Christian Science Monitor Greats Say Goodbye

It's the physicality of a newsroom that will be missed. For me, it's Ed standing up and bellowing across the newsroom, night after night. Rex in the proof room, passed out and snoring on the floor. The AP wire beeping. Tim miscalculating a word count by 500 words. Mary's office stacked kneehigh with newspapers. That one copy clerk coming to work in a bathrobe. Shouting back and forth about whether or not Boris Yeltsin was missing a finger. Finding out he was, so a rush to change the headline from "The U.S. Lends Boris a Hand." Long talks with John Carpinelli while waiting for final close. I miss Carpinelli. Lou racing to my desk, practically toppling over himself, to see if I got the message he sent me 10 seconds earlier. Snowed in and eating lunches from the vending machine. Seeing Richard Nixon in the lobby. Seeing Jesse Jackson standing near my desk. Erica and her dog. 15-hour days. Laughing with Tim. The clock, the clock, the clock. Getting it right. Watching the sun come up as I drove home and knowing I'd do it all again tomorrow. Any newsroom, anywhere in America.
The Christian Science Monitor prints it's last daily edition tomorrow. It's hard not to be sad.

Helmut Zilk, the "Journalist"

Post-war Vienna was divided into four sectors, each ruled by one Allied nation. The exception here, and to my knowledge the difference with Germany's occupation, was that the very center of the city--the Innerstadt--was ruled by all four Allied nations, each one taking turns for one month at a time.

This created a nice little incubator of naughty spy activity--there were secrets for sale coming and going, forward and backward, every which way to Sontag. And journalists were "journalists" --if you get my drift.

Helmut Zilk was one such journalist, apparently. The former mayor of Vienna was accused about 20 years ago of having been a communist spy for the Czechs during the Cold War, although he flatly denied it.

Zilk died last year, but handwriting samples are being examined now, and experts say: Yep. Zilk was a spy.

Post-War Vienna and The Third Man

Just finished watching The Third Man. I saw it ages ago and read the book a few years ago, but the film really holds up well. Well-written.

This is a map showing Vienna's Four Sectors, the post-war occupation that lasted into the mid-1950s. As can be seen from the map, the Russians controlled the regions outside of Vienna (the American sector controlled western Austria). The map is courtesy of USFA Veterans Association.

February and March mark 64 years since one of the worst series of attacks on the city by Allied forces: 30,000 people killed, 270,000 homeless, 12,000 buildings destroyed.

The (Not So) Hidden Treasures of Engelhartstetten

The Home for the Criminally Insane Plaster of Paris Oversized Bearded Man Gnome Heads Attached to Naked Female Bodies is located just outside of Engelhartstetten.













































So how did this headless, armless eunoch get in here?

Fritzl and His Blue Binder

Josef F. hides his face behind a blue binder. Some in the courtroom allege they saw him smiling when charges against him were read out. PHOTO: Reuters.

It was nearly a year ago that Elizabeth Fritzl and her children emerged from the dungeon that her father kept her in for nearly half a century. The police at that time reported that the two sons, aged 19 and 5, were giddy with the thrill of the moonlight and the motion of the car they were carried away in. They said the boys spoke their own language to each other, and that the older one had a permanent stoop because he'd never been able to stand up straight once he grew taller than the dungeon ceilings.

The trial of Josef Fritzl--known in the Austrian press as Josef F.--took longer than expected to come to trial because authorities couldn't find jurors willing to listen to the 11 hours of Elizabeth's videotaped testimony, nor all the other heinous details. Not sure other cultures would be so hesitant to step up to the plate. Surely Americans would stand at the ready to deliver penance.

The reaction from Austrians (to Josef F) boils down to an exasperated shoulder shrug, as in: what can you say? a monster is a monster. But not only the year before another monster had kept a girl locked in a cellar for eight years, just outside of Vienna.

Each country seems to breed its own form of monsters: the Americans and German kind like to let loose on school campuses, for instance. But these crimes at least tend to lead to some type of national dialog, spurred on by outrage and grief. It's troubling not to see some form of national debate taking place in Austria, in which they question how to prevent this from happening again. The only thing that seems to have come of it is a campaign to promote the good things the country offers, of which there are admittedly many. But would it hurt to promote a"if you see something, say something" type of campaign? A "stop and think" campaign? Austrians are, as a nation, notoriously suspicious of outsiders. But there is a desperate need to look at what's going on inside. Could it happen anywhere? Possibly. Possibly. But that's no excuse not try to prevent it from happening ever again.

Rain, Sleet, Clouds, Wind, GrayGrayGray: Go Away

The little chimneys atop the little houses of Austria should not have to be billowing with smoke from kachelofens in the middle of March. Enough already. Fertig.

Austrian Finger Wrestling (Backstory), or New Meaning to the Phrase "Pull My Finger"

My Wall Street Journal article on finger wrestling is out in this weekend's edition--but only in the European version, I believe.

I visited the fingerwrestlers late last year (these "light" articles can take awhile to see the "light" of day).

Josef Bachleitner is mayor of the tiny town of Vormoos in the Salzburg region and he took me under his wing for a few days, introducing me to the fingerwrestlers. Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of him, but he's the guy that proudly, uh, drove me through Fucking, although there's probably a more delicate way to put that.
He's also the guy that grew up next to the priest who helped the Von Trapp's escape--the guy characterized by music promoter Max in The Sound of Music.



















Georg Baumann, Jr., his dad Georg Sr., and Gottfried Eder--in the Baumann's cellar preparing to train for fingerwrestling.




















Wrestlers each loop a finger through a small leather band like this one and the wrestling begins



















Chalking hands before a match is critical.



















Seven-year-old Alexander Eder, in his granddad's garage, takes a stab at lifiting an 87+kilo stone (nearly 200 pounds), part of the fingerwrestling training regime. Maybe in a few years, Alexander.




















I think this is the first time I've put a photo of myself on the blog. Anyhow, I was attempting to try one of the training exercise. Not much success





And of course here's the video. Don't wait for DVD.

Skopje in Difficult Times

I spent about a month in Macedonia back in the spring of 2001--coming up on eight years. At the time, the city was rife with tension. I remember one early afternoon in the newsroom when we all moved over to the big window overlooking a main pedestrian walkway to see a surge of protesters flowing through. The Albanian minority was hungry for more autonomy.
















Macedonia was on the brink of civil war and it really did feel pretty certain. A curfew was in place. No one was allowed outside after dark. I shot this one day on my way to the grocery store--yet another swell of protesters gathering strength in numbers.


Five years ago last week, Macedonia's beloved president was killed in a plane crash. Macedonians were devastated. At the time, I wrote a commentary about it for the Virginian Pilot.

Redesigning, Vietnam Style

My job in Vietnam this time was to help launch a new Sports and Entertainment newspaper--a follow-up from a December trip. Since combining sports and entertainment in one package is like asking a cat and a dog to attend the same party, I decided to have a 2 in 1: Two front pages--a flip front. This newspaper and design is the first of its kind in the country.

Here's a look at the prototype. The paper went live Monday, and apparently was very well-received by the publlic.

The violet here is darker in print, and the other colors are much more muted. The paper is tabloid-size--so this is a condensed version.

Vietnam doesn't have a history of strong newspaper design and graphic elements are completely new to the industry there. Completely new. But the staff learned surprisingly fast. And since this is a consumer-oriented paper--also the first of its kind in the country, graphics play a key role in highlighting quick bits of takeaway info.


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In Budapest, It's All About Transparency

Between the Terminal Cafe and the Gun-Me-Down Bistro. The gulash was tasty. And not fatal.