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Alo-Ha! Friday Charles Memminger |
Family dynasty based
on weird bird photosI committed my first act of journalism when I was 16. I took a black-and-white photo of our family bird sitting in an ash tray with a wooden match in its mouth, apparently preparing to light a cigarette. (Birds didn't know better back then.) I went down to the photo lab on Hickam Air Force Base and developed the film myself. Then I made an 8-by-10 print, fixed it, dried it and brought it home. Then I mailed it to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Then several days later, an editor called me and asked me to bring down the negative. They made a print and ran the photo in the paper under the headline "Smoking's for the Birds" and paid me $12.50.
Thirty-four years later, my daughter Sarah, 16, took a picture of a homing pigeon that had landed on my head with a digital camera (Sarah had the digital camera, not the bird). We downloaded the color photo to my computer and e-mailed the picture to my editor in a matter of minutes. It ran at the top of my Tuesday "Honolulu Lite" column. (see: starbulletin.com/2004/07/13/features/memminger.html)
Just a reminder that while technology has changed a great deal in three decades, the fundamental basis of all true journalism is a bird photographed doing something weird.
Now the news ...
Pants and guns don't mix
SHEFFIELD, England (AP) » An Englishman who shot himself in the groin after drinking 15 pints of beer and stuffing a sawed-off shotgun in his trousers was jailed for five years for illegal possession of a firearm.David Walker was returning to a pub with the gun hidden in his pants after an earlier argument with one of the pub patrons when the gun accidentally went off.
"After the gun had discharged he placed it in a rubbish bin and crawled back to his home," a police spokesman said.
(While crawling home he was heard to be mumbling "bad idea, bad idea, bad idea ...")
When kangaroos go bad
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) » City residents were warned not to mess with starving kangaroos bounding through the Australian capital in search of food following reports that the desperate marsupials were attacking people and pet dogs.Wildlife authorities said the usually harmless, grass-eating Eastern Gray kangaroos are being driven by hunger from the drought-stricken countryside into the city. A woman walking her poodle was attacked by a kangaroo in a city park, while another woman reported a kangaroo drowned her Golden Retriever in a pond.
(Kangaroos also have been spotted hanging out on street corners smoking cigarettes and harassing passing Chihuahua and wiener dogs. Canberra cats are having a good laugh over the whole thing.)
Honolulu Lite on Sunday:
Realizing that Hawaii is the key to winning this year's presidential election, Independent candidate Ralph Nader will be in the islands to campaign this weekend. Read Honolulu Lite on Sunday for the inside scoop on how Nader's brilliant "Hawaii Gambit" will put him in the White House.Quote me on this:
"Reader, suppose you were an idiot; and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society
of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears
Tuesdays, Thursdays , Fridays and Sundays.
E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com