Chilling in Colorado

I got out to the Rocky Mountains three days ago and have been loving it out here. It's my final trip before returning to Boston for the fall semester of classes, which starts in two weeks. Right now I'm in Vail, Colorado with my parents. It's a ski resort in the winter and a great place for hiking, biking, running and eating in the summer. We're only here for a night, however; tomorrow we head even higher in elevation (about 9000 feet above sea level) to Telluride, Colorado for a 10-night stay. We'll arrive four days before the Telluride Film Festival begins.

The internship at The Jewish Advocate ended well, and I look forward to freelancing more with the newspaper in the fall. I did one piece an an outdoor club called the Mosaic Outdoor Mountain Club, which you can find if you go to www.thejewishadvocate.com and type the name Schwab in the "Site search" blank on the right side of the page. The paper's web site is now much more in-depth than it was a month ago.

I hope all is well with everyone out there and that we get to correspond soon. In the meantime, I'm preparing for a serious amount of film viewing next weekend. I'll get some descriptions of the film festival and Telluride happenings on this blog, hopefully. Take care.

Farewell to a Sophisticated Anchor

The man generally called "the face of ABC News," Peter Jennings, died last night of lung cancer, at 67. It was just four months since his last broadcast, which I heard some of during tonight's local news.

It was a much different departure than that of Dan Rather, anchorman of CBS News for several decades, and I began to wonder which way was more pleasant to go. Rather left as a result of a blunder, much of which appeared to come about from the actions of a conniving source, while Jennings suffered a disease brought on by years of smoking, so he had to check out of the news, and life, early.

I just hope Rather's blunder and Jennings' smoking aren't what the public focuses on, but rather their techniques as reporters and anchors. At the same time, the public should learn from what caused these men to step down from their positions. Society should learn how fragile life and integrity are and should work to preserve both.