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Blundering through life

Mike Fak ^(5,649) United States

Mike Fak

http://mikefak.com

Saying So Long But Not Goodbye.

Posted Thursday, October 01, 2009 (50 days 11 hours ago.) Viewed 2,837 times.

It has been an interesting couple of years here at Searchwarp for me. Originally I wrote as a counterbalance to some of the other writing projects I was involved in. I used the space I was kindly allotted to look at and laugh at some of the zany things that happen in our world.

I drifted from that a year or so ago and just started writing about what had happened to me or what I saw or what I felt.

That too was a good counterbalance to trying to be a fair and honest reporter in my real job where sometimes story after story, although important, is rather unchallenging to report.

I used the space I was graciously given by Bruce and Jean to keep myself from getting too focused on one thing in a world that deserves a full field of vision.

It has been a lot of fun talking to so many of you. I have appreciated every comment and every time I saw a click go next to something I wrote.

I follow a simple writer's creed, "I hope to have as many as possible read what I write but I cherish each single individual who took the time to do so."

And with that I want to tell all of you how much I have appreciated each of you who have spent a moment in your lives to read what a simple storyteller has had to say. It has been a privilege to be one of you Warpies during the past few years.

My life has gotten busier in the past six months. Besides manuscript projects, we have been able to greatly expand what we do at Lincoln Daily News. In the past we were that other paper in the community. Through hard work and being blessed to find dedicated and skillful writers we no longer are the other paper. We are now the definitive source for accurate and timely news in Logan County. That takes a lot of time and effort

I have also become involved in several charitable organizations since as my publisher says, "You don't know how to say no." I don't, and if perhaps one sentence can define me when I leave this world, the one that says "He always said yes" would be a good one if I could choose it myself.

I have several personal book projects that have been on hold for what seems like forever. I think since I had that little jolt of being reminded I am human this summer, I have found I want to at least get them finished. Whether they get published or not isn't as important as just getting them done.

What all this yammering means is that I will no longer be a regular writer on Searchwarp. The time constraints just don't allow me the time to properly spend trying to deliver a decent article twice a week. In the past month or so I have winced at a few of my submissions and it was because I was in a rush. We all know what happens when we get in a rush don't we?

Now just because my ugly mug won't be prominent on these hallowed pages of literary skill doesn't mean I am turning in my Warpie badge.

I will visit here and there and from time to time I will write something that I would like to share with all of you. It is just that I have to concentrate on other things right now.

And so with this final spot in the front row, I want to thank each and every one of you. It has been fun, it has been interesting.

I promise I won't be a stranger. May God bless all of you.

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A Sense of Balance the Media Isn't Interested In.

Posted Monday, September 28, 2009 (53 days 10 hours ago.) Viewed 1,506 times.

I'm sure either through my last posting or your own reading and viewing that you all know of the slayings of the family in Beason Illinois.

There hasn't been anything new to report but that doesn't keep some outlets from running stories saying that there is nothing new to report.

On Friday when our sheriff advised that the press conferences were discontinued until there was something relevant to report, the out of town media went home.

This weekend had a lot of other activity in town. But since it didn't bleed, no one stayed around to cover the good this community has to offer.

On Friday night and Saturday morning, hundreds of people were involved in an ALS fundraiser for a young mother of two who has ALS. It was a sad affair and a redeeming affair as I was able to report on how our town has collectively gathered to try and help this young lady and her family as they fight this disease. I have been covering this young lady and her family for over a year and although I always get emotional when I talk to her, I also get emotional in a positive way when I see how many there are of us whenever she needs help.

I was the only press that covered this fundraiser.

On Sunday we had our second annual Together for Lincoln event.

This year over 1100 hundred volunteers of all ages worked together on 104 projects in the community.

There were people cleaning homes for the elderly and fixing windows and doors. Houses were painted in a day as a dozen team members took to brush. Three wheelchair ramps were built and porches and decks received repairs.

Some volunteers checked smoke alarms while others ran to grocery stores and restocked shelves of shut-ins who don't have a chance to get out.

Youngsters raked and swept while others walked the parks and streets picking up trash.

And when it was over, almost a thousand strong filled the local university's chapel to join in song and praise for the "Boss" of the entire day's labors.

I'm not sure but I believe I was again the only media source present.

Today is the funeral of the five slain victims and the LDN will not be there. I'm sure all the other media that disappeared for the weekend will be there with cameras running in hopes of getting pictures of a family distraught with grief and sadness.

Over the weekend there were several attempts to get hold of me by a network in New York. I decided I was too busy covering the good in this community to help outsiders interested in only covering our tragedies. I imagine they were able to find someone else who had time to talk but it wasn't then and it never will be me talking on the air to any of these people. The media make me wonder how they sleep at night delving day after day into what is wrong with us while seldom spending a moment on what is right.

I have had a lot of people ask me how I have been doing lately. I think some are nervous that all this activity might produce another spell' in me.

Others probably worry that because I'm an emotional man that maybe this has been hard on me.

I am all right and I ask well-wishers to direct their worries to others who really need their concerns and prayers. I have been blessed to see the good as well as the bad.

It wasn't hard. All I had to do was look.

For those of you who would like to read a bit about the other side of our community you can go to this Monday, Sept.28 edition of www.theldn.com and read the stories for yourselves.

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Slayings In a Small Town

Posted Thursday, September 24, 2009 (57 days 12 hours ago.) Viewed 2,123 times.

Many of you have already read or watched something about the slaying of five family members in the small town of Beason Illinois. Last time I looked there were over 1,100 stories on the tragedy in the newsgroups. It has been on most television newscasts around the country as well.

I am quite aware of the story as the tiny town is in our county only nine miles outside Lincoln. I am a reporter covering the tragic event.

The entire affair is so sad and frustrating to me because news gatherers from around the country have been coming, or calling, or both, to get their share of a tragic story. To many of those who come, the story isn't important because it is tragic. They come because the story is horrific and anything horrific deserves front row copy. I know that is disparaging to colleagues but when you pursue children and ask them how they feel about their friends being murdered, I ask where information has ended and sensationalism has begun.

The story of an entire family being killed Monday evening has made the national and international headlines. The senseless killings of five members of a family has spread along the wires and the Web until every news source in the world now has seen the horrendous story come across their desks. It has turned quiet into loud, the unknown into infamous.

Beason is a small town of two hundred and some residents tucked just west of Illinois Route 10 East nine miles from Lincoln IL. When the corn gets high, only the Beason road sign pointing south keeps a traveler from motoring on past.

The town is so small that most maps refuse to recognize its existence. As of 4:30 pm Monday evening September 21, the world now knows its name and where it is located.

The town stretches for a mile on the Beason Chestnut Blacktop. Through the town, the blacktop is called Broadway. East and west of the main drag, the town stretches for a little more than a half mile and that is the extent of the town of Beason.

There are street signs. North St., South Street, a Walnut Street as well, but there is little need to have them in a town so small that every neighbor is within a fair walk of each other.

There are farms surrounding the little unincorporated township that carry a Beason mailing address but with no businesses left open on Broadway, there is little need to come into the town save to pick up mail or spend volunteer hours at the Beason Fire House.

For many years, the stores along Broadway have been shuttered and abandoned. Beason is quiet indeed. A town where everyone knows each other and visitors are rare.

That is no longer the case. On Wednesday the town was crowded with people. The next several days there will be even more.

There are many law enforcement and emergency personnel in the town. They are going about an investigation in hopes of finding clues to the person or persons who could be so evil or so sick to slay five people, including three children in their home.

The words among those volunteers and law officials were the same as those echoed by residents. There is disbelief, there is shock. Often, someone said that this was something they saw on the news somewhere else: but never here in Beason Illinois, never in Logan County.

Those words were said again a dozen times or more as people went about their jobs or their daily lives almost numb from the realization that the worst had now visited them. They were now members of a town that no one had ever heard of before now on the nightly news across the country.

The television crews are everywhere in this tiny town: parked without regard to traffic as if they were so special that the fact they are blocking a road is all right. After all they are television and television doesn't have to follow any rules of common decency or respect.

There have been press conferences and, like in most, the media doesn't get what they want as authorities try to protect their investigation. Could perhaps more be shared? Of course. But if you allowed some in the media to draw the line on what information should be given and what shouldn't, they wouldn't draw a line at all.

Besides the press conferences there has been a deluge of calls to all area media as well as local authorities. This deluge requires our local sheriff to have daily press conference to tell us something more, something pertinent, something comforting in a community fearful of who might lurk outside their doors. To date those words haven't been said and so the media clamors and yells and asks questions that if replied to confirm some point they desperately want to have made. Only then will their story be different from the hundreds already published. And so authorities say little and the furor over lack of information grows stronger

There are press from Chicago and St. Louis here. Five murders in both those towns occur how often: weekly, surely monthly. But they come here to cover our tragedy because this was in a quiet sleepy town and this is something that never happens here. Not in Beason Illinois.

I was appalled when the media found a pair of youngsters who attended the press conference. They were there to find out if anything new had been discovered about their friends' murders. In a minute these young girls were surrounded by microphones and television cameras and tape recorders.

The inane questions rolled at these youths, "How do you feel?" Are you scared?" Were your friends in trouble?" These and more intrusive questions rained down on the girls while the youngsters cried. But hey, a few seconds of this fifteen minute torture of kids will make a good five-second sound bite on the news. And when media decided they had more than enough to print or to roll on tape they walked away and chatted about where was the best place to get lunch and how the baseball season was going.

There were redeeming moments by some of my colleagues that I am grateful for. At a church service where young friends and classmates cried, photographers and camera men ran over to make sure they recorded their despair and grief. One young reporter from a competitor said, "I won't take a picture of that". I agreed and thought journalism 101 be damned, I won't either.

An old pro at another paper said she was disgusted with some of the inaccuracies being thrown out onto the wires and thus into print. I agreed and we smiled at each other knowing we would say what was said, write what had happened and add nothing that we didn't know was fact.

In a display of how amazing the internet is, I received a call from a FOX News New York producer only a half-hour after my last story had hit our publication. She asked for some background and then asked if I had interviewed any surviving family members regarding the tragedy. I said I was leaving them alone right now and she said "I understand". Chalk at least one up for the televised media.

As Wednesday wound down, out of area media began asking where they could find lodging. They are preparing to stay as long as this story runs the electronic waves of information.

Others will come and the news across the nation will continue to tell of a great sadness that occurred in the quiet town of Beason Illinois.

And across the nation people and families will read and watch and talk of what a terrible thing this has been. And they will all say "Thank goodness this doesn't happen in our town. Not here. Not where we live"

Until the next time: until the next place is their home town.

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Blundering through life

Saying So Long But Not Goodbye.

A Sense of Balance the Media Isn't Interested In.

Slayings In a Small Town

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