Elbowing my way back to health

Fifty-two weeks ago today, I rode my bicycle for what I can pretty much guarantee will be the last time. I shattered my right elbow in an accident, bringing to an end what had been a fairly remarkable run: despite leading a pretty active life as a backpacker, a runner and a cyclist, I’d made it to 54 without ever having broken a bone.

The actual anniversary date of my accident is tomorrow, Sept. 19. But today, the third Sunday of September, feels more like the real anniversary.

My injury was devastating and yet not all that debilitating. I broke the tip of my elbow almost clean off, and there was cracking of the bones all around. It was put back together with plates, pins and screws. Despite being very diligent about doing my rehab, it doesn’t feel remotely the same. Yet there’s been very little pain, even within a few minutes of the accident. Today I have almost the full range of motion, and can lift reasonably heavy objects. I’m told it will continue to improve.

I know how lucky I was. In fact, as you may know, Boston Globe reporter Bella English suffered far worse injuries in a bicycle accident the same day that I went down.

For those who are interested, here’s what happened. Because of recurrent gout, I had pretty much given up running in favor of cycling. I had a few favored 18- to 20-mile routes, but on the afternoon of last Sept. 19, a Sunday, I decided to try something new. I headed out along Route 127 past Endicott College, then cut toward Wenham, and rode around the Gordon College campus.

I didn’t like the route, as there were too many cars, and the roads were rutted and bumpy. Still, my accident really came out of nowhere. I was cutting through the empty parking lot of the Briscoe Middle School in Beverly, turning right, which of course had me leaning to the right. I wasn’t paying attention and hit a speed bump at maybe 17 or 18 mph. The weather had been drizzly off and on, so the pavement was wet. My bike slid to the left, and I went down, directly on my right elbow. I also slightly injured my back and bumped my head — though not hard, and I was wearing a helmet.

For a few minutes, all I knew was that I was in a lot of pain. I tried to lay back, but every time I did, a driver would stop and ask if I was all right — much appreciated, but I didn’t want an ambulance coming. So I forced myself to sit up. It soon became clear that I’d hurt my elbow, though I didn’t know how badly. I stood and walked around a bit — dizzily at first, but soon I started feeling better. I called my wife, who came and got me.

Now, as a sign of how little pain I was in, while we were riding home I tried to decide whether to ice my elbow or go to the emergency room. I opted for the latter, but went home first and took a shower. I did discover that it hurt a lot if I tried to lift my right arm over my head. I got dressed and drove myself to the Lahey Clinic emergency room in Peabody — a choice I made solely because I thought it would be less crowded than Beverly Hospital. I had to sign something at the desk, and it was really difficult. Still, I figured it was just a momentary thing.

Barbara and I were supposed to go out to dinner. I called her from Lahey, and groused that if I wasn’t seen in a few minutes, I’d leave. But I got in, X-rays were taken — and the damage was revealed. The doctor on call put a cast on it. The next morning, Monday, I drove my daughter to school, then drove to the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, prepared to go into surgery that day. Not sure I’d thought through how I would get home.

At Lahey Clinic, post-surgery. I walked around and slept with that thing for several weeks.

As it turned out, surgery was scheduled for Tuesday morning. My surgeon was Dr. Andrew Marcantonio, from whom I learned the seriousness of my injury. First, there was his name tag — “Traumatologist,” it said. Second, when I asked him when I’d be back to normal, he said (I’m paraphrasing), “With an injury of this nature, we speak in terms of functionality.” Oh, great.

I went home that day, feeling pretty good, and even watched part of a gubernatorial debate that night. I fell asleep, but I’m not sure the Percocet was to blame. I was out of work for three weeks, and when I came back, I was wearing a huge brace on my right arm.

Anyway, I will fast-forward here. Thanks to my amazing physical therapist, Julie Peterson, I made fairly rapid progress and got some help for a longstanding problem with my right shoulder as well. I don’t mean to suggest it was all onward and upward. I lost my confidence to the point that I got scared being so far from home on a trip to New Haven on Nov. 30, and drove back that night rather than stay in my hotel room. It was months before I could bend my elbow enough to tie a necktie. But I kept getting better.

Overall, I was so impressed with Lahey that I switched my primary-care physician, and finally started treatment for gout, which I’d had occasionally for about a dozen years, but which had suddenly gotten much worse in 2010. (I have learned that gout is serious business. If you’ve got it, get help.)

And because my gout is now under control, I started running again last February. Believe it or not, I lost a month when, in March, I tripped over a root, landed on my face, banged the bionic elbow and injured a rib. (I had to make a presentation to Northeastern faculty and administrators the next day with a scab covering my entire chin.) But I got back to it, and am now running five miles a day, three or four days a week. At 55, I’m probably in as good a shape as I’ve been in a while.

My one remaining frustration is that my elbow feels strange, almost constricted, when anything rubs against it, like a shirt sleeve. I won’t go backpacking because I need protection, and when I’ve tried things like a rollerblading pad, I can’t stand the feel of it rubbing up against my elbow. Dr. Marcantonio has suggested it might feel better if I have the metal removed at some point, but I don’t like the idea of elective surgery. And even he said most patients opt to keep it in.

Overall, though, I know I’ve been pretty lucky — lucky not to have been hurt more seriously, lucky to have gotten good treatment and lucky to be healthy and physically active at 55.

Besides, I can say with certainty that I will never be in another bicycle accident. How many people can say that?

At casinos, compulsive gambling is the whole idea

The appalling decision by state leadership to build three casinos and a slot parlor in Massachusetts is a disaster-in-the-making on many levels. Studies have shown that proximity to casinos correlates with increases in crime, divorce, even the suicide rate.

And here’s another. Though compulsive gamblers may make up a small proportion of the population (between 1 percent and 5 percent, depending on which study you look at), casinos are utterly dependent on those folks coming in and blowing the grocery money. Michael Jonas of CommonWealth Magazine writes:

Just how much of the revenue casinos bring in is from the losses of those with gambling problems? One of the most thorough studies of this issue was done in 2004 in Ontario, where researchers had a sample of residents maintain diaries logging their gambling expenditures. The study, prepared for the government-supported Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre, estimated that 35 percent of Ontario casino revenues were derived from moderate to severe problem gamblers. Such gamblers accounted for 30 percent of revenue from casino table games and a whopping 62 percent of revenue from slot machines.

Jonas also quotes Gov. Deval Patrick as saying, once again, that the legislation now hurtling through the Legislature will include money for treating compulsive gamblers. But there’s no logic to Patrick’s position. Within the casino industry, compulsive gambling is not a bug — it’s a feature, vital to its business model.

What’s taking place on Beacon Hill right now will live in infamy. Patrick’s legacy as governor will be his leading role in foisting this miserable enterprise upon the public.

Also: Harvey Silverglate writes in the Boston Phoenix about his angst over being a libertarian who opposes casinos and slots. As he notes, there’s nothing libertarian about what will take place in Massachusetts: this will be a government-run operation from the start.

If you really want to gamble, maybe we can start taking bets on which ex-legislator will be hired as the $150,000-a-year executive director of the Massachusetts Gambling — uh, Gaming Commission.

Judge upholds fair-report privilege in Herald case

Sounds like musician Tom Scholz is really reaching as he pursues his libel suit against the Boston Herald.

Scholz, as you may know, claims that the Herald’s “Inside Track” gossip column libeled him by reporting in 2007 that Micki Delp had said Scholz bore some responsibility for the suicide of her ex-husband, Brad Delp. Scholz was the founder and leader of the band Boston, and Delp was the lead singer.

Apparently Scholz also charged that the Herald libeled him by reproducing parts of those articles in reporting on his lawsuit against the paper when he filed it in 2010. One problem: the articles were an official part of the lawsuit.

Which means that the Herald had every right to report on the contents of those 2007 articles accurately, even if they ultimately are proved to be libelous. Which means, too, that Superior Court Judge John Cratsley dismissed Scholz’s complaint about the 2010 articles yesterday. As the nationally renowned First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams told the Herald:

It’s a complete victory based on deeply rooted principles of English and American law. It’s a privilege of the press to publish a fair account of just about anything that happens in court. Without that right, the public would never know what goes on in court.

The fair-report privilege is a vital protection for the press. Because of the privilege, for instance, a reporter may write about what takes place at a city council meeting without having to worry whether someone might have said something libelous.

As Abrams (and Cratsley) notes, court proceedings are covered by the privilege as well. I still recall reporting on a rather outrageous allegation someone had told me he’d included in a lawsuit he’d filed. The Boston Phoenix’s lawyer flagged it before publication. I double-checked, showed my editor the language in the lawsuit and the lawyer told us to go ahead and publish.

The Herald is still at risk over its 2007 reports. Cratsley recently dismissed Scholz’s suit against Micki Delp, ruling that the statements at issue were solely the Herald’s responsibility. Yesterday’s ruling, though, was a victory not just for the Herald, but for the First Amendment — and all of us.

The Boston Globe covers yesterday’s ruling here. Earlier coverage of the Scholz lawsuit here.

Talking online local news at MIT

Please mark this on your calendar — it should be a good one. Next Thursday, Sept. 22, I’ll be moderating a panel on “Local News in the Digital Age,” part of the MIT Communications Forum.

We will have an all-star cast: David Dahl, the Boston Globe’s regional editor, who’s in charge of the paper’s regional editions and the hyperlocal Your Town sites; Callie Crossley, host of “The Callie Crossley Show” on WGBH Radio (89.7 FM) and a fellow panelist on “Beat the Press” (WGBH-TV, Channel 2); and Adam Gaffin, the co-founder, editor and publisher of Universal Hub, Greater Boston’s one essential hyperlocal news site.

The free event will take place from 5o to 7 p.m. in the MIT Media Lab’s Bartos Theater, at 20 Ames St. in Cambridge. It’s being held at the same time that the Online News Association’s annual conference gets under way in Boston, and we’re hoping a few attendees decide to wander over as well.

This morning’s BostonGlobe.com report

The next few weeks should be interesting as the folks at the Boston Globe work out the bugs at BostonGlobe.com.

Starting last night, the site stopped working on my almost-four-year-old MacBook using Chrome and Safari. (Might be just my set-up, though I did reboot.) On the other hand, it still works fine with Firefox, for which I’ve recently been developing a new appreciation, as it seems to be the most stable of the three major Mac browsers. No problems on my iPhone or on Mrs. Media Nation’s iPad, either.

I’m glad to see Dan Wasserman’s editorial cartoon made it to the site today, and I hope syndicated cartoons will be included on days that Wasserman isn’t drawing. The comics are online today, too. Maybe they were yesterday, but I couldn’t find them.

Other observations: clean as the site is, the organizational scheme is a bit bewildering, with many different options. I feel as though I’m missing stuff. The “Today’s Paper” option doesn’t seem to be quite that. It would be nice to have a clearly delineated separate section of everything that’s in that day’s print edition.

Also, how about combining all the little “Names” tidbits into one column? Other “g” shorts could be combined, too. I don’t want to keep clicking to read 90-word items. It’s one of my main peeves about GlobeReader, too, and I’ll bet I’m not alone.

Real Paper alumni get together this Thursday

Veterans of the Real Paper, a Boston-based alternative weekly in the 1970s, will get together in a Ford Hall Forum event this Thursday to discuss what they learned and what lessons that might hold for the future of journalism. The event will take place in Suffolk University’s C. Walsh Theatre from 6:30 to 8 p.m. You can find out more here.

As we old-timers well remember, the rivalry between the Real Paper and the Boston Phoenix was intense during the decade or so that they both published. The Real Paper was formed in 1972 after Stephen Mindich, the founder of Boston After Dark, bought the Phoenix, which was sometimes known in that earlier incarnation as the Cambridge Phoenix. Mindich called his new paper the Boston Phoenix.

The former staff of the Cambridge Phoenix, rather than going away, founded the Real Paper, which during its first few years operated as an employee-run collective. The paper ceased publication in 1981.

This Wikipedia article on the Real Paper strikes me as an accurate summary of those years.

The Ford Hall Forum event brings together a number of well-known former Real Paper staff members: Harper Barnes, Jan Freeman, Mark Zanger, Laura Shapiro and Paul Solman, assembled by Monica Collins, herself a Real Paper alumna who’s also vice president of the Ford Hall Forum.

Pierce leaves Globe to blog on politics for Esquire

Anyone who follows Charlie Pierce on Facebook knows the guy was born to be a political blogger. Few combine snark, outrage and an eye for interesting links better than he.

Well, now Jim Romenesko reports that Pierce is leaving the Boston Globe Magazine to become the lead writer for Esquire magazine’s “Politics Blog.” (Pierce was already a contributing editor for Esquire.) Editor-in-chief David Granger says:

Charlie is going to make Esquire.com’s “The Politics Blog” one of the very few political blogs one has to read every day, all day. He is one of the great American voices, and we’re confident that he will lead a national conversation during what should be the most entertaining political season of our lifetimes.

The timing is a bit awkward for the Globe. While you still can, check out a video of Pierce talking about his favorite writers, which he made as part of a Globe ad campaign.

In 2009 I wrote about Pierce’s book “Idiot America” for the Guardian. Pierce is a longtime friend of Media Nation, and I wish him the best.

Update: Turns out there was more to Pierce’s departure from the Globe. Jack Sullivan of CommonWealth Magazine reports that Pierce was disciplined  for writing an “intemperate and intolerant” blog post about Tea Party Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell for Esquire last year. Among other things, he called her a “sideshow freak” and a “crackpot,” observations that might seem unremarkable to anyone familiar with Pierce’s writing style, O’Donnell’s bona fides or both.

Pierce currently has a union grievance pending against management. Pierce told Sullivan, “You could probably safely say ‘yes’” as to whether the dispute was among the factors that persuaded him to leave.

It would be easy to rip Globe managers for letting one of their most original writers walk over such a minor matter. But I understand why a paper like the Globe prohibits its writers from going postal for other publications, much as that policy might seem archaic in the Internet era. So I’ll leave it at this: What Pierce wrote for Esquire was precisely what the Globe could have anticipated he would write — it was standard-issue Pierce, neither more nor less caustic than his political writing in general. (Good Lord, have they read “Idiot America”?)

And the Globe is losing a lot more than it’s gaining.