Time has escaped from the bottle

Where has the time gone? June 13 marks my 4th anniversary at the Capital Press, but in many ways if feels like I just got here.

Perhaps that is because the Capital Press, our parent company the East Oregonian Publishing Co., and some of our sister papers are fortunate to have some staff members with long tenure. It's not unusual to have people stick around these parts for 10, 15, 20 years or more.

When I started working at the Capital Press in June 2005, it was something of a homecoming. I had worked at East Oregonian during vacations from college and joined the staff at the Pendleton-based daily in the Hermiston, Ore., bureau as my second job after college. When I first started working in the newsroom's photo lab in the summer of 1985, Mike Forrester was the editor-in-chief at the East Oregonian. He later become editor and then publisher of the Capital Press. Although he retired shortly before I came to the Capital Press, he still stops by from time to time as chairman of the Capital Press board and one of the owners of the company. I was seeing familiar faces from my first day of work at the Capital Press.

It doesn't feel like 24 years since I collected my first paycheck for this company and it certainly doesn't feel like 4 years since I got here. The only way I can quantify the passage of that time was that my daughter, who was born when I was in East Oregonian reporter back in 1991, is now 18. About the time I started my job as associate editor for the Capital Press I also attended her 8th grade graduation. Now, this month, she earned her high school diploma.

There is another obvious sign of the passage of time since my early days with the company. There is a black-and-white photo hanging on my office wall of me and four other photographers who were covering the Pendleton Round-Up in one of those summer/fall periods at the EO in the mid to late 1980s. The people who stop by my office and look at that picture don't seem to notice that I'm one of the people in it. And if I tell them I'm in the photo they usually can't tell which guy is me.

Well, the picture is black-and-white and it was taken a few years, and more than a few pounds, ago.

Still, there is some comfort in marking the passage of time, the changing of seasons, on familiar ground. So much changes and yet much remains the same.

I wish to thank my family and many friends for welcoming me back home in the summer 2005 and sharing so many special occasions with me these last four years. I look forward to many more special times.

I also wish to thank the Capital Press and East Oregonian Publishing Co. families who have extended so many professional opportunities to me over the years. I have gained a lot of experience and understanding of journalism and agriculture in the newsrooms of the East Oregonian, Hermiston Herald and the Capital Press. I also appreciate my colleagues and coworkers who have been receptive to the things I've suggested here based on things learned in other newsrooms and communities in the West.

And I also offer my thanks to all of you who stop in here at Blogriculture to check out what we have posted here. I've learned so much from the comments and interactions with my fellow bloggers too.

Four years. Wow. I can't believe how quickly the time has passed.

Oh, and if you are looking for anniversary gift ideas, the traditional fourth anniversary gift is fruit or flowers (I prefer fruit). The contemporary fourth anniversary gift is supposedly electrical appliances (and my iPod is showing it's age). Or is this my 24th anniversary? Funny, there is not traditional gift suggest for a 24th anniversary, according to my online website resources, but the modern gift suggestion is musical instruments. I have forgotten all I ever knew about playing the saxophone and I don't really have room for a piano, but I think the ever-musical iPod idea would still work.

OK, so I won't hold my breath waiting for the gifts.