#best of

You know it's a good sign when the first thing I do after finishing an article is double-check whether the whole site is some sort of AI-generated spoof. The answer on this one was closer than you might like, but I do think it's genuine.

Jakob Nielsen, UX expert, has apparently gone and swallowed the AI hype by unhinging his jaw, if the overall subjects of his Substack are to be believed. And that's fine, people can have hobbies, but the man's opinions are now coming after one of my passions, accessibility, and that cannot stand.

Very broadly, Nielsen says that digital accessibility is a failure, and we should just wait for AI to solve everything.

This gif pretty much sums up my thoughts after a first, second and third re-read.

A scene from Hot Fuzz, where Detective Andy leans down and says I got mad at literally the first actual sentence:

Accessibility has failed as a way to make computers usable for disabled users.

Nielsen's rubric is an undefined "high productivity when performing tasks" and whether the design is "pleasant" or "enjoyable" to use. He then states, without any evidence whatsoever, that the accessibility movement has been a failure.

Accessibility has not failed disabled users, it has enabled tens of millions of people to access content, services and applications they otherwise would not have. To say it is has failed is to not even make perfect the enemy of the good; it's to ignore all progress whatsoever.

The I will be the first to stand in line to shout that we should be doing better; I am all for interfaces and technologies that help make content more accessible to more people. But this way of thinking skips over the array of accessible technology and innovations that have been developed that have made computers easier, faster and pleasant to use.

For a very easy example, look at audio description for video. Content that would have been completely inaccessible to someone with visual impairments (video with dialogue) can now be understood through the presentation of the same information in a different medium.

Or what about those with audio processing differences? They can use a similar technology (subtitles) to have the words that are being spoken aloud present on the video, so they more easily follow along.

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of such ideas (small and large) that already exist and are making digital interfaces more accessible. Accessibility is by no means perfect, but it has succeeded already for untold millions of users.

The excuse

Nielsen tells us there are two reasons accessibility has failed: It's expensive, and it's doomed to create a substandard user experience. We'll just tackle the first part for now, as the second part is basically just a strawman to set up his AI evangelism.

Accessibility is too expensive for most companies to be able to afford everything that’s needed with the current, clumsy implementation.

This line of reasoning is absolute nonsense. For starters, this assumes that accessibility is something separate from the actual product or design itself. It's sort of like saying building a nav menu is too expensive for a company to afford - it's a feature of the product. If you don't have it, you don't have a product.

Now, it is true that remediating accessibility issues in existing products can be expensive, but the problem there is not the expense or difficulty in making accessible products, it's that it wasn't baked into the design before you started.

It's much more expensive to retrofit a building for earthquake safety after it's built, but we still require that skyscrapers built in California not wiggle too much. And if the builders complain about the expense, the proper response is, "Then don't build it."

If you take an accessible-first approach (much like mobile-first design), your costs are not appreciably larger than ignoring it outright. And considering it's a legal requirement for almost any public-facing entity in the US, Canada or EU, it is quite literally the cost of doing business.

A detour on alt text

As an aside, the above image is a good example of the difference between the usability approach and the accessibility approach to supporting disabled users. Many accessibility advocates would insist on an ALT text for the image, saying something like: “A stylized graphic with a bear in the center wearing a ranger hat. Above the bear, in large, rugged lettering, is the phrase "MAKE IT EASY." The background depicts a forest with several pine trees and a textured, vintage-looking sky. The artwork has a retro feel, reminiscent of mid-century national park posters, and uses a limited color palette consisting of shades of green, brown, orange, and white.” (This is the text I got from ChatGPT when I asked it to write an ALT text for this image.)

On the other hand, I don’t want to slow down a blind user with a screen reader blabbering through that word salad. Yes, I could — and should — edit ChatGPT’s ALT text to be shorter, but even after editing, a description of the appearance of an illustration won’t be useful for task performance. I prefer to stick with the caption that says I made a poster with the UX slogan “Keep It Simple.”

The point of alt text is to provide a written description of visual indicators. It does NOT require you to describe in painstaking detail all of the visual information of the image in question. It DOES require you to convey the same idea or feeling you were getting across with the image.

If, in the above case, all that is required is the slogan, then you should not include the image on the page. You are explicitly saying that it is unimportant. My version of the alt text would be, "A stylized woodcut of a bear in a ranger hat evoking National Park posters sits over top of text reading "Make it easy.""

Sorry your AI sucks at generating alt text. Maybe you shouldn't rely on it for accessibility because it true accessibility requires ascertaining intent and including context?

The easy fix

Lolz, no.

The "solution" Nielsen proposes should be no surprise: Just let AI do everything! Literally, in this case, he means "have the AI generate an entire user experience every time a user accesses your app," an ability he thinks is no more than five years away. You know, just like how for the past 8 years full level 5 automated driving is no more than 2-3 years away.

Basically, the AI is given full access to your "data and features" and then cobbles together an interface for you. You as the designer get to choose "the rules and heuristics" the AI will apply, but other than that you're out of luck.

This, to be frank, sounds terrible? The reason we have designers is to present information in a coherent and logical flow with a presentation that's pleasing to the eye.

The first step is the AI will be ... inferring? Guessing? Prompting you with a multiple choice quiz? Reading a preset list of disabilities that will be available to every "website" you visit?

It will then take that magic and somehow customize the layout to benefit you. Oddly, the two biggest issues that Nielsen writes about are font sizes and reading level; the first of which is already controllable in basically every text-based context (web, phone, computer), and the second of which requires corporations to take on faith that the AI can rewrite their content completely while maintaining any and all style and legal requirements. Not what I'd bet my company on, but sure.

But my biggest complaint about all of this is it fails the very thing Nielsen is claiming to solve: It's almost certainly going to be a "substandard user experience!" Because it won't be cohesive, there have literally been no thought into how it's presented to me. We as a collective internet society got fed up with social media filter bubbles after about 5 years of prolonged use, and now everything I interact with is going to try to be intensely personalized?

Note how we just flat-out ignore any privacy concerns. I'm sure AI will fix it!

I really don't hate AI

AI is moderately useful in some things, in specific cases, where humans can check the quality of its work. As I've noted previously, right now we have not come up with a single domain where AI seems to hit 100% of its quality markers.

But nobody's managed to push past that last 10% in any domain. It always requires a human touch to get it "right."

Maybe AI really will solve all of society's ills in one fell swoop. But instead of trying to pivot our entire society around that one (unlikely) possibility, how about we actually work to make things better now?

Requirements

Allow readers to upload photos (bonus: from any device, previously limited to desktop)
Store photos and accompanying metadata (name, address, contact info, caption, etc.)
Display photos and selected metadata (name, caption) on multiple platforms
Allow for editing/deletion after upload
Low/no startup or ongoing costs
Support multiple news properties without much cost for scaling
DO NOT create additional work

Research

There are a number of image hosts out there, of course, but the terms of use on their accounts vary wildly. The two main hosts we looked into were Flickr and Photobucket. Photobucket had the advantage of being Not Yahoo, which was a plus in my eyes, but their variable pricing structure (not conducive to multiple accounts, difficult to budget for the future) and lack of apparent developer support (the page you’re directed toward to set up an account no longer exists) made that seem unwise.

Flickr offers 1 TB of storage for reasonable pricing, but a hard request limit (3600/hour) and reasonable usage request (“You shall not use Flickr APIs for any application that replicates or attempts to replace the essential user experience of Flickr.com”) kind of limited its appeal to use a gallery host. Well, there went that idea. Then we started looking at resources we already had.

A few years ago, Digital First Media provided its news organizations with the nifty MediaCenter installations developed at the Denver Post. MediaCenter is an SEO-friendly, easy-to-use WordPress theme/plugin combo that stores its data in SmugMug, another photo storage site we’d looked at but abandoned based on price. But, you see, we already had an account. An in. (A cheap in, to the delight of my editor.) Once we clarified that we were free to use the API access, we decided to do what the pros do: Build what you need, and partner for the rest. Rather than build out the gallery functionality, we’d just create SmugMug galleries and MediaCenter posts, and direct uploaded photos there.

Challenges

The official SmugMug API is comprehensive, though … somewhat lacking in terms of ease of use. Luckily, someone created a PHP wrapper (PHPSmug), which works, more or less. (There are a few pitfalls, in terms of values not corresponding and some weirdness involving the OAuth procedure, but it’s all work-through-able.)

The whole point of user-generated photos is that you want to have the content live forever on the web, but keeping 400 “Fourth of July”-esque-specific categories around in the upload list is going to frustrate the user. We decided to treat categories in two ways: Active and Inactive. Once you create a gallery, it never goes away (so it can live on in search), but you can hide it so it doesn’t necessarily jump in the user’s face all the time.

Print workflow was especially important to us, as one of the major goals of the system was to not create additional work. Due to circumstances out of my control, the server we have to work with does not have email functionality. Using a combination of Google Scripts and some PHP, we weaseled around that limitation and email the original uploaded photo to our normal inbox for photo submissions, thus not forcing the print workflow to require using the web interface.

Allowing uploads from mobile devices is almost a cinch since both Android and the later flavors of iOS support in-browser uploads. The whole thing was built off responsive Bootstrap, so that was the easiest part of the whole project.

One of the biggest reasons we have a photo uploader and web gallery in the first place is to reassure people that when they submit a photo to us, we received it. This helps to prevent a deluge of phone calls or emails inquiring whether we in fact received the photo and when we plan to run it. Having the web gallery gives the user instant notification/gratification, and allows us to remind them gently that we don't have the space to print every photo we receive — but you can certainly view them online.

Method

On the backend, we have one database containing three cross-indexed tables — one to hold authentication info (per property), one for the category info and one for the photos themselves. Because we're using SmugMug as the storage system, there's no need to hold the actual photo ourselves (which helps with data usage from both a storage and transfer perspective). All the photo storage table has to hold is the information for retrieving it from SmugMug.

The user navigates to a specific property's upload form, fills it out and uploads the photo. The component parts of the form are stored separately as well as combined into our standard user-caption format. The caption is used when we send the photo to SmugMug, but we also store it locally so we can sync them up if changes need to be made. The photos are directed to the gallery specified by the user.

After a certain amount of time (about 5 minutes on SmugMug's end, and anywhere from 15-30 minutes on our gallery's end because of the massive caching it was designed with), the photo automatically appears on our photo gallery site. From the backend, users are able to create or retire categories, edit photo caption information and delete photos.

There's hope that we'll be able to do things like move photos around or create archive galleries, but that's down the road, if we have the time.

Results

You can view the final product here, here, here or here (spoiler alert: They’re almost exactly the same). There are still features we’d like to add, but there were more fires to put out and we had to move on. Hopefully we can come back to it when things settle down.

My first big in-house migration to save money!

#newspapers #tech #best of #projects

Aug 6

There's always a van. The Scooby gang, ghost hunters by trade if not specifically by design, rolled around in the Mystery Machine. The Ghost Hunters from SyFy flit from haunt to haunt in their souped-up van — black, of course, with "TAPS" stenciled in yellow "COPS" lettering on the side. Even the land boat the Ghostbusters tore through New York City with bears far more resemblance to a modern-day van than a car.

Though you may question whether the contemporary investigators are aping the ghost hunters of their youth, the Whispering Spirits Paranormal Research Society pulled up to Farmington Daily Times building in the quiet northwest New Mexico hamlet in their very own van. It was (appropriately enough) Friday the 13th, with a nice big moon hanging in the sky to perfectly illuminate the aging but still functioning newspaper. It's spooky business, poking around decaying buildings in the dark.

The motley crew that piled out for a night's work wasn't what you'd expect a group of ghost chasers to look like. They come in all shapes and sizes, all manner of hair colors and lack thereof, and range in age from 18 to well into Boomer territory.

Then again, if you really think about what real-life ghost hunting entails — a steadfast belief in the supernatural with an accompanying willingness to sacrifice your nights and weekends in pursuit of proving said logical improbability — they're exactly what you should expect them to look like.

They began unloading their hard plastic cases filled with all sorts of electrical gizmos, some recognizable and some not, around 11 p.m. To a person, the only thing they had in common other than the uniform black T-shirts was a determination, a sense of purpose. They exuded a clear sense of order and efficiency as they transferred the boxes first to the ground, then inside. It almost bordered on urgency — though, since the investigation wasn't set to begin until after midnight, it wasn't quite clear why.

They all wore matching black T-shirts with the name of the society and a very pixelated vortex plastered on the back, but it was rare you'd confuse any of them for another.

Mel, the undisputed leader of the group — who never was referred to as such by the rest except in their complete obedience to his every order — stood distinguishable by his stocky, muscular stature, his reddish-blond beard and accompanying (though thinning) hair. He got started right away.

"We expect to find whatever we can," he said, unpacking one of the six night-vision video cameras from where they lay in their custom-cut foam holes. He hands one of them to his wife, Krystal, one of the group's co-founders, and has her run it from the flat-screen monitor they brought with to a prearranged point in the other room. "We're doing a small investigation here, it'll be about an hour, an hour and a half."

The sheer amount of electronics the group carries along is somewhat staggering, especially considering the rather small area they're investigating on this trip. A lunchroom and a small bullpen seem like fairly easy ground to cover, but Mel says the total cost of the equipment they have is pushing $4,000. It's not hard to believe how expensive the equipment is. It's just a little hard to believe that the people who run this nonprofit (they're adamant about their IRS status) have nothing better to do with that kind of money.

Of course, it's a little hard to understand what drives a person to do this sort of work in the first place. As people who believe in ghosts, they're actually somewhat less equipped to deal with coming face-to-face with a spirit than a nonbeliever. A nonbeliever would be just as scared at a startling noise or a freaky coincidence, but logically they'd attribute it to just that — a coincidence. True believers, though, are prone to seeing specters around every corner. To them, that hard, bristly thing that brushes lightly against their left arm in the darkened room is out to get them — there's no chance it's just an upturned broom.

It all started with a cellphone. A smartphone, actually, the marvel of modern technology that carries a staggering amount of computing power in your hand. More than enough to solve the most intractable mathematical mysteries that stymied humans for generations. And it finds ghosts, apparently. Sometimes?

"We were messing around with an app on my phone, and it turned out to be fake, and we started wondering kind of a little bit more about the paranormal," says the other co-founder, Natasha. By day Natasha works at a deli, but nighttime is when she can bring out her spiritual, supernatural side.

"We found another app on the Droid called the Ghost Radar, and I was curious as to how it worked because I couldn't find anything on the Internet that said it was either fake or real," chimed in Krystal, interrupting slightly. The two went to a local cemetery to test out the app, which instructed them to look for "Paul."

It's worth noting that, on the website for Ghost Radar, the company's only comment on the app's veracity is that it's "as effective as an EMF detector or a KII." Which is to say they either believe in it wholeheartedly, or think it's a great way to transfer money from the gullible to their bank account.

Krystal, however, seemed to be convincing herself she believed.

"It was like leading us to it, I want to say, because we were looking for this person’s name and we couldn't find a Paul, and it said, 'Beyond,' so we're like, OK, so it's on the other side. It wasn't actually on the wall itself, it was on the ground, so we just kind of went from there and invested ..."

"They were playing, basically," interrupts Judy.

Judy is Mel's mother, something of a skeptic and an utterly devout Christian. She got into the ghost-chasing game after Mel and Krystal kept out all hours of the night and asked her to babysit the kids. Judy doesn't actually believe in ghosts, per se. She mostly tags along to help protect Mel and Krystal from the spirits they face, which Judy believes are all demons. She started asking to help them analyze the recorded evidence, and eventually worked her way up to a starting spot on the squad.

The investigation itself is actually the easiest part of the whole thing, if you can get over the whole "actively seeking out haunted places" thing. The part that Judy broke in through, the analyzing, is actually the most difficult piece — mostly because of the tedium. Hour upon hour of straining to look at grainy, black-and-white footage of something you just witnessed firsthand, all to find some — any — evidence of the supernatural. Since just about anything unusual can be ascribed to the supernatural, just about everything that happens has to be double-checked to rule out the presence of other beings.

Mel couldn't give me a definite estimate as to the man-hours involved, but what he did come up with sounded exhaustively time-consuming.

"Probably two hours for every hour, reviewing just video," he said. "It takes probably a couple of weeks to go over four hours worth of audio and video."

The cameras, recorders and what can only be described as gadgets they carry with them could stun a small herd of high school AV nerds. Each investigative "team" of two people carries at least one personal digital audio recorder. There are also various electromagnetic field readers, something called a "ghost box" (an AM/FM radio that continually scans through frequencies, so as to create "white noise" that spirits can use to make themselves heard more easily) and of course the Ghost TiVo, the digital video recorder that captures of every frame of freaky footage they shoot on their stationary night-vision cameras.

Between the expense, the late hours, the hours (and days and weeks) annihilated by analyzing and the cringe factor that accompanies an adult describing his or herself unironically as a "ghost hunter," it's somewhat bewildering to comprehend why this dedicated — and any group of people that willfully sacrifices this kind of time and money deserves the designation "dedicated," among others — group of people would do this kind of thing. From the variety of their answers, it's clear there's no category they can be slotted into, no on explanation that covers all of them.

Except, maybe — simply — that they like to do it.

"This is probably the best hobby we could ever come up with," says one.

It's time for the investigation to begin. First the entire group clears out to the back door, most to smoke, but ostensibly for the purpose of getting a neutral reading, of sorts. The sensors and video cameras can get a control reading — and maybe pick up some stray ghost bloopers before the spirits see the "ON AIR" light switch on.

The group also needs to let off some steam (slash smoke). This is the part of the play before the play, when the cast gathers backstage to let out the giggles, stretch and warm up their vocal chords. And, of course, pray for a good show.

Religion and ghost hunting don't mix together well when you first throw them in the blender. Though you can (and Mel does) point to the Bible for evidence of evil entities on Earth, the prescribed method for dealing with them involves commanding them into the bodies of pigs and running them off the cliff.

Not only are there no big drop-offs present, we're fresh out of pigs as well. This, however, does not deter the group.

"Basically, we stay in God's word. If I have to take a Bible with me, I'll take a bible with me. I preach God's word," says Mel. "There's no guarantee that we can get rid of what's there, but we do our best."

Mel, Krystal, Judy and Shane (he's the oil worker in his mid-20s with the tattoos and the leather vest that plunk him square in a moderate-to-rough motorcycle gang) are adamant about religion playing a huge role. Shane takes the same demonological hard line about spirits that Judy does, while both Krystal and Mel believe God protects them and their children against the spirits they counter. It might be the couple's biggest worry, actually — unknowingly bringing a ghost home for a spooky reenactment of "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?"

Mel's even had a sit-down with his pastor. Or two.

"He does not agree. He has an issue with me doing what I'm doing and my wife doing what she's doing," Mel recalls.

"He's just real concerned with the Bible and what it says," offers Krystal. "In there it says not to seek the spirits."

After the invocation, the group heads back in and picks up their gear. Each two-person team has the aforementioned voice recorder as well as a walkie-talkie to facilitate to communication and rule out false positives. If one of the teams hears a weird noise, they'll try to ascertain whether another group's nearby before maintaining radio silence in the hopes of hearing it again. Similarly, if the group leader back at base sees something on the camera, he can instruct a team in the field to take a closer look.

The audio devices seem to be the easiest way to catch a ghost, though the reason is never fully explained. Mel tells me he can just sit in his backyard with the recorder and hear plenty of voices. This for some reason makes him think the method is more, as opposed to less, reliable.

In addition to the audio devices, Judy's carrying around a garden-variety digital camera with the flash set to "accidentally staring directly at the porch light when your parents flip it on after the sun goes down." The hope is that you can catch a spirit by surprise? Or something. That was never really spelled out to me, though Mel assured me 35mm film cameras do a much better job than the new-fangled digital ones.

Even ghosts can be Instamatic hipster snobs.

Natasha and Shane are exploring the lunchroom, where unspecified paranormal activity is rumored to have taken place. They carry both an EMF reader and the ghost box. Shane takes the EMF reader and basically runs it over every square inch of the cabinets, walls and as much of the ceiling he can reach, interrupting every so often with a desultory, "Are you there?"

Natasha, on the other hand, immediately takes a seat at the table, lays her cellphone and the ghost box down on the table, and turns on the squawk.

"Are you there?" she asks, though it's more of a demand than a question. "Show yourself. Prove to me that you exist."

This goes on for longer than you'd think tolerable. In the corner of the room sits one of the tethered night-vision cameras, its presence notable for the circle of small red LED lights that ring the lens, staring directly at us. It's watching Natasha decry whatever spirits may be there as "cowards," challenging them to prove her wrong.

One obliges.

As the ghost box flips through the frequencies, every so often you'll be able to make out a word or a partial sentence that slips through a broadcaster's lips.

"Did it say 'press room'?" I ask at one point, pointing at the device even though we can't really see each other.

Natasha confirms she heard it too. Her aggressive patter picks up in volume and intensity, but we don't get much more in terms of aural confirmation.

But there is something strange going on. For some reason, every time the ghost box rolls through the 1300 AM range, you can hear a whine cycle up through different pitches. And when it gets to 1380 AM, it just ... stops.

It stops scanning and hunkers down on some random Latin music station. Natasha says it's never done that before. Shane agrees. When we set it to start scanning again, everything continues as normal. At least, until we hear the whine in the 1300s. And it stops. Again.

The group line is that they're debunkers. Sometimes it's the house settling, other times it's simply in your imagination. They say their job is to go in, gather all the information possible and announce that the ghost was actually just Mr. Jenkins, the creepy real estate developer, all along.

"The main purpose of the group is to go in and debunk, to make sure that people aren't seeing or hearing things that are naturally occurring," says Judy.

That's the spin on natural occurrences. When it comes to the supernatural — that no one spoke out against during the powwow we had before the investigation began — there are no human spirits wandering in search of a loved one or a great burger or a long-lost childhood sled.

Everything is demons. If you hear a voice that sounds like Grandma Lil or knows something only Uncle Jerry could know, that's just a particularly crafty demon trying to trick you. Judy also believes in demonic possession — but they're spirits of Hell, not spirits of people. Tricksy demons.

There's a lot to debunk in this creaky old newspaper office, though one can't really rule out the notion that one or more demons has passed through its halls posing as an editor or a sales rep. But there are plenty of clunks and groans when the air conditioner kicks on, at least twice an hour at random. And since the gigantic printing press used to be just on the other side of the wall, there's a drop-basement that holds the leads and connections to enough juice to power at least one good-size Vegas hotel.

This is where some of the science comes in, the debunking. They're a research society, see. It's right in the name. And their studying is not limited to extraterrestrials and ghost stories; they also read up on common phenomena, and I'm sure the electrician-in-his-other-life has gotten through a technical manual or two. That, the technology and the scientific method the group applies to their investigations (two people to a team, so they have verification; constant communication to rule out false positives; and making sure everyone knows where everyone else is for the same reason) are the values the group holds highest.

But the power plant only explains the crazy readings we're getting on one section of the wall with the EMF reader. We've still got this ghost box that's spooking us all just a little bit with its whine and random-but-not-at-all-random stoppages. We run it through some tests.

"Try stopping it manually once we start hearing the whine," I suggest. Natasha does so, and we both hear the whine skip up through the scale on each of the 1310, 1320 and 1330 AM stations.

"So the octave's not tied to the frequency," I offer, which sounds scientific-ish, at least to my ears.

Natasha nods. She then turns the scan back on, only to have it stop a few seconds later on the same station as before.

"OK, this is pretty weird."

Natasha nods again.

We sit in silence as we let the box run through the same cycle two or three more times. Then we decide to experiment again, so Natasha picks up her phone and hits a button so we can get a better view at the ghost box.

Which proceeds to skip right on by 1380. No whine, either. The ghost is gone.

We're both a little disappointed. She sets her phone back down so we can continue the hunt in darkness, which is apparently the group's guess at spirits' preferred mood lighting. When the whine comes back and the box stops abruptly at 1380, Natasha gasps.

"Dammit. It's my phone."

She moves it away from the box, and we resume the investigation in silence.

Some level of skepticism should be present. As debunking performs a fairly vital part of paranormal investigating, at least for Whispering Spirits, you'd expect the group to be somewhat wary of what it finds. You'd expect each of them (or at least some of them) to examine things with a critical eye, always naysaying each other and operating on a basis of "normal until proven not."

You'd also be wrong. Most of the debunking, it seems, falls to one man — Bobby.

"Bobby is very skeptical," Natasha had told me earlier. "He is the one who does not believe."

The concept was boggling. Why would a paranormal group carry around a skeptic on its roster? More to the point, who joins a group for the expressed purpose of not believing a word it says?

"I think it's curiosity," Bobby says. "I just like to prove 'em wrong. Until they can prove me wrong."

Bobby's proved 'em wrong on more than one occasion. Despite being very hard of hearing, the first thing he does when the group shows up on site is to check for any mitigating evidence — do the lights hum, is there a power plant behind that wall, what noises do you hear?

"Bobby's very observant," says Mel. "He'll note everything in his head, and when it comes time to go over evidence, he remembers. He tries to debunk everything that we come up with, because we get excited. He tries to explain everything."

Once, the group set up in an old graveyard. (Despite the ready abundance of dead bodies, nobody ever seems to haunt a new graveyard. Wrong atmosphere, maybe. Not the right aesthetics.) They had been wandering among the tombstones for a while, in the oldest section, running the ghost box.

"We were walking through there, and the radio come off with, 'Scared,'" Mel recalls. "And we stopped and we said, 'Don't be scared of us, we're here to help you' ... The girls come off with, 'What do you have to be scared of?' And it came through, 'Reaper.'"

The electromagnetic spook set the scene perfectly. Armed with their digital camera, the group took a steady succession of pictures of some spooky-looking trees.

"We were shooting pictures, and you see the dark images of trees, and there's the really dark image that looked really tall," says Mel. "It looked like the Reaper."

That one wound up being pretty easy for Bobby to debunk.

"It turned out to be me," he says.

Bobby's disbelief isn't really disbelief, though — more like the suspension of belief. He says he truly wants to believe in ghosts and spirits — he just hasn't had the opportunity yet.

At the very least, Bobby has to be a believer in belief, then, right? He's actually had a spooky experience he couldn't explain — a recorder he set down in a haunted basement recorded a disembodied voice growling, "Lucifer" about 10 seconds after he left a room. He has no explanation for it. But still he doesn't believe.

"Every investigation, though, I go in hoping to find something that I can't (explain) — that's not me. And so far, I've been let down," he says. "I wanna be a believer. And someday, I will be."

The dark is scary, regardless of whether ghosts are present. By far the spookiest occurrence took place in the press building, where the team finished up after scouring the main building. There are no windows in the building's deepest recesses, so the area where huge mountains of five-foot paper rolls are stored dims to the blackest of black with the lights off. So black you can't even discern the movement of your hand as you wave it in front of your face.

Stephen seems like the most normal guy in the bunch. His partner, 18-year-old Kim, isn't the opposite, but she's closer to the other side of the spectrum than to his.

Stephen and Kim set up in a paper-roll canyon that stretched back to the cinderblock wall, towering some 20 feet overhead. Stephen aimed a red laser pointer at the wall opposite, down the length of the chasm, explaining it would be much easier for a spirit to cause a small, weak light flicker than to manifest into a form visible by flashlight or camera flash.

So we waited. In absolute darkness, with only the tiniest, most anemic of red beams shimmering along our sides, barely even visible on the far wall. Your mind starts to play tricks at that point, combining the extraordinarily low light with the sleep deprivation that comes from ghost hunting until well into the 4 a.m. hour.

Then I heard shuffling.

Officially, I was along as an observer, not an investigator. And yet, much like when I asked if anyone heard "press room" on the ghost box, I felt compelled to speak up when no one else did.

For I knew the stories of the press building. Of the suicidal press operator who jumped into the baler (which compresses plastic barrels, cardboard or human flesh and bones, if you ask it, into much smaller and compacter versions of those things) in order to commit suicide. He failed to notice that the baler had been emptied and wound up just being stuck for the weekend, but it's still a bummer vibe to put out there.

I had heard of the full-bodied apparition of the '70s press operator, still dressed in the proper garb, standing watch at the control panel one late night. And the barking dogs and growls heard over by the ink tanks when no other soul, man or beast, was supposed to be in the building.

"I hear feet shuffling," I announced.

"You do?" asked Kim, surprised.

"Is anyone there?" I asked, directing my question toward the tiny point of light on the wall.

"Check the radio," I instructed Stephen.

He did. "No," came the response.

So we waited. Silence can seem oppressive in any situation, but in absolute darkness it's downright suffocating. I strained my eyes, trying to see anything.

Then I noticed the slightest waver in my peripheral vision, right along the left wall of the canyon. The laser beam streamed down almost directly along the right side, so the movement I noticed was so slight I almost missed it.

"I see something," I announced again, this time a little bit louder. I was, I admit, slightly scared. I scooted back away from the light, toward the cinderblocks. And I knew it wasn't Bobby this time, because I had heard him breathing heavily and walking away a few minutes earlier.

"You hear shuffling?" asked Kim.

"No, I definitely see something. Turn on the light, turn on the light!" I finished, my voice getting slightly louder, higher and faster on every word. Stephen fumbled for the laser pointer, which was attached to a flashlight, flipped the light on and shone it on whatever was coming for us. I gaped at what I saw lurching out of the darkness.

I don't know if Judy is right to be keeping an eye out for demons, or if Krystal's prayers do keep the evil away from her home and family. I don't know if Bobby's skepticism is well founded, or if Shane is correct in his adamant belief of evil spirits trying to fool us. I don't know what's on the other side, reaching out to make a connection to the land of the living.

But that time, it was Mel.

In the end, it turned out the newspaper wasn't terribly haunted. In the bullpen, where most of the spooky happenings had been reported, there were only two things to note before they went back to the tapes for analysis.

Judy managed to snap a photo of an "orb," a large globe of light that appears in one frame of a photograph and doesn't appear in any taken just before or just after. On the small screen of the digital camera, it definitely looks like an orb.

This was confirmed by one of the press workers, who exclaimed (multiple times) while looking at it, "Damn! You caught an orb!"

It's not as interesting as expected, given their recitations of other investigations. In fact, their very first time out they visited a location they refer to only as "The Basement," a literal hole-in-the-ground Mel had been told was haunted since he was a little kid.

"Growing up, all the kids used to talk about a lady that lived there that kidnapped kids back in the '40s," Mel recalled. After kidnapping them, locking them in cages and starving them for weeks, "she would take 'em down to the pond and drown 'em, if they were still alive. And she'd throw their bodies down a shaft."

Of course, after a full investigation the team found there was no truth to this story. The woman merely had several citations for cruelty to animals to her name before she was "taken away."

"She lit a horse on fire," according to a neighbor Mel spoke with.

Then the house was demolished and some homeless guy took up residence, kicking all the drunken teenagers out and scaring them by re-enacting "The Blair Witch Project" (back when people would have gotten the reference) before himself getting taken away by police.

Despite the attempted suicide-by-crushing in the press room story, this was no basement. Yes, one team did have a strange encounter with a table in the bullpen area. They sat the recorder and themselves down at one of the tables in a corner of the room where a lot of disturbances (both spectrally and in the flesh) took place. There, when Stephen (Kim's partner) knocked, a distinct rapping sound knocked right back.

"It's very interesting. It was almost like it answered me, so that's what makes me think it's not coincidental," Stephen recalls. "It knocked several times. I think it's something more. I'm hoping."

Kim, however, has no qualms about believing. Ghosts, spirits, demons, she'll root for the existence of everything. And she's even extra religious — though she grew up with her grandmother's Christianity, the deli-worker-by-day also got to hear about the traditional Navajo creation story and myths.

"Yeah, I believe there's a God, but I don't believe, 'Oh, you have to do this and be good,'" she says. "Traditional, they come from four worlds, and it's ... confusing, mainly. They talk about skin-walkers, bigfoots ..."

Of course, as much as religions differ, they also come together in surprising ways. In the same way that Mel and Krystal worry about ghost hitchhikers, Kim's dad employs his own religious cleansing for her ghostly doings.

"He believes that if I do something like this, then something's going to follow me home," she says. "He has to do a prayer with me, medicine man."

Kim's purpose for joining the group is the simplest, which is why it seems like the most honest.

"I just wanna find answers. To know if there really is another side," she says. "You have to find something to believe in, and I want to believe in something."

That may be why Kim appears to the most in tune with the supernatural. For the group's recent (and as of yet, only) UFO outing, Kim was the only one it communicated with, it "only lik[ed]" her. And this investigation — which was her "first big one," according to Krystal, as Kim is still technically training — she got a response in two different places, as opposed to most of the group's none.

Did Kim's search for answers influence her perceptions? Perhaps. Then again, it's possible she's just more attuned to the other side. Her grandmother told her the story of her grandfather, who was murdered before Kim was born. Every few years, her grandfather would visit her grandmother, telling her, "Good job."

"And he's telling her the next time he comes back, he's going to take my grandma with him," she says.

Kim also believes her grandfather is the voice in her head that restrains her from getting too angry or too upset, the voice that tells her, "Stop," or "Don't."

"My grandma says that's him protecting me. And that's what I want to know, I want the answer to it," she says. "I'm not all crazy about the idea of demons."

The intricate weave of belief in ghosts and religion seems to at once make both perfect sense and none at all. Kim's makes more sense than most, as she's already trying to tie together two beliefs that don't have any common threads — in fact, Christianity explicitly refutes much of traditional Navajo religion, If she can make those work, adding in ghosts just requires tweaking a few names.

The rest of the group, the devoutly religious, seems just as out of place on a paranormal investigative team as Bobby does. Are they just on the lookout for exorcism opportunities? Do they actually expect to see something? Do they really not see the parallelism of not believing in earthly spirits lingering after their physical life, but giving full credence to the notion that a heavenly spirit has total dominion over all?

"There's proof that there's a God. In history, and in the Bible itself," Judy says. "So we're guessing about spirits, we're not guessing about God. We believe in God."

In the end, if you ignore the somewhat muddled philosophies and jury-rigged beliefs, the group really does have one motivating idea. Kim is looking for answers. I don't know if she's finding any, but she's found a group of people that give her something to do after work — breaking her out of a rut that she says started when she finished school. Bobby is looking for evidence that will permit him to believe. He hasn't found it yet, but he still keeps coming along on investigations, sure that this one could actually provide the concrete solidity he needs. Mel, Krystal, Natasha, and who knows how many others are really just trying to find out what's out there — and they find something, every investigation, whether the origin of the phenomenon is supernatural or perfectly ordinary.

And when you think about it, that's pretty much what they've done so far. When they piled in and drove away that morning, they weren't trying desperately to convince anyone they'd encountered the supernatural. They had a few things they were going to check, sure, but that's just diligence — much like their other investigations. Despite the few "unexplained" occurrences such as the "Lucifer" recording, the group primarily spends its time finding weird stuff and then coming up with normal explanations for it.

Overall, their catalyzing agent is actually the same one that drives the original Scooby gang — getting to the truth. Demystifying the previously inexplicable.

Or, to use Judy's words, "To help people. So they're not afraid."

They were a great bunch of people, and I absolutely ate it writing the story for the newspaper the next day. This version is so much better.

#newspapers #best of

Sep 19

Hoo boy! As a [technology writer/reporter without a story idea/old person], I've seen my share of changes in life. But [new product] is about to completely alter [area in which new technology will have extremely slight impact].

I was at [public place] the other day when I saw a young person extricate [latest technological obsession] from her purse. Now, I don't disparage [Generation X or newer] their technological revolutions, but it seems to me that [outdated technology people don't use as much but is still prevalent] works just fine, for my purposes.

See, my generation, the [****any generation older than X, whose name invariably invokes a more positive connotation than more recent ones], we didn't need your fancy new [latest technological obsession] for [arduous chore made easier by modern advancements, but still possible to perform "the hard way"]. We were happy as [animals commonly presumed to be in a constant state of rapture] with [old technology] — it may have taken longer, but that was the way we liked it.

You see, with the [fancy new technology], people aren't able to [incidental advantage of old technology no one noticed/cared about until new technology]. Why, when we wanted to talk to one another, we just [verb for specific type of communication]-ed on our [technology two generations removed; old enough to be nostalgic about, but young enough to masquerade at least a passing interest in technological advancements].

[Obligatory reference to that goddamn Nicholas Carr article/book about about how the Internet is imploding our brains].

I don't see why young people today feel the need to live their lives so quickly, or expensively. Sometimes, you just need to take the time to [verb indicating the activation of one of the senses] the [pages/roses/other noun that often evokes nostalgia or pleasure]. That's why I refuse to buy [advanced technology]. I'm perfectly happy with [older technology that's itself a vast improvement over how things "used to be done"] — the way things used to be [until a newer version of the advanced technology comes out and I can bitch about that while upgrading to the previous generation without seeming hypocritical].

One day, when [generation too young to have a name yet] grows up, they won't remember the feel of [physical object being replaced by technology], or the joy of browsing [physical store replaced by Amazon, et. al] to spontaneously find [physical object]. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think being [verbified formation of name of new technology] necessarily means [pun-ish play on verbified name of thing being replaced by new technology].

See the inspiration for this guide here.

Replace "Nicholas Carr" with "John Hermann" and this was accurate through about 2023.

#tech #best of

Sep 2

Note: This story was originally published in the Pacific Northwest Inlander.

I’m not entirely sure what I expected when I ordered my tickets for ArenaBowl XXIII for “STANDING ROOM ONLY.” Perhaps a corral where we would be led and allowed to roam around, like free-range chickens.

“This is your pen, and this is where you must stay,” they’d say sternly, but we’d mill around and laugh and visit and generally enjoy ourselves.

I certainly didn’t expect to be renting my own little patch of airspace, all of 18 by 20 inches. The only indication of its existence was a one-row duct-taped grid, barely distinguishable from the concrete floor, with a little “1” scrawled in Sharpie.

But I was there to support the team, our Spokane Shock. My job, such as it was, revolved solely around screaming my lungs out while simultaneously sticking my fingers in my ears in an attempt to block out the steady low hum of the vuvuzelas so thoughtfully sold by the host team.

And so I stood in my box, eagerly.

The game got off to a bit of a slow start. I scanned the crowd, noticing some of the very same people who had stood out so conspicuously while waiting in line.

Most of the fans were properly outfitted in jerseys, official ArenaBowl shirts and other Shock-branded tees. Even among the less officially authorized clothing, some managed to nail the particular garish shade of Shock orange. They looked like human Cheetos, though decidedly of the “puffed” as opposed to “crunchy” variety.

Over there, a three-pack of neon redheads stood grinning in their sea-blue shirts like buzz-cut Troll dolls in policemen’s uniforms. And over there, next to the vuvuzela-clutching headache-in-waiting, a man who either tried to paint his face Avatar-blue and misplaced his hairline, or else applied his hair dye before going to sleep and passed the night in a frenzy of macking with his beloved pillow.

What I noticed about all of these fans was their location: in seats. Standing in front of their seats, to be more precise, as if taunting those of us who lacked accommodation for our posteriors.

I shifted uneasily, trying to fend off a nice-looking middle-aged couple who unilaterally commandeered three squares, forcing me into a no-man’s land ungoverned by the duct tape.

And so I stood outside my box, warily.

There was still a game going on, I think — the Napa Auto Parts ArenaBowl XXIII. A thrilling sequence, that started with a “Toyota game ball in the stands” and was followed by a pair of “Dishman Dodge first downs,” culminated in a rather pedestrian “touchdown.” Fortunately, after the YMCA Kickoff Kid grabbed the tee — and on the heels of another Toyota game ball — the Shock defense managed a Papa Murphy’s takeaway, setting up the offense for some more Dishman Dodges and ultimately another … touchdown.

It was all terribly exciting. But it was getting to be around halftime, and my legs were starting to ache.

I glanced around at my fellow standees, and most of them — though cheering — appeared to be preoccupied with alleviating pain: Doubled over to ease the strain, crouching, leaning against the wall … I glared at the Sitters, who were of course standing. How dare they take their seats for granted?

How we Standers longed for the gentle cupping of our buttocks by those plastic blue thrones, sinking in to those rigid, unforgiving slabs and literally taking the load off our backs. Where they could pile their hot dogs, their nachos and their taco salads on their knees, we set our popcorn on the floor and kicked over one another’s Bud Lights.

I fantasized a coup, a hostile takeover, in which we would remove from them their laps of luxury and line them up against the wall, just as they had done to us. But they were too numerous, and we too tired.

And so I stood in my box, uncomfortably.

The rest of the game passed in a blur. The paradox of the sports fan began to assert itself. Despite the outrageous lengths you may go to acquire a suit stitched from what can only be melted traffic cones and then wave around a bloated, grotesquely lifelike orange hand, you still must subordinate yourself to the team.

Though you wish to be recognized for your devotion, ultimately it’s not about you. And when your team is on the verge of winning it all, the arbitrary divisions between fans come down. Eight-year-olds and 80-year-olds beam alike, tripping in the heady haze provided by the proximity of champions. Standers and Sitters …

I have one small confession to make: I bailed at halftime. And though the fans at my next stop were more generous with their advice to the players (“Don’t talk to the press, get your head in the game!”) and loquacious in their constructive criticism of the referees (“I don’t even know what that call means, you encephalopathic zebra!”), they cheered all the same as we watched the clock tick down and the ArenaBowl trophy being trotted out.

Whether at the Arena or miles away, a “championship atmosphere” formed wherever the fans congregated.

And so I sat on my barstool, contentedly.

Basically all of my sportswriting involved writing around the sports. Our alt-weekly audience not being so much interested in game writeups.

#best of

Jun 28

This piece was originally published in the Pacific Northwest Inlander.

Minor league baseball. Even the name sounds so ... inferior.“Minor league” has that connotation in today’s parlance: cut-rate. Second-fiddle.

Not good enough.

Most often, when people refer to something as “minor league,” it’s with the assumption that things aren’t ever going to get any better: a permanent state of mediocrity. When you’re actually referring to minor league baseball, though, there’s another word you should add to the end of the last definition: not good enough yet.

It’s an expression that certainly applies to this year’s Spokane Indians, both as individual players and the team as a whole. The Indians opened their season with a pair of four-game losing streaks split by an 8-1 win against the redundantly named Vancouver Canadians.

The reason for their struggles isn’t readily apparent, at least not after watching just one game. No one’s throwing the ball into the stands instead of hitting the cutoff man; the first baseman isn’t striding out to the batter’s box with his helmet on backwards. The troubles start and end with consistency.

“One night you’ll get pitching, but you don’t get hitting. The next night you’ll get defense, but we don’t get great pitching,” Manager Tim Hulett says. “You’ve got to put those things together.”

The Indians certainly have the roster to contend on any given night. Shortstop Jurickson Profar, a 17-year-old prospect out of Curacao, can hit, field and throw — but then, he wouldn’t be playing professional baseball if he couldn’t do that. Hulett says what sticks out are Profar’s game awareness and highly tuned instincts. Especially when you consider he’s only a teenager.

Big 6-foot-2 third baseman Mike Olt provides some power at the plate, says hitting coach Brian Dayette, and Olt backed that up by knocking in a double and a triple in his first three games. In addition to his offensive prowess, he’s also an asset in the field. “For a big guy, he’s got some great feet, some good hands, and he can make some really good plays,” Hulett says.

Pitching coach Justin Thompson mentions Chad Bell, Zack Osborne and Jimmy Reyes as promising arms to watch. Though the trio has combined for zero wins and two losses thus far, Thompson still sees their upside.

“Once we get those guys stretched out and get their pitch count up, I think we’re going to contend,” says Thompson.

Whether pitcher or position player, the most important thing a minor-league player (assuming there are no gaping flaws in their fundamentals) gets out of a season is experience. The more innings they play, the more chances they have to further their development. But when looking at the feeder-system nature of the minor leagues, there would seem to be two conflicting forces driving a given team: getting wins and developing players.

Hulett doesn’t see it that way. “Our focus is on developing winning players, because I think [winning and developing players] go hand-in-hand,” he says. “It’s hard to develop a player who goes through your whole system [and who] loses at every level and then say, ‘Go win at the big-league level.’”

To a certain extent, using the term “minor league” in a derogatory tone makes sense even in a baseball context: As a whole, the team’s never really going to get all that much better. But that’s only because when the end of the season rolls around, the best players will be moving another rung up the ladder. The worst will find a different career.

And those who need a little more time will be back next year, ready to mix with another crop of guys starting out from scratch. They probably won’t be that good. At least, not yet.

"redundantly named Vancouver Canadians" might be my favorite phrase I've ever written.

#newspapers #sports #best of

Oct 26

Once six o’clock — my tenth hour of work — rolled around, I figured it was okay to take a call. It wasn't as if work was particularly difficult, being my first day and all, or even that I was busy. The last hour and half or so had been spent waiting on someone else to finish up. Until that point, I felt somewhat uncomfortable taking a personal call on the job. Now? Probably in the clear.

Around noon, I had checked Facebook and saw a note from an old high school friend who I hadn't spoken to in years. Under the subject heading, "Hey...", the rather cryptic message read, "You should call me today. It's important. Anytime after 1:00. My number is (###) ###-####."

With the office to myself, I decided to give him a call. I really couldn't fathom the reason he wanted me to call; I assumed there was some sort of party being planned, or some celebration in the offing.

When he picked up, the first thing he asked me was if I had heard about Rachel. I wasn't quite sure what he meant. We were the same age, having attended the same school from kindergarten right up through college. We were both in band, we had a number of activities and classes that overlapped, and I was fairly certain I had seen her at a barbecue two days before graduating college, about three months prior.

"No," I replied honestly. I hadn't really heard anything beyond the vagaries absorbed through Facebook. Things like extracurricular activities, internships and the like. When I heard who the call was in reference to, I kind of assumed she had done something major. Maybe she won some national award? Unsure as to why this required informing me, I really wasn’t sure what to expect. I certainly wasn’t ready to hear the news.

"Dead?..." I stammered. "How? What happened?" My mind raced through any number of scenarios: car crashes, plane crashes, muggings ...

"She killed herself."

"Oh."

Several seconds passed in silence.

"Wow."

"Yeah."

...

"Damn."

"Yeah."

He related how our band director heard the news, then instructed old students in the area to get ahold of those who might not have heard. Apparently, there was to be a memorial service held on Friday or Saturday. Would I be able to make it?

It was Tuesday. Literally my first week, my first day on the job. I hadn’t even filled out my W-4 yet. I had just finished getting my new apartment ready, and hadn’t even gotten my furniture out of storage. I was sleeping on an air mattress on the floor of my living room. Not to mention I now lived in another state, an additional 90 miles on top of the 250 miles I put between me and my hometown during college.

“If it’s on Saturday, I’ll absolutely be there. I probably can’t if it’s on Friday.”

We caught up a bit, then, about where our lives had taken us after high school, but I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention. My mind just kept repeating what he had said, over and over. Finally, after wishing each other well, we hung up.

Rachel and I had our share of run-ins over the years. It wasn’t adversarial or anything like that. But from a very young age, both of us were culled from the herd as “smart kids.” Smart kids, in a school district like ours, were expected to do a lot. We were both taken out of classes for the “gifted” program in elementary school, sat next to each other in the “honors” classes in middle school, and frequented the same courses a year ahead of when we were supposed to in high school.

Smart kids aren’t the ones who wind up dead before they hit 30 – at least, not without a good reason. We can be victims of violent crime, sure. But it’s the other people in high school, the ones who don’t go anywhere, they’re the ones you read about in the newspaper. The obituary section is for the kid who never cared, who never tried; he’s the one who was caught stalking and trying to rape a teenager not a year and half after he graduated high school.

Not us.

I recalled a recognition luncheon, for a scholarship we both received. I hadn’t seen her there, but apparently my father ran into her father at some point, and they spoke. My dad told me that Rachel and her sister had apparently talked about me quite a bit. We were always at the head of the class, and whenever I would get a higher score on a test, they would return home and complain about it. I had never known this, but I always felt a certain sense of rivalry with them—and I lost just as often as I won.

I really didn’t know what to do at that point. I just stood in my office and stared at the Starbucks across the street. Standing 350 miles away from where everything was happening, where I felt I should be, I definitely felt lost.

My fingers played with my phone. I had to call someone, find someone I could share the news with. Problem was, I didn’t really keep in touch with anyone from high school. I kept in regular contact with two people: one I worked with, Dale, and one I went to school with, Mallory. Dale lived 15 miles away from my hometown; and besides, he was a guy—not the sort of person you talk to about these things. Mallory moved around a lot as a kid, only settling in Arlington her sophomore year. She didn’t really have the same connection with everyone, and talked to even fewer of them than I did.

I called Mallory.

I told her the news rather abruptly, and she was understandably shocked. She was probably more worried about me, as I kept stuttering, rushing through my sentences and trailing off. I felt bad about just dumping it on her without pretense, but how do you prepare someone for that sort of thing? “Hey, so you know how Michael Jackson died? Well, you’re never gonna believe this, but …”

There didn’t seem to be an appropriate segue.

We talked about how strange it was, how Rachel was the last person you’d ever expect to do something like that. I didn’t know much about her situation. I knew she had graduated and landed a pretty swank internship over the summer. I assumed she was still with the company, or looking for something else to do. Having just extricated myself from the pits of unemployment, I knew how difficult such a process could be, but it didn’t seem that overwhelming.

We talked for about 45 minutes, and she graciously told me I could crash at her place on Friday night if there was going to be a service on Saturday. She made me promise to keep in touch with her during the week, and we said good-bye.

I left work about half an hour later and walked to my apartment. I checked the mail, took off my shoes, sat down in front of my computer, and generally went about my business.

But in the back of my mind, thoughts were still festering. They strayed from the somber to the downright petty. I felt curiosity about what caused her to do it. Sadness and grief for Rachel’s family, who I didn’t know particularly well but had run into over the years. I particularly sympathized for Rachel’s twin sister—I couldn’t fathom how she felt. I wondered what was going to happen if I went to the funeral, and how I could possibly afford another trip to the Westside—considering I hadn’t gotten paid and had just finished buying everything for my new apartment.

As I struggled to force myself to fall asleep, my main focus was on the line of questioning Mallory kept up during our conversation.

“Why are you going to the service?” she asked. It wasn’t demanding, she honestly didn’t know why I would drive the six-plus hours just to attend a service for someone who I wasn’t very close to.

I started to speak, but hesitated. Truth be told, my reaction had been more gut instinct than anything else. No long-term planning guided my decision. I just said I would go.

“I feel a sense of obligation,” I finally decided upon.

“Obligation? Why would you be obligated to go to a funeral? It’s not like anyone’s going to look down on you for not making the trip,” she replied with infuriating logic.

“It’s not an obligation to them,” I answered. “It’s not for the people who are going to attend, it’s not even for the family… It’s for her. When you go to school with someone for that long, when you’re around them that much… You just have to, you know?”

She gave what can only be described as a verbal nod of assent, clearly unconvinced.

“What’s your earliest memory?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Probably something with my family, when I was a real little kid. Why?” she responded.

“I guess it kind of explains why I’m going,” I said. “My earliest memory, the very first thing I can remember, involves Rachel.”

“ It was in second grade, and she was wearing her glasses to school for the very first time. I can see her clearly, sitting there in Mrs. Webb’s class, and she is just bawling because she’s afraid she’s going to be teased.”

I fell silent for a moment.

“That’s why I feel obligated to go. My very first memory includes her. A lot of my high school memories from band include her. I even remember in middle school honors, we held weekly competitions where the winner would get to move either their or someone else’s seat, and one week I moved her. I don’t remember why, I don’t even remember where … but I know it was her.”

“Okay,” Mallory said after a pause. “That kinda makes sense.”

“Yeah,” I said. Not really, I thought.

They planned the service to be held in the performing arts center at the high school. This was actually going to be my first trip back to my hometown in at least three years, and the first time since the month after graduation I was going to see a sizable number of people I knew.

In another of many firsts, it was the first time I had seen the performing arts center, as it was built a year or two after I graduated. When I walked in the front doors, the first two people I saw were signing the guest book. One was my best friend throughout most of high school, with whom I had a falling-out with during junior year. The other was a mutual female friend.

I actually didn’t recognize him. I thought I knew who he was, but enough doubt remained in my mind to prevent initiating conversation for fear of being mistaken. It turned out not to matter, as the girl embraced me as soon as she saw me, calling me by a nickname I hadn’t heard in four and a half years.

As I made my way into the theater (and yes, it felt very strange walking into a theater for a memorial service), I saw grown-up versions of the kids I had known. Some of them were instantly recognizable, though only in two cases had they not aged a day. Others might as well have been ethereal phantoms from the 19th century, for all the familiar they seemed.

The crowd only half-filled the auditorium, with a clear physical delineation between those who knew her, and those who knew of her. I sat with the latter group, farther away from the stage.

Whether for good or bad, this was not the first memorial service I attended for a high school classmate who committed suicide. A boy involved in my youth group had done the same thing during my freshman year, so I felt oddly prepared for the service.

The service part was a bit strange, at least to me. I had never attended a Catholic memorial service, so I was a little overwhelmed by the iconography and rituals. Other than that, it seemed a normal (if such things can have a “normal”) memorial. The priest—for whatever reason—told us Rachel had been studying for her master’s at UW, and simply become overwhelmed by the pressures of life.

I was definitely not expecting the stories that came when they opened up the mic to the audience to share memories. The family went first, describing intimate moments most of us in the crowd were not privy to, but enjoyed for the love and warmth contained in the stories.

Then her kindergarten teacher stood up, describing how — even from that young age — she was bright, caring, and full of life. I was mildly surprised by this, as the woman who stood up was my kindergarten teacher as well. Apparently, our stories had been more intertwined than I thought.

Following that, a number of people affiliated with the college we both attended stood up and spoke of their remembrances. She had been a counselor who gave freshman tours, and a boy from her group related how personable she was. Another—who wasn’t even in her group—confirmed this. Members of the various student organizations she was involved in also spoke out, praising in her in the kindest possible terms.

By no means was I surprised that people would remember her in such a way, as it jibed perfectly with my own memories. What seemed strange about the whole thing was simply how much of her life had taken place after high school. A vast majority of the people in the audience knew her from her years in Arlington, yet there we were, hearing stories regarding things we never even thought about. Even I, who spent an additional four years at the same college, two of those at the student newspaper, didn’t know about them. Sure, some of the events sounded familiar — I knew what the tour group was, I knew the various organizations — but it still felt like hearing stories about a stranger.

As I imagine is the case with everyone, I had defined her in relationship to my own life. I don’t think this a terribly foreign concept. It’s a bit like playing peek-a-boo with a small child — once something’s gone out of their vision, they forget about it. In the same way, as people pass in and out of our lives, we are able to write their background stories only insofar as we know them. If you haven’t seen someone for a year, you can still pick up a friendship. But there are so many things, so many experiences they lived through, that you’ll never be able to truly comprehend. You’re left, instead, with a partial portrait — and I would imagine not a great many of them are ever completed.

Following the service, I reunited with a number of my favorite teachers and people from high school. A group of us hung out for a few hours, just as we used to. Then, just as I had driven back into my past, it was time to strike out again for the present.

Rachel still pops up in my thoughts every so often, though not nearly as much now as when it first happened. I’ll see a death notice while reading the news online, and that will get me thinking. Or her profile will pop in the “Mutual Friends” list when I’m randomly surfing Faceboook—that’s jarring, but not nearly as bad as the “you should reconnect” notifications that scared the absolute hell out of me.

But the strangest effect of all of this has to do with a song I hadn’t listened to in years. After getting my whole apartment set up, I went through and re-filled my iPod with a random assortment of music. While at work one day, about a week after the service, Vitamin C’s “Graduation (Friends Forever)” started to play. Even though the song was released in 2000, it nonetheless managed to ingrain itself as “the song” for every class from 2000-2005.

The opening lyrics go, “And so we talked all night about the rest of our lives/Where we're gonna be when we turn 25/I keep thinking times will never change/Keep on thinking things will always be the same/But when we leave this year we won't be coming back.”

The song doesn’t have the most beautiful melody. The lyrics are not terribly inspired. But for whatever reason, when I heard those words, I flat-out lost it.

I hurried to the bathroom, tears in my eyes, and haven’t been able to listen to the song since. I’m not sure I can. It’s the line, “Where we’re gonna be when we turn 25,” that gets me. When I hear it, I’m reminded of the simple but obvious fact that she’s not going to turn 25. The thought that, statistically, there will be probably others in my class who won’t turn 25 — maybe even me.

The second is stranger, though this time it has nothing to do with ephemeral pop culture. While it still holds true that I generally define the people I've known in terms of their entry into my consciousness, I also find myself spending greater amounts of times actively seeking them out. Where I previously just let those people go until they organically sprang back into my life (which, being 200+ miles away from most of them, didn't happen often), I now go out of my way to at least think about them, check up on Facebook and see what they're doing. Even though I do not see them any more often than before, their lives seem so much more relevant to me now, and thus their link more tangible.

I cannot, unfortunately, repeat the clichéd idea of the dead live on in the hearts of the living. I believe this sentiment denigrates the sanctity of death, shielding us from its permanence and functioning as an emotional crutch that allows denial and repression to linger on and strangle those left behind. Dead people have, in every respect, passed on. That does not, however, mean they did not have an impact while they were alive. What I will take away from Rachel are two things: the way in which my interactions with her shaped me (for the better, in every case I can think of), and the ability to pierce what previously seemed an impenetrable veil between the present and the past. I find myself much better able to comprehend others in their own right, rather than the imperfect refraction I saw when gazing through my personal perceptual prism.

Even though "Graduation" is skipped when I hit shuffle and barred from my iPod playlist, every time I hear it — or even when I’m reminded of it — I think about her, and what the entire experience meant to me. And once I'm ready and capable of hearing it without losing control, I hope it will signify a profound shift in my reaching out toward those friends who might once have fallen by the wayside.

#writing #best of