Phone rings at 11, “Hi kiddo. Lunch?”
We meet on the corner at noon, you always get there first.
Shocker, you’re wearing a Cubs hat.
And your Library badge.
And your “great to see you” grin.
We get our sandwiches, and a root beer for you.
Then walk over to the garden and sit on our bench.
Remember when we were three on the bench?
Remember when we were two?
And now I am here this Monday, just one.
It’s an incongruously beautiful day.
The sun and blue sky taunt the sorrow.
An acappella group out of nowhere gets off a charter bus and is singing on the corner.
What’s up with that?
On a regular Monday, that would have launched yet another conversation.
Beginning with the acappella group and ending who knows where.
Along the way covering politics, art, books, music, god, baseball.
But, it’s not a regular Monday. So instead, I close my eyes and listen. The music is lovely.
It washes over me, the sun shines on my face.
They finish the song, get back on the bus and drive away.
Just like that.
I sit and listen to the quiet.
And I think of your curiosity and intelligence, Ken.
Your ever-present optimism.
The twinkle in your eye.
Your strength.
Your smile.
Your ability to accept and move on to what’s next.
And if there’s a heaven, that’s what’s next.
When you got there did you ask, “Is this Iowa?”
Ken, may your journey forward be filled with biking, sailing, writing, ice cream, Christmas eves, dark beer on tap, crosswords, It’s A Wonderful Life, a bathroom always nearby, and of course—the Cubs winning the World Series.
I think Ken was the stubbornest man I’ve ever known and one of the most contentious. You could walk into the office dripping wet, tell him it was raining outside and he’d question your credentials as a weatherman.
I remember when he first showed up in Washington, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed—and young—I tried to take him under my wing, show him the ropes, give him some advice. Fat chance. He kept questioning my assumptions and making me defend them. Within a year he knew the ropes better than I ever did.
That act could be a little irritating at times but it was very valuable to have a colleague than didn’t let you get away with sloppy thinking. He was that colleague.
He carried that same attitude into his own work, the hallmark of which was thoroughness. He was especially good at breaking down a complex statistical survey and converting it to English. He did good work and laughed at all my jokes. What more can one ask of a colleague?
I think his stubborn streak served him well during the last cruel decade of his life when fate dealt him a lousy hand.
Despite suffering a disability that would have laid most of us low, he never gave in to it. He insisted on riding his bike long after he should have and continued his writing career, producing not only a weekly column but a book, all the while maintaining what seemed to be an upbeat outlook.
I was proud to call him friend. And if he were here, he’d probably ask me what I meant by “proud.”
By George Anthan, Former Washington Bureau Chief at the Des Moines Register
To say that Ken fit into the Register’s Washington Bureau activities doesn’t cover reality.
Ken fit seamlessly into a move by the Register to de-emphasize Washington coverage which focused on national issues in favor of regional issues centered on Iowa, and especially on food and agriculture.
When he found a large commercial farm operation that reaped a harvest of federal dollars, it made it quickly to Page One. There were many large farmers who complained bitterly. On one of my Ragbrai rides, I stopped one day in a town square to rest and get a drink of water. There was a big banner across the main street welcoming the Des Moines Register, etc. The fellow I was sitting next to identified himself as a big farmer who had received large subsidy checks. “I’d love to get my hands on this guy ‘Pins,’ he told me. I weasled my way out of town.
This meant Ken became an expert on how agriculture and food policy was formed, who formed it, who benefited and who didn’t.
Ken was at the center of coverage which kept Washington output as a defining factor of The Register’s daily news report.
Journalism publications of that time pointed to The Register as an example of how Washington bureaus could serve their readers, helping to ensure the bureau’s very existence. Ken soon became an expert on Iowa’s economy and its prospects. He explored how rural areas in general could be economic success stories while the small towns in many rural regions were declining.
Ken went to West Virginia to report on how economic declines affected individuals in its small towns. He went there to report on the impact of ignoring economic troubles. This led him to study the census for details on poverty in Iowa.
In doing this, Ken began looking at airline service, which is a factor in the economic growth of a region. He found that the cost of air- line service in the Des Moines area, for example, was significantly higher than in Omaha or Kansas City.
At one point he went to Omaha’s air field and found that many of the cars in the parking lots had Iowa licenses. I raised this issue during a dinner with some Register editors, told them of what Ken wanted to do, and was discouraged in this venture as the economic impact would not be of general interest to the traveling public.
However, at a subsequent, and unrelated, meeting, some business leaders specifically raised this point, and Register editors quickly embraced Ken’s project, which included reports from New England on how affordable air service was a chief factor in a city’s — and region’s — economy.
Ken played a major role in covering what we called “the ethanol wars” of the late 1990s, about which he wrote “a million stories” in the words of bureau reporter Jane Norman. These “million” stories were cited by journalism reviews as examples of a newspaper’s serving its readers.
Ken did his share of stories on what Washington-based reporters called our “sickening stories” featuring “filthy” meat, with carcases covered with fecal material. He and I had a sort of competition on who could produce the most lurid examples of filthy meat and chickens. One story we held back so it could be delivered to homes on Thanksgiving Day. This was about a Kansas City doctor who felt a “tickle” in his throat and removed a tape worm several feet long. This was too much for Don Kaul, who threatened to “stop the paper.”
Through all of this, Ken did his share of covering routine events: Iowans at presidential inaugurals; international meetings on trade; the activities of Iowa’s congressional delegation. There were more than a few unpleasant lunches I attended with Iowa senators and representatives who had complaints about Ken’s work. Never, not once, were these complaints justified.
Ken and I had a special friendship that went beyond our work together at the Des Moines Register. There was the magical visit he paid to Kansas City and wonderful days spent together there.
Among the many places we went to there were the Negro Leagues Museum, the National Jazz Museum, national World War I Memorial, and the Truman Library. He wanted to taste Arthur Bryant’s Barbecue and he wanted to see the place where the Mafia put their victims into car trunks.
I will miss Ken and our times together when I would visit Maryland.
The first memory I have of Ken is a summer morning when Maddie and I were six or seven years old. I was going to camp with Maddie for the day and Ken drove us there. Tony was in the front seat, Maddie and I were in the back, and as we’re driving along Maddie and Tony both start to say things like, “Dad please!” and “Come on, Dad, do it”. Ken would respond, almost coyly with, “No, no, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” This was again met by Maddie and Tony asking over and over for him to do “it”, whatever “it” was. I had no idea what was going on when all of a sudden Ken guns the gas and we go flying over a speed bump. We all screamed and laughed and asked for more and sure enough every speed bump we encountered on the way to camp that day was taken on with full speed and 4 laughing voices.
The next memory I have of Ken is 3 years later, another summer morning this time with Kim and Mookie, who the Pins’ had just gotten the previous winter. We were sailing along when all of a sudden, young, curious, unable-to-swim Mookie decided it would be a good idea to jump off the boat into the Bay. Maddie and I, of course, found this hilarious until we saw the panic in Kim’s eyes as she jumped right in after him. Ken, who had been steering the boat, decided to hand me, a ten-year-old girl who had never been on a sailboat before, the tiller as he also went to Mookie’s aid. I’m not sure if it was his trust in my steering abilities rather then his concern for Mookie that led him in this decision, but he seemed to think it would be fine, and I decided to take that as a sign of trust he had in me.
These are my earliest memories of Ken that I can recall, and I’ve been racking my brain for more, craving specific snapshots of times spent together. But what I’ve realized is its the moments in between, the moments that all blur together; Of countless dinners and Christmas Eves; Of walking into the front door of the Pins house and seeing him slowly rise out of his chair to say hello; The sound of his voice saying, “Hey kiddo” when he saw it was me; It’s those moments that have been a backdrop of my life since I was 4 years old, and its those moments that mean so much and will be missed the most.
Since my father was first diagnosed with a pituitary adenoma – a form of brain tumor – in 1999, I have periodically attempted to find his articles through various mainstream and academic online search engines. Yet for a man whose byline appeared in the Des Moines Register nearly everyday of the week, his digital record is surprisingly sparse. It turns out that the best repository for his career’s work, which ended just as Internet journalism was becoming a reality for newspapers large and small, is in the family filing cabinet.
The fact that I cannot Google search his name and receive more than a few hits is both evidence of the piddling archive of his former employer, but also the era in which he worked. Lest his memory fade into the tangible - if inaccessible – record of paper and ink, I want there to be just a few pixels out there in the Internet ether that describe what an incredible guy he was. The next few posts will be memories read by family, friends, and colleagues at his service a week ago. Obituaries for my father ran in the Dubuque Telegraph Herald, Dyersville Commercial and the Washington Post. He passed away on April 16th, 2012.
—
So the story has it that my father’s dying wish was to see one last game from the bleachers in Wrigley Field. But after seeing the opening week’s box scores, in which both Kerry Wood and Carlos Marmol blew late inning leads, he decided, “Ah, forget it.” Then he checked out.
—
My father was an incredibly loyal man. To earn his respect was to win his love, and there was rarely a distinction between the two. He was a loving father, a dedicated husband, and a compassionate friend to both close acquaintances and strangers alike.
He was also an extremely patient man, and I’m living testament to that fact.
Long before I took up distance running in high school, he and I decided to participate in the annual Thanksgiving Day Turkey Chase. Deeming the 10K too long for a seven-year-old, we decided the two-mile fun run seemed more our speed. My father’s only instructions at the outset were, “Tony, pace yourself.”
Now, I imagine if my father felt he had to issue a belated warning, he was already aware of the kind of trouble he was in. I, of course, had visions of a world record or at least a gold medal. No one had told me that, in a “fun run,” they did not keep time, nor did they give out prizes. When the gun went off I shot out of the pack in a full sprint, weaving in and out of runners, cutting them off with little regard for their or my safety. My father, annoyed but collected, followed closely behind.
“Tony. Pace yourself.”
This phase of the race lasted no more than a few hundred meters, after which my pace rapidly slowed, first to a hurried jog, then a fatigued trudge, and finally, little more than a weak power walk. At last, exhausted and defeated, I stopped. After allowing me a quick breather, my father looked at me and said, “Are you ready to pace yourself?” His eyebrows were raised in manner that suggested this was not so much of a question as an instruction. Obediently, I nodded in the affirmative…
… and then took off sprinting again.
We repeated this cycle – sprint, slow, stop, sprint, slow, stop – for most of the race. Each time, as runners streamed by us, my father held his temper. We were passed by old men, fat women, children much younger and smaller than me. Still, he remained cool.
It wasn’t until we were passed by a man on crutches that he finally cracked.
With a few choice words, he explained exactly how the rest of the race was going to proceed, and at an even pace, we trotted out the last few hundred yards. And when we crossed the line there were no records, medals, confetti, or for that matter, too many people left.
And we still lost to the guy on crutches.
—
If my father was able to exact a measure of revenge, it came in editing my school papers. Taking a paper to my father was like spending all afternoon on the beach building a grandiose sand castle, only to watch the evening’s high tide reduce it to a sad, wet lump. He did not share my youthful enthusiasm for large word counts, nor was he particularly impressed with my extensive use of the thesaurus – then, still in book form. He wanted only the facts, distilled to their purist, in the most accessible and comprehensible manner.
His talent and professionalism as a journalist were unquestionable. His career, though cut short, bore the mark of a reporter with exceptional diligence and the highest ethical standards. In an era where editors resorted to sensationalism to pump a few last gasps into the dying lungs of the print newspaper industry, his work was evenhanded and fair. And whether he was on the campaign trail during the Iowa Caucuses, covering Congressional maneuverings on agriculture and commerce policy or a simply writing a personal interest piece on a farmer in Dubuque County, it was always interesting.
And if his job while tasked to the Des Moines Register’s Washington Bureau was to sift through the mess of Capitol Hill politics to give his readership the information most relevant to their lives in Iowa, his role as a father was to ensure that his children never strayed to far from the Midwestern upbringing that both he and my mother shared. The incredible sense of fairness and equity permeated each of his stories was equally present in the lessons of our home, as was the ever-present emphasis on responsibility, hard work, and trustworthiness.
—
I’d like to close by talking a bit about heroes, and specifically about the loss of heroes, as through both my childhood and my early adulthood it seems that every year the number of people I can direct my admiration toward diminishes.
It may have started when Roberto Alomar, then an Orioles second basemen spat in the face of umpire John Hirshbeck, or when Sammy Sosa’s rapid muscle development became too dramatic to attribute to any natural cause. Locally, the game of Which-Politician-Will-Disappoint-Us-Next has become an almost seasonal sport. And perhaps most recently, as a fan of Penn State football, there came the time when it was impossible to ignore that the moral and ethical lapses of an otherwise deified football coach. Through the years, one by one, these otherwise superhuman figures have failed in front of our eyes.
All the while, there was my father, who under my nose maintained the prosaic, if consistent, single-mindedness of what was right and what was not. Well after the brain tumor had cost him his more cerebral faculties, he would be there, sitting in his chair, and I could walk through the door and know full well that in any dilemma I was confronted with his advice would provide clear and resolved perspective on the best way forward. His determination, in both overcoming his original tumor as well as his more recent diagnosis, was incredibly heartening. When my mother told him the median life expectancy for his new tumor was two- to five-years, already a bit of a stretch, he soon began talking about what he could do with year six.
And yet, while he was living, I would never have thought to call such simple acts heroic. Despite his enduring optimism and unyielding ability to live with and overcome the indignities that life had dealt him, I was ignorant or possibly unappreciative of the ways in which he enriched the life of my family and me.
But if his early departure has cost me a living moral compass, it has at the very least opened my eyes to another heroic figure in my life: My mother.
My mother, for the last thirteen years, has been nothing other than the stalwart leader of our family. Taking on a role she never imagined, she has been the backbone and provider for a family that would have crumbled under the guidance of a lesser woman. And though I know neither she nor my father could not have done it alone – our family has been fortunate to have the most incredible, tight-knit group of family, and close family-friends – she stands alone in my admiration for personal strength and perseverance.
And, of course, there are all of you, who have gathered here today from the most extreme distances and under the shortest of circumstances. Your love and compassion is overwhelming. I cannot begin to express how much it means to me, my sister, my mother, and of course, my father.
In our representation section this semester, we were tasked with designing a chair (Note to non-architects: ‘Representation’ is our way of saying ‘drawing’). Though we finished the project last week, I’m not going to be sharing mine, at least for broad and anonymous consumption, any time soon. It needs at least another two or three weeks worth of work. And when I think about taking the time to do that work, I think man, what else could I be doing with my time besides making this chair? (See above).
Old Folks Go Gaga
This is one of those videos that, when seen for the first time in a public place, elicit choking and/or the spitting of coffee as liquid and laughter mix to create a near death experience. Or at least, that what happened to me. Apparently this is from something akin to a Macy’s Day parade, in telethon form. Evan Osnos explains:
This clip comes from Hunan TV’s Mid-Autumn Festival celebration, an annual television extravaganza roughly along the lines of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade telecast, i.e. you remember it exists when you flip past and find it. The Mid-Autumn Festival is a time when families get together, though, like many filial responsibilities in China these days, people in the cities find it increasingly difficult to maintain. The folks on stage are from the Hunan Elderly Government Employees’ Activity Center and Chorus. The important part of the lyrics:
Dear kids, life is busy and you are working too much! Although you don’t have time to come home to see us tonight you can sit in front the television and watch Mom and Dad turn into Lady Gaga for a second!
In China, truth be told, the video passed by without the slightest comment. Only now are people starting to write things online along the lines of: Do you know that this video is apparently really popular in the West?
Ai Weiwei Sings “Fuck Your Mother” to the Chinese Government
How to repay so many donations made to Ai Weiwei’s defense against accusations of tax evasion by the Chinese government. In a song, apparently. By popular request, Ai’s Twitter followers asked him to record himself singing ‘Caonima,’ a Chinese word meaning ‘grass mud horse,’ but sounds nearly identical to the words meaning “fuck your mother.” The term is popular in internet circles among social activists and Chinese youth who use the term as a way of identifying similarly minded government critics. A translated version of the Caonima song can be found here (Warning: The lyrics are a bit lewd and unquestionably offensive).
Prior to his detainment in April, Ai also took a series of photographs showing himself nude except for a stuffed grass mud horse covering his man-parts. Originally believed to be the source of pornography charges also brought against Ai, it has now been reported that these charges also involve his former assistant Zhao Zhao, who took a photo of Ai and four nude women, titled “One Tiger, Eight Breasts.”
Wencan Xue Our representation course gives the type assignments that you want to spend a lot of time on. Unfortunately, circumstance conspires against it and they get put off until the night before. When these popped up the yesterday, I was impressed and figured they were worth sharing.
When I left Wencan late last night, he was was talking to his mother – in China. Even after that, he still found time to make these two pieces of pretty. Well done.
Brittany Gacsy G can get down on some infographics, clearly. Too bad she doesn’t feel similarly about spell check. Still, this by far the most complex illustration of multiple data sets in the class.
John Guinn
Dorin Baul
So here’s a piece of awkward: I’ve never met this Dorin fellow before. He’s just another face in the sea of really tired faces. I like this graphic though, distilled to its essential elements. Who knew it only required 5,487 miles of chain link fence (yeah, I added it up, in my head) to keep our borders safe – from Canada.
Daniel McTavish
Jordan Hicks While in China, Jordan had his shoe pooped on from a height of approximately seven feet by a small, Chinese toddler. The exact physics of this are still under dispute, however the soiled left foot from a pair of Toms was presented as corroborative evidence. This has nothing to do with his lovely infographics, however I feel that as a friend, it is incumbent upon me to repeat this story to as many people as possible.
b
Bennett Scorcia
Joe Filipelli The most enjoyable thing about this is it’s undeniable I-don’t-give-a-sh*t approach to the assignment. Lifted background image? Check. Approximated quantitative data? Sounds about right. Loose perspective line work to the contours of the can? Why bother. And still, they’re sexy. I have a particular liking for Mr. Fish.
Hans Papke Our class’s Scandinavian representative, obviously.
