A roller coaster couple of weeks

Today I looked like a weirdo, walking around the newsroom and exulting. The good news was that my son Chas got some great news, allergy-wise (the soy allergy is all but gone, and his egg and peanut numbers are MUCH improved). This could dramatically improve his quality of life, and therefore, ours.

But this news came on the same day that we got the stomach-lurching call to gather for an impromptu staff meeting. Our publisher, who doesn't usually gather us together like that for good news, told us that the dispute our newspaper (the Seattle P-I) is having with the competition (the Seattle Times) is headed for arbitration, a secret and binding process that is supposed to end in May 2007. And after that, if we don't prevail, the P-I will have a 6- to 12-month lifespan. We've had the dispute between these two newspapers hanging over our heads since before I got to the paper, back in 2001. But now it's no longer an amorphous threat that we can tell ourselves may never materialize. It's taking shape. And that's scary. Though it's also kind of exciting to think of how bold we could be at a paper with gifted people and nothing to lose. Assuming the gifted people stick around for a while.

We kind of grumped at each other around the office, a place where sparks of creativity and personality often create little brush fires. Today was edgier than usual. Saturday we said goodbye to Phil Webber, a guy who was Mr. P-I for 50 years. Those are Phil's shoes in the picture. Well, some of them. They stood silent vigil at his memorial, pair after pair after pair after pair, colorful sentinels of creativity.

Can't help but think of the worst (having to say goodbye to the P-I itself) even as I hope for the best.

Oh, and overlaying all this is the massacre of 6 people in a Capitol Hill house, including a 14-year-old girl. A well-armed man went nuts for reasons we have yet to ascertain, much less understand. So the air is full of things we can do nothing about, things we can't fix, things we can't change yet still have to explain. But the good news about my boy's allergies is enough to have me skipping. Thank God for my family, and for the sense of perspective I doubt I'd have without them.