)

On my list of endangered species are newspaper publishers who still use molten metal to typeset their product. I believe there are only two of these left in Colorado: Dean Coombs at the Saguache Crescent, and Eugene Thomas at the South Y-W Star in Kirk. They are the last remnants of an era in which it was common for each publisher to own a printing press with the means of supplying metal type to it, a time when heavy equipment dominated both the composing and printing phases of producing a newspaper.

Central to the hot-metal method of forming a line of type and casting it on a type-high base (called a slug) for strike-on printing is a machine called the Linotype. This marvelous contraption took the labor and slowness out of having to handpick each metal character from a partitioned wooden tray (type case) to compose lines of type for printing, only to have to meticulously return each character to its proper bin afterwards for reuse. The Linotype made it possible to cast a line of characters and automatically return each tiny character-mold (brass matrix) to its original channel in a storage magazine for reuse, doing the work of at least five people setting type by hand.

Marketed in 1886, the Linotype was heralded as the greatest advancement in printing since Gutenberg’s movable type in 1450. Its inventor, Baltimore resident Ottmar Mergenthaler, reportedly went berserk figuring it out. Certainly, many of us who have operated one of these iron monsters could easily understand why. Featuring a built-in crucible that melts the lead-antimony alloy used in typesetting, the Linotype had myriad steel rollers, drive-wheels, molds, knives, cams, elevators, levers, springs, belts, fragile brass matrices and a uniquely styled keyboard, all mounted on a cast-iron base. Standing even feet tall and weighing a ton, the Linotype is testimony to the pioneering editors who lugged these machines across prairie and mountain to spread the news. They were the unsung Pulitzer heroes.

 
Many believed that a Linotype had its own personality: it could balk at any time, but more aptly at press-time. It could hum right along, turning out galley after galley of type, only to ruin things by spitting hot metal and grinding to a halt. That’s one area where Linotypes held advantage over computers -- a person could usually get the Linotype going again by using a heavy “ball peen” and screwdriver to remove the spewed metal.

Why do publishers such as Coombs and Thomas hang onto this old-fashioned method of producing a newspaper? Part of the explanation might be that, like printer’s ink, “it gets into your bloodstream.” And you don’t mind because you enjoy the physical as well as the mental challenge it offers, plus the freedom of self-sufficiency.

Computers teamed-up with lithography to end the reign of the Linotype. Will the Web page do in the web press and newspapers?

(Retired and living in Longmont after 50 years of publishing small-town newspapers in Colorado, Percy Conarroe is a past-president and honorary lifetime member of the Colorado Press Association.)

May 2006
A PERSONAL LETTER

To: Susan J. Tweit

I read your piece on Christo and Jeanne Claude’s Over the River project in The Denver Post and was disappointed at the casualness with which you, a naturalist, can promote a new encroachment, albeit temporary and in the name of art, on the natural beauty of this portion of the Arkansas River canyon between Canon City and Salida, Colorado.

A Colorado native of 79 years, I worked for the Salida Daily Mail-Record from 1949 to 1952. I’ve driven Highway 50 up and down this canyon many times, and I always marveled at the breathtaking vistas that need no artificial enhancement.

Leave the canyon alone. Humankind has already done terrible things to it—all for “a good purpose.” Let rich people with big egos leave their footprint on the region in some other, less controversial fashion. I doubt that Salida would have had much of a library early on had it not been for Andrew Carnegie, and now a new, spacious art and history museum dedicated to the town by Christo and Jeanne Claude, bearing their names, would surely be welcomed, be of a more lasting intrinsic value, and attract tourists too.

If the Over the River project ever comes to a statewide vote, (and it may end up there, who knows?), I will vote no. Colorado has been entirely fair with this artistic team in its use of public property, having allowed the Valley Curtain project near Rifle. The principals have done their thing here, and need to move on.

You have my permission to forward a copy of this to High Country News, distributor of your columns, whose email address I could not find on its Web site.

Percy Conarroe
Longmont CO

Letter to editor, 7-08-06
Longmont (CO) Times-Call

OVERSTEPPING BOUNDS

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Pity the unfortunate woman who hoped to better her life by purchasing an established equestrian center on 71 acres of agriculturally-zoned land south of Longmont, only to have Boulder County’s Land Use Department come along and shut the whole operation down. (“Ranch corralled,” T-C 7-4-06). One does have to wonder just where an equestrian center should be appropriately sited, if not out on the prairie.

In Boulder County, the County Commissioners not only control all the land within their jurisdiction but have also positioned themselves dictatorially into micromanaging every square inch of ground and everything on it through a separate bureaucracy called the Land Use Department, which has its own headquarters. Facing of all this raw power, there’s not much hope for this woman and her agriculturally friendly enterprise.

She is most likely just another victim of Boulder County’s overreaching zoning laws, and her options are few. She can either go hat-in-hand to the Board of Commissioners and beg penance (although I have never heard of the commissioners breaking stride with their enforcers), or go lawyer-up big-time and really wreck her financial future if she loses. The County Commissioners and Land Use Department have nothing to lose, of course, since the taxpayers pick up their legal tabs.

But wasn’t this a lot of what the Declaration of Independence was all about, the heavy-handedness of those in power?

Percy Conarroe

Letter to editor
Boulder Daily Camera 6-24-06

FLAG BURNING—Vote, leave Old Glory alone

Columnist Nat Hentoff and former Nebraska U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey think it is perfectly all right to burn or desecrate our flag to show disdain for our country ("Our flag and our freedom," op-ed, June 21) and they downplay those of us who seek to overturn the wrongheaded 1989, 5-4 Supreme Court decision that forces acceptance of this violent form of protest. I reject the idea that to democratically pursue steps to protect the flag from abuse is tantamount to being against the Constitution.

The flag cannot speak — it is inert, harmless and incapable of causing disillusionment, treachery, betrayal or disgust. It poses no threat. To the contrary, it is the proud symbol of the most successful form of government on planet Earth, and just as our system of government deserves respect from all of us, so does its symbol. Nobody can be forced to respect the flag, yet those who do not respect it should be restrained by law from maliciously burning or physically attacking it, no matter their station in life. This has nothing to do with satire or calm rejection.

It's time to get back to our country's normalcy, the two centuries preceding 1989, by again denying a privileged few the right to abuse the flag to bring attention to themselves.

People whose uncontrollable anger drives them to act out their childish tantrums by physically attacking the flag are the ones who are sullying our First Amendment rights through their excess. People make policy, flags don't. Go vote, work to change policy, and leave Old Glory alone.

There are limits to free speech. Try libeling someone or making a politically incorrect remark and see how far your First Amendment rights go.

The flag is my flag, too, and if ever I get the chance to vote against this political mischief of flag desecration cloaked as a free-speech issue, I will do so.

PERCY CONARROE

Longmont