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A memorial was held at Lincoln Center yesterday for news man Walter Cronkite who past away back in July. In attendance were many top-notch journalists including Tom Brokaw, Diane Sawyer, and Steve Kroft. Also there was Obama whose stirring eulogy became something of a “state of the union” for journalism in america. I don’t think anyone could of summed it up better. Below is a transcript of the speech in its entirety…

“To Chip, Kathy, and Nancy, who graciously shared your father with a nation that loved him; to Walter’s friends, colleagues, protégés, and all who considered him a hero; to the men of the Intrepid; to all of you who are gathered here today; I am honored to be here to pay tribute to the life and times of the man who chronicled our time.

I did not know Mr. Cronkite personally.  And my regret is made more acute by the stories that have been shared here today. Nor, for that matter, did I know him any better than the tens of millions who turned to him each night in search of the answer to a simple question:  “What happened today?”  But like them and like all of you, I have benefited as a citizen from his dogged pursuit of the truth, his passionate defense of objective reporting, and his view that journalism is more than just a profession; it is a public good vital to our democracy.

Even in his early career, Walter Cronkite resisted the temptation to get the story first in favor of getting it right.  He wanted to get it first, but he understood the importance of getting it right.  During one of his first jobs in Kansas City, Walter’s program manager urged him to go on the air reporting a massive blaze — and we just heard how much he loved fires — a massive blaze at city hall that had already claimed lives.  When Walter reached for the telephone, his boss asked, “What are you doing; get on the air!”  Walter replied that he was calling the fire department to confirm the story.  “You don’t need to confirm it,” the manager shouted, “my wife is watching the whole thing!” 
Needless to say, Walter made the call, and even as the program manager took to the air himself to broadcast the unfolding tragedy, Walter discovered that it had been nothing more than a small fire that hadn’t resulted in any injuries.  He lost his job — but he got the story right.

Walter wasn’t afraid to rattle the high and the mighty, either; but he never dared to compromise his integrity.  He got along with elected officials, even if they were wary of one another’s motives.  One politician once remarked, “Walter, my friend, you’ve got to believe me, fully 85 percent of everything I told you today is the absolute truth.”  (Laughter.)

He shared a complicated relationship with Presidents of both parties, who wanted him on their side even as they were convinced that he wasn’t.  President Johnson called Walter after the evening news from time to time to voice his displeasure over a certain story.  But Walter knew that if he was receiving vociferous complaints from both sides, he must be doing his job.

His endless inquisitiveness about our world, I can imagine, came from a mother who sold encyclopedias for a living.  As a boy, Walter spent countless hours getting lost within their pages, endlessly sidetracked by new and interesting entries that branched off from one another, fascinated by the world around us and how it worked.

And that’s the way he lived his life — with curiosity, exploring our planet, seeking to make sense of it and explaining it to others.  He went everywhere and he did everything.  He raced cars and boats; he traveled everywhere from the Amazon to the Arctic; he plunged 8,000 feet below the sea, trekked 18,000 feet up into the Himalayas, and experienced weightlessness in the upper reaches of our atmosphere — all with one mission:  to make it come alive for the rest of us.

And as our world began to change, he helped us understand those changes.  He was forever there, reporting through world war and cold war; marches and milestones; scandal and success; calmly and authoritatively telling us what we needed to know.  He was a voice of certainty in a world that was growing more and more uncertain.  And through it all, he never lost the integrity or the plainspoken speaking style that he gained growing up in the heartland.  He was a familiar and welcome voice that spoke to each and every one of us personally.

So it may have seemed inevitable that he was named the most trusted man in America.  But here’s the thing:  That title wasn’t bestowed on him by a network.  We weren’t told to believe it by some advertising campaign.  It was earned.  It was earned by year after year and decade after decade of painstaking effort; a commitment to fundamental values; his belief that the American people were hungry for the truth, unvarnished and unaccompanied by theatre or spectacle.  He didn’t believe in dumbing down.  He trusted us.

When he was told of this extraordinary honor that he was the most trusted man in America, he naturally downplayed it by saying the people had not polled his wife.  (Laughter.)  When people of both political parties actually tried to recruit him to run for office, without even asking for his stances on the issues, he said no — to the relief of all potential opponents.  And when, even a decade and a half after his retirement, he still ranked first in seven of eight categories for television journalists, he was disbelieving that he hadn’t won the eighth category, “attractiveness.”  (Laughter.)

Through all the events that came to define the 20th century, through all our moments of deepest hurt and brightest hope, Walter Cronkite was there, telling the story of the American age.

And this is how we remember him today.  But we also remember and celebrate the journalism that Walter practiced — a standard of honesty and integrity and responsibility to which so many of you have committed your careers.  It’s a standard that’s a little bit harder to find today.  We know that this is a difficult time for journalism.  Even as appetites for news and information grow, newsrooms are closing.  Despite the big stories of our era, serious journalists find themselves all too often without a beat. Just as the news cycle has shrunk, so has the bottom line.

And too often, we fill that void with instant commentary and celebrity gossip and the softer stories that Walter disdained, rather than the hard news and investigative journalism he championed.  “What happened today?” is replaced with “Who won today?”  The public debate cheapens.  The public trust falters.  We fail to understand our world or one another as well as we should –- and that has real consequences in our own lives and in the life of our nation.  We seem stuck with a choice between what cuts to our bottom line and what harms us as a society.  Which price is higher to pay?  Which cost is harder to bear?

“This democracy,” Walter said, “cannot function without a reasonably well-informed electorate.”  That’s why the honest, objective, meticulous reporting that so many of you pursue with the same zeal that Walter did is so vital to our democracy and our society:  Our future depends on it. 

Walter was no naive idealist.  He understood the challenges and the pressures and the temptations facing journalism in this new era.  He believed that a media company has an obligation to pursue a profit, but also an obligation to invest a good chunk of that profit back into news and public affairs.  He was excited about all the stories that a high-tech world of journalism would be able to tell, and all the newly-emerging means with which to tell it.

Naturally, we find ourselves wondering how he would have covered the monumental stories of our time.  In an era where the news that city hall is on fire can sweep around the world at the speed of the Internet, would he still have called to double-check?  Would he have been able to cut through the murky noise of the blogs and the tweets and the sound bites to shine the bright light on substance?  Would he still offer the perspective that we value?  Would he have been able to remain a singular figure in an age of dwindling attention spans and omnipresent media?

And somehow, we know that the answer is yes.  The simple values Walter Cronkite set out in pursuit of — to seek the truth, to keep us honest, to explore our world the best he could — they are as vital today as they ever were.

Our American story continues.  It needs to be told.  And if we choose to live up to Walter’s example, if we realize that the kind of journalism he embodied will not simply rekindle itself as part of a natural cycle, but will come alive only if we stand up and demand it and resolve to value it once again, then I’m convinced that the choice between profit and progress is a false one — and that the golden days of journalism still lie ahead.

Walter Cronkite invited a nation to believe in him — and he never betrayed that trust.  That’s why so many of you entered the profession in the first place.  That’s why the standards he set for journalists still stand.  And that’s why he loved and valued all of you, but we loved and valued Walter not only as the rarest of men, but as an indispensable pillar of our society.

He’s reunited with his beloved Betsy now, watching the stories of this century unfold with boundless optimism — every so often punctuating the air with a gleeful “oh, boy!”  (Laughter.)  We are grateful to him for altering and illuminating our time, and for the opportunity he gave to us to say that, yes, we, too, were there.

Thank you very much.  (Applause.)”

On my way home last night, I stop into my local Starbucks for some cold beverage and park next to this guy. His name is Dr. Safwan Sweidan, a medicine man with a practice in nearby Paterson, NJ, but instead of bringing his work home with him, he prefers to get it done in his convertible Chrysler Sebring, which he converted into a full-functional office complete with Desktop computer, lamp, desk, and even colorful silk flowers to liven up the place.

I walked up to him and told him I was impressed with his setup. I then asked Sweidan why he does his office work in his car and he flatly replied, ” I like it.”

Amazed by the eccentricity of it all, I told him I was a reporter for the New York Post and would love to write a story about him, he then shot me down by saying that the paper had a story about him two years ago and then proceeded to show me the article on his computer.

According to the article, which originally ran July 16, 2006, Dr. Sweidan originally  put a platform over the passenger seat for a place to put his cup of coffee and then slowly added these office items. he also said that he gets more of his “take-home work” done this way and at the time was parking  near Bryant Park.

Needless to say, he gets a lot of onlookers. I originally thought he was some sort of artist trying to make a statement. Below is the full story that ran in the Post.

REAL SPIN DOCTOR; MEDIC MAKES CAR INTO NYC OFFICE

By SUSANNAH CAHALAN

The doctor is always in – his convertible, that is.
Meet Dr. Safwan Sweidan, who turned the front seat of his 2000 Chrysler Sebring into a mobile office, bolting a desktop computer and fax machine to a desk where there used to be a passenger seat.

His rolling office even boasts a pretty desk lamp, sophisticated mini Oriental rug and soothing fake plants.
“I have the cheapest office in New York,” Sweidan said.
Lithuanian-born Sweidan, a divorcée, lives in Kearny, N.J., and practices in Paterson.
But he spends two to three hours a night on the streets of Midtown, usually parking around Bryant Park, where a free WiFi connection allows him Internet access.

Top down, the internist relaxes to the tunes of ABBA, sips coffee, soaks in the atmosphere – and analyzes data on his patients’ heart health.

“I do my take-home work much faster in my car,” Sweidan explained. “I get to be outside – it’s much better than being inside at the office.

“I love New York. I love the scenery, the crowds and the noise. It’s part of my daily life. I live alone so I don’t need to get home. And it’s . . . really easy to meet people.”

The four-wheeled office was born when Sweidan built a small platform over his passenger seat to hold coffee. He added from there – a pen holder, some plastic flowers, a Swingline stapler – then purchased a computer.

“But when I first added a laptop, it got stolen two times,” he said. “So I got a desktop – it’s obviously much harder to steal.”

To power up the office on wheels, all he needed was a little knowledge of high school physics and an extra battery, he said.

All the office furniture and equipment is bolted or glued down. Nothing flies away as he zooms “65 mph on the highway with the top down,” he said.

When he’s parked, crowds converge on the strange coupe.
“Some people think I’m a famous guy or a big-shot movie producer,” he said. “But others think I’m homeless. The No. 1 question is, ‘Do you live out of your car?’ ”

While he likes the attention he gets from curbside pedestrians, it’s not always the positive kind.
He had to remove his computer’s Web cam after some passers-by openly wondered if he was a pervy voyeur.
Another time, “a person called the police because he thought that I was watching porno. Another person thought that I was selling drugs.”

The doc says his next health-care hot rod will be a Mini Cooper.
“It’ll be the smallest office on earth,” he said.
Additional reporting by Juan Gonzalez

Cost of doing business
from doc’s car:
2000 Chrysler
Sebring $5,000
HP desktop
computer $750
eMachine
monitor $150
HP printer/
fax/copier
Sony DVD player $100
Microsoft TV
adapter $50
TV antenna $50
WiFi adapter $50
Plastic flowers $10
Desk lamp $50
Batteries and
converters $130
Stapler $10
Paper tray $10
Loose-change box $2
Paper clips $1
Pen holder $10
Extra ink cartridge $20
Total $6,543
* What he paid for car

I returned from Spain about two weeks ago and I had hoped to put up a posting with some pics when I returned, but since being back I’ve been swamped with work, even having to travel to both the Philly and Denver areas back-to-back. In the swing of things for  two weeks and I feel like I need another vacation. At least I’m spending this spring rambling around after thawing out from a long and oppressive winter.

But back to my trip to Spain…I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to Europe many, many times, and enjoyed each of the places I’ve seen, but this last trip to the cities of Madrid and Seville, during the end of last month, was truly one of the best trips I’ve ever taken.

Seeing Spain had been at the top of my list for a few years now. I have always been fascinated with their culture and was hyped to be there.

From beginning to end the jaunt was perfect. The people were some of the friendliest and laid-back locals I have ever met or seen in any European country. All my expectations were more than fulfilled.

Like most of Europe, the sights were unbelievable, but what struck me the most on this trip were the people of Spain. Usually, it’s pretty tough to be an American tourist in Europe. In countries like Italy and France, the locals do not have much tolerance for Americans and they make it quite known, but the people in Spain have a great, easy-going spirit and are very patient when Americans approach them and butcher their language. More importantly, the passion these people have for living the good life is unparalleled and it started to rub off on me while I was there.

Being there and soaking up the culture made realize the importance of actually taking the time to enjoy the moment… Something I had forgotten about in the past year.

The people of Spain take the day as it comes and maybe we in the states could take note. They have their share of problems too (the unemployment rate is up to 17%), but they take it in stride.

Their way of life is similar to what the Italians call, “La Dolce Vita.” They have a passion for the arts. They love gathering with friends eating good food . They enjoy the simple everyday acts like relaxing in a café with little tapas and some cervezas…or strolling though the narrow streets and alleys in the picture perfect cities they call home. Every time I return from Europe, I always have the mindset that Americans could learn so much from their way of life, but with this most recent trip it rings more true to me.

I took way too many pics, nearly 500 to be exact, I won’t eat up bandwidth by posting them all, but, go to my Flickr page and decide for yourself. Leave a comment or shoot me an e-mail and I’ll put up the choices on a later date.

Seville by night

So,as soon as got the new blog up and running, I won’t be able to post  a single thing. But it’s with good reason. I’m on my way to Spain where I’ll be hitting up Madrid and Seville for their yearly feria (spring festival). I’ll be back next week, hopefully with many pictures and stories. Peace out cub scout.

…Don’t try to upload new blog software onto your site with out the help of a savvy web tech or designer. That’s what happened to me last week when I tried to upgrade my word press program. Apparently the “easy 3-step install’ is easy only if you design websites for a living.

Unfortunately, all of my previous postings were wiped so now I have to start from scratch. A reboot of sorts.Sorry for the absence…new postings TK very soon.