City Slicker Meets Coyote

I am the ultimate city slicker. I couldn't survive in the wild, any wild, unless it's the wilds of Manhattan, for more than a few days. I couldn't tell you what a tamarask tree is. I don't know what trapping bait is (don't ask). And I've never felt particularly kindly toward coyotes.

Until now.

Through a Yahoo! writing group I'm a member of, I learned of a blog called "The Daily Coyote," kept by 30-year-old photographer and author Shreve Stockton. I'm about as likely to read about a coyote as I am to fly to Alaska tonight. But I went to the blog out of curiosity and not only ended up reading the entire thing, every post, but also falling in love with the coyote, Charlie!

You must see this blog. No wonder, according to someone in the writing group, Shreve got a book contract to turn her photos and memoir writings into a book. So take a look at the blog, even if you're a city slicker like me.

And in the Beginning....

In my reminiscence of my friends among the ENR Newsmakers (the item below, written last night while watching an NFL playoff game), I can't believe my omission. Here's the story.

Some 12-1/2 years ago, I "discovered" the Internet. Of course, it had been around for many, many years, but it wasn't very user-friendly and the World Wide Web wasn't yet very mainstream. I'd never heard of it.

I was the person that my editors gave stuff to that they didn't know what to do with. Being tasked with writing a review of the book Sex and Buildings comes to mind. So when a press release came in saying that Winter Park Construction had a "home page," ENR's editor-in-chief at the time, Howard Stussman, gave it to me. I recruited fellow ENR editor Bill Angelo to help me with the story, and we wrote a pretty lame story about this incredibly newsworthy event, namely that a construction company had a home page. They didn't call them Web sites yet, and most of the sites really did consist of just a page or so. They were basically brochures online, if that, many created by renegade IT people who wanted to play on this new playground.

A few days after the story ran, I got a phone call from Jon Antevy, who, with his partner at the time Dave Gruber, had a small company -- shortly thereafter named e-Builder -- that helped construction companies use the Web in a way that would help their businesses do business and make money. He said he'd seen my article and he asked, "Do you know much about the Internet?" Nooooooooo. That was pretty obvious from the article, I could see later when I learned a few things. So he started telling me about it.

I had been multitasking when he called, basically waiting for him to get through what I thought would be his "I shoulda been in the article too" that we often get after we write stories. But I heard something amazing, about a world I had no idea existed. I stopped doing anything else and listened. I'll never forget this moment: I got it! I saw the window open and I saw the world beyond that he was describing. I was hooked!

Jon didn't ask for anything. He just said he'd like to come up and explain more about the Internet to us ENR editors. I immediately said yes, which seemed to stun him. I think he was prepared to sell me on the idea. When he let me know the date he and Dave could come up, then I had to sell my fellow editors on the merits of taking half an hour out of their day to learn something about this strange computer thing.

The day came and Jon and Dave set up their laptop in one of our smaller conference rooms. Our editors weren't much interested and they kind of drifted away one by one. But I was enthralled. I ended up taking their picture and writing up a little article on what they were up to and the concept of what the Internet was capable of. "It's a tool, not a toy," was Jon's mantra.

I was the first person to cover the Internet and the Web for construction. I was the first of ENR's editor to get on the Web. I got special permission to get a modem -- unbelievably slow dial-up -- but there was only one phone plug so I could use either my phone or my modem, so I had to switch back and forth. I spent dozens of nights, sometimes til midnight or later, surfing the Web and learning the technical aspects of computers and the Web. I'd run up against a wall, run into my boss' office across the hall, call Jon, get instructions, put the phone down, run back to my computer, do what he said, run back to the phone and tell Jon what I was seeing and get the next instruction, etc. Jon was so patient with me, because I was not a techie and this was all new to me.

I covered the Internet, online forums, Partering on the Web, etc., and finally -- I mean many months later -- all of the other editors got modems and the Web hit warp speed and the rest is history.

At the end of that year, I nominated Jon and his business partner from FMI, Hoyt Lowder, to be Newsmakers "for bringing Partnering to the Web." They passed the vote, and they were our first Web-related Newsmakers.

e-Builder is pretty much the only independent Web service provider in the construction industry among the dozens that sprouted up over the next few years that has survived, let alone thrived. The others died, were absorbed or sold, or just faded away. A few exist today but they are parts of bigger companies. Jon and his current partner, his brother Ron Antevy, didn't succumb to the temptation, as most of their competitors did, to seek millions in venture capital money and spend like drunken sailors. It wasn't easy to resist when most of their highly visible competitors were receiving all the publicity in major business magazines and were seemingly going to be flying high forever. How some of those tanked would make its own book. But Jon., Dave and Ron kept to the original plan of their business, and today e-Builder is still around, still independent, still making money, and Jon and Ron are still the majority owners of their business. And, in 1999, ENR named Jon as one of the 125 Top Innovators of the past 125 years (and I had nothing to do with that selection).

Jon and I have been in close contact all those years. Hoyt and Ron, too, though I've lost track of Dave. I definitely consider Jon a very good friend. I trust him more than 99.9% of people I know. We've seen a lot of growth and many changes in each other. I hardly even remember when he was a 23-year-old entrepreneur who flew all over the country pitching e-Builder but couldn't even rent a car by himself because he wasn't 24. But I remember the principled, dedicated, hard-working person he was then...because he still is.

Newsmakers and Friends

The magazine I used to work for (and still freelance for), Engineering News-Record (ENR), long considered the bible of the construction industry, has just released their annual list of The Top 25 Newsmakers. I am thrilled to report that one of them is "mine," one that I wrote the story on that made him eligible to be nominated for the honor.

Bob Nilsson is being cited for his admirable work with severely injured vets at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Bethesda Naval Hospital. He (and Jim Todd, head of The Peterson Companies, a developer -- Bob always demands that the credit be shared) came up with the idea of a scholarship for deserving injured vets, most of them amputees, which would pay their expenses beyond what the government pays them while they finish or expand their education.

Bob and Jim have been raising money from their fellow Urban Land Institute Foundation governors, from Turner Construction, where Bob serves as a senior advisor, and from anyone they can corner who has $25 to spare. They have talked the ULI Foundation into letting them use it as a platform for the scholarship, so it's called the ULI Second Chance Scholarship. They have two recipients, both of whom, not coincidentally, plan to go into construction or real estate when they finish their studies. And they have more in the pipeline. But beyond that, Bob spends several days a week out at either Walter Reed or Bethesda basically helping the injured vets adjust to their new life, helping their families through the overwhelming and confusing bureaucracy, and pumping them up in general. There's nothing that gets him more excited than to get a call or a note from a vet a few months after his or her release from Walter Reed saying how well they're doing out in the world. Some of them are doing absolutely awesome things!

I've known Bob for somewhere around 17 or 18 years. I met him when he was president of Turner International. I liked him immediately. He was always the one with the brightest eyes and the sharpest mind in the room. He looked waaaaay ahead, was always a visionary. And he was a nice guy who gave a rip about people. He still is, obviously.

Bob helped me immeasureably when I went to Kuwait in the early 90s to report on the rebuilding after the first Gulf War. (Who knew then that it would be the first and not the only?!) He hooked me up with his guys over there, and they and the other contractors my various construction pals linked me up with absolutely made my trip possible, fruitful and a whole lotta fun! And Bob and I have kept in touch all these years ever since. He's been keeping me up to speed on his activities with the amputees for several years and I'm delighted and gratified that he's getting some of the recognition he deserves.

I absolutely consider Bob a friend. In fact, I consider all of the Newsmakers I've considered "mine" over the years to be friends, as well as "my" two winners of ENR's big annual award, the Award of Excellence. As a journalist, it's good to have objectivity, but, especially in the trade-magazine world, we go back to the same people, the top dogs in the industry, over and over and you kinda can't help but get to be friends with them when you've known them and talked to them frequently over 10, 15 or more years.

"My" first winner of ENR's top award was Terry Farley -- he prefers going by the name "Chip" -- who was president of Bechtel Construction, then a unit of Bechtel Corp., when they were charged with doing whatever it took to get the fires put out in Kuwait after the first Gulf War. Terry -- I still have a hard time calling him Chip -- calls me when he's in the neighborhood and he frequently sends me jokes via e-mail, some better than others. At the time, ENR's top award was called "Man of the Year" award, which was a very strong name that everybody in the industry knew.

When my second top award winner was named two years later, it was a woman, Ginger Evans. First woman to snag that award. She was honored for being responsible for getting the Denver International Airport (DIA) built. Getting the environmental and other approvals to even build it was the hardest part and she accomplished that. She also was the project manager for the city for the whole huge project. (We won't talk about how controversial the baggage system was at DIA and how long it delayed the airport's opening.) By the time she won the honor, it had been mandated from above at McGraw-Hill that we change the name from Man of the Year to something less sexist. So it became the namby-pamby "Award of Excellence." Well, what could they do? But Ginger wanted equal status with the Men of the Year, so we called her the "Woman of the Year" and the "Award of Excellence" winner. (That was a challenge for our art director.)

Ginger and I got to be friends after I followed her around for several days at the airport and we are to this day. I watched her three daughters grow up! I consider her one of my best industry friends. Post-DIA she went to CH2M Hill, Carter & Burgess and, as of this month, Parsons Corp., where she's a senior VP.

My two other Newsmaker-friends are both now-retired military guys, Generals, in fact: Ralph Locurcio and Pat Burns. I met Ralph in Kuwait -- he was in charge of the reconstruction for the Army Corps of Engineers. He was the most dynamic, personable and common-sense-oriented leaders I'd ever met. And he was beyond creative in his approach to getting things done. (Ask him how he got his guys into Kuwait in the first place!). He's now a professor at Florida Institute of Technology, and, true to form, he has brought innovation, this time in the form of a construction management degree program. I see Ralph mostly at ENR and SAME (Society of Military Engineers) events these days, and we always give each other great big hugs. Get a drink or two in him and get him talking about driving his sports car (Porsche, was it?) across the nation, and you'll be rolling on the floor.

Pat Burns was my most recent Newsmaker before Bob. Pat -- General Burns at the time -- was the chief engineer of the Air Force's largest command, Air Combat Command (ACC). He led a major-league turnaround of construction times, budgets and methods for ACC, some of which extended to the Corps and NAVFAC. When I wrote about him, everybody talked about how brilliant he was, and how competitive, both of which, combined with his high perceptivity and level of caring about people, made him good at what he did. Pat's passion for music -- he was lead guitar in the ACC band -- got me back into music too. I now have an 88-key electronic keyboard (which I don't play nearly often enough) and an iPod with nearly 2,000 songs on it. Pat is now a VP with Mortenson Construction and a frequently requested speaker all around the nation. Some egotistical retired military officers insist, even tacitly, that you still call them "General," but Pat, from the first moment he retired a couple of years ago, said, "Call me Pat."

My Newsmaker-friends are wonderful human beings. If I forgot anybody, I apologize. I'm writing this as I watch the Green Bay Packers whup the Seattle Seahawks in the NFL playoff games -- YAY! Love to see Brett Favre win! All of these guys -- Ginger's one of the guys too -- are inspirations to me, true mentors, and I feel privileged to call them friends.

Believing Someone Who Believes Roger Clemens

Aa a recent former New Yorker, over the years I heard a lot about Roger Clemens when he was a Yankee...and beyond, when he played for Houston. He was an awesome pitcher. He was a hero. Now he's being bashed by people left and right after his former trainer claimed he injected Clemens with steroids on several occasions. Who do you believe and how do you know how to judge?

Well, I believe Clemens.

I am not in a position to know anything about what happened or what didn't. But someone I know and respect is an award-winning, longtime sports writer who has covered Clemens for some years, and he has taken a strong stand for the (hopefully) future Hall of Fame pitcher. His name is Mike Geffner. Mike is a passionate do-gooder in the BEST sense of the word; he has created several writers groups online solely for the purpose of giving writers a place to go for help, to help other writers and to learn about writing. If you write anything, or aspire to, I urge you to subscribe to Mike's Writing Newsletter (free!), join Mike's Writing Workshop (a Yahoo group), and become a "friend" of Mike's on his MySpace page.

Mike posted a blog item today on his MySpace page called "Believing in Roger Clemens." You can see it on his MySpace page and on recordonline.com. He says he believes Clemens because he knows him, knows who he is as a person, and he believes in him. That's good enough for me.

People have no idea what journalists get to learn about people. They, well, we -- I'm one too, which is how I know -- are attuned to whether someone is being straight with us or not. Our job is to ferret out the exaggerations, distortions and outright lies and deliver the truth to our readers, and we get to be very good at it. We can smell a lie a mile away. Not always -- we can be gullible too. But by and large, we know who people are when we talk to them. It's a lot about patterns. When we see something 150 times, we can assume when we see it for the 151st that it's a lot like the first 150.

But really and truly, the great benefit of being a journalist is the relationships we form with the people we write about. It would absolutely astonish you to learn what people tell us. They start to trust us or they get caught up in the conversation and they forget we're journalists and they open up to us. I've had people tell me the most private things about their businesses, their marriages, their extracurricular activities, their bodies, their partners and their deep-down frustrations and desires. I know when they lost their virginity and to whom (the best was at a Black Sabbath concert), I know the exact moment their marriages took a turn for the worse, I know the political landscape and that they're angling for the CEO position (or leaving the company) before they've told anyone else. I know the real reasons for their actions despite what they've told their colleagues, clients, spouses or their p.r. people. So I totally believed Bob Woodward when he said that William Casey, the former head of the CIA, revealed deep secrets to Woodward on Casey's deathbed for Woodward's book Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987. Casey's wife said it never happened, that Casey would never do that. Well, wives, p.r. agents and best friends never know what people say to us one-on-one. There is no doubt in my mind that Casey had that kind of conversation with Woodward, a journalist he trusted. Hey, journalists will go to jail to protect their sources. You're better off telling things to a journalist than to your best friend.

So when Geffner says he believes Clemens, I believe him. And, therefore, I believe Clemens.