On that walk I thought, or better said I felt, this might be a good time to buy Jonah Lehrer’s book How We Decide. I referred to the book in the previously mentioned story, but had read a library copy. One of the first stories in the book is about a guy in the Navy who decides to order missiles fired at what appear as blips on a radar screen. He doesn’t know why he makes that call, and for a while assumes he was wrong to do so. When he finds out his call was correct he assumes he got lucky. A few years later a scientist figures out how it wasn’t luck at all, that information his brain was receiving triggered different chemicals in his body that gave him the sense that something was wrong. Amazing stuff.

There is a down side to that, too. Feelings influence many of our buying decisions, and advertisers know that full well, so that’s why attempts to appeal to our logic are not as powerful as ones that get us emotionally.

All of these thoughts on the walk to the bookstore happened because of other reasons that had me primed to make the decision to buy the book. I had wanted it. I went to Utah. While there I really enjoyed it but had no interest in staying there permanently. I came back and fell in love with this place again, despite the fact that the weather was not perfect today. The situation with Dad is such that we are sure we need to begin preparing for changes so that we can create a sustainable environment in this home. So many things triggered decisions to make changes, but most noticeably a determination to buy a book.

After writing about it I’m still not sure why I felt like I wanted to share that here. It seemed like a good idea while I was walking. Of course the bigger issue tomorrow will be getting that car started.

Snoop Dog told me that he’s given up pot now that he’s discovered meth … My favorite key on the typewriter is the “caps lock” key … I don’t care what the Catholics say; hemorrhoids are no fun … Does anyone put on a better show than Ringo Starr? … A recent survey said public speaking has been replaced as everyone‘s greatest fear. Americans now are most afraid our next president will be a horse … Bob Hope once told me he had never actually been to Morocco … I just read Glenn Beck’s latest book a fictional piece called “The Overton Window,“ and I can’t believe I’m the one who has to retire … I still love 7-Up, thought it’s been years since I’ve had it straight … Do these glasses make me look younger?… When Kelsey Grammar first got the part as Frasier Crane on “Cheers” it was originally planned that he would compete with Sam Malone for Diane’s attention, but then would eventually be written out of the show. The producers first thought he should get cancer and die, but then thought maybe people wouldn’t get the joke … After all these years I still haven’t figured out why we have toe nails … I went clothes shopping the other day with my wife in a mall in Utah. We bought seven pair on sale, but when I got home I decided to return them, because now that I’m retiring I better be frugal with my money and furthermore I will seldom wear pants … When David Crosby was on the show once and during one of the commercial breaks he threatened to kill me … The Lakers are the best basketball team this year … Michelle Obama was on the show recently and I had trouble concentrating because I kept wondering what she would order at Olive Garden … I’m glad I’ve lived long enough to enjoy Snickers with almonds … The third movie in the “Twilight” series opened to record crowds the other night. I went with my kids to the midnight showing and was awake long enough that when I did fall asleep during the movie I had a nightmare that I would live long enough to see the fourth movie … My kids say iCarly is the best show on television. … I once dated Barbara Hershey but I broke up with her before we got married because I discovered she didn’t have toe nails …

Each quarter Scripps, the parent company of the paper I work for, hands out awards for the best work of a quarter. In February I had a piece run about conversion. I posted a short comment about it earlier on this site. I also wrote that somewhere down the road I’d explain why I wrote it. Today I learned the story earned first place for Scripps’ small newspapers in the feature writing category. The judges wrote:

“FEATURE WRITING: Resolutions are broken as easily as they’re made. People vow to exercise, then don’t. They pledge to save, but spend. They promise to be more modest, yet boast. Writer Steven Gardner of the Kitsap Sun in Bremerton, Wash., examined the phenomenon of conversion, but did it through local residents who told their stories of transformation. Beyond recounting their fascinating individual experiences, he also included experts in theology, spirituality and mental health to help explain the key elements of conversion. Gardner’s feature was beautifully reported and written. It was touching, but also smart and informative. For all these reasons, he wins the Feature Writing award for small newspapers.”

This award is a first for me, because in 10 years of journalism the only time I’ve ever won an award that wasn’t part of a group effort was an honorable mention for The Bremerton Beat blog. That was cool. All the group efforts were great, too. I know I’ve done other work in the past that was worthy of winning awards, but I’ve concluded that a lot of good stories don’t win prizes. Bad stories don’t win them ever. Not winning doesn’t mean the story was bad. It just wasn’t the best, or at least one set of judges thought it wasn’t so much.

On this story, though, winning meant something more than it would have on all those others I’ve nominated. This story was a passion piece. It had been brewing for years. I first talked to an editor about the idea of addressing conversion a few years ago.

What sparked the idea was my own experience of religious conversion to the Mormon faith when I was 11 years old. All but one family member joined the church at the same time. The one hold-out joined about 15 years later. I recognized other moments in life where conversion to things other than religion took hold. I can think of sudden moments where I was in love, where I chose journalism as a career, where the decision to move to another state seemed like the only choice possible. And I watched as other people made conversions to other religions, told stories of life changes regarding work and others of health.

Finally, on Sept. 11, 2001, four planes were hijacked and flown into buildings or into the ground. As I recoiled at the carnage and the awfulness of the act, I also wondered about the forces that drove the 19 men to do the horrible things they did. At some point in their lives they became so devoted to something that they were willing to commit unspeakable acts with the faith that what they were doing would make them favored with God.

Somehow I had the hunch that what drove them to do what they did, what motivates people to lose weight, what influences others to switch careers and others to overcome addiction might all follow a similar pattern.

It took the commitment of an editor, Kim Rubenstein, to put on paper a date I was to aim for to get the idea into publication. We didn’t meet that first date or the second one. The timing, about the same time many people have given up on New Year’s resolutions, worked out well.

In the end I learned so much more than what appears in the story. Some of what I learned involved the process of creating a long story that interests people enough to make them read from beginning to end. Instead of my usual practice of writing everything down as I thought of it, I looked at what I had and created an outline. Kim gets the credit for that, because she knew my weaknesses well enough to request to see one. The process of writing an outline served a huge purpose in making the actual writing process easier. The one exception was the ending, which in this case really was one of the last things I came up with. It became the single element I was complimented most for.

The story took a lot of work. Every interview I did for it was fun, but it was toil. There were nighttime interviews and at least one trip to Seattle. There was the creation of a draft that Kim had to read and make suggestions. From what I recall, the final version wasn’t vastly different from the first one. We took some things out. Originally I had thought it would have to run over a few days, but Kim convinced me it could work, and would probably work better, as a single piece.

Beyond all that today’s news about the recognition from the company matters to me, because it says what I thought was a question worth asking really was to someone else. I love that the judges wrote that the story was written beautifully, and smart. That’s good for my ego. It matters just as much, though, that someone thought the subject matter was valuable enough to include in a daily newspaper and to offer it special recognition. This award is acknowledgment of the question as much as it is of me or the story itself. And it’s validation moving forward in my quest to write stories of equal importance, though I have yet to figure out what the next big question is.

The award also carries with it a $1,000 cash prize. The first question I asked after hearing the news was how much money I’d get. It was a joke. I’ll take the money and it’s going to come in handy. What made me giddy, though, was the e-mail itself. It showed me the question and the story was every bit as important as I thought it was.

In the Aug. 31, 1930 edition of the New York Times is a piece by Orrin E. Dunlap explaining how Einstein believed people had forgotten about the miracle of technology and invention radio was and were too soon content to focus on the programming.

“Radio listeners should be ashamed to make use of the wonders of science embodied in a radio set while they appreciate them ‘as little as a cow appreciates the botanic marvels in the plants she munches.’ So spoke Professor Albert Einstein in expressing his regrets of public apathy toward scientists, at the opening of the Berlin Radio Exposition.”

The writer quotes Einstein very little in the rest of the piece, preferring to refer to the difference in attitudes from about a decade earlier. Then people were fascinated figuring out how to make their own radios in their homes. When they would tune into some faraway broadcast they would call out to family and neighbors so all could huddle around what it was that was drawing the signal. Anymore a clear broadcast coming out of something that rivaled nice furniture was expected, the author wrote.

Well, it is true that the day of marveling at much if any innovation is pretty well gone. I remember jogging with a Walkman knowing that one day I would probably be able to travel with something much smaller that would play the music better.

Still, we have our moments. I remember joining a friend on an AOL chat room in 1995 purposely trying to make others in the chat room angry. We were trolls before the term was invented. But when I tried it several months later the thrill had already worn off. Watch someone who is new to Facebook take part in all the farms and gang wars and buttons until they inevitably grow tired of them and become fans of clubs that don’t care about those same things. Technology marvels us for a while. Days, not years.

Sometimes never. I didn’t like “Billy Don’t be a Hero” any better just because I could hear it on compact disc.

Wednesday night I went to a city council meeting where the councilman who is leading this effort shared some of the rules. One is you can only have up to four hens. They can’t be roosters. Another rule is that the four chickens don’t count against the city’s limit on four pets, which is great because our cat doesn’t lay eggs.

In fifth grade there was a boy whose name I can’t remember (And it’s really bugging me that I can’t.) who startled me one day when he suddenly erupted and called the girl next to him something completely random, like “a communist.” The boy told of riding his bike and finding a dead cat by the side of the road. The kid put a firecracker in the cat’s mouth, lit it and watched it explode. “That will teach you not to smoke,” he said he told that former cat. I was horrified, but I laughed like crazy.

Another kid whose name I do remember was a constant source of trouble, but was genuinely nice. Because of his inability to catch on to schoolwork and his penchant for displaying attitude, he was doomed to continuation school by the time we reached high school. There was something amiss in his family, though I never got close enough to figure out what it was. Years later I saw him yelling at a girl I knew from church, a girl who had fallen away because she never really found a friend there. She was his boyfriend. He got her pregnant. I wasn’t surprised.

These two boys I remember, even if not by name, have yet to show up on Facebook, so I’m left to wonder what became of them. So much can give a kid a tough start to begin with that it’s no wonder years later when you read in the newspaper that they’ve been busted for meth, got arrested for doing something that to most of us seems incredibly stupid, or maybe died an accidental death. Or maybe they found a way to make life work.

I have my doubts. I heard Michael Hanlon, who wrote the book “Ten Questions Science Can’t Answer (Yet!): A Guide to Science’s Greatest Mysteries.” He told the host society doesn’t really deal well with people who aren’t very smart. We accept that we can’t all be elite athletes. Most of us just aren’t built for it. Yet we expect everyone to go to college. These boys I knew didn’t cope well early on, and didn’t get a lot of help.

Then there is my nephew, who is in prison, again, for reasons none of us seem to know. That boy wasn’t wired like the rest of us. You see those movies where some country type says, “That boy just ain’t right.” That’s my nephew. It could be alcohol his birth mother drank while pregnant with him, or so we’ve heard. Whatever it was, he wasn’t wired the same as you and I. So it’s hard for me to be too certain that he is, shall we say, a dirtbag. No matter what those two boys from school ended up doing, they aren’t either.

In Rick Bragg’s book “The Prince of Frogtown,” he comes to accept that there was more to his father than all the bad things he saw.

“But over a lifetime I have known a lot of men in prisons, men who will spend their eternity paying for their worst moment on earth. It came when they caught their wife cheating on them and thumbed back the hammer on a gun they bought to shoot rats and snakes, or got cross-eyed drunk in some fish camp bar and pulled a dime-store knife, just because they imagined a funny look or a suspicious smile. You do not have to forgive such men, ever, that minute. You can lock them away for it, put them to death for it, and spend your eternity cursing their name. It is not all they are.”

This doesn’t mean people shouldn’t pay for their crimes. It wouldn’t hurt, though, to consider that we aren’t the sum of all the bad things we’ve done.

On Saturday I applied for a business license to become a publisher in this state, marking the real beginning of the purpose of this blog. Over the past few years I debated how I would get my first book published. Within the last month I definitively concluded I want to publish myself. I have confidence enough in the quality of my work that I could get a publisher. The pay-off for that, though, is less attractive than it once was.

Any advance for a book would be unlikely to amount to much more than minimum wage. Publishing companies are being less generous with the handouts, especially since the economy tanked and the industry itself is in technological flux. Another soon-to-be self-published author got himself an agent, who told him he’d probably get at most $5,000 as an advance, which he wouldn’t get all up front. And that $5,000 would be all he’d probably ever get.

Self-publishing used to be primarily for those who couldn’t get a book sold to a publisher and had the money to pay for the printing themselves. Those books were immediately suspected of being of awful quality and had trouble finding space in the market. There were exceptions, but they were rare.

Print-on-demand and evolving consumer habits are changing that. For the past decade or so it has become entirely affordable for authors to go their own way in publishing. Of course, this means there are probably more awful books out there, but I have enough confidence in my writing that the quality of the book isn’t going to be the issue. For a few hundred dollars as a publisher I can get my books sold on Amazon and other retailers. For a few more bucks I can start getting them physically into stores.

There is the additional reality that big publishers don’t traditionally love their authors’ books. It’s all about what will sell. There is nothing wrong with that approach. I want to make money, too. But for someone passionate about the work I think it’s a method less likely to create longevity in the field. Typically what happens is big publishers throw books against the wall to see what sticks. The rest, which is the majority, they return. An author who doesn’t do well the first time isn’t likely to be invited back to try again. On the other hand I worked for a small publisher for a year and saw that they were passionate about the books they chose to publish. It didn’t always translate into massive sales, but the publishers continued to work angles for years and years to get those old books sold. In my case I can continue to market the book in perpetuity and I’ll be motivated to do it. I can work the angles long after traditional publishers would have given up.

Beyond that, I want to be in control. I’ll hire someone to edit my work, but I’ll be the one making the changes, deciding on the book’s look and feel. Ten years ago I did get a publisher, but let him decide too much. I was embarrassed with the result and had virtually no recourse. Putting the books in my control means I get to write more of them as well. And this way, I just might get that old book out on the market again.

On Saturday I registered for a business license with the state and founded the company Narrative Arts. The first couple of books will be test projects. I imagine there will be some return on my investment, but I would be thrilled if I broke even. I’ll wait until a couple of months from now to unveil what books are coming.

Part of this is also a reaction to what’s going on in the newspaper world. For years I’ve appreciated the stability that comes with being paid a salary, but the earning ability was put on shaky ground for a while. I always thought I should take more control of my earning ability anyway. Things seem to have hit bottom in the industry, but that’s no sure thing. Having a second income that has the potential of being a first income is exciting.

Every so often in years past, especially before I became a reporter again, I would catch a little entrepreneurial fever, but usually it was toward something I had no natural passion for. So when things got the slightest bit difficult — be it in selling NuSkin or 900 numbers — I’d get tired of the act. The best thing I ever realized was I thought I had a great idea for a restaurant, but was smart enough to know that I wanted nothing to do with running a restaurant business.

The reason the entrepreneur in me will continue to push in this case is because it’s backing something I want to do anyway. I want to write books, a certain kind that will be spelled out more as I develop Narrative Arts. This whole venture is designed to make it possible for me to write books for the rest of my life. The first book that makes a profit will help pay for the next one, and so on. Chances are, that’s why this time my venture adventure will work.

For obvious reasons the Haiti earthquake, while devastating and still generating news, didn’t dominate our hearts the way the attacks did. For me professionally it had the most minor of impacts. I happened to be on my regular cops duty the day after the quake, which meant being responsible for any late news coming in. Another reporter had written about Molly Hightower, a 22-year-old former resident of the area whose parents still lived in town. Molly was in Haiti for a year working with disabled orphans.

Molly’s parents were available to the media, following the sage advice that the best way to keep someone concerned about your family member is to keep talking about it. For me I just shared a few e-mails with Molly’s dad Mike. Because I was in the loop that one night, during which I did not have anything to add to the existing story, I continued to receive the media e-mails the Hightowers sent. I was touched by their gratitude. Often it is true, and perhaps with good reason, that families in this kind of situation resent our intrusion. I sent a note right before deadline Wednesday night. “Any news?” Mike Hightower responded that there wasn’t. It wasn’t surprising. They weren’t expecting to hear anything at least until the next day.

On Thursday there were a couple of e-mails saying who would be speaking for the family. Then there was a link to a news story that gave room for some hope that Molly would be found alive.

When I read the e-mails Friday morning, there was this:

“We received the call we did not want, Molly’s body has been recovered.
Thank you for the prayers you all offered and the respect you have shown my family.”

I never knew Molly and only knew her father through the e-mails. Still, the news hurt. Another co-worker, Chris Henry, had written about Molly on the South Kitsap blog and I think accurately described her.

“I did not find a saint. Just an upbeat 22-year-old with a taste for Starbuck’s and Taco Bell, a love of children and a deep well of compassion.”

Over the hours that I had anything to do with this story, I found a video Molly made showing off the kids she was working with. If I were to answer why the news hurt like it did, I’d say, “The video got my hopes up.”

Just this evening I was recounting to my daughter that in all my years, and I’ve had more than it might appear, I’ve not once been bitten by a lion, or a tiger.

That may seem astounding to you, but I assure you it’s true.

There are innumerable ways I have been blessed, experiences I’ve not had that I hope I never do. It’s that I’m not a risk-taker, but good fortune has prevented me from experiencing some of the maladies that strike so many. If there are odds in this world, apparently I’m good at defying them.

Not once have I had rabies. Surgery for swallowed glass? Not I. Lemonade laced with deadly poison has never passed my lips. All those plane crashes we hear about have all happened when I wasn’t flying.

I’ve had the kind of luck few people have.

Never have I had the experience of being somewhere in public, like church or a Major League Baseball game, and suddenly realized that I wasn’t wearing any clothes. Believe me, I’ve checked. Countless times I’ve reached down and tugged on my pants just to make sure I remembered to put them on. I’ve never had the awkward experience of wondering how to handle the situation once you realize you’re not wearing anything. I mean, do you just sit there and pretend it’s normal and wait for everyone to leave before you exit? Or do you make a quick getaway, hoping few people will understand why? Is it possible in that situation that no one would notice? Would they look at me and think, “Hmmn, there’s something different about Steve today, but I can’t quite put my finger on it?”

Fortunately for me, it’s not something I’ve had to go through.

I just pray my extraordinary good fortune will continue.

I became most troubled by what saw the other day on a show about a bilingual kid who travels the world carrying a backpack that has a map of every place I’ve never been and takes with her a pink-booted monkey.

Because we have a television and aren’t afraid to employ it as an occasional baby sitter, Apollo has developed a love for Nick Jr.’s Marina of the Fresh Beat Band, Max & Ruby, Diego, the Backyardigans, Ni Hao, Kai-Lan, and the show that gets today’s study,Dora the Explorer.

It’s a show I’ve seen a lot. Dora speaks Spanish and English, which is all good. She asks questions and waits for answers. Not once have I seen any of my kids answer out loud. By the time they’re old enough to figure out that Dora wants a response, they’ve outgrown her. Recently Dora’s mother had twins, which they didn’t realize until they were born, something that just doesn’t happen anymore, but I won’t quibble with that detail. The other day the twins escaped the house, crawl into a stroller, which makes it start rolling out of the yard on a path that will eventually lead them to a geyser, the Gooey Geyser, to be precise.

Aside from your standard negligence, so far it’s all good. Before the geyser is a farm and a garden. The parents have joined in the chase and when they all get to the farm they split up on three different paths. In the barn Dora and Boots meet a horse who tells them that he has hunger. “Tengo hambre,” he says, wanting three apples.

You know, it’s fine that the horse wants some apples and that he wants help from Dora and Boots, because I’m certain he didn’t understand that Dora’s little siblings were on their way to a boiling death in the Gooey Geyser. But I think the hungry horse would have been content going hungry a little while longer had Dora explained that she was trying to save a couple of lives. But no. Dora wants to please eveyrone and asks for our help in finding apples, then carrots. So now if those babies get cooked, we’re accomplices, unless we yell at Dora to have the sense to get going, which I have a hunch she wouldn’t have heard, despite the pretense that we’re along on this trip.

Later the group is heading through the garden and the flowers in the garden decide they won’t let anyone pass without A. Being woken up, or B. doing a funny dance, or C. making a funny face. Knowing what these babies are headed toward, I’m thinking Dora should be pulling out the weed whacker and telling the flowers to back the #$%&! off. But no, they all do their dances and faces and other unreasonable things. They end up getting to the kids just in time, but it’s all so unnecessary if they had hurried a little more, or not left the gate unlocked, or the stroller in the yard or the babies’ window open.

I’ve been watching too many of these shows.

If you’ve ever seen Dora, you’ll love this video: