Messenger reunion

Yesterday (Saturday, August 12, 2012) I attended a reunion of former Canandaigua Messenger newspaper employees.
The reunion was held in the large atrium of Finger Lakes Community College.
The atrium is being renamed in honor of George Ewing, Sr. (“you-ing”), former owner of the Canandaigua Messenger.
Mr. Ewing was instrumental in founding the college.
He editorialized it in his newspaper, and gave legacy gifts.
I was tempted to bail, my wife having died, but there were people I thought I might see.
Chief among these was Stevie Circh (“Kurch”), an editor who quit not too long after I started employ.
Circh was hired as a sports-editor, but ended up doing quite a few of the inside pages of the newspaper.
Copy taken from Associated-Press and local columnists.
Circh was a master of the snide comment, as was I, so we worked well together.
We’d toss nerf-balls at the office TV when “Teletubbies” came on.
In fact, Circh would retune the TV to get Teletubbies.
Here came Circh, ambling toward the atrium.
I hadn’t seen him for years.
“You’re the main reason I came to this shindig,” I shouted.
Another was Pam Hoyle (as in “coil”), known to me as “Pammy.”
Pam’s husband died about a year ago.
“We’re in the same boat,” I said, my wife having died about four months ago.
“Tell me it gets better,” I said to her.
“Well, not exactly,” she said.
“When Fred died I couldn’t leave the house,” she said. “Now I do outdoor work.”
“Grief like that is something I know all too well,” I said.
“Although what I get is leaving the house because I can’t stand being alone inside it. It hurts too much.”
“An empty house,” she said.
“I’m all too familiar with that,” I said.
Someone once told me Pam was strong. She’d be able to survive the death of her beloved husband.
“Yeah,” I said. “Strong like me, yet also devastated and heartbroken, as am I.”
My best contact at this reunion was a surprise, stately and beautiful Kathy Hovis (“hoe-viss”).
Hovis was an editor when I began at the Messenger as a post-stroke unpaid intern.
She let me take over the newspaper’s “Community-Page,” at that time the newspaper’s only fully computer-paginated page.
I’d dredge up content, and then assemble the page in a 486-PC.
She watched over me, but then let do it even when she went on vacation.
No supervision; I was on-my-own.
“Are you sure you want me doing this?” I’d ask.
“I might be too persnickety or controversial.”
Yet she encouraged me, and what a joy it was to use Quark software instead of Microsoft Word©.
I had done my bus-union’s voluntary newsletter in Word, which wasn’t as flexible.
Quark let me do things Word wouldn’t do.
A real word-processor, or should I say paginator?
And she let me do it; “you were doing a good job,” she kept saying.
Completed, I’d send the “Community-Page” to the newspaper’s image-setter, a process that extended to everything else when the newspaper computerized.
“You saved my butt,” I kept telling her.
“Imagine if this newspaper was managed by a Simon Legree. I would have walked away.”
The reunion had old newspaper pages posted, annual pictures of the newspaper’s staff.
“They got me in Editorial,” I kept pointing out.
“My job-title was ‘typist.’”
“But you were Editorial, sorta,” one said.
“Everything and anything,” I said. “I had to pull teeth to get them to admit I was an ‘Editorial Assistant.’”
I also commented to another that when I retired published school honor-rolls became a rarity.
I’d get honor-rolls e-mail, and then process with Word into useable copy.
I tried to show others how I did it, but they were buffaloed.
The newspaper required honor-rolls be ready-to-run, or a typist hand-entered them if she had time.

• The Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper is from where I retired almost seven years ago. Best job I ever had — I worked there almost 10 years. (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city nearby where I live in western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 14 miles away.)
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993, from which I pretty much recovered. After my stroke I began at the Messenger as an unpaid intern. I was later hired by them.
• My beloved wife of 44 years died of cancer April 17, 2012. She was 68. I miss her dearly.
• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and its environs. My stroke ended that. I retired on medical-disability. During my final year at Transit I did a voluntary union newsletter called the “282-News” that caused weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth among Transit management. It was great fun; and I did it with Microsoft Word — although it required a lot of time. Our union was “Local 282” of the nationwide Amalgamated Transit Union.
• “Pagination” is to completely assemble a page (for example a newspaper-page) in a computer. For that you have to have pagination-software, which Quark was, and Word may now be.
• The newspaper’s “image-setter” was a large machine that took a computer-file and transmitted it onto a full-page negative from which a printing-plate could be “burned;” that is, made.