Connecting
December 20, 2021



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Colleagues,
 
Good Monday morning on this Dec. 20, 2021,
 
This is Christmas Week and Connecting continues to share your stories of the holiday, with one today from colleague Adolphe Bernotas on Kucios, the ancient Lithuanian celebration of the winter solstice.
 
In another series, covering stories in the place where you grew up, colleague Chris Carola shares his own story from upstate New York.
 
And here’s a new suggestion from colleague George Tibbits, spurred when he saw a Facebook post by Michael Liedtke, AP business/technology writer in San Francisco, about his long hours spent at the Elizabeth Holmes trial -- such as needing to arrive at 3:30 to secure a seat when court opens at 9.
 
“It might be interesting to collect some stories about other stakeouts AP reporters and photogs have endured,” George wrote, “especially those where all the member reporters had gone home, safe in the knowledge that AP would protect them. Or as the motto given the Olympia capitol bureau puts it (believe someone even had a button made of it) ‘That's Why God Created AP.’”
 
Have a great day – be safe, stay healthy!
 
Paul
 
A Christmas tradition – Kucios
 
Adolphe Bernotas (Email) - I wrote a version of this Christmas story soon after I retired from AP. I update it periodically and share it around the year-end holidays with new friends (as those in Connecting). I haven't prepared the described feast for at least 30 years. Attendance to scaled-down public celebrations of Kucios in Lithuanian communities has replaced my labor-intensive home-grown variety.
 
Part of the fun of Kucios, the ancient Lithuanian celebration of the winter solstice, used to be to guess which of my guests are wondering when can they leave the table and hit McDonald's.
I never took offense. For meat-and-potato Americans, a platter of beet, egg and herring salad and a bowl of cranberry pudding washed down by a purple-gray milk made from macerated poppy seeds doesn't much resemble a Christmas Eve feast.
 
But for me, it reconnects me to who I am -- one of about 5 million people around the world who speak a singular language from a tiny nation where centuries of occupying armies haven't crushed the identity of its people.
 
And once my guests were courageous enough to try these foods, they often agreed that the dishes were quite palatable.
 
Perhaps some overcame their initial aversion to the poppy seed milk. And that group usually asked for seconds of the frothy, sweet drink that tastes of almonds and poppy seeds.
 
But so labor intensive is the Kucios (pronounced coo-chuss) meal, that I haven't prepared the celebration in decades. I used to take at least a week of vacation before Christmas to assemble and prepare the Christmas Eve-only foods.
 
This typically meant driving to Boston or New York to get proper herring and smoked fishes. Plus, I would return to my New World-home American-Lithuanian community in Waterbury, Conn., to get the best Lithuanian rye bread this side of Kaunas, city of my birth.
 
(My most recent participation in Kucios was a pre-Covid Christmas gathering two years ago at the American-Lithuanian Club in St. Petersburg, Florida).
 
Kucios dates to around 2000 B.C., when Lithuanians settled along the Baltic Sea. They celebrated to pay homage to the sun as winter's short days waned. It was a unifying ritual that included all beings -- people, animals, plants, spirits and gods.
 
But much of what Lithuanians now celebrate as Kucios has been influenced by Christianity. Lithuania, which sits at the geographical center of Europe, was the last nation on the continent to accept Christianity, formally in 1386.
 
The Roman Catholic Church adjusted the pagan celebration of light into the observance of Christmas. Pre-Christian Kucios required the eating of nine foods, reflecting the nine-day weeks of the lunar calendar. Under Christianity, 12 are served to recognize the 12 apostles. 
 
And while ancient Lithuanians included meat and ceremonial mead in their feasts, under Christian observance the feast became a fast from meat, even milk (substituted by the poppy seed beverage.)
 
The setting matters, too. The room where the meal is eaten must have as much light as possible. Straw and a cross are placed on the table under a white tablecloth as a symbol of the creche in which Christ was born. 
 
An empty setting is left at the table for those who died during the year, strangers or those who could not be home for the feast. The day is meant for contemplation and communion with the family. "I" is discouraged; "we" is encouraged.
 
The meal begins with the rising evening star. Diners stand for a prayer, consume a special communion host that has been blessed by the parish priest, and family members wish each other good fortune. My wishes used to include the return of freedom to my native land, which the Lithuanians regained with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
 
The most important food is the kucia (coo-cha), a porridge of grains, peas, beans, nuts, poppy and hemp seeds mixed with honey-sweetened water. All who sit at the table -- as well as the household and farm animals – must taste it.
 
In fact, everyone must taste everything. Tradition says that those who skip any of the Kucios foods will not live to see the next Christmas.
 
Fishes, especially herring recipes ranging from smoked to baked to marinated, make up much of the 12-course menu.  
 
Depending on the region, other foods might include mushroom dumplings, carrots, nuts, honey, apples, cabbage with peas, beans, onion and beet soups and salads, potatoes seasoned with hemp or flax seed salt, pudding from fermented oatmeal and (a favorite at my table) cranberry pudding.
 
After the meal, the table is left uncleared until morning to leave food for the souls of ancestors, spirits and gods. And the fire in the hearth cannot be allowed to die.  
 
My sisters and I haven't shared Kucios for many years, As children we would argue whether indeed, according to our parents and folklore, animals at the moment of midnight would converse in language understandable to people. We were too young to stay up to find out.
 
Connecting series
Going home to cover story from place we grew up
TIMES UNION PHOTO BY PAUL BUCKOWSKI -- MONDAY JUNE 1, 1998 -- MECHANICVILLE, NY -- Christine Clark goes through a desk drawer in what used to be the living room of her home on Cannon Court in Mechanicville. A tornado ripped through the area Sunday afternoon totally destroying the house. In the background is the Hudson River and the defunct paper mill where one of two smokestacks was toppled by the twister.
 
Chris Carola (Email) - In the spring of 1998, I spent two days covering the aftermath of severe tornado that tore through the place where I grew up, Mechanicville, a city of about 5,000 located on the Hudson River’s west bank about 18 miles north of Albany, N.Y.
 
The tornado, a rarity then in that part of upstate New York, was one of several reported in a region stretching from western New York to western New England on Sunday, May 31, 1998. I was playing pickup sand volleyball games with friends at my brother’s tavern outside Saratoga Springs late that afternoon when the skies to the south darkened, the winds picked up and lightning prompted us to get inside the bar. The sirens at the volunteer fire station next door began wailing, and soon afterward someone came in the bar and said a tornado had just hit Mechanicville.
 
I called the AP bureau in Albany, where the staffer on duty was already writing up a story on the severe weather pounding upstate New York. I made the short drive to Mechanicville, where my first stop was my sister’s home located on a hill overlooking the city. Her house only sustained minor damage, but a housing development just a few hundred yards away was devastated by the twister, which tore a path of destruction along the border of Mechanicville and the town of Stillwater before churning across the Hudson River and plowing across neighboring Rensselaer County and into Southern Vermont.
 
What was later determined to be a category F-3 tornado knocked over one of the two landmark smokestacks at the long-defunct riverside paper mill where my grandfather and many other relatives had worked for decades. The tornado destroyed or damaged scores of homes and businesses, overturned numerous vehicles and caused tens of millions in damage. A few dozen people were injured, but no one was killed despite the storm’s ferocity and arrival: late Sunday afternoon, a time when many families in Mechanicville, a predominately Italian-American community, were just sitting down to dinner.  
 
I spent the rest of that Sunday and the following day reporting from Mechanicville for AP’s national story on the tornado outbreak that had hit the Northeast. At one point I went live on AP Radio in Washington using the phone in my Aunt Pat’s kitchen. I interviewed childhood friends and schoolmates who had narrowly escaped harm by rushing into their basements just as the walls above them were being torn apart. They all commented on how it was a miracle no one had died.
 
During then-Gov. George Pataki’s tour of the damaged areas the day after the tornado, I stopped at the wrecked home of my brother-in-law’s cousin. Their house was located in the development hit hardest by the tornado. The roof and exterior walls were gone, having been peeled away by the twister, but the living room and kitchen were still standing, mostly undamaged. The cousin’s wife pointed to the stove, where a large pot of sauce remained virtually untouched, still waiting to be heated up for the family’s Sunday pasta dinner.
 
Mother of Marc Wilson dies
 
Connecting colleague Marc Wilson (Email) shared this obituary for his mother:
 
Doris Wilson, a long-time resident of Jefferson County and a Colorado native, died at her Golden home Dec. 16, 2021. She was 94.
When her dad lost his business during the Depression, the family – which included her brother, Horace, and sister, Shirley -- moved to a farm near Wood River, Nebraska.
 
“Dad would never take public assistance, he was too proud,” Doris recounted. So the family lived off what they grew in their garden and the eggs they gathered from the chicken coop.
 
She met her husband, Arthur D. Wilson, at a dance in Grand Island after he returned from serving in the U.S. Navy in World War II. Art had been an all-state football player and class president at Grand Island High who played for the University of Nebraska football team until he joined the Navy at the outset of the war.
 
They were married on Dec. 5, 1947.
 
Doris and Art both worked in Lincoln while he finished his engineering degree. After graduation, Art went to work for International Harvester. They had their first child, Craig, on Oct. 20, 1949. Three more children followed – Marc in April 1951, Laura in July 1952, and Jane in June 1954.
 
In 1957, the family moved to Arizona where Art became branch manager of Trailmobile, a semi-trailer manufacturer and distributor.
 
After Art turned the Phoenix branch into the highest-performing branch for Trailmobile, the company promoted him and made his branch manager of the larger Denver branch in 1962.
 
Art and Doris bought a three-bedroom home in what was then unincorporated Jefferson County.
 
They bought season tickets to the fledging Denver Broncos of the American Football League, and the family has kept season tickets for nearly 60 years.
 
In 1968, Art and Doris bought the Utility Trailer dealership in Denver, Colorado Utility.
 
Major clients included the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, Leprino Cheese and Coors. Colorado Utility became one of the most successful dealerships in the nation.
 
Business success allowed Doris and Art to pay for their four children’s college education – all four were in college together for at least one year. None left with student debt.
 
Art and Doris joined Rolling Hills Country Club in the late 1960s, and moved to a house off the second tee box at Rolling Hills. They traveled extensively, including to Hawaii, Mexico, Scotland, England, France and Russia.
 
Art died in June 1991, and Doris lived 30 years as a widow. She traveled extensively with family and friends, and maintained a membership at Rolling Hills and Broncos season tickets.
 
She was preceded in death by her husband, her son Craig, and grandson James Howle.
 
She is survived by son Marc and his wife, Ginny; daughter Laura and her husband Rocky Howle, and daughter Jane. She is also survived by grandsons Paul Wilson, Travis Wilson, Tyler Wilson, and granddaughter Courtnay Howle; nine great grandchildren, and nieces and nephews.
 
Best of the Week
AP responds to US tornadoes with sweeping, distinctive all-formats coverage
AP Photo/Mark Humphrey
 
When a tornado warning sounded across Kentucky Friday night, the AP’s Appalachian staff didn’t wait to find out if a twister really touched down. They hit the phones and worked their sources, scrambling to find whatever information they could in the dead of night. By early Saturday morning it had become clear Kentucky was going to be the epicenter of one of the most powerful tornadoes to hit the region in recent memory.
 
In West Virginia, reporter John Raby chased sources, tips and user-generated content from Friday night until sunrise Saturday morning. By that time, Louisville reporter Dylan Lovan was on his way to Bowling Green, where he made an important early photo from the storm: a semitrailer that had been flipped over and thrown into the side of a building. He then moved on to Mayfield, where he switched hats to video, transmitting the first live shot anyone had of the devastated town. He kept the live feed going for hours.
 
Kentucky statehouse correspondent Bruce Schreiner was also out the door before dawn Saturday, along with Louisville-based national writer Claire Galofaro, reporting dramatic accounts of survivors reeling from the storm.
 
Amid the team's urgent coverage, there was one important pause: When Gov. Andy Beshear expressed fears that a candle factory collapse could have left as many as 70 dead, AP treated his prediction with a caution borne of experience. Not everyone did. While other news outlets breathlessly repeated the governor’s grim prediction, the AP team was more measured, preserving a reputation for accuracy when the actual toll came in much lower.
 
Read more here.
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Welcome to Connecting

Stories of interest
 
AS OMICRON SURGE BEGINS, HOSPITALS HAVE NEW REASON TO OPEN COVID-19 WARDS TO JOURNALISTS (Intercept)
 
By PETER MAASS
 
MICHAEL DOWLING MADE an unorthodox move when the Covid-19 pandemic got underway. Dowling is the chief executive of the largest hospital network in New York, and he decided that instead of barring journalists from Northwell Health’s facilities, he would let a documentary team inside one of its hospitals.
 
A prominent figure in the U.S. health care industry, Dowling was making a radical break from other CEOs. As people stricken with Covid-19 began to perish, most hospitals closed their doors to journalists, claiming that patient privacy had to be protected and that outsiders who weren’t medical professionals might contract the virus or get in the way of their swamped staffs. Dowling had been a top health official in New York during the AIDS epidemic and didn’t think that it would be a problem.
 
He was right.
 
The journalists he let inside Long Island Jewish Medical Center were led by an award-winning director, Matthew Heineman, whose just-released documentary, “The First Wave,” is being hailed for its up-close realism of a hospital at the pandemic’s outset. There were none of the disasters that other hospital executives claimed to fear if they granted access to journalists: No violations of patient privacy occurred, none of Heineman’s team contracted the virus, and the hospital’s staff has warmly embraced the film.
 
With the Omicron variant starting to overwhelm the U.S., the lessons learned from Northwell’s experience are timely in the extreme: hospitals do not have valid excuses for keeping journalists out, and letting reporters inside will confront skeptics with graphic evidence that might sway some of them.
 
Read more here. Shared by Richard Chady.
 
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A reporter risked her life to show the world Covid in Wuhan. Now she may not survive jail. (NBC News)
 
By Keir Simmons, Jennifer Jett, Amy Perrette and Elizabeth Kuhr
 
It was dark as Zhang Zhan walked along the building in Wuhan, China, a constant, dull roar in the background.
 
“It’s 12:40 a.m. The sound of the funeral home’s crematorium,” she said in the February 2020 video, one of dozens she posted on YouTube. “They work day and night.”
 
In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, when the Chinese government was trying to contain the initial outbreak, reporting by citizen journalists like Zhang questioned the scale of the crisis and the government’s response. But they worried their aggressive reporting wouldn’t be tolerated for long in a country where the news media is strictly controlled.
 
“At the moment it’s OK,” Zhang said of her critical coverage in a May 2020 interview with an independent filmmaker, which was shared with NBC News. “They didn’t arrest me. However, if I continue with this, I don’t know their bottom line.”
 
Read more here. Shared by Richard Chady.
 
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Opinion: A judge is restraining the New York Times from reporting on Project Veritas. That sets a dangerous precedent. (Washington Post)
 
By Stephen J. Adler and Bruce D. Brown
 
Stephen J. Adler, who recently retired as editor in chief of Reuters, is chairman of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, where Bruce D. Brown is the executive director.
 
Fifty years ago, the Pentagon Papers case presented a profound constitutional challenge to press freedom when the Nixon administration sued to prevent the New York Times and The Washington Post from publishing stories about a secret government-commissioned history of the Vietnam War.
 
Fortunately, in June 1971, that challenge was resolved quickly. Given the importance of First Amendment interests, the Supreme Court hastened to vindicate the public’s right to know. From start to finish, the case lasted a mere two weeks.
 
This sense of urgency stands in contrast to a current situation in Westchester County, N.Y., where a state trial judge has restrained the Times from reporting on a matter of public interest for 28 days and counting and shows no indication of moving forward with any speed.
 
Read more here. Shared by Carol Riha.
 
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Anderson Cooper Reacts to Chris Cuomo’s CNN Firing: “Journalists Have Strict Ethics” (Hollywood Reporter)
 
By ABBEY WHITE
 
Anderson Cooper says that he feels “terrible” for Chris Cuomo and his family following the former CNN anchor’s firing earlier this month, but that journalism is “a business with very big responsibilities, and there are repercussions.”
 
The Anderson Cooper 360 host addressed his former colleague being let go from the news network while appearing on The Late Show Thursday night. During the sit-down, host Stephen Colbert acknowledged that CNN has been “the story in many ways” over the last couple of weeks, before more directly addressing Cuomo’s termination on Dec. 4 following a third-party investigation commissioned by CNN into his conduct regarding sexual assault allegations made against his older brother, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
 
When asked whether Cooper felt like terminating Cuomo was the “right thing to do,” the anchor shared that while he feels for Chris and his family, journalism has ethics and standards that come with “repercussions” when not adhered to.
 
“I don’t want anything bad to happen to somebody who’s a colleague and somebody who is a friend of mine, and I feel terrible for him and for his family,” Cooper stated. “That being said, look, journalists have strict ethics and strict rules that we are to abide by, and if you don’t abide by them, there are repercussions. And I wish Chris the best, and I’m sorry for how all of this played out, and I hate this for his family. But this is — it’s a business with very big responsibilities, and there are repercussions.”
 
Read more here.
 
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Obituary: Elizabeth Selby – “old age isn’t for sissies” (Photo Archive News)
 
WILL CARLETON
 
Elizabeth Selby, who co-founded Rex Features, one of Fleet Street’s longest running independent press photo agencies, with her husband Frank Selby, died peacefully aged 96 on Sunday 14th November 2021. See our report 22 November.
 
Elizabeth’s funeral took place on Wednesday 15th December at West London Crematorium, with all her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren present.
 
Dining-out in gloomy post-war Britain could be a hazardous experience and so it proved on the evening of 11th September 1948 when Frank and Elizabeth Selby were married at Marylebone Town Hall. Following a modest reception the couple raced away for the highlight of their day, a slap-up goose supper at the Czech Restaurant on the Edgware Road. Britain was suffering rationing, goose was a rare treat. Sadly, it seems, the goose had also been on rations…fishy rations. Undeterred, the happy couple escaped to board the 11pm “Golden Arrow” sleeper-train for Paris, undertaking a Grand Tour of their pre-war haunts in France, Switzerland, Prague and Budapest. Sunny days in Paris and the south of France were joyful, Elizabeth noted wonderful pastries to eat in Switzerland, but in Czechoslovakia and Hungary the future appeared bleak.
 
Read more here.
 
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What Happens to Democracy When Local Journalism Dries Up? (Washington Post)
 
By Margaret Sullivan
 
It has been our great privilege to bring you news from Stoneham and Woburn over the years,” read the announcement. “We regret to inform you that this will be the final edition of the Sun-Advocate newspaper.” The Massachusetts weekly, as of August, is no more.
 
It is an increasingly familiar story across the United States. Already in a sharp downward spiral, the local news industry was hit hard by the covid-19 pandemic. The worst blows were taken by newspapers — businesses that, as a group, had never recovered from the digital revolution and the 2008 recession. Between 2005 and the start of the pandemic, about 2,100 newspapers closed their doors. Since covid struck, at least 80 more papers have gone out of business, as have an undetermined number of other local publications, like the California Sunday Magazine, which folded last fall — and then won a Pulitzer Prize eight months later.
 
Those papers that survived are still facing difficult straits. Many have laid off scores of reporters and editors — according to Pew Research Center, the newspaper industry lost an astonishing 57 percent of its employees between 2008 and 2020 — making these publications a mere specter of their former selves. They are now “ghost newspapers”: outlets that may bear the proud old name of yore but no longer do the job of thoroughly covering their communities and providing original reporting on matters of public interest.
 
Read more here. Shared by Sonya Zalubowski.
 
The Final Word
Shared by Mark Mittelstadt.
Celebrating AP's 175th
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The AP has created a store with 175th anniversary merchandise available for purchase, as well as items branded with some of AP’s most historic logos.

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Today in History - Dec. 20, 2021
By The Associated Press
Today is Monday, Dec. 20, the 354th day of 2021. There are 11 days left in the year.
 
Today’s Highlight in History:
 
On Dec. 20, 1987, more than 4,300 people were killed when the Dona Paz (DOHN’-yuh pahz), a Philippine passenger ship, collided with the tanker Vector off Mindoro island.
 
On this date:
 
In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase was completed as ownership of the territory was formally transferred from France to the United States.
 
In 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union as all 169 delegates to a special convention in Charleston voted in favor of separation.
 
In 1864, Confederate forces evacuated Savannah, Georgia, as Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman nearly completed his “March to the Sea.”
 
In 1924, Adolf Hitler was released from prison after serving nine months for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch.
 
In 1946, the Frank Capra film “It’s A Wonderful Life,” starring James Stewart and Donna Reed, had a preview showing for charity in New York, a day before its official world premiere.
 
In 1963, the Berlin Wall was opened for the first time to West Berliners, who were allowed one-day visits to relatives in the Eastern sector for the holidays.
 
In 1989, the United States launched Operation Just Cause, sending troops into Panama to topple the government of Gen. Manuel Noriega.
 
In 1995, an American Airlines Boeing 757 en route to Cali, Colombia, slammed into a mountain, killing all but four of the 163 people aboard. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, NATO began its peacekeeping mission, taking over from the United Nations.
 
In 1999, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that homosexual couples were entitled to the same benefits and protections as wedded heterosexual couples.
 
In 2002, Trent Lott resigned as Senate Republican leader two weeks after igniting a political firestorm with racially charged remarks.
 
In 2005, a federal judge ruled that “intelligent design” could not be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district, delivering a stinging attack on the Dover Area School Board.
 
In 2017, Cardinal Bernard Law, the disgraced former archbishop of Boston, died in Rome at the age of 86; his failure to stop child molesters in the priesthood had triggered a crisis in American Catholicism.
 
Ten years ago: Lori Berenson, an American paroled after 15 years behind bars in Peru for aiding leftist guerrillas, arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport for her first visit home since her arrest in 1995. (After a 17-day visit, Berenson returned to Peru to serve out the rest of her parole; she was expelled from Peru on Dec. 2, 2015 and returned to the U.S.)
 
Five years ago: President Barack Obama designated the bulk of U.S.-owned waters in the Arctic Ocean and certain areas in the Atlantic Ocean as indefinitely off limits to future oil and gas leasing. A deadly chain-reaction explosion ripped through Mexico’s best-known fireworks market on the northern outskirts of the capital, killing at least 36 people. Two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova was injured in her playing hand by a knife-wielding attacker at her Czech Republic home and underwent surgery. (The attacker was sentenced to 11 years in prison.)
 
One year ago: The Trump campaign continued with its unprecedented efforts to overturn the results of the November presidential election; a petition asked the Supreme Court to reverse a trio of Pennsylvania Supreme Court cases having to do with mail-in ballots, and also asked that the state General Assembly be allowed to pick its own slate of electors. Several European Union nations banned flights from the U.K. and others were considering such action, all in hopes of blocking a new strain of coronavirus sweeping across southern England from establishing a strong foothold on the continent.
 
Today’s Birthdays: Original Mouseketeer Tommy Cole (TV: “The Mickey Mouse Club”) is 80. R&B singer-musician Walter “Wolfman” Washington is 78. Rock musician-music producer Bobby Colomby is 77. Rock musician Peter Criss is 76. Former U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue is 75. Psychic/illusionist Uri Geller is 75. Producer Dick Wolf (“Law & Order”) is 75. Rock musician Alan Parsons is 73. Actor Jenny Agutter is 69. Actor Michael Badalucco is 67. Actor Blanche Baker is 65. Rock singer Billy Bragg is 64. Rock singer-musician Mike Watt (The Secondmen, Minutemen, fIREHOSE) is 64. Actor Joel Gretsch is 58. Country singer Kris Tyler is 57. Rock singer Chris Robinson is 55. Actor Nicole deBoer is 51. Movie director Todd Phillips is 51. Singer David Cook (“American Idol”) is 39. Actor Jonah Hill is 38. Actor Bob Morley is 37. Singer JoJo is 31. Actor Colin Woodell is 30.
Got a story or photos to share?
Got a story to share? A favorite memory of your AP days? Don't keep them to yourself. Share with your colleagues by sending to Ye Olde Connecting Editor. And don't forget to include photos!


Here are some suggestions:

- Second chapters - You finished a great career. Now tell us about your second (and third and fourth?) chapters of life.
 
- Spousal support - How your spouse helped in supporting your work during your AP career. 

- My most unusual story - tell us about an unusual, off the wall story that you covered.

- "A silly mistake that you make"- a chance to 'fess up with a memorable mistake in your journalistic career.

- Multigenerational AP families - profiles of families whose service spanned two or more generations.

- Volunteering - benefit your colleagues by sharing volunteer stories - with ideas on such work they can do themselves.

- First job - How did you get your first job in journalism?

- Connecting "selfies" - a word and photo self-profile of you and your career, and what you are doing today. Both for new members and those who have been with us a while.

- Most unusual place a story assignment took you.

Paul Stevens
Editor, Connecting newsletter
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