It was the 12th of September in 2001, the day after the 11th, and I was driving to work to fill a newspaper with followups. I lived Alameda County, California, and every day I crossed a minor mountain pass and descended into the wall-to-wall sprawl of Silicon Valley at Fremont, a burb that became a city of 200,000 people. It was the same view I’d seen a hundred mornings before, but this time it was different. As I wondered what could’ve possibly possessed those clowns to fly jetliners into skyscrapers, I didn’t see Silicon Valley’s smog-inducing sea of sameness....

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It used to be easy to explain how I earned a living. Just show somebody the daily scandal sheet and point to the headlines, captions, photos of a proper proportion, etc. All that ended a couple summers ago when I left the San Jose Mercury News by the back door for the last time. Today I’m doing something similar yet altogether different. I still write, I still edit, I never stopped blogging (it was easier to kick nicotine). I call my new venture Verb Nerd Industries — the link leads to several pages of shenanigans I’ve been implicated in...

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When I’m not noodling with my various blogs, I’m often killing brain cells at these online hangouts: Facebook I was geeky enough to snag facebook.com/thomasmangan before somebody else did. Twitter Twitter was a mildly diverting toy till I discovered a site called Paper.li, which allows you to create an online newspaper from the links posted to Twitter. Now I have four tweets-papers: Tom Mangan Daily: Roundup from all the people I follow on Twitter. Triad Tweets: News & culture links from the Triad region of North Carolina. Hiking & Outdoors Afternoon Update: Cool links for people who like to...

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Funny how necessity recalibrates your intentions. Back in California I’d do almost anything to avoid long drives to trails — it seemed like a crime against nature to spend more time driving than hiking. The reality, though, was there were so many excellent hiking trails in the Bay Area that I could always find an excuse to pair a long hike with a short drive. On our current end of the country, the situation is almost entirely reversed: it’s crazy to make do with local trails when excellent ones are just a couple hours away. Case in point: Saturday’s...

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This is the Yadkin River, taken from Tanglewood Park. Used my iPhone camera.

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We moved all the furniture over today and Melissa had the place looking like home in five hours flat. A few images: Entry hallway. Dining room. Office. Bedroom Living room. Fireplace. Hildy says hi. Bathroom. Melissa was in here painting and cleaning every day for the past four weeks; I expect she’ll be sleeping for a week. I’ll gab more about what’s happening in our lives later; just wanted to satisfy the curiosity of anybody who wanted to know what the inside of the place looks like.

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Looks like we’ll be setting up housekeeping here in the Triad — we’re in the paperwork phase of acquiring a condo in the burbs west of Winston-Salem. Yeah, there are burbs here. This’ll be the fourth address change in 12 months; we’re hoping it’ll be the last in several years. I’ve always liked the South, though I confess I’ve read none of Faulkner’s novels (did enjoy “All the King’s Men,” a great Southern novel if there ever was one, however). North Carolina has become so prosperous and populous (10th most people in the U.S. now) that it’s unfair to...

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Six weeks ago today we arrived in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I suppose I should have a lot more to say about the place, but I’ve spent most of the past 42 days right here, tapping into my keyboard. Went on a few hikes, dutifully recounted on my hiking blog. We moved out of Melissa’s mom’s living room after a month. We like having our own four walls, even if it means having a landlord. So what do I think of North Carolina? Liking it so far, mainly because it appears to be turning into California. It already has mountains...

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My Aunt Bev, firstborn of the five children of Thomas Mangan (my grandad), died a week ago today. I spent a few days with family last week remembering what made her such a remarkable woman. My dad recalls how now and again he’d be reading a letter to the editor of the local paper “giving the politicians hell,” and then he’d see his sister had written it. Bev Gibbs, Sept. 2006 Bev should’ve been a journalist — she loved to write, loved to spout on politics, and had a human touch that would’ve invited people to tell her their...

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