April 7, 2004
Going full blast. Haven’t had a moment to write. Big production meetings yesterday, trying to get a handle on ad problems. Our art director Dan Harshberger was out so he helped out quite a bit. Everyone respects him and he helped smooth the waters a bit. For that I bought him lunch at the Satisfied Frog ($22, chicken salad and iced tea, includes tip).

Wrote up the Custer narrative and got it off to Michael Donahue and Jim Hatzell. Many mistakes, historical blunders and bone-headed typos (It’s Major Reno, not Captain Reno!). Fortunately Michael and Jim have caught all the bad stuff. Now on to the sidebars and editorial.

Working on editorial. Here’s my current idea for a headline: Was Custer Done In By Beavers?

Believe it or not, it may be true. I’ll explain later.

Raining out right now (5:25 pm). First time I’ve had a moment to catch up in here. Big meeting this morning at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts. A well-known Western museum is considering building a branch museum in the Scottsdale area and they invited about seven of us to a breakfast focus group run by an LA firm (I knew they were serious when the blueberry muffins were warm). Marshall Trimble was there. So was Troy Murray, a legendary art collector (he once owned 80 plus Frederick Remington paintings), and through the course of the meeting I discovered Troy is from Seligman! This is a big deal because Marshall is from Ashfork and I’m from Kingman. Of course, Don Imus is from Peach Springs and Ted Danson is from Flagstaff. What do we all have in common, besides being gay? We all grew up on Route 66. Hmmmmmm.

Had Deena and her boyfriend over last night for my homemade tacos (gives new meaning to the term Taco Bell). Deena related a story about working the front desk at her hotel job. Some guy came in at 11:30 at night, said he was meeting his sister at the hotel and asked if she was checked in already. Deena took the name, looked it up and said no, she hadn’t checked in yet. He asked if he could go to the room and wait for her (he was tired and had been travelling all day). Deena asked for a credit card, started to give him a key and then said, “I’m sorry, your credit card has been denied.” He looked so sad and weary. He pleaded with Deena that his sister was right behind him and he’d like to get some sleep. Deena gave him the key.

Deena met with the police the next day. The credit card was stolen, the guy and his associates, stole everything they could out of the room, broke all the mirrors and destroyed everything else they could lay their hands on. Big life lessons.

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing that you will make one.”
—Ellen Hubbard