A not-so-fond farewell to 2008 from the newspaper industry

The year is drawing to a close, and I daresay for most of us in the newspaper industry it’s time to say “good riddance” to 2008. According to the trade journal Editor & Publisher, the U.S. Department of Labor estimates that 21,000 newspaper jobs disappeared over the past 12 months. That report totals 3,000 jobs […]

Leukemia patient gives the gift of hats

Here’s a delightful story from North Dakota about a 3-year-old boy battling leukemia who, as a Christmas present for those working at and being cared for at the hospital where he’s been treated, donated about 500 hats that people all over the world had mailed to him. According to the AP story, the boy’s illness […]

Caps I have known — and lost

I’ve been a bit lax in posting of late, so to get back on the board I leave a short note in tribute to my old Weyerhauser “tree-killing” cap. I always wore it when I did yard work around our Seattle home, especially when a tree needed killin’. The cap was simple: a green crown […]

Amid the great outdoors, indoors

In search of a Christmas gift for a relative, my wife and I trekked to the new Bass Pro Shops store in Manteca, Calif., today. The store is, simply put, amazing. Racks and racks of merchandise are on display amid scores of stuffed bears, deer, boars, wolves, buzzards, sheep and pretty much any other critter […]

Juxtaposition: New Jersey and Yosemite National Park

What possessed me to take my “Weird N.J.” cap to Yosemite National Park? I guess my subconscious mind was trying to make a statement about the breadth of the American natural experience. Whatever the motivation, I wore the cap yesterday on an absolutely gorgeous fall day. This was my third trip to Yosemite, and the […]

Phillies follies: Winter caps on the diamond

Until the other night, I had never seen a baseball cap with cold-weather earflaps. But there was Jimmy Rollins on national TV, doing a postgame interview. Although I actually think the cap is cool in a this-is-weird kind of way, it also underscores a major flaw of the baseball playoffs. They come too damn late […]

Great online caps source: Ebbets Field Flannels

A great source for baseball stuff is Ebbets Field Flannels, a Seattle-based online retailer that specializes in minor league replica jerseys from days gone by. If you want a Sacramento Solons or Seattle Rainiers jersey from the heyday of the Pacific Coast League, this is the place to go. My wife sports a fun Nevada […]

My goofy Holy Cross College cap

One of the oddest caps in my collection isn’t a baseball cap but this circular, beanie-like cap. I bought it at the Holy Cross College bookstore while I was in school there in the mid 1970s. I rarely wore the thing, which my friends routinely referred to as my “douche cap.” I once asked why. […]

The newspaper cap and a changing industry

This post is a tough one. As a journalist, I’ve accumulated several newspaper caps from hundreds of visits to newsrooms and industry conventions. Collectively, they are among my favorites because they represent the vitality and pride of my profession. But the newspaper industry is in decline, severely so in towns deep in the clenches of […]

Pretty cool Canadian Olympic cap, eh?

As the whole world watches the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, I couldn’t help but trot out one of my most unusual caps. This is a Canadian Olympic team cap from the 2000 summer games in Sidney. The photo hardly does justice to the cap, one of the most unusual and stylish in my collection. […]