Good-bye to all these great people

Written by MIKE FERGUSON Baker City Herald July 17, 2009 10:09 am

Public goodbyes aren’t my thing, but in the newspaper business they sure can be efficiently handled.

In one column I can wish you all well and say nice things about the people I’ve worked alongside the past nine years.

Both are easy tasks, but neither is a job I tackle with relish. Except for the nice-making part.

First things first.

You people — you know who you are, because you’ve graced our Page 1 over the years — have been wonderful, a privilege to profile. Ned Steele told me the moving story of his Marine Corps service during the Battle of Guadalcanal — a story so painful he’d just started sharing it with family members in August 2002, the 60th anniversary of that fierce battle.

Losing a really good reporter — and a really bad French accent

Written by CHRIS COLLINS Baker City Hera July 17, 2009 10:08 am

Saying goodbye has never been easy for me, but a particular melancholy has come over me in recent weeks at the prospect of watching my colleague Mike Ferguson leave the Baker City Herald building for the last time as he prepares to move his family to Iowa.

I won’t say that I’ve enjoyed every day of working side by side with Mike. You see, I like a quiet work environment.

Mike, on the other hand, is a thespian and a storyteller. He even fancies himself as something of a song-and-dance man. On more than one occasion, upon arriving at the office with a less-than-enthusiastic attitude, Mike’s voice has been the first thing I’ve heard as I walked through the front door. Never mind that he’s still two rooms away at that point.

I'll miss my colleague. . . and my friend

Written by JAYSON JACOBY Baker City Herald July 17, 2009 10:08 am

My colleague Mike Ferguson will leave soon for Iowa, where he will not, so far as I know, work in the corn industry.

This bothers me (Mike’s leaving, not his inability to find corn-related employment, even in Iowa) because his departure means I have to figure out who’s going to report on Baker City Council meetings and do the myriad other tasks which Mike has performed deftly and with particular aplomb since he joined the Herald’s staff nine years ago.

Basically this looks to me like something of a hassle, and I dislike those.

But there’s another Mike Ferguson who’s leaving.

I call him my friend.

A little lake in the Elkhorns has gone nameless long enough

Written by JAYSON JACOBY Baker City Herald July 10, 2009 02:36 pm

A lake ought to have a name, mainly so I can tell people where I was when I got pierced by a gaggle of mosquitoes.

Or swarm, or whatever you call a bunch of ill-tempered mosquitoes.

Freedom in decline? How to explain all the guns and beer?

Written by JAYSON JACOBY Baker City Herald July 03, 2009 09:35 am

The notion that freedom is on the wane in America seems to have gained widespread currency these past several years. This is an alarming prospect at any time, but it seems to me particularly so as I ponder the matter on this eve of America’s birthday.

On July 4, more than on any other day, we celebrate our shared belief that freedom is not merely desirable but necessary, the granitic foundation which underlies and supports the grand and noble construction that is the United States.

The possibility that the bedrock beneath us might in fact be riddled with cracks after 233 years, which is no great span in the life of a nation, troubles me greatly.