Godspeed, Mike Huber

It’s August of 2009, and I still don’t know how Mike Huber found me.

But I’m kind of glad he did.

I had spent three years blogging, off and on, with a personal online blog.  Maybe it was read by three or four people, or maybe two people and a bunch of spambots, I don’t know.  But in 2009, Mike Huber – editor of the blog content section on the TU website – dropped me an e-mail and asked if I would like to join the TU blog community.

I asked one question, and one question only.  “How often do I need to blog for the site?”

“Whenever you can,” he replied.  Of course, I took “whenever you can” to mean once a day.  Every day.  And on August 25, 2009 – my 46th birthday – I joined the Times Union blog community.

In Mike Huber, I found a person who would help guide my internal creative muse.  He let me blog about whatever I chose, so long as I kept it within the boundaries of good taste.  He allowed me to express my opinions, so long as I was able to back them up with solid convictions and rhetoric.  And he let me blog about esoterica, so long as I could make the esoterica interesting.

He knew I was passionate about making the blog community – a diaspora of independent Capital District lifestyle and political and collegiate and family bloggers – a true community.  He supported me when I fought to have the TU’s “Best of our Blogs” page returned to the TU print edition, after it disappeared in a newspaper redesign.  He made sure I kept focus on what was important in the blog community, and to make sure that whatever content I brought to this website would be enjoyed and appreciate and discussed and delineated.

In other words, Mike Huber was my hands-on blogging professor.

He also stuck up for me on several occasions when I wanted to walk away from the blogfarm completely.  In 2011, when I had to deal with a virulent and repugnant commenter who went from being a “trusted friend” to a vicious and hurtful hurler of venom and vindictiveness, someone who thought that a case of “monitor courage” would allow them to go undetected, Mike took the vicious messages to the TU’s tech support group, who blocked and locked the person from ever commenting on my blog or contacting me.  Mike Huber didn’t have to do that.  But he did.

There were also human, silly moments between us.  Like the time we worked out a system that kept me from using salty or barnyard language in a blog.  Thus was born the legendary TU SEZ NO CURSE WORDS blog filter.  You know, it pops up whenever I say the word or the word , or if I suggest that Tom Brady is a smirking little piece of or whether I wanted to tell someone they could go themselves… you know what I’m doing, right?

And on occasion, when he could, he supported his community of bloggers.  I know that he showed up at their book signings, at their public events, and he gave money out of his own pocket for their fundraisers.  He even showed up at my 2013 solo art show, “A Dream in the Dash,” which was a great show of support which I totally appreciate to this day.

And then there was the Krazy Glue incident.

Yep, that time when, on Valentine’s Day, I moped online about being lonely and unwanted, crafting a poem about “When your heart is broken in two, mend your heart with  drops of Krazy Glue.”  Next thing I know, Huber calls me and says that there’s a package at the TU’s headquarters.  Sure enough, the company that manufactures Krazy Glue read my blog and sent me a CARE package of their stuff, and the only address they had was the TU’s main office.

He was there when my son Kris visited me from Washington for a few days; he was impressed by Kris’ poise and intelligence, and the two talked for a good half hour before I had to pry Kris away to catch his flight back to the Pacific Northwest.

Mike Huber’s last day with the Times Union is today.  He’s heading off to new adventures and new projects and a new chapter in his yet-to-be-finished career.

And I wish him all the best.  My time with the TU would surely have been shorter and less fulfilling had I not known Mike Huber and the work he’s done to make the blogfarm a better place for all of us – bloggers, commenters, readers, the whole.

Have safe travels in your next adventure, boss.  Enjoy every sandwich, and never lose track of all the lives you’ve touched along the way.

There will be new blogbosses on the blog farm.

But there won’t ever be another Mike Huber on the blog farm.

Good luck and best wishes, my brother.