REGINA - I will begin this column by sharing the lyrics of a well known 1970s television show:
Welcome back,
Your dreams were your ticket out.
Welcome back,
To that same old place that you laughed about.
Well the names have all changed since you hung around,
But those dreams have remained and they've turned around.
Who'd have thought they'd lead you
(Who'd have thought they'd lead you),
Back here where we need you?
(Back here where we need you?)
Yeah, we tease him a lot 'cause we got him on the spot,
Welcome back.
Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.
Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.
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For those of you young folks out there who weren’t even born when this show was on, those lyrics are from John Sebastian’s iconic theme song from the TV show Welcome Back, Kotter. That’s the sitcom where Mr. Kotter returns to his old stomping grounds in Brooklyn to be a teacher to the “sweathogs.”
As it turns out, that’s the situation for me. It’s “Welcome Back, Cairns” to SaskToday.
After walking out the Harvard Media door for what I thought was the final time back in late May, here I am right back in the same old place that I laughed about.
Which in this case is a home office, in a neighbourhood here in Regina that really does seem a lot like Brooklyn when you think of it.
Without getting into all the details, what happened is that after I had accepted the offer to move to the other place, my former bosses at Harvard Media counter-offered. Expanded responsibility, a better job title,and most important, a return to provincial politics coverage and my old Leg office space once the Leg is back in session.
After spending my summer covering City Hall at the new gig, all the while missing the Leg beat and the other stuff I had been doing, I finally told my old/new boss Jayne Foster I was going back. And I really appreciate the "welcome back" I've received from all of them.
To be clear, this is not going back to my “old job”, but to an expanded role. I am now Content Lead - Provincial for SaskToday.
I’ll be helping guide our reporters out in the field on the provincial political stories, and have a Regina reporter reporting to me later this fall for the local stuff.
I’ll be taking on major duties with our Harvard Media political coverage. We’re working on some ambitious plans for streaming, for on-air coverage, the works. You political junkies out there ought to be excited, and all these other media organizations in town should be shaking in their boots.
At the end of the day, though, what this really is about is one last chance for a lot of us from the former News-Optimist/Glacier gang to get back together. It really is about returning to the old neighbourhood, with a better job and more responsibility — just like Kotter.
About these annoying Kotter pop-culture references:
Those who know me well know that I am a big poker fan and wannabe-player myself. Actor Gabe Kaplan, who made his name playing Kotter on TV, is himself an active poker player who played in the World Series of Poker and co-hosted the iconic TV cash-game show High Stakes Poker. (Which quite frankly was a better show than Welcome Back, Kotter ever was, but I digress.)
Welcome Back, Kotter also starred a very young John Travolta. Soon after the series hit the air, Travolta very quickly rocketed into movie stardom with Saturday Night Fever and Grease.
I say that as a segue way to my other announcement: that my movie column, Cairns on Cinema, is back with more box office news. We also have got some big expansion plans in the works for that as well. Stay tuned.
Now that I am moving ahead with “Cairns 2.0” here at SaskToday, I’m thinking maybe I need to go the 2.0 route in my personal life as well. Such as (a) spend more time improving my poker game, and (b) spend more time at the movies. Both pursuits have gone straight to heck lately.
Here’s a third reason I bring up these Kotter TV references: the timing of my return also coincides with “back to school.”
Really, back to school is a time of year I always hated. It always meant the end of summer and the end of my quality time in front of my beloved television set.
No sooner have I returned to SaskToday that I am being reminded daily on how much issues in the classroom are dominating the provincial beat.
Teachers strikes. Binding arbitration. Pronouns. Cell phone bans in classrooms. New school construction announcements. This gig definitely means I’m “back to school”, too, whether I like it or not.
So much for what I said in my supposed “farewell” column, which now belongs at the bottom of a Just Bins trash container. My work here is not done, after all.
This return to SaskToday punctuates the craziest year I have ever had career-wise, going through three different companies in one year.
I surely didn’t expect this turn of events. When I left back in May, I really did think I was gone for good. I had entered the summer thinking my life was going to turn into some combination of NewsRadio and Spin City. Instead, I got Welcome Back, Kotter.
“Yeah, we tease him a lot 'cause we got him on the spot, welcome back! Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.”
