Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…

Detroit Free Press senior managing editor Jeffrey Taylor has been named the new editor of The Indianapolis Star.
Taylor was introduced to the Star's staff on Tuesday and succeeds Dennis Ryerson, who retired June 1 after nine years leading the newsroom staff at Indiana's largest newspaper.
The Star reports Taylor has been at the Free Press since 1995. He was a reporter at the Kansas City Star when he shared a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 1992 for an examination of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Taylor also was an editor on the Free Press' Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of a scandal involving former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
Both the Star and the Free Press are owned by Gannett Co.

Nothing unusual here

Driving in to town to take Maria to dinner this evening, I found myself following this pickup truck with a guy sitting in the bed making a cell phone call.

Having a passenger in the bed of a pickup truck is illegal in some places, but probably not here.

AMA Member: Inflammatory article twists facts, denigrates motorcyclists

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Support the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) in our efforts to protect your freedoms to ride!

An article by Fairwarning.org published on June 7 and subsequently picked up by USA Today and other news outlets, “Despite Death Toll, Motorcycle Groups Strive to Muzzle U.S. Regulators,” contains biased reporting and derogatory language toward motorcyclists.

The article selectively cites statistics that lead uninformed readers to the conclusion that motorcyclist fatalities are on the rise and that helmet mandates and motorcycle-only checkpoints are necessary to promote public safety.

Michael Dabbs, president of the Brain Injury Association of Michigan, is quoted in the article, saying, “Maybe we ought to save some of the costs when police or emergency responders go to the scene of a crash and the person is not wearing a helmet. Perhaps they ought to be left there like roadkill.”

This statement displays crassness and exemplifies editorial bias because there is no evidence that injured motorcyclists are any more likely to be a public burden than other roadway users. A Harborview Medical Center study published in 1988 reported that injured motorcyclists in the trauma center relied on public funds a lower percentage of the time than did automobile drivers to pay their hospital bills during the same time period. Also, a 1992 study by the University of North Carolina's Highway Safety Research Center reported that automobile drivers and motorcyclists have their medical costs covered by insurance at a nearly identical rate.

The article selectively cites statistics to suggest that motorcycle fatalities are on the rise, yet failed to point out that motorcycle sales surged dramatically during the same period, or that motorcycle fatalities dropped 16 percent in 2009 and have stayed relatively flat in 2010 and 2011.

The article portrays rider education as ineffective, yet failed to cite the federally funded motorcycle crash causation study, conducted by Professor Hugh “Harry” Hurt, Jr., documenting the efficacy of rider education. The 1981 report said: "The basic Motorcycle Rider Course of the Motorcycle Safety Foundation is effective in training motorcycle riders and those trained riders are both less involved and less injured in motorcycle accidents." The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also cited rider education as effective in its 2005 report, "Promising Practices in Motorcycle Rider Education and Licensing." The report states: "Although evidence of the effectiveness of rider education on crash reduction is mixed, several studies have shown that trained riders tend to have fewer crashes, less severe crashes, and overall lower cost of damage resulting from crashes."

All of this information was provided to the author of the article, Rick Schmitt, in correspondence with the AMA before publication. The AMA can only assume that the Fairwarning.org editor selectively edited the reporter’s copy to fit a preconceived desire to promote helmet mandates and motorcycle-only checkpoints.

The AMA strongly advocates helmet use and protective apparel, but opposes mandates because they do nothing to prevent crashes. Motorcycle crash prevention should be the overarching policy of our elected officials and the regulatory community. Programs such as rider training and motorist awareness are effective, yet history has taught us that when helmet mandates are enforced, scarce resource dollars are siphoned away from these programs.

The AMA opposes motorcycle-only checkpoints because they target a select group of legal road users simply because they choose to ride on two- or three-wheeled vehicles.

We applaud the courage of legislators, such as U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who have taken on the powerful anti-motorcycling interest groups that seem less concerned with promoting policies that prevent motorcycle crashes, and more concerned with reducing insurance payments after crashes occur.

With more and more newspapers printing articles attributing this biased story, the AMA needs your help to send a pre-written letter to newspaper editors if you see this report in your paper. To improve the chance of your response being printed, please personalize your letter.

Act now to contribute a non-tax deductible amount to the AMA. To contribute, please call Membership Services at (800) AMA-JOIN (262-5646) and say, “I would like to contribute to protect my freedom to ride.” The hours for Membership Services are Monday-Thursday 8:30 a.m.-8 p.m. and Friday 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. (all times Eastern).

Another option is for you to help us support our friends in Congress, such as Sensenbrenner. The AMA has the American Motorcyclist Political Action Committee (AMPAC), which allows us to provide support to members of Congress who battle to preserve your rights.

If you want to help protect your freedom to ride, please sign up to be an AMA Defender member by calling us at (800) AMA-JOIN (262-5646) and ask to upgrade your membership. Your support is greatly appreciated.

Maria’s handiwork

A pair of baby quilts.

Home game at ASU

Click the photo to see it BIG.

Yes, I can shoot home interiors

This is an HDR image in which I sampled the original RAW image at 5 different EV settings, then merged them in Photomatix Pro 4.2 and tweaked the final result in Photoshop.
A version of this photo appeared on the cover of a local home interiors magazine a couple of years ago. I like this version much better.

Seen at the Farmers Market

Nice hat.

ASU Farmers Market in HDR

Saturday mornings during the growing season mean a trip to the ASU Farmers Market for us.

We were pleased to see our friend Alben Langlois was there with his birdhouses, inspired by houses and other buildings from his Cajun childhood in Louisiana. They’re real works of art.

Click on the photos to see them much bigger.

Ringing the bell

I think it was the summer of 1962, the summer I turned 17, that I decided I became a man.

I’d had a driver’s license for a year and had taken up smoking cigarettes.

But the event that convinced me that I had arrived at adulthood was that summer evening when I stepped up to the High Striker at the Old Settlers carnival on the courthouse square in Delphi, Ind., slammed the maul down and heard that full-throated Ding!

I tried it again a few times over the next couple of days and got a satisfying ding every time.

My prize was a cellophane bowler hat with a picture of a naked woman on the top that I was embarrassed to show to my mom. It was tacky and sleazy, but it was a great little trophy.

It was a wonderful discovery to realize that I had joined a loose confederation of strongmen and tough guys.

Thank God, I got over it.

Jack has been busy

When we returned from dinner last evening, we found this chair dragged off of the patio and the garden hose wrapped around the legs, a chewed up tree planter next to it.

It seems impossible that Jack, seen here in the background, could have wrapped the hose so neatly, but unless someone is pranking us, it’s the only explanation I can come up with.

Jack has proven himself to be resourceful with feats like turning on the outdoor faucet and dragging a 6-foot-wide child’s plastic swimming pool around the yard like it was just another dog toy. I suppose he could have started with the chair on the patio and dragged the hose around it several times before hauling the whole thing into the yard.

Pete watches the sky

Pete, our older Australian shepherd, watches the sky like no dog I’ve ever seen.

We think it may have something to do with the two occasions when he ran away as a young dog.

The first time was when he was left outside in a violent thunderstorm. The second time was when a beefwit neighbor shot a bottle rocket over his head.

I think those two experiences left him with the notion that the sky was trying to kill him.

So he scans the skies, especially on cloudless days, and gets very agitated when he notices jet contrails marking up his pristine sky. He runs back and forth in the yard, staring up and barking excitedly until the planes pass and the contrails fade.

Oooops!

Driving home from town at 1:15 p.m. today, I shot this accident scene at the T-intersection of Ark. 351 and U.S. 49, commonly called “Hilltop” on the northeast side of Jonesboro.

Looked like they were putting someone on a gurney.

Never forget D-Day

Sixty-eight years ago this morning, elements of the greatest army the world has ever known stormed ashore in Normandy.

They were our fathers, grandfathers, uncles, cousins and they came from places like Indianapolis, Ind., and Redlands, Calif., and Grand Rapids, Mich., and Shelbyville, Tenn.

According to figures compiled by the D-Day Museum, there were 6,603 American casualties, including 1,465 dead.

My late father-in-law Phil Kroon, a captain in the 144th Field Artillery Group, shot this photo of G.I.s enjoying their morning coffee somewhere in France or Germany before going to work on the Germans for another day.

They were heroes.

Attitude

This is probably a Photoshop creation, but I wouldn’t put it past a dachshund to go after a rhino. Those little guys are freaking fearless and fierce all out of proportion to their size.

In which I vent my spleen over a Facebook group

Most of my newspaper career was spent at The Indianapolis News.

I began my career at The News on Feb. 6, 1967 and was with the paper all the way up to its untimely death at the age of 130 on Oct. 1, 1999 at the hands of Gannett bean counters.

We were the largest evening daily in Indiana and our only real competition was our sister paper, The Indianapolis Star, which was the largest morning daily in the state.

The Star had a much larger staff, but compared with my colleagues at The News, they were mostly lazy and lackluster. Many of my friends and I were fiercely partisan and were bitterly resentful of the fact that the circulation department worked much harder to promote The Star than they did The News.

With the demise of The News, I and lots of other News refugees, ended up working for The Star. I hated it. I hated being associated with a newspaper I had competed against for nearly 30 years and I took early retirement in October, 2000.

I was pleased when a News alumnus started a Great Hoosier Daily (the nickname of The News) group on Facebook, but I was irked and dismayed when I noticed former Star people joining the group.

Lately, the posts have been mostly by Star people about Star people. I’m sorry a former Star staffer is in the hospital, but I don’t want to read about it in a group dedicated to the Great Hoosier Daily because she never worked there. And neither did most of the people keeping us updated on her condition.

So there.

The sound of one dog barfing

Our neighbor, whose dog was killed a few months ago in a one-sided encounter with a motor vehicle, came over yesterday with what was left of the dead dog’s food.

We accepted his offer and he dumped it on the ground next to the gate of our chain link backyard fence.

Pete and Jack, always eager for a new taste, went after it and grazed on it off and on the rest of the day.

Flash forward to 12:20 a.m. when we were awakened by Jack whimpering in his bedroom kennel and pacing within the cramped space. When I let him out to go outside, I saw why – he had barfed in the kennel.

It was raining at the time and warm, so I decided to let the dogs spend the rest of the night on the back porch. Maria and I carried the barfy kennel through the garage to the driveway where I would hose it out later in the day.

I was awakened again about 3:45 a.m. by a nearby crash of thunder. Realizing that Pete has a terror of thunderstorms, I decided to take pity on him and let him inside. Jack seemed content to stay on the porch.

When I brought Jack into the house about 8:30 a.m., he seemed only mildly interested in a duck-flavored treat and ignored the food in his kitchen kennel bowl. A few minutes later I noticed him retching and moved to hustle him outside. Instead, he ran past me and barfed on the edge of the living room carpet and the hardwood foyer floor.

Our Aussies seem to have sensitive digestive systems and the inheritance from Buddy next door just doesn’t sit well with Jack. I scooped up as much of it as I could with a shovel and flung it beyond the fence and out of the dogs’ reach.

In the meantime, my spider bites appear to be healing nicely and it seems highly unlikely that I was attacked by the dreaded brown recluse spider.

File this under “It’s Always Something”

We spent about three hours in the St. Bernards Hospital ER last night, mostly waiting, because I woke up yesterday morning with a couple of nasty spider bites on my left thigh.

I’ve been bitten in my sleep a couple of times before in the past month or so and the bites healed after a few days of swelling and itching.

But the most severe of yesterday’s bite sites developed a large blister and an angry look that had us wondering if we didn’t have a brown recluse spider lurking in the bedroom.

The physician’s assistant said it might be a brown recluse bite and prescribed antibiotics and steroids.

Considering the horrific appearance of brown recluse bites as pictured online, I’m inclined to think it was the non-recluse spider that crawled out from under our bed and died after we hosed the area down with Raid spider spray.

At any rate, I was not bitten again last night and yesterday’s bites look better today.

Yep. ABS problem solved

I fired up the bike this morning – a cold start that previously was guaranteed to trigger the ABS warning lights – and the problem is gone.

It really was as simple as topping off the rear brake fluid reservoir. I have an unopened bottle of DOT 4 brake fluid in the garage for the next time it happens.

So it turns out that I didn’t really need to spend more than $200 for a new battery two weekends ago.

Oh, well. The old battery was four years old and I now have the security of knowing I’m relatively safe from battery failure and the nasty consequences that can go with it.

Besides, the Nashville dealer didn’t charge me for the shop t-shirt.

ABS warning light problem solved–I think

Here’s my GT undergoing a 6,000 km service at the hands of Grass Roots BMW Motorcycles technician Mike Gurnow.

Mike opined that my ABS warning light problem is a consequence of rear brake pad wear which drops the level of brake fluid in the rear brake reservoir and triggers the ABS warning light sensor. Makes sense to me. We’ll find out tomorrow morning if the problem is solved when I give the bike a cold start and ride to the post office.

The lights continued to flash for the entire duration of the 150-mile ride up to Cape Girardeau the morning. I suspect the cool temperatures were a factor.

He also determined the engine oil level sight glass just needed cleaning, not replacement.

I was out and on my way by 11:50 a.m., so I rode over to the White Castle on I-55 for lunch. It’s the closest White Castle to our house and a lunch there is almost like going home to Indiana. Almost.

I had five cheeseburgers and a medium Diet Coke. I think it was the Diet Coke that gave me heartburn for the rest of the afternoon.

I arrived at home at 2:47 p.m.

150 miles for service

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. - I’m at Grass Roots BMW Motorcycles this morning for a 6,000 mile service on my ‘03 K1200GT.
It was a brisk 58 degrees when I rolled out of my garage about 6:20 a.m. Early morning rides to the north or the east usually involve the discomfort of riding into the blinding just-risen sun, but I was spared that inconvenience by a cloud deck that persisted all the way to I-55 and then some.
I stopped for a breakfast parfait and coffee at the Kennett, Mo., Mc Donald’s, then pressed on. Ordinarily, I would expect the morning to warm up but I found I was riding deeper into the cold front that swept across the Mid-South last night and it was only 55 when I reached Cape Girardeau.
Happily, the Grass Roots folks had the coffee pot on.
I’m hopeful that today’s service will solve my ABS warning light problem. The warning lights continued to flash after restarts at Kennett and when I gassed at Boomland at Exit 80 on I-55. I noticed a few days ago that the brake fluid level in the rear brake reservoir was at or slightly below the MIN mark and was chagrined that I hadn’t thought to check that possibility much earlier. I opted not to top it off, so as to give the Grass Roots guys an uncluttered view of the problem if more brake fluid doesn’t cure it. I’ve seen no sign of leaking brake fluid, so it’s a mystery to me where it’s going. With luck, we’ll have an answer today.