Upddate from Bob Kotzbauer

Sounds exciting up around your neighborhood with all the parties, photo taking, etc. I just want to add my best wishes for the BJ and its staff. (Does everybody get a short Sabbatical in Honolulu? How about alumni?)

My visit with Dave Hess and Rick Zimmerman at the National Press Club went like clockwork except for momentary delays occasioned by the arrivals of Henry Kissinger and VP Cheney, there to hand out irrelevant awards to other reporters. Except for the Secret Service, nobody noticed us.

Well...that's not exactly true. Hess, having been President of the Club some years ago, still receives VIP attention from the staff and assorted lobbyists who wander by. He appears remarkably well, considering his stroke earlier this year.

Rick, just back from a book-research trip to Columbus, seemed relieved by the BJ's acquisition by a "Canadian publisher," rather than his one-time employer, the Plain Dealer. I don't quite know what to make of that. Rick, if you didn't know, idolized John Knight as the "best publisher in Ohio" and the BJ "one of the state's best papers."

As you might surmise, we three spent most of our reunion trashing politicians past and present, and recalling amusing, and often embarrassing, escapades in Ohio 40 years ago. Ah, those were the days..... Bob Kotzbauer