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My dad and I at the Apple store circa 2007, about to buy my first MacBook (this is a Photo Booth Photo).

(Author's note: This was originally posted on my Drake University-sponsored blog on Oct. 5, 2011).
His name was Frank Valentini, and 60 years before he’d flown planes across China and back at the height of World War II.

Now he was in a little house in Chisholm, Minnesota, sitting across from a wide-eyed 17-year-old journalist conducting the first interview of his life.

I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew I couldn’t screw it up. I recorded the interview, popping open my computer and firing up a popular little program called Garageband.

I took pages of notes during the two-hour interview, most of which made no sense afterwards. But that was okay, because I had it all there on the computer, ready to be taken and transcribed. I used that software six more times that summer, and I wrote about them.

I spent most of the summer after my freshman year of college coated in blood and screaming my head off. My close friends and I had decided to film a full-length horror movie involving trucks, kayaks and a bloody set of pruning shears. We wrote the script (the story involved a dysfunctional film crew who went into the Northern Minnesota woods to film a horror movie, only to begin dying themselves), acted the parts and edited the entire thing in a little program called iMovie. It was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life — I even wrote a column in the local newspaper about it.

Another summer, I decided to run a marathon along the North Shore of Duluth. I charged up my iPod — a white little beauty that featured full video-playback capabilities — and ran for 5 hours. It was so great — I wrote about it.

And tonight, it occurs to me that for the last 10 years or so, whenever I’ve experienced something that was so important to me that I had to write about it — I had some sort of device named after a piece of fruit with me. I couldn’t not write tonight, not when the caretaker of that strange little company passed away.

I never met Steve Jobs, but I did email him once, because my roommate convinced me to. His email was easy to find on his website. I told him about an idea I had about an iPad that slipped in and out of a console-type device, so that it dual functioned as a tablet and personal laptop. That was earlier this year, so I have yet to see if my idea becomes reality.

I don’t think I’m going to be very coherent tonight. There’s a lot of memories bouncing around. Tapping out papers about Romeo and Juliet in ninth grade on an iMac. Bono singing ‘Vertigo’ against colored silhouettes with white buds lacing up along their necks. Eagerly downloading season 2 episodes of LOST and watching them on a 2-inch screen. Winning an iPod shuffle and having it be one of the most exciting moments of my life. Falling through an icy pond and using my iPhone for a year afterwards. My mom discontinuing expensive wireless internet because the data plan on my dad’s iPad was $70 cheaper.

My parents began texting me. Best one: “Your father and I got netflix. So and so go to White Castle. Awful.”

And I couldn’t even begin to say what Steve Jobs did for my future. Journalism hasn’t quite figured that one out yet. But I’m starting to believe that the opportunities made existent by the technology ushered in by Apple will become the basis of my future career. And that’s intense, no matter how you look at it.

In a way, he kind of reminds me of Charles Schultz, the Peanuts cartoonist who worked tirelessly for 50 years and ran the last comic strip the day before he died. I don’t know where it is these strange pioneers who cause so much job come from.

I find myself thinking of those interviews again, the ones with the veterans. Their smiles. Their stories. And I think about the stories I’ve recorded with these keys, all the words I’ve saved with these programs.

What’s funny about Apple is that I won’t remember the broad, sweeping changes they made to the world while I was growing up. I’m going to remember staying up all night editing video with friends. It’s those little things I’ll remember. RIP, Mr. Jobs.

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'You called me beautiful once...' 'Babe, you got real ugly.' -Evil Dead, the Musical
Two weeks ago, my Macbook had reached its limit. My baby had a cracked screen, a 20-minute battery life and a six-month expired warranty. Sorry hon. It was a good three years, but this relationship is over.
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The HHS Speech Team, circa 2006
Man, I was such a dork in high school.

For five years of my life, I gave up every Saturday between February and April to board a schoolbus at the crack of dawn, a vehicle that was usually UN-heated and driven by a maniac who hit every damn pothole in the road. By the time we arrived, we were usually strung out on coffee and hoping to God that SOMEBODY had black paper. We went into the school wrinkled, bleary-eyed and smelling faintly of bus; two hours later, we were the best looking kids in the school, complete with sharp suits, crisp blouses and the cool face of competition. It was Speech, and it was wonderful.
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Back in the day, I ruled the Hibbing High School Speech Team with an iron fist. Speech was a tough commitment. You had to get up really early every Saturday in the winter and ride off to some mysterious Iron Range High School for competition. 
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I had to spend about twenty minutes with a weed whacker on this blog before I could write to get rid of all those ugly dandelions that sprang up since the last time I posted. I mean day-um, it's been a while! Summer is in full swing, complete with mine pits, mosquitoes and killer tornados. I landed the Summer Job of Awesome and am taking an online course from Duluth that's supposed to be teaching me how not to be racist.

I could talk about all these things, but instead, I'm going to discuss love today (*cue the Isaac Hayes*). My parents recently celebrated their 34th homicide-free year of marriage.

I don't know how they're still together. My mom is an attorney and my dad is a lumberjack, for crying out loud. She's logical, practical and always earthbound. He's creative, emotional and an endless generator of bad puns. He teared up when I went to college and told me I was at the start of my greatest adventure; my mom shoved me out the door and threatened to drive down and rip me a new one if I hadn't vacuumed my bedroom floor so she could use it.

When they married, she was a non-practicing Baptist who I suspect was a lot more feminist than she now says she was. He was from a family of Catholics baptized almost as soon as they popped out of the womb.


They met on the first day of college and were married the day after, so it would be easier for their families to attend both ceremonies. That was in 1976. I once asked my mom why they waited until 1989 to have me, and she told me she didn't know if the marriage was going to last. My mom, a regular Nostradamus, that one.

My parents did some other things that don't make sense. They traveled to California shortly after they were married, intending to shirk the Minnesota winters forever. They got to the Golden Gate bridge and inexplicably turned around and came back, without ever really explaining why. Until I was 15, I thought they named me after St. Matthew; it turns out they really, really liked Gunsmoke. I'm not kidding.

Initially, they celebrated their anniversary with more expensive gifts, I imagine, but as the years went by that habit somehow faded to my dad picking up flowers from Walmart on his way home from work, or ordering a Choppy's pizza. This past week, my mom only gave my dad a card depicting a truck sitting in the top of a tree. Inside, she had only written, "Why?"

My dad planned on getting his normal Walmart flowers gift, but the flowers were wilted this year. Goddamn economy. He had to improvise, buying her a card with two frogs on it, with a message inside saying, "I'll love you till I croak." His other gift? A gigantic bucket of cheese balls. Yes, the cheeto-like, cholesterol inducing orange spheres.

My mom showed me the gift later that rather — rather, showed off the gift. Upon delivery, my dad apparently said, "I figured, 'What do you get the woman who has everything?' Cheese balls."

These cheese balls are off limits to me. I've already been accused once of pilfering from her stock. They frequently discuss the exact specifications of the cheese balls, such as how much cheesy dust would be left over if you ground it all down (I'm guessing half an inch, although the debate rages on) and how much random crap the plastic container will hold once the sweet supply has been swallowed. She enjoys sitting in the chair, he on the couch, while they both watch the Twins (not the World Cup; she's always hated soccer, she revealed to me this week. Only sport I ever played, thanks mom). 

Somehow, it's all good.

How? I have no idea.  I just hope that someday I find a love that's just as perfect as it is bizarre.

Mom and dad, happy anniversary.
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Back in the day of awkward high school dances, geometry and hallway drama, yours truly used to spend around 13 hours a week in the Hibbing Public Library in the role of the coveted "Library Aide" position.


Let's be honest. As a job, it sucked. My time was spent alphabetizing items and yelling at people looking at porn. The paycheck wasn't great: $5.15 minimum wage.


But as a freshman in high school, when I didn't drive or pay bills, it was actually a pretty sweet gig. Get a couple hundred dollars every two weeks, use a little to avoid the vomit served in the school cafeteria and the rest to spend on DVDs. Hell, what wasn't there to love?


I've got a lot of stories from back then... there was this one 90-year-old guy, Norm, who worked at the library for Only God Knows How Long. He was sharp as a tack, but his vision wasn't so good. He'd come back while I was putting away books and enliven my dreary day by talking about baseball, Hibbing lore or proving his sharpness by reciting various alphabets of different languages.


There was this lady, too, who apparently knew my parents and me quite well. She would stop me in the library and engage me in conversation whenever she could, often about random topics such as bathroom facilities in Europe and her daughter's battle of the bulges. She talked to me off and on for the entire two years I worked there, and I bullshitted every single conversation. I have no idea what her name was.


But my most important memory of the Hibbing Public occurred on my first day of work. It was a two-hour shift. I was being trained in by a girl named Adrienne. I remember everything, because I was nervous for my first real job, and so I was concentrating hard. 


I remember walking through the basement, checking the toys.


I remember choosing my locker (number 12, but the 12 was scratched off).


I remember the snow falling, and one of the librarians, Roberta, saying how we were supposed to get six inches that night.


And I remember, so strongly, three hours later when my Nokia Brick rang, and how I answered it, and found out a good friend of mine had been in a car accident, and was dead, on the way to one of those awkward high school dances. And I remember the week that followed, concentrating so hard on the letters and call numbers on book spines so I didn't have to think ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE.


I can't help but think about that whenever I'm in this building. I'm here now, home on Spring Break, taking a quick break from my Day of Homework. This building is important to me. It's where I first mourned someone I was knew. Once you've been in a place that profoundly affects you, some part of you never really leaves it. Coming here, despite the negative connotations, feels good. It feels important, like there are some things I shouldn't forget.


Time goes by. Adrienne got married, Norm passed away, and I moved to Des Moines. But when I'm back here, it doesn't feel like so much has changed.


Any readers want to share a similar place of importance to them? Doesn't necessarily have to be a workplace, just somewhere that a piece of you still remains the way it used to be.
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