Tehachapi News

And now a bit about myself - sigh

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There are few things I like less than writing about myself. I've spent my career writing about others, and describing myself feels like a root canal, a colonoscopy and a property tax hike served in a big bowl of valley air pollution. It was much more fun to introduce the staff of the Tehachapi News last week.

I was born in 1971 in Washington, D.C., where my dad worked as an architect for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. About five years later, he was transferred to the San Francisco Bay Area, and there we stayed.

I graduated from St. Ignatius, a Catholic high school in San Francisco, and earned a literature degree from U.C. Santa Barbara. I went in wanting to be a poet and came out a journalist.

I raced for the U.C. Santa Barbara bicycle team, which contributed mightily to the fact that I graduated in five years, rather than the four my parents would have preferred. For three years in college, I was six feet tall and weighed 140 pounds. Wow, do I miss that.

After college, I interned at National Public Radio in Washington, D.C. and returned to the city of my birth. I stress fractured both my legs while running. Georgetown Hospital treated me, returning me to within yards of the room where I was born.

After NPR, I got a job at the Danville News, in Danville, Penn. There I covered everything from boroughs and townships -- the Pennsylvanian names for municipalities -- to police, fire, and emergency crews.

I rode with the first bicycle police officer in town. I covered a runaway buffalo who, in the space of one day, crossed miles of hilly terrain, stomped through a yard belonging to the McDonald family, was captured, returned to a pen, and drugged.

The McDonald's yard was just a gift to writers. I can still remember the first sentence in my story: “The McDonalds are not farmers.”

After Danville, I moved to Alabama and became a reporter for The Anniston Star, covering the rural counties surrounding Anniston. I drove almost constantly and covered some really different stories, from a young man who died playing Russian roulette to another from the same area who piloted the Space Shuttle following an impressive Naval aviation career.

After Alabama, I moved to Cheyenne, Wyo., where I covered state government for the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle. Wyoming has fewer people than Kern County, so I got to know state Legislators pretty well. I got hired as press secretary for a guy running for governor. He got second place and I got unemployed.

That's when The Bakersfield Californian picked me up. I worked as their Night Assistant News Editor for five years.

Since then, I bought my first house, in Bakersfield, I got married, and I was laid off on Dec. 4, 2008.

And, of course, at the end of December, I was hired on as the Managing Editor here, which I'm enjoying immensely.

One more thing. I'm a student at Cal State Bakersfield now, studying engineering. At some point a few years down the road, I plan to switch careers to civil engineering, following my father's footsteps.

OK, a few more things after that. I'm a San Francisco Giants fan. The team, especially Barry Bonds, hasn't made it easy, but I tried liking other teams, like the Yankees, and it just wouldn't go. I'd gnaw off an arm before voluntarily liking the Dodgers, and relish the opportunity to visit Dodger stadium and inform fans of their tragic, misguided loyalty.

I can't stand eating fish. I don't know why, but it totally repels me. I can handle shrimp, that's about it. Which, my mother has pointed out more than once, is just weird for a kid brought up between the Pacific Ocean and the San Francisco Bay.

At some point during this column, readers may have remembered that I actually introduced myself months ago in these pages. I'm reintroducing myself now because I want to get to know Tehachapeans better.

We've been working here to make the paper more lean and mean in these hard times, and, frankly, that work so consumed me that I have not learned nearly as much as I would like about the people here.

I hope it is not too late. I hope you'll write back. Or invite me to your workplace. Or your play place. Or have me speak to your group or assembly or classroom or clique or crew or team or open mike night or any other gathering you might have. I'm ready when you are.

I can be reached at 823-6360. Or just e-mail me at cgeorge@tehachapinews.com.

Cheers!