280. June 2001 Death Linked to Contaminated Medicine

280.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer for Bay City News, June 13, 2001, “Second Death Linked to Contaminated Medication”. This is one of those stories you needed to move fast, although it’s not new information.

Wire services remain invaluable to news organizations/communities because they can, in seconds, get urgent news out to multiple media agencies within a region or network and get the immediate attention of editors. Now, the internet does this largely, but the information on the internet is too vast, overwhelming and unfiltered. When it comes to breaking news items for immediate broadcast, wire services like Bay City News and larger services still provide a crucial service.

At the same time, though, some news providers have essentially cheapened the meaning of “breaking” news. The assassination of a prominent world or local leader is a “breaking” news item in the minutes and hours following the murder, but the arrest of a new suspect in a two-month old story about the nightclub beating of a popular fashion model is not of the same gravity. Both are interesting stories, but only the first qualifies as breaking news.

For the record, stories are categorized by news agencies according to public importance. The highest priority, according to The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, is a Flash. Those are extremely rare news items of global interest. It has to be something like, “FLASH; SPACE CENTER, HOUSTON – Man lands on the moon.”

Check out my other blogs:

bayarealurene.blogspot
fecklesspreapproved.blogspot
unbelievableanimalstories.blogspot
baghdadiproposal.blogspot
risksinreporting.blogspot
genesisoutline.blogspot
mobiloilnigeriaman.blogspot
northbeachman.blogspot
blackholeeconomics.blogspot

13: Fish in San Francisco's Chinatown Wants to Catch Cable Car, Swim Back to Beach

California coast in April of 2007

13.

Undated, unpublished satire, by Lurene Helzer, Probably sometime in mid 1990s, regards scene in San Francisco’s Chinatown at a small grocery. The scene involves a fish being loaded into a box. He falls to pavement. I ask where the fish thought he was going in life:


I was walking through The City a few days ago. I came into Chinatown. A couple of Chinese grocers were loading some fish from cardboard boxes into plastic containers. There must have been about 30 fish stacked up there. Fish are Fools! They have no idea they are going to be at any moment mere decoration in a Chinatown storefront, with their blue eyes staring at passing Chinese ladies with plastic shopping bags.

Anyway, two Chinese guys were slapping them from cardboard box to plastic box, cardboard box to plastic box, and so on. One of the guys had a cigarette hanging from his mouth. A fish, who had somehow managed to survive the journey from the ocean to the store, wriggled out of the man’s hand and slapped himself down to the pavement. There he was: gaFlop gaFlop gaFlop.

The merchant picked up the fish and threw him like a slimy washcloth into the plastic bin with the other fish.

The question struck me suddenly: “Where did that fish think he was going? Did he think he was going to catch a cable car back to the beach or something?”

11, 12: Opinions, Opinions.....The New York Times and C.I.A.

11.

Brief published comment I wrote for a web opinion site sometime in the 1990s, It is still published on the internet under the name Lurene Helzer

12.

New York Times letter to the editor, written by Lurene Helzer, published October 30, 1998. Regards 1998 American Central Intelligence Agency monitoring of peace agreements between Israelis and Palestinians. I say in letter that we ought to have asked another American agency to do the work because the C.I.A. is unpopular in the region.

10: Berkeley Post Office on Tax Day, April 16, 1999

Money find in 1969 Philly.

10.

Published news story, Post office scene: ‘Regular mail or taxes?’ by Lurene Helzer for Berkeley Daily Planet, page one, April 16, 1999. Story is still fun to remember because Americans of all varieties come out of the closet for federal tax day, which is April 15. You just stand around a city’s main post office for a few hours and return to the newsroom with something pretty entertaining for next day’s issue. Of course, taxes are normally not described as entertaining to collect, most people the world over would agree:

By 9:15 p.m. there was a faster-moving line of people. “The rush has not even arrived,” he said. “Every year, people will wait until 11:45 and flock to the post office.”

It was a nice evening in Berkeley on the dreaded April 15, 68 degrees, light winds of 7 mph.

There were a lot of cars with couples.

“Maybe it’s a night out for them. They come in groups, too,” said Roberson.

Some seem to consider April 15 a family event. One sports utility vehicle went by. A woman with a happily panting dog was in the passenger’s seat and the kids were in the back. A man was driving. They were all laughing.

At nearly 10 p.m., one guy steps up to Roberson. He looks fatigued, slightly shaken. He asks where he can get tax forms.

Another woman wants to give postal workers her envelopes from her sunroof, and as one worker tries to take them, she snatches them back into her car. She holds them out again, the worker reaches out, and she snatches them back again. The worker throws up his hands.

Roberson shrugs his shoulders. “It’s kind of frustrating sometimes.”

There are a few people using the stream of people as a political opportunity. They were giving out flyers for an upcoming protest against the NATO airstrikes in Yugoslavia.

One man stood around on the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets. Tony Spaulding of Los Angeles, an engineer visiting town.

Just about every year, he stands out on April 15 at a post office. He’s performed the vigil in Los Angeles and Santa Monica. This year it is Berkeley.

“Only once a year do we all get down on our hands and knees and give royalty to the king,” he quipped.

9: Another odd essay, Dec. 27, 1994

9.

Another Weird Story from San Francisco, unpublished essay by Lurene Helzer, December 27, 1994. Story centers on old roommate Anton Loman. I can’t say he was even a close friend, but he remains a memory of true fascination even now, in 2007. I must also admit I always had sympathy for the history of Russian Jews. I think they have a hard time being truly understood in Israel today, or anywhere they try living outside Russia, actually. They are simply unique people wherever they may wander. Anatoly (Natan) Sharansky today remains a controversial and necessary figure in the history of the 20th Century, as far as I’m concerned. I keep an old news photo of him in 1984 San Francisco in my collection.

8: The Pigeon spoof, September 24, 2000

8.

Published satire, “The Pigeon,” by Lurene Helzer, San Francisco Chronicle, September 24, 2000. This comedic episode is spoof of metropolitan life, most of which floats by unnoticed in its absurdity every day. It is also, on a deeper though not immediately noticeable level, a satiric comment on the dot-com revolution as it was occurring then in the San Francisco Bay area. The paper initially mistook it for a completely accurate series of events, which it was not. For example, there was no drunk on the corner, and there was no “I wonder who does her teeth” comment.

The published form can be seen in two versions, however. The original version, unedited, that ran in that Sunday’s SF Chronicle, is the one here. A second version, edited significantly, remains today on the San Francisco Chronicle’s website if you search for it by using my last name then, which was Helzer.

7: Engagement party poem for Lukeris' on April 26, 2003

Melissa as a teen, visiting me in San Francisco Bay area, 1990s.

7.

Unpublished engagement poem, April 26, 2003 by Lurene Helzer for sister Melissa Helzer and Gabe Lukeris’ engagement party. They are today married, raising two boys, Drasil and Ashton, in Bellingham, WA.