Today an old friend came on the show to promote his first book and I was very happy to help him do it. Jesse Katz is a former Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Magazine reporter whom I first met more than 20 years ago. I was an intern at the Los Angeles Times and he was a recent hire. 

Many people taught me how to write over the years but Jesse's tutorials were especially instructive. I learned there could be poetry in news writing. I admired the way he crafted his stories--choosing just the right words, reading his sentences aloud, appreciating the people whom he was writing about. I found myself trying to write in the same way in the years that followed. I never achieved the same level of craftsmanship in my writing but he certainly influenced me in a positive way. 

Jesse's new book is called "The Opposite Field." It's a memoir about Jesse's experiences as a dad and as a Little League baseball commissioner in multicultural Monterey Park. I enjoyed the book thoroughly. I hope it's just the first of many books to come from Jesse Katz.

Books, by the way, are why I'll be absent on Tuesday. Mrs. Buckley is the co-chair of a fund-raiser at our sons' school to benefit the school library. Los Angeles writer Lisa See ("Shanghai Girls," "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan") was kind enough to accept Elena's invitation to speak at the breakfast. A banquet room full of folks will be looking forward to hearing her presentation. I'll be one of the volunteers on hand to sell her book and others with the monies going to put more books into the school library.

We love books in the Buckley Family. All of us read every evening. Elena and I have always been readers and we're happy to say the Buckley Boys have become big readers, too. One book I will recommend to them in the years ahead is one that's on my bedside table right now, "Little Bee." It's not a book that's appropriate for the boys just yet.

While I tend to go for the Tom Clancy sort of stuff when I want to be entertained, I look to my wife's reading list when I want to read good literature. That's how "Little Bee" recently came over to my side of the bed. It was written by an English writer by the name of Chris Cleave and it's hard to describe without giving too much away. As Simon and Schuster puts it:

"It is a truly special story and we don't want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this: It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific. The story starts there, but the book doesn't. And it's what happens afterward that is most important. Once you have read it, you'll want to tell everyone about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds."

A good book is like that. You'll find magic in the pages. What are you reading?

Did you happen to catch 60 Minutes on Sunday evening? Correspondent Scott Pelley was granted access to the Centers for Disease Control to show how the government is responding to the H1N1 "swine flu" virus. He focused on 15-year-old Luke Duvall, a healthy high school football player who became ill with H1N1 and within days was barely clinging to life. He was on a ventilator and fighting infections that were threatening to kill him. It was enough to scare any parent to death--including me.

I called our pediatrician on Monday to inquire about the swine flu vaccine (we'd been told previously that not only did the doctor not have swine flu vaccine, she didn't have the seasonal flu vaccine) but that now yes, the office finally had some doses available. But only 200 doses, I was told, so hurry in before they run out, a nurse said.

I know there are questions and concerns about the H1N1 vaccine but for me, the potential risk of not vaccinating my children outweighs those concerns. Experts say 99-percent of the people who come down with the swine flu will just get sick and will survive the ordeal. But if we have an explosion of H1N1 illnesses this fall and winter, that means thousands of people will not survive it. I don't want to take the chance that my sons might fall into that one-percent. That's why we've decided as parents to have our children vaccinated.

I wouldn't presume to tell any other parent how to proceed or question their decisions on the vaccine if they differed from mine, but my thinking is there is risk in every medicine we give to our children and in many medical procedures. That doesn't mean we should avoid them especially when the benefit is they are protected from a potentially lethal illness.

That said, I still have questions and I suspect you do too. To that end, I invite you to submit any questions you may have by posting on this blog. We will read some of them on the air on the 1 P.M. broadcast on Thursday, October 21st and ask an expert on iinfectious diseases to answer them for you.

When I first saw the balloon flying through the air with six-year-old Falcon Heene reportedly trapped inside, I wanted to be sick. As a parent, it was a worst-nightmare times ten. It was that nightmare that every parent has had of their child being scared and in danger because of their own neglect or stupidity. I felt for the boy's parents and prayed for the young child. I hoped (aloud on the air during our breaking news coverage) that the balloon would somehow have a soft landing and the child would emerge unharmed.

When the balloon did have a soft landing and rescuers were able to secure it, they found no child inside. My heart sank again as I wondered if that child had fallen out as the balloon flew through the air. Later that day, we would all learn that little Falcon Heene was alive and well and had never been in danger.

 
While I was relieved to hear the child was O.K., my relief slowly turned to anger over the weekend. Certainly not at the boy--he's six-years-old. He's innocent. He was doing what children do--trying to please their parents. My anger is aimed at his parents after the local sheriff in Colorado alleged that the boy's father, Richard Heene, and the boy's mother Mayumi Heene, staged the entire affair as a hoax to promote a reality show. As an attorney for the Heene family points out, they are certainly innocent until proven guilty. But if true, what kind of a person would do this? And if they are convicted, what do you think the punishment should be?

According to a Robert Thomas of Denver, Richard Heene was pitching a TV show that would portray him as a "mad scientist" who carries out scientific experiments. Thomas sold his story to the website gawker.com, providing what he says are e-mail exchanges between him and Heene on this show. In one, Heene reportedly says: "This will be the most significant UFO-related news event to take place since the Roswell Crash of 1947, and the result will be a dramatic increase in local and national awareness about The Heene Family, our Reality Series, as well as the UFO Phenomenon in general."

The local sheriff, Jim Alderden of Larimer county confirmed emails are among the things investigators are looking at. "We certainly know that there's a conspiracy between the husband and wife, you've probably seen some of the e-mails and some of the things on the internet suggesting that there may be other conspirators," Alderden said.

As for Mr. Heene's alleged "mad scientist" proposal, Alderden said: "He may be nutty, but he's not a professor."

Among the worst moments of this story--when little Falcon appeared on CNN and other TV shows to talk about what happened. He literally became ill and vomited off-stage. Was the poor child sick? Nervous? Or being asked to carry out a lie that his parents were asking him to tell. We'll no doubt know the truth sooner or later. But I'm with Falcon. It made me want to be sick when I heard he was in danger. It makes me sick now to think his parents might have been using their child and all of us to promote a dumb reality TV show.