Season’s Greetings to our Family and Friends

2007 was great! We worked, worked and worked some more.

Lois settled in as the construction director at Men’s Wearhouse. Where she is enjoying her job. She also decided on a lifestyle change, losing 35 lbs and cutting her hair so that it is easy to maintain after exercise.

In April Bob was sent to Brazil by the State Department to speak to Afro-Brazilian journalists about media diversity. He spoke to journalists and journalism students in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre and Salvador. At left he and long-time television reporter Mary Kim Titla address journalists in Sao Paulo.

In May Lois and I spent the Memorial Day holiday on the Big Island of Hawaii. We lounged around most of the time but spent one day driving around the entire island. We stopped to check out the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden and the Volcano National Park (right).

We held our annual Cherry Picking BBQ in June with about 50 family and friends. The very cold winter resulted in the largest cherry crop in the last ten years. Man, they were good!!

Later that month Bob was elected as a national board vice president of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and, in August, was elected as the regional director of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ). What this means is he spends a lot of his time working as a volunteer.

As if that wasn’t enough, he began working (volunteering) for the Chauncey Bailey Project. The project was created to continue the work of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey who was assassinated as he walked to work on August 2nd. As this is written, he is negotiating a salary (YEA!!) with the project leader.

Bob’s Dad came down for his birthday in September. Mark and Pam were in town so we had everyone over for a party. We hosted 30 members of the family for Thanksgiving. Robert even made it down from Eureka. The next day we took off for a week in Mazatlan. We stayed at a resort right on the beach and the view from our window (right) was fantastic.

On the way back, Lois went home and Bob flew off to New York to join a delegation of NABJ reporters for meeting at the United Nations. They all then went to spend a week
reporting in Senegal documenting that African country’s fight against climate change, HIV and malaria. You can read about that trip at www.nabjinsenegal.blogspot.com.

Love to all of you.

Bob and Lois

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I just returned from a 7 day reporting fellowship to Senegal. The trip was a collaboration between the National Association of Black Journalists and the United Nations Office of Sport for Development and Peace. Funding was provided by the Knight and Kaiser Family Foundations.

Over the next few weeks I'll be producing a print and audio slideshow on our visit to Goree Island. I've heard about it, but to actually stand inside the men's cell (right) in the Maison Des Esclavages (Slave House) was damn powerful. Great audio of the curator explaining the process: people were kept in shackles for up to three months before taking their last steps on African soil as they walked out the "Door of No Return" for passage to the Caribbean or the Americas and a member of the United Nations explains how the tourist attraction now serves as a vehicle for reconciliation between the races: White and African slave traders and the African people whose ancestors were enslaved.



I'll also look at how climate change is affecting Senegal. Roughly 40 percent of the population depends on fishing for their living. Climate change over the past 5-10 years has resulted in higher sea levels, which has sent more salt water into the mangrove swamps where fish reproduce. This has reduced the number of juvenile fish and has resulted in fewer fish available. One environmental expert says fisherman used to be able to make a living by fishing 6 to 8 hours a day. Now they go out at 5am and have to stay out until 3 or 4pm to catch the same number of fish.