Cindy Lange-Kubick: Looking back at 2007
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Technically, this is my bi-annual catch-up column, letting readers in on the feedback and fallout from past columns, but this time around I’d like to start by casting my vote for Grinch of the Year: Time Warner Cable.
The filthy rich megacorporation had a chance to turn a disaster — Navigator — into an opportunity by simply stuffing a little cheer in subscribers’ bills, as recommended by the city’s cable advisory board.
Instead, it stuck stubbornly to the company party line. Bah Humbug.
(Full disclosure: I received a credit after complaining. I even got a phone call at the paper from a company spokesperson.)
OK. Now, let’s move on.
* Following up on a Halloween column on orthodontist Rebecca Hohl’s efforts to buy back candy and save teeth: Hohl’s office collected 150 pounds of candy. Hohl paid $2 a pound, plus a matching donation to the American Cancer Society; 80 percent of the candy went to soldiers in Iraq, the rest ended up at a retirement center.
* A column on a summer drive — “The Sandhills at 70” had people conjuring up memories of similar drives and several e-mails like this one: “Where in the Sandhills is the speed limit 70 MPH? I imagine the LJS subscribes to a number of Sandhills area newspapers ... during the summer the majority of Cherry County and other Sandhills area county court records are for traffic tickets issued to those taking a scenic journey of the Sandhills.”
* Remember the man who got a DUI after being spotted driving through McDonald’s drunk? I wrote a column in August about Sheila Klein, who was not drunk in the drive-through but got a call from police after she left because someone thought she was. She assumed it was an employee.
It wasn’t: “I read your column and was just curious how you found out what had happened? I was in the car ahead of this lady ... and called police because I noticed her kids in the car and it appeared she was drinking a Pabst Blue Ribbon.”
The drink was actually a Diet Dr. Pepper. And Klein wasn’t upset. So to the anonymous e-mailer who called her in: No harm.
* A column on virtual vitriol — the nasty things we say to one another under the cloak of Internet anonymity — elicited a response from a reader who was used as an example of such nastiness: “I see I’ve managed to make your comments ‘Hall of Shame.’”
He went on to say he’d mended his ways, given up his flaming posts and wished the same for others: “I’d like to appeal to the populace’s ‘better angels’ in hopes the discourse (becomes) better.”
* In waxing about the joys of autumn this September, I ended up waning instead, extolling those “helicopter seeds from silver maples spiraling to the ground, a sidewalk lesson in aerodynamics.”
Oops. At least one astute reader phoned to say, “Um, I think that happens in the spring.”
Gosh. I love spring, too.
* I also stubbed my toe in a column about a Lincoln woman who “accidentally” sold a signed letter from President Harry Truman at a moving sale.
In the piece I wrote “Harry S. Truman.” See the mistake? This reader did: “Dear Cindy, I am compelled to join the chorus of voices that must be pointing out to you there is no period after the S in Harry S Truman, since it is not an initial.”
* I spent much of the fall trying out for a spot on the LJS sportswriting staff, much to the dismay of some readers. (See "Husker coaches, you're not alone," "It may be time for Husker fans to move on," "Tom Osborne's legendary return," "A quiz for Husker fans," and "The allure of the rumor").
“You need to stick to writing about namby-pamby stuff instead of sports,” one wrote. “Stick to writing about refugee’s (sic) that have come to our country or some other crap no one gives a damn about.”
* A nice couple from Fairbury sent an early Christmas gift to a (big) little boy named Mykeal, whose adoptive parents were given a car. Two hundred dollar bills showed up in my mailbox with this note: “It takes very special people to adopt a child like Mykeal. We don’t think we could do it, but we sure respect couples that do.”
* A few months ago, I got my dad’s picture in the paper cutting his barber buddy Bob Taylor’s hair. Bob shaved his head to raise money for the cancer society and his daughter Linda Nettleton. In late November Bob sent me this all-caps e-mail: “LINDA CALLED AT 1:57 TODAY AND SAID SHE WAS CANCER FREE. MY WHAT A GOOD FEELING.”
Bob ended his message this way: “GREAT ARTICLE IN PAPER TODAY. YOUR DAD SAID HE WROTE IT FOR YOU.”
* Chris Webster, a street outreach worker for Cedars with tattoos and a wallet on a chain and combat boots, called me, all excited-like dude, after a column about his help getting a homeless teen mom, Jackie Leafty, on her way to a better life. Someone had come in and paid Jackie’s tuition so she could become a certified nursing assistant. Chris was as excited as a kid at Christmas.
I thought it was awesome, too, man.
* Floodplains. Can’t live in ’em ... can’t live in ’em? After a column on my floodplain confusion ran, a former member of the mayor’s floodplain taskforce dropped off a brochure that explained why “impervious surfaces” like an apartment building shouldn’t be built on Military Road.
And one reader wondered: “What good will it do us to build a research park if we don’t follow the research we already have — i.e. research on floodplains.”
* I updated folks on what happened to the $20 bill I received last December and a few days later a man from Bagels and Joe appeared in the newsroom.
He had received a share of the money that grew to nearly $1,000 and wanted to let me know where it went: $50 to the People’s City Mission, $20 to kids holding a car wash in the cold, $50 to Park Middle School, $10 to a stranger at the airport who didn’t have enough money to buy her kids ice cream and $100 to the Capitol Humane Society to pay for an adoption for a family who didn’t have the funds.
Several more $20s have come in — and out — since that column ran earlier this month.
* Campbell third-grade teacher Janelle Boehm came up with the idea of paying a needy family’s rent for a Christmas surprise, said school counselor Deb Biggs, after a column ran last week.
Biggs also wanted to make sure people knew the folks at Pyrtle Elementary across town were exceptionally generous. One para-educator at the school alone donated $700. Wow.
* That said, I wish all the best to everyone who graciously appeared in my column these past six months, whether they were here because of sad circumstance (losing a father, or a sister, dying of some dreadful disease), for silly situations (almost meeting the president, trying to sell a zebra skin, inviting me to be a Facebook friend) or for my own self-indulgent whims (thanks, kids, I love you, I didn’t think you’d mind).
And to the rest of you, thanks. I don’t know about the reading end of things, but for me to write? It’s a pleasure.
Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.
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Thanks, Cindy! "
SAT wrote on December 28, 2007 8:38 am:
Knightrider wrote on December 28, 2007 2:54 pm: