Off the I-15

A lot of my time on the job is spent on the crime beat, which could easily leave me pretty cynical. But sometimes I get to cover stories that are touching and even inspiring. On Monday, for instance, Matthews Hamilton became one of my heroes. Most of my heroes aren’t famous. They’re people I know personally, like my friend Brian Pace, who graduated from college with a biology degree and immediately headed down to Ecuador to help clean up the site of a massive oil spill in the Amazon rain forest using oyster mushrooms. The mushrooms, through some chemical process that I don’t really understand, basically eat up the oil and render it harmless. Pretty cool stuff. But I digress.

Matthews Hamilton, my new hero, is a 16-year-old recovering from leukemia. Although his cancer is in remission, he still can’t go to Barstow High School with his twin brother and 15-year-old sister. He has to wear a mask over his face to keep from getting an infection that could land him back in the hospital. He can’t do tricks on his skateboard or bike like he used to.

Under the circumstances, a person could easily be pretty depressed, especially when that person is a teenager. When I was 16, I remember carrying on as if the world was coming to an end over much less serious problems. But Matthews struck me as one of the best-adjusted kids I have met. He’s polite, smart, and interested in the world around him. When he couldn’t go to school any more, he made new friends at the hospital. When he couldn’t ride a skateboard, he picked up the guitar. While teenagers can be notoriously hard to get a good quote from, Matthews not only had thoughtful answers to my questions, he also had questions for me. When did I decide I wanted to be a reporter? How many people work for the Desert Dispatch? Do I like my job? He said he wanted to take a photography class, so I let him take some pictures with my camera (it belongs to me, not the paper, so I can take risks like handing it off to a 16-year-old).

It’s nice to be reminded once in a while that the kids are all right and some people can make the best of hard-luck stories.

Abby Sewell | reporter

Emily Lambert probably won’t drive for another six years. David Pallante has at least four years until he gets behind the wheel — and pays at the pump.

Despite being years away from their 16th birthdays, these two students, and many other Newberry Springs Elementary School fifth-graders, knew exactly what was up with gas, the price.

While interviewing students at Newberry for a story about a proposed increase in school meal prices, many stressed that the high gas prices were more of a concern to their parents than an extra quarter for lunch. With gas prices in California up nearly 50 cents from last year and a 25 mile drive to school facing some parents, gas is the biggest concern, according to their kids.

Emily, 10, said her parents drive her from Barstow to Newberry for school each day and seem to spend a lot of money on gas. David, 12, said his parents do the same thing. When asked if they, and other fifth-graders, heard their parents talk about prices going up, all they could talk about was gas.

“That’s expensive,” said Emily. Other’s clamored about what they had heard from their parents about the price at the pump. It seems the price of gas was a daily discussion in most households and one the kids were privy too.

One student held up 10 fingers and told me that he heard gas was going to reach $10 a gallon soon. His teacher, Sheril Helms, quickly corrected him, showing only four fingers to indicate the possible gas ceiling.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor

The contestants changed outfits three times. Former Teen Miss and Miss changed four. Sixteen-year-oldKassy Alexander’s favorite cardio activity is playing soccer, and she likes to spoil herself with a strawberry and cream frappuccino from Starbucks and a pedicure. She wore a sea-foam green dress. Leslie Ray, 21, likes to run on the treadmill and then go shopping with friends and eat ice cream. She wore a lime dress.

I know all this, and more, because I took notes. And I know the colors of the young women’s dresses because I asked my photographer, Aileen.

About mid-way through Saturday’s Miss Barstow Pageant, I could not believe I was furiously scribbling down the contestants’ favorite activities, their indulgences and counting wardrobe changes. I certainly did not get into this business to cover pageants. But by the end of the night, I certainly didn’t mind.

True, I did joke about covering Miss Barstow for most of the week leading up to the pageant. Pageant day is a long day for a reporter — it’s a longer day for the contestants and their mothers I am sure — and not one that will expose any government injustices, help the down-trodden or win a Pulitzer.

There are, however, many reasons why covering the Miss Barstow Pageant is great.

1) The gym is replete with stories.

Each contestant, each parent, each grandmother sitting in the gym chairs is a potential story, and they are not going anywhere for hours. I chose to focus on sisters this year but could have done stories on moms and grandmas who sew dresses, make-up experts that cannot drive yet or the little 7-year-old who wouldn’t smile with her mouth open and was pretty sure she wouldn’t win just because she lost her two front teeth a few months ago.

2) People are genuinely excited.

For most of those involved, this is a big deal. Like interviewing the quarterback after a big win, the contestants are normally up-beat and willing to talk about what it took to get where they are, how they are feeling and what they expect. Parents too are sometimes a little too anxious to grab the reporter’s arm and tell you how great their daughter is. This is a nice change from the all too routine practice of pulling teeth to get comments on a normal news day.

3) Great interviews.

All reporters know the horrors of interviewing a 10-year-old:

Q: Did you have fun today? A: Yes.

Q: What was your favorite part? A: Everything.

Q: What do you like about pageants? A: I like being in pageants.

Not so at the Miss Barstow Pageant. Even the two-year-old I talked to was comfortable enough to give me a good facial expression and say she was having lots of fun. The pacifier in her mouth made her a little hard to understand. The younger kids gave great insight into competing and the importance of sisters, and the older women did not seem to flinch when I started asking questions. Anne-Shirley Harpole, who won Teen Miss, was obviously comfortable answering questions and proved to be a great interview. And Miss Barstow AlyxBurnett was so unreserved with her emotions that I believed her when she said she was overwhelmed and left it at that.

4) And it’s just fun.

Everyone is dressed up. Everyone is excited. The audience is cheering. The girls are crying — some in joy, some in disappointment. Flash bulbs are exploding everywhere. The gym is a mob scene at the end. I told my photographer, it’s like being a real reporter, covering a real big event. And who doesn’t like that feeling.

5) Beauty queens can even make me look good.

Me interviewing Miss Barstow Alyx Burnett.

and me interviewing Teen Miss Barstow Anne-Shirley Harpole.

Even though I felt a little silly writing down that fifteen-year-old Victoria Herrera’s secret spoil is carneasada French fries from Amigos (I like Robertizo’s better) or that Danya Hawes wore a chocolate colored dress, better sounding that a brown dress, the pageant is still important and something I don’t mind taking notes at.

This post also is blogged on my Pluck blog “Leftovers” at www.desertdispatch.com

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor

I try not to think about philosophy or mathematics in the shower but sometimes, it’s inevitable. I was in the shower thinking about the story about babies born on Leap Year that I had to write for today when I started thinking about dog years.

If dogs age seven years for every year a human ages, and if Leap Years occur only every four years, how old would a dog born on Leap Year be?

It turns out that question is not nearly as confusing as it sounds once you work it out on paper.

• A boy or girl born on Feb. 29, 2000 would have aged eight years after celebrating their birthday on Friday but it would only be their second birthday.

• A dog born on March 1, 2000 would have aged 56 dog years by Friday. 

• A dog born on Feb. 29, 2000 would have aged 56 dog years by Friday, but would only have celebrated 14 birthdays.

City editor Aaron Aupperlee called the Barstow Humane Society to verify this logic, and the worker there emphasized that the number of birthdays a dog has doesn’t change its biological age. She said the average dog lives for about 16 human years or about 102 dog years. Leap year dogs live for the same amount of time.

“Trying to cheat to make you younger doesn’t count, even for a dog,” she said.

Jason Smith — Staff Writer

We can add modern art to the list of things I don’t really understand.

I was working on an article today about the 99 Cents Only store that’s going into the Barstow Shopping Center at the 1300 block of East Main Street. Henry Chu, the corporation’s vice-president of marketing was trying to impress upon me how clean and orderly the company keeps its stores.  He told me that the stores are so clean that German photographer Andreas Gursky took a photo, “99 Cent,” of the company’s store on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

The photo sold for $2,256,000 at a Sotheby’s auction in 2006, then the highest price ever paid for a photo at auction, according to Photo District News Online.

The painting can be seen at the 99 Cents Only Store Web site. 

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a nice looking photo. It’s a nice looking store. There’s wide aisles and good lighting. Bright packages. The brightly colored packages of candy make me want to hit the office vending machine (for the fifth time today.) That’s all well and good, I’m just not sure a photo of a discount store is worth more than what I’ll probably make in a lifetime.

Of course, “99 cent” is a deal, pun intended, compared to Gursky’s “99 cent II, Diptych,” sold to an unnamed private collector for $2.48 million in 2006, according to Photo District News Online.

A March 2007 article found at Popphoto.com, theorized that the photos may have been priced higher because they were sold at a contemporary art sale, and not with other photographs. The article cited the Sotheby’s catalogue entry for the photo sale and compared Gursky’s work to Jackson Pollock, Donald Judd and Andy Warhol.

Here’s what the catalogue entry said:

“Andreas Gursky’s powerful large scale photographs have quickly informed the way that we view the ‘the fetishism of our material world’ and have immediately become a part of established artistic vocabulary … Executed on a grand scale, his photographs survey the post-Capitalist landscape, searching for the signifiers which define our daily lives.”

Please don’t ask me what any of that means, I’m going to go read a comic book. Possibly Spiderman or maybe the Green Hornet if I’m feeling uber-sophisticated.

Jason Smith

Desert Dispatch, Staff Writer

Throughout the 58th Engineering Company’s deployment, the Desert Dispatch will check in with the Harters. Robert deployed with the company, leaving his wife, Betty, and their son, John, 13, back at Fort Irwin. Stay tuned to the Desert Dispatch and the Off the I-15 blog.

At around 5 p.m. on Saturday night, Betty Harter said goodbye to her husband, Robert outside the gym at Fort Irwin. Robert, Betty, and their son, John, 13, had spent much of the day together, even if it was just standing in line together as Robert waited to fill out last minute paperwork. Then Robert and the 162 other soldiers of the 58th Engineering Company boarded buses on their first leg of their journey to Iraq.

She said some of the wives broke down in tears when the buses pulled away. Betty kept herself busy during the last hours before Robert left. It didn’t sink in for her until she arrived home later Saturday night, exhausted.

“It’s kind of hard,” Betty said. “You know, it’s going to be a long haul.”
Immediately, Betty said, the family began to talk about the latest news coming from their loved ones. Where were they? How was the flight? When they were going to land in Kuwait? Betty learned all she needed to know from a photo of Robert holding a cup of coffee on his way through the Bangor International Airport in Bangor, Maine.

“He’s a coffee drinker,” she said. “When I saw him with that cup of coffee, I know that he was OK.”

On Monday, Robert called Betty to let her know he had safely landed in Kuwait.

Sgt. Robert Harter with a cup of coffee in the Bangor International Airport in Bangor, Maine. The photo was taken by a troop greeter and posted online at www.mainetroopgreeters.com

For more photos of the “Red Devils” passing through the Bangor International Airport, check out www.mainetroopergreeters.com. The 58th troopers arrived at the airport early Sunday morning and were met by a group of people to greet them and send them on their way to Iraq. The group has been greeting soldiers, either leaving or returning to the U.S., since Desert Storm in 1991.

Over the past few months, readers have sent me copies of scam letters they received. Here are some excerpts from those letters.

Nelson and Susan MacDonald received this letter from Waterhouse Financial Inc. informing them that they had won $250,000 in a Swiss lotto drawing.

“We are pleased to inform you that you are one of the declared winners of the DE-LOTTO SWITZERLAND SWEEPSTAKES…We have made many unsuccessful attempts to contact you regarding this winning. You are therefore entitled to the sum of $250,000 US DOLLARS …To expedite the processing enclosed is the check of $4880 US dollars which has been deducted from your winning. The sole purpose of this check is for the payment of applicable Government Taxes on your big winnings.”

Below is a copy of the check. Susan said it looked real, felt real and came from a real bank in Oregon.

An other Barstow resident received this letter from the Cashnet Sweepstakes, promising $68,000 in winnings.

“Enclosed is a check of USD3,450.00 (THREE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY U.S. DOLLARS) payable to you in order to pay your accounting, tax processing and clearance fees for your prize…To begin your prize claim kindly deposit your check and allow 24 to 48 hours for the check to clear.”

In both cases, the targeted victims grew suspicious and did not cash the check.