Farewell, Goodbye & Amen to McClatchy colleagues

I'm not sure what the protocol is for writing about your colleagues who have suddenly, by involuntary attrition, become your ex-colleagues. Somebody on the business desk showed me a list she'd made of the 20 or so Kansas City Star newsroom employees that she knew who had been let go in Monday's purge. Yes, I know you have read that McClatchy, the chain that owns us, was "to cut 10 percent" of its workforce, but the future tense is actually past tense, and those who are going are, for the most part, already gone.

When I was a temp worker at Kraft Foods in the early 1990s, about a month after Philip Morris had gone through like a buzzsaw and severed 20,000 people from its payroll, I remember how palpable the trauma still was there. People didn't even talk about it in hushed tones. They were still shellshocked, or lacked communication skills, or maybe it wasn't the Kraft way -- whatever. The point is, no one was saying anything. Here, it's different. We're journalists. We've been loudly discussing the firings in our newsrooms all week, and you can bet we will write about our departed comrades because, as we saw in all the reverential tributes to Tim Russert the past few days, that's what journalists do on such and similar occasions. They write and reminisce. So, look for some heartfelt farewells to appear in our pages and on our blogs.

Like I say, though, I'm not sure about the protocol and I don't feel comfortable sharing all the names on my colleague's list. What I have done, however, is set up this blog so that people can post appreciations of Star employees laid off this week and where those who are departing can post farewells.

Since his name is already out there, however, I'd like to tell you something about this man, Paul Horsley. He has been our classical music critic since 1999 and for most of that time, he has worked a few feet from my office door. We talked all the time and I found him witty, engaging and knowledgeable about just about everything. His last story, it turns out, was about a local contestant on the TV show "America's Got Talent." I was planning to show him my slides from the Symphony in the Flint Hills when I got into the office on Monday. About three times a year, I'm asked to write an overnight review of some TV event, usually an awards show. Paul would sometimes do three overnight reviews in a *weekend*. I can say this without hesitation — no one at the Star worked harder, produced more copy, endured nuttier hours or flexed more intellectual muscle than Paul Horsley. Losing him just sucks.

I went to the ballgame last week with Elvera Voth, the ageless conductor of the East Hill Singers, which is partly comprised of prisoners. Elvera is stepping down this month, as was duly noted by our critic. (Typical of Paul, he wrote two stories: one about her, one about her successor.) Elvera actually doesn't like to be the story much. She always was happy to promote Arts in Prison, the group that supports the Singers, and she liked it when reporters paid attention to the men from the Lansing lockup who sang alongside non-convicts, some of whom go to the church we both attend. She never kidded herself that the quality of the music approached that of the big opera companies she conducted in Alaska back in the day. But she absolutely cherished — to the point of telling me for the umpteenth time last week — the review she got of an East Hill Singers performance by Paul Horsley in 2006. I reprint it now in its entirety:

On the face of it, nothing was unusual about Sunday's concert of the East Hill Singers. True, you had to wonder about the guards outside the doors of Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church and ask why some of the nearly 60 choir members wore blue shirts that distinguished them from the rest of the singers.

In fact those blue-shirted men are inmates at the East Unit of the Lansing Correctional Facility, and they and more than 30 volunteers sing under the auspices of Arts in Prison, a nonprofit group that uses arts to build self-image and wholeness.

What was most striking about the standing-room only concert, titled "How Can I Keep From Singing?" was how good this choir can sound.

Under the devoted direction of Elvera Voth, who built the group 10 years ago, the choir filled the gorgeously outfitted church with virile, golden sound that reminded one of the Maennerchor tradition of 19th-century Germany.

It negotiated things like "Va, pensiero" from Verdi's "Nabucco" with suave sonority and intelligent phrasing. But it was the inmates' stories between songs that lent heft to the proceedings. Like that of tenor Frank Dominguez, a former inmate and choir member who sang Gounod's Sanctus and spoke of how the East Hill experience gave him "the power to walk" when he got out into the world. Dominguez is now an assistant choral director at an area church.

"Me, sing opera?" inmate Jefferey Harper said with a laugh, before the choir launched into Verdi. "Well, I am singing it, and I'm liking it." There were fine renditions of spirituals, with clear-voiced jazz singer Monique Danielle, as well as Gregorian chant in Latin, the Pachelbel canon with narration by Forrest Moret, and religious and folk songs from several centuries and in five languages.

Most moving was a "Rap of Redemption," composed by maximum-security inmate Essex Sims and juxtaposing Sims' own rap texts (heard on recording) with bits of the Kyrie and Agnus Dei Mass texts. The idea might have seemed outrageous, but Voth pointed out that rap was an ancient tradition with roots not so far from those of chant.

The piece had impact for the power of its poetry. If you listened closely you could hear the words "I wish I never hurt you" blend with the "Miserere nobis" (have mercy on us) of the chant.

Redemption and penitence - the reasons, perhaps, why Voth and Arts in Prison have persevered with this choir for a decade, "to make a difference," as she said, "in this very broken world."

Beautiful, isn't it? And learned, and fair. Elvera loved that careful choice of words: "how good this choir can sound." That was praise dolloped out in exactly the right proportion. And it was that attention to tone that made Paul Horsley an indispensable person to cover one of the trickiest beats ... that we used to have at the *Star*.

In the newsroom, we are all devastated by the loss of so many of our comrades, many of whom leave us in the prime of their careers. For me, though, this is the one that hurts the most.