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2000.02.13
I finally had a chance to talk with Elijah Gosier, the editor I worked for as a journalist in the Army. The conversation lasted a good while, although Mr. Gosier never had a penchant for talking. This means, of course, that I did much of the babbling. In my mind's eye, though, I can still see his facial expressions. He has a way of constantly lacking the words to speak for any given moment, consequently, he has this bemused look of almost-embarrassment as he hunts for something to say. The calm, gentle sound of his voice doesn't allow itself to escape him easily. More's the pity for the rest of us. But he still writes. He has worked for the past couple of years on a book. I did not ask him about the book; I'll allow myself to be surprised. He also seems to have a strong readership for a column of his that appears in The Times in Florida. He pointed out that Scott Farwell has continued his work in journalism, gaining some measure of success with it. We worked together as journalists, both of us very young and immature. Scott had a nearly magical way of pissing people off. According to Mr. Gosier, this ability has dulled significantly. I've already made an attempt to contact Scott, to see how he's doing. We also talked briefly about Caroline, another journalist we worked with. Apparently, the two chatted for a bit a couple of years ago. She has apparently matured as well. David Baker came up very briefly; we did not work together very long before I started playing in the band. David became a Satanist while working at The Patriot. Somehow, it seems appropriate. When I think back on those times, we must have seemed terribly disfunctional. In retrospect, one could easily have based a sitcom around our personalities. I desperately needed to resolve my beliefs against my nature, while Scott needed to learn how to temper his idealism with the emotions of those around him. Finally, Caroline needed to learn to work within whatever system she put herself in. Through it all, Mr. Gosier seemed the only person who had a measure of sanity about him. I can only imagine what he must have thought daily as he put up with us. Although, apparently, we were more enjoyable to deal with than the bozos we worked for. He expressed a lack of enjoyment for dealing with the lieutenant colonel that managed our office. He also suggested that strong racist feelings existed amongst certain other folks we had to work with. I would not be surprised, remembering some of the comments I heard back then. No wonder we got drunk as often as we did back then. Well, in other news, I've been trying to learn how to deal with autoconf and automake, so I can ensure this little HTMLArchive project can compile on as many of the different OSes as possible. I've also reorganized much of the code, preparing for the last milestone. I managed to smash a few more bugs I noticed, too. Poor Melvin struggles to get everything done in time. Tonight, he'll likely work on his school paper, although he's currently visiting his grandmother. He'll eventually get some sleep and slam into work tomorrow. I hope this doesn't mean he has picked up my traits. And.. that's about enough for today. Catch you folks later. |