Publisher's notebook
Happy Birthday Sweet 16!
Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear Brucie, happy birthday to me ... all three of me. More on that later.
This being our New Year’s Eve edition, I am required by the Laws of the Gods of Journalism to write all my fearless prognostications for the upcoming year. But that plan collided with another law. The laws of journalism ran into the Laws of Birthdays. Journalism fought the Law (of birthdays) and The Law won.
My predictions are being Trumped (pun intended) by me just wanting to be my usual goofy self today.
Thus, I have limited my personal Year in Review and Predictions story to two lines. 2016 was The Year of Trump. 2017 will be The Year of ... Trump.
Okay back to fun.
Since I write this column every Wednesday, that turned out to be Dec. 28. Woodrow Wilson’s birthday. And mine. President Woody was born in 1856 though, exactly 99 years ahead of me. I’m sure you match majors out there already deduced that I really am not 16. Sadly, that is just dyslexic Bruce. Real Bruce is 61.
I am happy to announce that this year, Dec. 28 will serve as Unification Day for the multiple Bruces.
As you know, most 61-year-old men are not real big on using Facebook. I mean, I do it because it is the way of the world now. My techie son, Post Publisher Michael Trogdon, got me started on it years ago because it was necessary for me to understand social media. He doesn’t like it either, but takes after me and knows that business comes first.
At the time, I hardly ever used the account and forgot my password. My social genius daughter Mandy, who loves Facebook, insisted that I start using it more. After all, when you have eight children like she does, there is always a lot of stuff to post. She must have made me up a new account somewhere along the line so that I could keep up with all my grandkids.
Unbeknownst to her, I had already set myself up with a new account. So now I had three. One connected to my newspaper Gmail account. One connected to my horse farm Gmail. And the other connected to my personal email.
Eventually I got more socially savvy and actually posted pictures of my other life identity, bicycle Bruce, on two of them. The other I never used and there I just remained invisible Bruce.
On the morning of my birthday, Facebook starting filling up my various email inboxes with birthday wishes for the various Bruces. My longtime editor Michelle Farnham is like a daughter to me and looks out after the Old Man just like my two real daughters do. So she texted me with a screenshot from her own email.
“Wish Bruce Trogdon, Bruce Trogdon and Bruce Trogdon a Happy Birthday!”
So OK girls, I relent. I am officially going to kill off the other two tonight after I officially blow out their candles. Kind of like Jeff Probst does on Survivor when he snuffs out your flame.
I am then going to share Michelle’s screenshot with the friends of the deceased Bruce Trogdons and invite them to friend the new and improved unified Bruce. Interestingly, horse Bruce has the most friends so that will be the new home for unified Bruce.
As a longtime Trekkie, I plan to invoke the spirit of Leonard Nimoy to do a Vulcan Mind Meld on all the Bruces at one time to put them all into one Face(book).
I promise to be more focused going forward in life.
This being our New Year’s Eve edition, I am required by the Laws of the Gods of Journalism to write all my fearless prognostications for the upcoming year. But that plan collided with another law. The laws of journalism ran into the Laws of Birthdays. Journalism fought the Law (of birthdays) and The Law won.
My predictions are being Trumped (pun intended) by me just wanting to be my usual goofy self today.
Thus, I have limited my personal Year in Review and Predictions story to two lines. 2016 was The Year of Trump. 2017 will be The Year of ... Trump.
Okay back to fun.
Since I write this column every Wednesday, that turned out to be Dec. 28. Woodrow Wilson’s birthday. And mine. President Woody was born in 1856 though, exactly 99 years ahead of me. I’m sure you match majors out there already deduced that I really am not 16. Sadly, that is just dyslexic Bruce. Real Bruce is 61.
I am happy to announce that this year, Dec. 28 will serve as Unification Day for the multiple Bruces.
As you know, most 61-year-old men are not real big on using Facebook. I mean, I do it because it is the way of the world now. My techie son, Post Publisher Michael Trogdon, got me started on it years ago because it was necessary for me to understand social media. He doesn’t like it either, but takes after me and knows that business comes first.
At the time, I hardly ever used the account and forgot my password. My social genius daughter Mandy, who loves Facebook, insisted that I start using it more. After all, when you have eight children like she does, there is always a lot of stuff to post. She must have made me up a new account somewhere along the line so that I could keep up with all my grandkids.
Unbeknownst to her, I had already set myself up with a new account. So now I had three. One connected to my newspaper Gmail account. One connected to my horse farm Gmail. And the other connected to my personal email.
Eventually I got more socially savvy and actually posted pictures of my other life identity, bicycle Bruce, on two of them. The other I never used and there I just remained invisible Bruce.
On the morning of my birthday, Facebook starting filling up my various email inboxes with birthday wishes for the various Bruces. My longtime editor Michelle Farnham is like a daughter to me and looks out after the Old Man just like my two real daughters do. So she texted me with a screenshot from her own email.
“Wish Bruce Trogdon, Bruce Trogdon and Bruce Trogdon a Happy Birthday!”
So OK girls, I relent. I am officially going to kill off the other two tonight after I officially blow out their candles. Kind of like Jeff Probst does on Survivor when he snuffs out your flame.
I am then going to share Michelle’s screenshot with the friends of the deceased Bruce Trogdons and invite them to friend the new and improved unified Bruce. Interestingly, horse Bruce has the most friends so that will be the new home for unified Bruce.
As a longtime Trekkie, I plan to invoke the spirit of Leonard Nimoy to do a Vulcan Mind Meld on all the Bruces at one time to put them all into one Face(book).
I promise to be more focused going forward in life.
