"What's so civil about war anyway?"

I'm a Duck. My brother is a Beaver. And today we engage in the seventh oldest college football rivalry in the United States.

We're not a football family. We didn't grow up passionately cheering on our teams. Even in high school and the years between that and college, I never really cared about the Oregon rivalry specifically, but then again, there wasn't much to celebrate in those years.

I remember walking around on campus and seeing Joey Harrington  in between classes during his final year there. Later I had a class with Kellen Clemens. Something about collegiate football grows on you. By the end of my two years at the University of Oregon, I was a full-fledged Duck fan.

Early in my awareness of football as a national sport in the United States, I was under the misguided notion that your team somehow defined you. I would pick the best team and claim that I was there number one fan. My first was the Dallas Cowboys, a team I picked after watching them destroy the Washington Redskins on a Thanksgiving many, many years ago.

Years and many teams later, I watched a Super Bowl with my father. That year I was a fan of the Cincinnati Bengals because they were beating everyone else. I was a candle in the wind fan if ever there was one.

My father had sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge into a new life in America as a young boy. Into one of America's greatest cities. As a San Franciscan, he loved Bay Area football. Having been born in the Bay Area but never having lived there long, I did not inherit his love for the 49ers. Not until that game.

Watching Joe Montana and Jerry Rice march down the field and a John Taylor touchdown with 35 seconds to go was pure, unadulterated football beauty. And I was hooked. I have been a 49er fan ever since.

Watching the Ducks dominate this year has been a pleasure. The pure machine that is their offense is so fluid and fast, one can't help but enjoy it. Well, unless you're my brother. He tends to think that the coach is a classless lout and that the Ducks cheat at every available opportunity.

But I also find myself falling back to something that my dad taught me along the way. A close game is better than a blowout any day. In every high-scoring game this year, there came a moment when you'd just know there was no way the tired opponents could stop the Ducks. You'd watch the defense give up, and the Ducks would reach for 20 and 30 point leads.

After spending three years in Missoula, Montana, a place where the football team's unbroken streak of conference titles is the second or third thing you'll hear when you arrive, I've grown a little tired of college football state rivalries.

Facebook is full of Beavers complaining about a surge of "new" Duck fans that seem to have come from nowhere and Duck fans taunting the Beavers about their lack of ability to find the goal line. It was the same in Montana with Griz fans mercilessly taunting the beleaguered Bobcat fans in the windup to the Brawl of the Wild.

I'm going to be very happy if my Ducks beat the Beavers today and go on to the National Championship. That can almost go without saying. A big bowl game and a national title would be incredible, if not tainted by the fact that the BCS is so corrupted and the two best teams may not even be playing in the final.

But if the Ducks happen to drop the ball today and the Beavers win out in a hard-fought game, I'll be all right. I'm a Duck, but their football team doesn't define me. I wish I could say the same for my kids, three kids bedecked in green and yellow and as rabid as any fans I've ever seen.

Go Ducks!

A sense of place

There will be a lot of lasts this week. This is in fact our last Monday in Missoula. Last kickball game tonight, last flag football game for Carson, final cross country practice for Cole. Next week at this time we'll be in Salem, Oregon meeting up with our trailer that will ship our belongings to Alaska.

Today we are going to take a few hours and go to one of our favorite hot springs. We have a long week of packing our life up into boxes, so I want to spend one last day enjoying the good life of Western Montana.

There are few places like this, and after three years I understand why people carve out a life here despite a poor economic base. The amenities in this region of the Northern Rockies are like nowhere else. Mountains, lakes, rivers, hot springs, national parks and wildlife better than the best zoo are just a few of the reasons people move here.

The adventures we've had here as a family can only probably be rivaled by some time spent in the last frontier, but we won't know that until we have lived it for awhile. Place is the great forgotten character in the story of life. Missoula is a place where people are in touch with that primordial notion of the home pond more than anywhere I've ever visited before.

A sense of place defines Missoula so much that people are willing to make less money in return for living in proximity to places like the Rattlesnake wilderness or the Bitterroot Mountains. People carve a life out of some very meager economic sediment. Many of our friends have multiple jobs or cram their families into tiny apartments in order to live somewhere many call the last best place.

I struggled to see this when I first moved here. In fact, for nearly three years I was frustrated at the idea that anyone should earn less because of some nature tax. I still think the idea is absurd, but I'm less inclined to blame those who choose to reside here in spite of the nature tax.

But I will gladly blame city officials and those leaders of the largest industries, including the university, for continuing to make Missoula Poverty With A View. A nature tax does nothing to improve this city, nor does it keep people away as you might hope. Californians continue to move to Montana every year.

Place is integral to our story. When my grandparents told their story, place was a character that shifted with them. It was a trail through mountain passes, a city in northern China, a refugee camp in the Philippines, a boat sailing across the Pacific Ocean. It was an apartment on Geary Street in San Francisco, and I caught up with their story when place was a lovely little house in Pacifica, California.

For others, place is a still point, like every 4th generation Montanan I've ever met. They are in tune with the fenced parcel of land back to their great grandfathers who homesteaded these parts. For Native Americans, place is a 10,000-year-old continent finally free of ice where they could roam and have their being.

I don't have a strong connection to place. If I did, it would be a cedar-lined ocean shore with thundering surf and a salty nose. That's as close as I can come to identifying with place. I love my parents' wooded home in the Willamette Valley, but it's a stop for me. My birthplace of Santa Rosa, California is one of my favorite places. My grandfathers plowed those grape-seeded hillsides and valleys. Richenau an der Rax is where I think I fell in love with mountains, hiking, skiing and life in a quiet woodland. Pasadena, California is where I learned to love big, ugly, sprawling cities teeming with humanity. Salem, Oregon is where I found my best friend. It is also that which is most familiar to me and therefore that from which I most readily flee. Honolulu, Hawaii is where I fell in love with the crossroads, those cities that blend life from many different pathways.

In Missoula, I fell in love with community. No other city exhibits community the way Missoula does. From weekly gatherings for lunch or dinner in Caras Park to First Friday art walks and community runs along the river, I've never seen a town so aware of its identity. That I could readily talk to the mayor, leading citizens, long timers and newcomers at any point of any day speaks volumes about how tight this city is.

I don't have a sense for what Anchorage will be like. Four days there was not enough to get even a small feeling about it. But I can't wait to find out what I think about it a year from now.

Maybe place moves with me, as it did for my family as they emigrated across the vast Eurasian Steppe. Maybe the cities I've lived in collectively add up to place for me. I don't know. All I really know is that I've yet to find that stretch of cedar-lined coast with roaring waves and salty air.

Tim

Thirty seven days in the unemployment line

It looks as though I'm going to have to change the name of this blog. I was originally inspired by the government extension of unemployment aid allowing laid off Americans to collect for up to 99 weeks.

My position at the Missoulian newspaper was cut on Monday, September 30. I applied for unemployment immediately, and to date I've received nothing but slips of paper saying my unemployment aid status is pending.

Last night I accepted a job at the new director of digital content at KTUU, the NBC affiliate in Anchorage, Alaska. Somehow Ninetynineweeks just doesn't seem that appropriate any more. However, I don't want to leave any interested readers hanging, so I'll continue to chronicle the adventure as it progresses.

My wife and I spent a lot of time in Hawaii in the early part of our marriage. Having to move away after we had our first child, we vowed to find a way back some day. Since then, we returned to Oregon, spent time traveling and working in Eastern Europe and ended up in Missoula, Montana, which is not exactly a population center. And now Alaska, with an even lower population than Montana, is our our next destination. Things don't always make sense, but I find that big picture stuff is often a little fuzzy and distal. Probably for a good reason.

I have always loved the ocean, but I have come to love the mountains. Anchorage seems to have both in abundance, which is something very satisfying to me.

Several months ago I was chatting with a friend in Alaska about our various moves since we met several years ago when I was researching a story for a University of Oregon publication. We would eventually end up working together at the Statesman Journal in Salem, Oregon, and we founded the craft beer blog - "Will blog for beer."


On this evening, I was asking about life in Alaska, a place she moved after her husband graduated from law school in Oregon. To my surprise, one of the best print writers I'd ever worked with was now working at a broadcast station.


She took a few minutes to explain that the company was expanding beyond the traditional 5 and 6 p.m. broadcast news to a more web-centric model to provide news digitally in the way Alaskans are increasingly digesting their news.


She told me they were going to begin a search for a digital content director and asked if I was interested in having her forward my resume on to the station president.


I floated the idea past my wife the next day, and I got the reaction I thought I would get. She sort of frowned and cocked her head sideways with that look that says, "You're crazy, and I hope I didn't hear you right."


I let it go and didn't think much more about it until that fateful Monday.


After sort of processing the idea of being laid off and immediately formatting several plans, including grad school, self employment, international job possibilities and cobbling a bunch of local job offers together, I came back to the Alaska job and decided to E-mail my friend to find out if that search was on.


It was, and while figuring out how to navigate the unemployment aid system, I was corresponding with my future boss in Anchorage.


Finally we were invited to travel to Anchorage to meet with the team there and to check things out around town. I've usually done this part of the job interview process myself, but this time Cheryl came with me, as I knew she'd be the hardest sell.

Sunset from downtown Anchorage

Turns out we both loved Anchorage. The sun was just setting as we flew into the city over the tortured ice-bound world of southwest Alaska. I could see a monolithic shadow to the north, something so immense I had to scrunch down in my seat to see the entire mass. This was Denali. The snowless Chugach range framed in the twinkling lights of Anchorage as we landed.


Ocean and mountains. It's like a complete world for me, though neither of us have any illusions about how difficult winters can be up there. We're pretty big fans of the light.


A move to Anchorage is not taken lightly. Not by the prospective employer and not by those seeking a job in that state. So the drawn-out process has been a bit torturous as our funds have shrunk to uncomfortable levels.


To accept the offer last night was rewarding for many reasons, not just the physical need to know that our future is set. It's rewarding to know I'll be able to continue in the job that my journalism career has morphed into. Going from a traditional print reporter to mobile journalist and videographer to online reporter and finally a digital manager is something I didn't expect when I walked across the graduation platform at the University of Oregon, but it's twice the career I planned for and therefore twice as rewarding.


It's nice to know I won't have to wait around for unemployment checks that never come. And searching for jobs is a torturous activity in this day in age. I will not miss it.


Now begins the daunting task of getting ourselves to Alaska. You can drive, but it takes up to five or six days. Shipping items is expensive, as is flying. This blog will likely continue to explore the whimsical nature of family antics, the challenges of moving to America's last frontier and the interesting details of settling in a place that might as well be a million miles away from family for the ease of getting their and back.





Tim

Forcing the Dream Part I

I always saw this ad in my head:

The New York Times seeks a smart, fast and ambitious reporter to cover the (pick your war) from our (pick your bureau). The reporter will join an energetic four-person team covering this and other conflicts in the region. This is a high-profile position, as the world is watching to see if this conflict spreads and involves other nations and regions. The reporter will be expected to consistently break wire-moving news and to write insightful features on important developments as well as to report on human rights violations and the lives of citizens caught up in the conflict.

By the time I graduated from journalism school the dream was dead.

The New York Times and Washington Post effectively disassembled their world-wide bureaus during my last two years as a student at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication.

I used to walk into the study room on the ground floor of Allen Hall in hopes of finding a note posted to the bulletin board announcing internships in places like Moscow, Mexico City or Madrid, but I never did.

By the end of my junior year, I was looking at spending the summer interning at a local weekly paper covering city council and the county fair. My wife was watching my dream die right in front of her eyes, and it was a conversation we had about how we loved to travel together so much that got me thinking about E-mailing some editors at English-language newspapers around the world.

I sent a dozen notes out to newspapers like the St. Petersburg Times, the Prague Post, the Kyiv Post and some papers in China and the Middle East. Within a few weeks I'd heard back from no less than half that dozen.

My favorite reply came from the Kyiv Post in Ukraine.

"You want to come work at this newspaper for free for the summer? I think you're crazy, but I'd be crazy not to take you up on it. Come on over."

My dad graciously gave me some of his air miles to purchase a ticket, and I left my wife and two young boys on their own to pursue this journalism dream that didn't have a raft to float on.

Two days later I was sitting at a desk hastily cleared of old Kyiv Post publications and calling a government source about damages from a huge set of thunderstorms that pounded the region just after my arrival.

Within a week I was working on a story about the 2,000-strong Palestinian community settled right in the heart of the city. I spent time with them in their homes at their Mosques and the Christian services they attended with their Ukrainian wives on Sundays. I wrote my first front-page feature story on a part of Kyiv culture that not even the local dailies would touch.

By the end of the summer, the Orange Revolution was more than just an idea, it had fomented into a huge political wheel rolling toward a November showdown in Kyiv. I wrote about some of the earliest effects like student riots at the U.S. Embassy, even interviewing U.S. Sen. John McCain when he visited the city with a large contingent of U.S. politicians.

I spent many nights at the famous political hangout known as The Baraban (the drum) just off the city's main thoroughfare. The politics were hot, and reporters recited poetry and defended their latest articles. Some talked of going into hiding after reporting on the country's four ruling oligarchs, while I soaked it all up like a sponge.

I was as green as you could be in journalism. Not even worthy of being a cub reporter at the time. But the editor, a sharp New Yorker of Ukrainian background, liked my ambition and my sense for good feature stories about culture, people and places.

The closest war-like experience was the explosion of a pipe bomb in a market in the neighborhood I was staying in during my last week in city. And I survived a long hitch-hiking trip across the country on my last weekend there. 

It wasn't war-time reporting, but it was electric, and I was absolutely sure of what I wanted to do the rest of my life.

With my wife's encouragement, ideas and blessings, I had forced the dream, even if briefly, and I got a taste for it that is as strong and salty on my tongue today as it was the day I left Kyiv seven years ago.

Tim