A eulogy

I'm taking the editor's privilege of posting my eulogy to my great-uncle who died over the weekend.

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Robert Hugh Kirksey was known by many names.
To those who knew saw him at the Pickens County courthouse from 1962 until 1981, he was "Judge Kirksey."
To those serving with him in World War II, during which he was decorated for his bravery, he was "Lt. Kirksey."
To those who knew him more casually around his native Pickens County, he was "Mr. Robert Hugh."
At his church, he was known as devoted servant of Christ and congregational leader.
To his wife of more than 60 years, he was known simply as "Bob."
To his four daughters, he was "Daddy."
To his other relatives, he was "Boss," a nickname bestowed upon him by the household cook when he turned 12 and asked her to begin addressing him as "Mister Robert Hugh." She opted to call him "Boss" instead.
That young man shouldn’t have worried. Respect and accolades followed Robert Hugh Kirksey for eight decades.
Though never an official designation, "storyteller" may have best fit him. Robert Hugh Kirksey always had a story to tell. Usually humorous. Never hurtful. The family favorite involved a talking parrot that belonged to his mother, and that tormented young Robert Hugh.
He collected his life's worth of stories in two books, "With Me: Growing up in the Faith" and "People and Places." They are a lasting legacy to his family and friends.
He never stopped sharing his stories. Late last month, he commenced an e-mail exchange with his great-great-nephew and namesake, Hugh Kirksey Davis, age 8.
"Your invitation to me to be your pen pal is very encouraging to me. I like the idea of being your friend," Robert Hugh Kirksey wrote to the young boy. In the space of a few days, Kirksey filled an e-mail inbox with stories -- stories about two dogs he had as a youngster (Skeeter and Bob). Stories about taking a picture of a tornado when he was 16, and seeing it published in a newspaper. Stories of playing in his school playground. Stories of getting caught with candy in his mouth during elementary school.
We can take many lessons from the life of Robert Hugh Kirksey – his undying faith in his Creator, his family, his community and his country.
I plan to tell some stories today in his honor.
-- Bob Davis

Bobcast: Torture's burning issue: What did Nancy know and when did she know it?

Latest Bobcast is up. Listen here.

Power failure in north Anniston

UPDATE: Anniston Star story is here.

Star reporters, photographers and editors are out covering a power failure in the Lenlock area. As I typed this the lights just came back on at The Star's offices.

Star's jumpStart front page on Newseum's Top 10 Front Pages

The Newseum writes:

Today’s Top Ten are a tribute to front-page designers. As more and more readers go online for their news, a designer’s challenge is to make the cover more enticing, surprising, innovative and different from the rest. There’s no rhyme to these front pages, but there’s plenty of reason to take a second look — and plunk down a few quarters for the whole package. Note to The Anniston Star: You dress up well. (Emphasis mine.)

Link is here.

Bobcast: Unraveling hits home

Latest Bobcast is up. Listen here or read below.

In 2003, New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman published a book criticizing the Bush administration called "The Great Unraveling."

Six years later and with the affects of those policies playing out in rising jobless claims, failing industries and declining home values, Americans are left wondering when the great and terrible unraveling ends.

The butterfly effect is usually summed up by saying, "A butterfly’s flapping wings in Brazil sets off a tornado in Texas." The economic butterfly effect is in play all around us.

Sunday’s Anniston Star article by Dan Whisenhunt provides a local example. As part of its restructuring General Motors and Chrysler are shuttering dealerships, here and across the country. In the abstract, it’s a perfectly sensible idea aimed at coping with new economic realities.

In its real-life application, closed dealerships can mean pain for more than the employees at a local dealership.

Many car dealers, like many other responsible local enterprises, are pillars of a local community, sponsoring youth sports teams and contributing thousands of dollars to charity.

Body blows are landing on local communities, many of which have already endured the rise of mega-marts and subsequent decline of mom-and-pop shops. From retail to banking to media, local authority if not local ownership has given way to large corporate control based in a far away headquarters.

It’s unfair to count this rise of the corporations and decline of locally owned businesses as all bad. The advantages of centralized power – big retail, if you will – can mean lower prices and greater continuity in doing business.

Yet, like that Brazilian butterfly flapping its wings and damaging Texas villages, trouble at the top of these corporations is a pain that won’t be isolated.

A new start

By Ben Cunningham
Metro Editor
05-10-2009

The Star's Monday edition will feature a new look starting this week, with changes to both the format and content.

The new Monday paper, re-branded "jumpStart," will be printed in single-fold, tabloid form, 11 inches by 17 inches. Editors say it's an effort to freshen the paper's approach to news on Mondays.

Editor Bob Davis said the redesign is the result of a months-long process taking into account editors' and readers' thoughts on what a new version of the paper should look like. He said the goal was a product that could be useful throughout the week.

What readers see Monday morning will be the paper's attempt "to try to keep up with the changing readership habits and appeal to new readers while staying true to our core mission, which is community journalism," Davis said.

The most obvious physical change is the tabloid format, which Managing Editor Anthony Cook likened to a magazine in the way it feels and handles.

A color photograph from a single story dominates the covers of a template and the first edition, with colors and graphics directing readers to other content inside.

Editors plan each week to feature a single story, typically a profile of someone in The Star's coverage area, and not necessarily a newsmaker.

"What we want to do is highlight the people of our community," Cook said. "These are your neighbors who you might know, but this will help you to really know them."

The story planned for this Monday's edition is about Blake Waddell of Hokes Bluff, who runs a faith-based boxing program in Gadsden for local youth.

Another key feature in the new jumpStart is a look at the week ahead, with details on what's expected in local government, entertainment and cultural events.

"These things will help you plan out your week," Cook said.

Davis noted that other newspapers throughout the country are experimenting with new formats, including switching to tabloid editions. He cited the Chicago Tribune, which in January switched to a tab size for newsstand sales five days per week while keeping home delivery copies in the familiar broadsheet format. In March The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News ended home delivery four days per week, instead making tab-size editions available at newsstands.

The Star will retain its traditional format the other six days of the week, and jumpStart will be delivered to subscribers just as the other days' issues are.

Cook and Davis said jumpStart also will contain regular coverage of any important news happening on Sunday.

Realizing the departure from tradition may elicit some comments from readers, the paper's staff has set up several ways to invite feedback.

Continuing The Star's recent "Grill the Editor" sessions, Davis will be at Jack's restaurant in Anniston (1900 Quintard Ave.) on Monday morning from 6:30 to 7:30 to discuss the new Monday paper.

The Star's marketing department will have free copies of jumpStart for the first 100 customers at Jack's locations in Heflin, Munford, Coldwater, Oxford, Anniston and Lenlock.

Also Monday, Davis will be hosting a digital "Grill the Editor" at noon on www.annistonstar.com. Readers who want a sneak peak at the format with a prototype edition can visit annistonstar.com/jumpstart and leave comments.

The Star also has set up a phone line at 235-3552, at which readers can leave messages with their thoughts on the new format. Readers also can e-mail comments to Davis at bdavis@annistonstar.com.

Noble Street Festival video

Sights and scenes from last weekend's fun on Noble Street.

Star stands by reporting on Cleburne schools

David Easley, Cleburne County schools superintendent, takes issue with a story in Tuesday's Star, Cleburne County Board votes to not renew school employees due to poor job performance.

A fax sent by Easley on school district letterhead Tuesday to Cleburne district principals reads:

"In the Anniston Star today, the article regarding pink slips in our system was totally misquoted by the reporter. As we all know, this is not the first time misquotes have been made in this paper and probably will not be the last. I would like to reassure everyone the information that was printed is not at all true and that no reasons are ever to be given for pink slips."

The newsroom of The Anniston Star disagrees with the fax's assessment. We stand by our reporting and the accuracy of the quotes attributed to the superintendent.

On the air

Had a fun time this morning visiting local radio station WDNG. (Background here.)

Thanks to WDNG's Chuck Stricklin and J.J. Dark for allowing me on to discuss our madeover Monday edition, jumpStart.

We also took several calls from readers, some with complaints and some with compliments. Thanks to all who listened and/or called in. It was fun.

One bit of housekeeping. One caller asked about restaurant health inspection notices. We no longer publish them in the print edition. They are available online at annistonstar.com. The most recent is available here.

Vern Gosdin, RIP

Over the weekend, a Roanoke subscriber complained that we had not written a story on the passing of country music singer and Woodland native Vern Gosdin. The e-mailer wrote:

I subscribe to your paper to keep up with things of regional interest. How could you not report on country music star Vern Gosdin passing away? He was born and raised in Randolph County (Woodland to be exact) and has many relatives and fans in your coverage area. If by some chance I missed your report on his passing I'm not the only one. Thank you for your time.

Ours was a sin of omission, not commission. Our editors had simply missed the news of Gosdin's death, even though it warranted obituaries in the Los Angeles Times and Billboard magazine.
To us, the complaint was more like a news tip. This morning's paper had our obituary, nicely penned by staffer Nick Cenegy:

"The Voice" sang country music with bare-boned honesty.
Randolph County residents and country music fans remember Woodland-native Vern Gosdin, 74, who died in Nashville early last week, as a singer and songwriter whose lyrics were at times aching with lonesome and other times soaring with love-struck.
Friends remember him as an ordinary country guy, a lover of fried okra mixed with cream corn, who was relatable and intelligent.
Gosdin's country music wasn't the slick-marketed alternative rock blend that has since blurred the lines between Nashville and Los Angeles.

I e-mailed our Roanoke reader to offer thanks for sending along the tip. The response from reader was, "Thank you, you have redeemed yourself."
That's good to know.

Grill the Editor update

As mentioned earlier, I'll be at Courthouse Cafe this Monday morning.

The following Monday -- May 11 -- we'll have another Grill the Editor session at Jack's in Anniston.

Bobcast: Chickens in the city

Latest Bobcast is up. Listen here or read below.

It’s a twist on the old saying. The updated version is that if it looks like a chicken, clucks like a chicken and pecks like a chicken, most cities don’t want it around.

Anniston is no different. Its city code bans fowl, except for exotic breeds.
Some friends found this out first-hand several years ago. A chicken who had apparently fallen off some farmer’s truck took up residence in our friend’s yard. My friends looked after the rooster, feeding it and giving it a name, Cogburn. Not so fast, said the city bureaucrats, who pointed to the city code while hauling Cogburn away.

The reasons for the city prohibitions are obvious enough – public health concerns as well fears over noise.

The reasons more city dwellers are pushing back against the bans are equally obvious. They are rising food prices as well as health concerns over eating poultry products raised on all sorts of growth hormones while confined to massive corporate farming operations.

Its part of the locavore movement, to eat local. Increasingly, American consumers are concerned with how groceries get to their table. With food-borne scares cropping up with greater frequency, the reasons obvious enough. A Google search reveals urban chicken-raising is a spreading across the country.

Thursday’s New York Times notes that some cities are taking a “don’t cluck, don’t tell” policy. That means so long as city residents keep just a few hens in their backyard (no noisy roosters, please), then the bureaucrats look the other way. After all, dogs and cats, which are legal in most towns, can be just as noisy or dirty.

It’s too late to save poor Cogburn. But if the pressure continues apace others here and elsewhere may somebody soon enjoy fresh eggs from their backyards

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Me, on the radio

I'll be on WDNG/AM-1450 from 8:20 until 9 a.m. this coming Tuesday. The topic: Coming changes at The Anniston Star, including our revamped Monday paper and a redesigned Web site.

Wednesday's Star: The tale of a '54 Pontiac

This is my favorite story from today's paper. It's a nice job by Bill Edwards, who last week wrote about getting out of his own car and walking around town. - Bob
Before Pontiac was a sports car, it helped raise families
By Bill Edwards
Staff Writer
04-29-2009

One of the strong points of a 1954 Pontiac was the way it hauled children, assuming its owner was handy with tools.

That's one of the recollections retired Anniston physician Kirby Bryant had Tuesday about a favorite old car, as he and no doubt millions of other Pontiac owners pondered the sad news they had heard from General Motors: During 2010, Pontiac will become automotive history.

Like Plymouth and Oldsmobile of the recent past, the brand has fallen victim to cost-cutting. But also, like the passing of a popular celebrity, the passing of a popular car line evokes memories.

Former owners of Studebakers, Packards and DeSotos know what that's like.

Bryant got his Pontiac at the same time he married, in 1955 — that's because his bride, Shirley, had bought it new the previous year at a Tupelo, Miss., dealer.

"Our honeymoon was driving from Tupelo to Boston to go back to school," said Bryant, a graduate of Harvard Medical School.

Not long after, when their two children at the time were babies and Bryant was in the Air Force, numerous trips between Texas and Tupelo were necessary. To make the trip safer and more comfortable for the tired little ones, Bryant created a wooden frame that was just the right size to fit in the back seat of their Catalina coupe and hold a baby crib mattress.

In general practice at the time, Bryant made house calls in the car from 1959-65, then passed it along to a cousin to drive for a while; the couple brought it with them when they moved to Anniston in 1969.

Until the late 1990s, the car hung around their house like an old dog, sometimes out front, sometimes in the driveway in the back.

The last time Bryant fussed over it was when one of those aforementioned back-seat children, his daughter Kathy, got married in 1985. The vaguely light orange chariot was cleaned up enough to be presentable at a Country Club reception.

"It was in pretty good shape," he recalled.

Since, then, however, time has taken a toll. Sometime in the late '90s, Bryant said, the car was sent to a family member's house in Wellborn, and there it has remained. Restoration was anticipated, but the man who was going to do the work died.

When a good battery is under the hood, the old "Straight-8" still cranks and runs, but with flat tires it's not going anywhere fast.

People who still want to create their own Pontiac memories, or those who already own Pontiacs shouldn't notice any changes in the wake of GM's announcement, said Ken Wesenberg, owner of Classic Pontiac-Cadillac-GMC in Anniston.

"It's business as usual. No changes at all," he said Tuesday afternoon.

All warranty work will be honored, he said.

Additionally, not only does the dealership have a "sufficient" supply of Pontiacs on hand now, it has more cars on the way and "we are still able to order," he said.

"We're not seeing it going away in two weeks or two months or six months," Wesenberg said.

Pontiac has long been a familiar brand in Anniston. Fowler Motor Co. sold the cars in the late 1940s, then P. O. Wilson bought the dealership from Marvin Fowler in 1954 and continued to sell Pontiacs from the 600 block of Noble Street.

In 1978 Wilson Pontiac-Cadillac-GMC moved from Noble Street to the site where Classic Pontiac-Cadillac-GMC currently does business.

Bobcast: Budget cuts and pandemic preparedness

Latest Bobcast is up. Listen here.

Starting May 11, JumpStart your Mondays

UPDATE: The launch of our new made-over Monday product is delayed by one week. JumpStart will now make its debut on Monday, May 11. The delay is caused by computer software adjustments required in the billing department, far out of the control of the newsroom.



(Image from prototype.)
Starting on the second Monday in May, the Monday edition of The Anniston Star will undergo a radical makeover.

We'll still have the same local, state, national and international news, columns, comics, editorials plus great sport coverage. But it will arrive with new bonus features in a different-sized package.

On May 11, look for JumpStart in a tabloid-sized format. (Tabloid-sized, but not tabloid-sensationalized.) It will feature colorful magazine-styled layout and a variety of features:

► In-depth profiles of local people
► Weekly calendar of events
► Enhanced workplace news
► More community and neighborhood news
► Health and fitness tips
► Lifestyle features, tips and advice
► A listing of entertainment options
► How to navigate office politics
► Personal-financial advice

You'll be seeing and hearing more about this Monday change in the coming weeks ahead of the May 11 launch.

JumpStart promo is up

Click here to see and here promo.

Grill the editor next Monday morning

I'll be at Anniston's Courthouse Cafe next Monday morning from 7 until 8 to meet with readers and discuss The Star's launch of JumpStart.

Crossword in the crosshairs

We had a technical problem today with our Crossword puzzle.
The far right column of the puzzle was missing, and some puzzle fans, understandably, were not happy.
Here's what happened:
We have a new wire service providing our crossword puzzles. (The old crossword was discontinued.) On occasion, the new puzzle doesn't quite fit properly in the space that's reserved for it, which led to the missing column in today's paper.
Fortunately, there's a computer function that allows us to manually re-size the puzzle to make it fit properly, and that will be done in the future. This step wasn't necessary with the old puzzle because it automatically re-sized itself to fit in the alloted space, and only recently did we discover that re-sizing will sometimes be necessary with the new puzzle.
We apologize for the inconvenience, and will try to prevent it in the future.
Thank you for your patience.

A forced march for Earth Day

6 miles, 3 ½ hours and 1 fish: I reduced my carbon footprint with my own 2 feet
By Bill Edwards
Staff Writer
04-22-2009

The oddest thing I saw walking the route from The Anniston Star building to the Starbucks coffee shop in Oxford was a dead fish.

Really. It was on the east side of Anniston's South Quintard, at E Street, just lying there on the sidewalk. A com-pletely whole dried-out dead fish.

I'm taking it as proof that this area was indeed once covered by a shallow ocean.

The exercise that produced this discovery was an effort to reduce my carbon footprint on this Earth Day 2009. If one were to give up one's car, how far would one be walking to take care of essential activities (not necessarily grabbing a cup of coffee)?

The answer, in this case, 6.2 miles, give or take.

The walk began at 8:50 a.m. Tuesday from the newspaper driveway, and ended at 12:15 p.m. inside the coffee shop. Following in his car, Star multimedia intern Whit McGhee manned the video camera to document my progress. It took nearly 3 ½ hours, but included along the way were pauses to talk, take pictures, use the facilities at a sympa-thetic business, etc. That means the distance could easily be walked in three hours, maybe 2:45 if one were brisk about it.

I found that surprising. It makes walking, at least in the flatlands, seem more feasible.

My legs did start getting a little sore, though. Later, it was good to sit down.

Additionally, sidewalks or some other created footpath would be good to have the entire distance, not just the por-tion from 22nd Street south to Greenbrier-Dear Road.

Along the way — the entire path was on the east side of the highway, facing oncoming traffic — the ground was surprisingly clean. We're gonna give credit to the city prisoners (the fellas in the gray-and-black stripes) who are taken outdoors under guard to keep the roadsides picked up. Thanks, guys. Oh, by the way, there's a dead armadillo down there in front of one of the King car lots.

Random note: Billboards are really big when you're not driving past them. I observed this at the Putt-Putt golf course.

Even the drainage ditch above 22nd Street was generally clean. I could see the individual segments of old paving that made it up — it looked like an old Roman road. One chunk of stone was evidently a piece of sidewalk from town: The abbreviation AVE, as in "avenue," can clearly be seen.

The walk through Anniston was pleasant as always. Founding fathers would likely be pleased to see that so much of their landscaping survived, and was even improved upon when dogwoods were first planted in the Quintard parkway around 1964.

The sidewalk down the hill south of Fifth Street was pretty ordinary as sidewalks go. I did wonder about a steep flight of stone steps that led down to the "A Street" neighborhood. Who built them? When? Who needed them?

In that territory, I saw the fish on the sidewalk. Shown a photo, newsroom observers declared it was a catfish; not unreasonable, given how a restaurant was like 30 yards away.

Maybe it was trying to escape.

The path south of Greenbrier-Dear Road, as noted previously, lacks a sidewalk. This doesn't make foot travel impos-sible, but if someone were attempting the route in flip-flops, for example, it would become messier.

The most interesting feature on the southern leg of the journey was the viaduct over the railroad tracks at the Annis-ton-Oxford boundary. It's a long way down to those tracks and Snow Creek that runs beside them. That, combined with the relatively low guard rail and the shimmy of the roadbed as semis rumble past, creates keen incentive to reach the other side as soon as possible. I was disappointed that no one had bothered to carve into the bridge's stonework any indication of the year in which it was built.

Under the bridge were signs of occasional human habitation. Count your blessings, people.

The path through Oxford held no unusual hazards. Although no sidewalk exists, the verges are wide enough to allow a safe walk. Motorists here, as everywhere else along the route, were polite. Well, no one yelled anything rude, even though I looked awfully suspicious.

Upon finally reaching the Starbucks service counter, I enjoyed seeing an old friend making my coffee and serving a yummy pastry.

All right, Whit, let's go back to the paper. My feet hurt.