While this blog has been dormant (other than the ever-changing Twitter feed on the right side of the website), my other blog, The Midwest League Traveler, has been going strong. That where I chronicled my summer journey to the 16 Midwest League (Class A minor-league baseball) ballparks and continue to write about baseball-related topics. I’m in the process of writing a book about the ballparks and my experiences visiting them. My plan is to publish the book by the start of the next baseball season, and most nights I’m staying up late to work on it. If you haven’t done so already, I hope you will check out my work at The Midwest League Traveler and if you use Twitter, follow me at @MWLtraveler in addition to @thebreadline.

That brings me to what I’m thankful for this year. In addition to the usual stuff — you know what kind of stuff I mean — I am thankful for the opportunity to be pursuing my dream of writing a book and, in doing so, being able to combine my loves of baseball, road trips and writing. I’m thankful for all the support I’ve gotten from family, friends and even some strangers (people I hear from through the blog or Twitter, or whom I met at ballparks this year), but I’m especially thankful for the unwavering support of my wife, without whom my book project wouldn’t be happening.

Thanks for checking in at The Bread Line. While I rarely post here anymore because of my commitment to finishing my book and pushing it through my other blog and social media, I am glad you stopped here and read this.

Now it’s time to enjoy a turkey day cup of coffee. Have a happy and safe holiday, everyone.

I’m sure Blagojevich’s attorneys will file a motion to appeal the verdicts, but I believe the convictions will stand.

Justice has finally been served in this case.

Bruce Springsteen is one of my favorite musicians, and the loss of his longtime sidekick will be felt throughout the music world. I got to see them perform together in Milwaukee during the E Street Band reunion tour, and that remains one of the best concerts I ever saw in person.

You may be aware that I’m currently working on a book project that involves visiting all 16 of the Midwest League (Class A minor-league baseball) parks. (You can read more about it on my other blog, The Midwest League Traveler.) I go back on the road Monday, and I’ve decided that I’m going to make that two-day trip’s soundtrack Springsteen-based. I’ll bring all the classic E Street Band albums, but I also want to create a Big Man mix CD for the trip. I’m definitely going to include “Jungleland,” which includes my absolute favorite Clarence Clemons saxophone solo. I have other songs in mind, too, but I’d like to know what you would include if you were making the mix CD.

I look forward to reading your suggestions!

I’m still in the beginning stages of the adventure, having gone only to a couple Peoria Chiefs games so far. I’ve got a schedule in place for when I’ll visit the other 15 Midwest League ballparks (and likely return to Peoria’s park, too, since that’s the closest one to me). I set up a second Twitter account from which I’ll tweet about my Midwest League odyssey: @MWLtraveler. I’m also building a blog at which I’ll chronicle my ballpark visits at www.MWLtraveler.com. It’s still a work in progress right now, so please excuse the metaphorical dust as construction continues, but bookmark it and check back regularly if you want to follow along there, too.

That’s it for now here at The Bread Line. I’ll still be posting here occasionally, but I’ll be posting at The Midwest League Traveler blog a lot more this summer. I hope you’ll like what you read there, and as always, feel free to give me feedback about my writing and the project in general.

“The risks of release outweigh the benefits,” Obama said. “Conspiracy theorists around the world will just claim the photos are doctored anyway, and there is a real risk that releasing the photos will only serve to inflame public opinion in the Middle East.

“Imagine how the American people would react if al-Qaida killed one of our troops or military leaders, and put photos of the body on the Internet,” he continued. “Osama bin Laden is not a trophy – he is dead and let’s now focus on continuing the fight until al-Qaida has been eliminated.”

I completely agree with Obama’s reasoning. Here’s what I tweeted about his decision before I read his comments:

“I think that’s the right decision. No need to risk upsetting the wrong people (potential terrorists) just to satisfy conspiracy theorists.”

and

“Besides, would conspiracy theorists really be silenced if photo released? They probably would claim it’s doctored.”

Obama’s comments about not releasing post-mortem images of bin Laden will air today on “CBS Evening News.” The full interview will air Sunday on “60 Minutes.”

I’m not going to spend a lot of time typing this post because, frankly, I want to concentrate on watching news coverage of the al-Qaida leader’s death. But I’d like to point out that the news broke and spread quickly on Twitter, before the television anchors told us (particularly CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who metaphorically seemed to be the last person to arrive at the party). Yesterday I wrote about the news value of Twitter and its varied acceptance level by print reporters (you can read that post by clicking here), and the way so many people learned about bin Laden’s death is a perfect example of why all reporters should be on board with the use of social media.

As I tweeted earlier tonight, “I hope all the print journalists who don’t buy into the news value of Twitter are paying attention to how the bin Laden news broke/spread.”

Finally, I’ll end this post with the sentence I tweeted immediately after President Obama finished his speech tonight: “If I could type the sound of America clapping, I would.”

The first type is self-explanatory. If you understand the power of online reporting and the use of social media to further the reach of a reporter’s words, you know a reporter who “gets” it when you see his or her work.

The second type is still too common. A great example of this type can be found locally. There are two smaller daily newspapers that primarily cover La Salle County — The Times and the NewsTribune — and they both have reporters who “get” it and reporters who resist having to do anything beyond writing and occasionally shooting a photo for the print product. Reporters at both newspapers obviously were directed to create and use Twitter accounts, and as best I can tell, all the NewsTribune reporters embrace this to varying degrees, but there are still some Times reporters who don’t use Twitter at all — one reporter even locked his account so you can’t follow him unless he approves you doing so! They obviously don’t understand the value of reaching out to a wider audience through such newfangled means.

An example of the third type works for the Chicago Sun-Times. Lynn Sweet, a columnist and Washington bureau chief for the newspaper, uses Twitter and blogs, but she doesn’t do it quite right. Earlier today, she tweeted a reminder that the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner is tonight, and that people can follow her at @lynnsweet for notes and photos from it. That is a good use of Twitter. But when I clicked on the link she included in her tweet, I found her accompanying blog post, which began as follows:

WASHINGTON–The White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner is tonight, with Saturday Night Live headwriter and comic Seth Meyers the headliner. Meyers–I locked eyes with him for a mini-moment at the New Yorker party Friday night–speaks after President Obama, always a hard act to follow.

That is an example of Sweet trying too hard to impress and not quite “getting” it, which she tends to do on her blog. Believe me, nobody cares that Lynn Sweet locked eyes with Seth Meyers for “a mini-moment.” Another example of her trying too hard on her blog is the many instances of her writing “as I reported earlier” or a similar phrase. Newspapers have a long tradition of patting themselves on the back for reporting something first — and I have no problem with that — but when it’s done often by the same reporter in the first person, the writer can come across less favorably.

With that said, at least Sweet is using social media, and she gets credit for that. Too many reporters still resist using social media, and that’s a real problem in the journalism industry.

I wish I could say with any certainty that this will end the birther movement, but I think it’s more likely those people who hate Obama so much they wouldn’t believe he was born in Hawaii now will find something else equally ridiculous to believe and pester the president about.

And while Trump is not to blame for those people believing such nonsense, he is responsible for stoking the fire that fuels their craziness. (Incidentally, Lawrence O’Donnell, host of MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” said “NBC has created a monster” in Trump. I agree with him.)

Since most of us who are sane are tired of hearing about the birther nonsense and Trump’s feeble attempts at logic, the president’s action Wednesday was most welcome (and sad that a sitting president had to produce his birth certificate to prove again that he was born in the United States). I just wish Obama would’ve done this on Friday so there would be something big to report that day other than the royal wedding that’s being covered way too much in this country. I’ve already accepted that the final launch of the space shuttle Endeavour, which will be attended by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (the shooting victim whose husband, Capt. Mark Kelly, is helming the Endeavour’s final voyage), will practically be ignored by comparison.

I expect to take a day off from watching TV news on Friday because of the royal wedding overkill. I’ll stick to the Internet (Twitter and websites of news organizations) for my news that day so I can avoid the royal wedding as easily as possible while still staying informed about whatever important is happening.

That caught my attention because something similar once happened to me. The last time I was unemployed, after The Times laid me off, I went nine months without being called for jury duty. Then as soon as I landed a job to help launch Ottawa Delivered, I received a notice for jury duty — for the week the first issue of Ottawa Delivered was scheduled to hit newsstands and launch online.

The county clerk let me off the hook, though I got another notice for jury duty just a few months later. The second time my jury pool didn’t get called in, so I didn’t have to serve that time, either.

Now a couple years later, I find myself on the unemployment line again (victim of another newspaper layoff), and I sort of wish I would get called for jury duty. I haven’t so far, but both my wife and her brother-in-law have been called for jury duty — and served on a jury — while I’ve been off work. Go figure.

But that’s OK. I’m pursuing a book idea that should keep me busy this summer. As a result, I probably won’t be blogging at The Bread Line as much as I did the first time I was unemployed — but that’s OK, too, if that means I’ll finish writing a book. But I’ll still be posting here semi-regularly — I certainly expect to blog about the Blagojevich trial — and when the time is right, I’ll reveal more about my book project.

Coincidentally, ABC World News aired a segment the same day about 97-year-old Agnes Zhelesnik, who is still a full-time preschool teacher in New Jersey.

I’ve always been somewhat fascinated with people who live to be centenarians (or at least come close). I may even be married to a future one, considering my wife’s great-grandmother Ethel lived to be 107.

My fascination comes from considering how much change and notable events these “golden oldies” have seen in their lifetimes — and the ages they were when those things took place. For example, Breuning was born before baseball’s American League was organized (1900), Teddy Roosevelt became president (1901), Thomas Edison invented the modern battery (1902), the Ford Motor Company sold its first automobile (1903), the Wright brothers’ first flight (1903), the New York City subway opened (1904), and Scouting was founded in Britain by Sir Robert Baden-Powell (1907). He was a teenager when the Titanic sunk and World War I began; in his 20s when Prohibition was enacted and American women won the right to vote; in his 30s when the Great Depression began; in his 40s when the Hindenburg blew up, Amelia Earhart was lost at sea and World War II took place; in his 50s when the Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation in public schools, Queen Elizabeth II was crowned and Sen. Joseph McCarthy waged a libelous war against alleged communists; in his 60s when the Soviet Union sent the first man into space, President Kennedy was assassinated, and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones started playing; in his 70s when Martin Luther King was assassinated, men landed on the moon, and the Watergate scandal took place; in his 80s when John Hinckley shot President Reagan and the space shuttle Challenger exploded; in his 90s when the Exxon Valdez dumped more than a million gallons of crude oil into the Alaskan waters and the first Iraq war took place; in his 100s when the 9/11 terrorist attacks took place; and in his 110s when America elected its first black president.

So what’s the secret to long life? Reporters always ask that of centenarians, and according to the Washington Post, Breuning’s answers to that question were:

Embrace change, even when the change slaps you in the face. (“Every change is good.”)

Eat two meals a day. (“That’s all you need.”)

Work as long as you can. (“That money’s going to come in handy.”)

Help others. (“The more you do for others, the better shape you’re in.”)

And the hardest of all: Accept death.

“We’re going to die. Some people are scared of dying. Never be afraid to die, because you’re born to die,” he said.

Zhelesnik’s keys to staying active well into your 90s are keeping busy and having a sense of purpose.

In August 2009, I wrote about Freyda Siegel, a Massachusetts woman who had recently turned 100. You can read her tips for living a long life well by clicking here.

When I wrote that blog post, I asked readers to share their own tips for living life well, even if they’re still young. I’m making the same request now. Share your thoughts in the comments section, and of course, live your life well.