September 11, 2002
Wall to wall coverage of memorials. Tried to avoid them as much as possible. Did listen to a bit of NPR on the way to work. Sad day. Probably the biggest shock is reading that the U.S. had only four armed planes in the entire country the day of the attack and that one of the contingencies the Air Force considered was to have a pilot fly an unarmed jet fighter into any other attacking planes in a suicide mission. Ironic, eh?

Had a productive production meeting at 11:30 with Robert Ray, Abby Pearson and Gus Walker. They are inundated with too much inane ad work (Gus spent most of a day creating a rope border for a $500 ad. Ouch!). Stressed the need for systems. Another big problem we have is most of our mom and pop advertisers don’t know how to submit their ads and are sending in materials via email with 72 dpi images. etc. We came up with a pro-active idea of sending out any potential advertiser a “how to build an ad for True West”. Robert is creating it. Will also be on website.

Ate lunch in conference room with Carole and Kathy (who went to Tonto and got salads). Carole went to a wedding in upper New York state last weekend and she had pictures. At one point I looked at these two beautiful women and smiled. We were all roommates in the wild seventies and here we are: oltimers. Ha.

There’s hope for me. I read last night in Newsweek that “the best stories are written by losers.” Ha.

Bob McCubbin is finally up on his computer. Got an email from him in the evening. We need his copy for The Fifty Most Historically Important Photos. He wants to do it on his typewriter and I’m trying to wean him off it and have him just email it. We’ll see how that goes.