Smell you later

Even as the loathsome stinkweed plant waxes in late summer and launches its noxious spores to the protesting winds, so Evergreen Newspapers must bid aloha o’e to a pair of its most valued nuts, releasing them to corrupt new fields of endeavor.

Bonnie Benjamin-Skopinski and Nancy Hull, their names forever enshrined within the hearts and minds of some theoretical people within whose hearts and minds their names are enshrined within, will shortly take leave of their prestigious reporting posts to follow the capricious dictates of overweening ambition.

Among the savages

Pursued by plausibly deniable allegations stemming from her literal application of the “bedside manner” concept among the prudish Hopi of northern New Mexico, Bon Jovi ‘Bonnie’ Benjamin-Skopinski fled her former nursing career to become the Canyon Courier’s premier local gumshoe and crazy-junk-guy-writer-abouter. Often chided by co-workers as “Beantown Bonnie” because of her Philadelphian roots, B-S’s incomprehensible Up-East enunciations and scything judgments upon the iniquitous quickly established her as an aromatic Boston Harbor breeze of integrity and niceness blowing across the fetid lime-pit that is Evergreen.

Ask her, and Bonnie will say her proudest achievement was a riveting Outdoors story detailing the surprisingly nihilistic worldview of marmots, a well-punctuated piece in which her gutsy use of the word “booger” earned an unprecedented fifth Writing Excellence and News award – the coveted Weanie.

A brighter vision

Bonnie’s greatest contribution to the Canyon Courier’s journalistic canon – or at least the one that will be mentioned here – was her damn-the-torpedoes expose of Colorado fly fishing. While all who read the article agree that its raw language and brutal narrative style brought the sport’s terror and exhilaration home to even the most unimaginative reader, few realize that Bonnie salted the trout she caught that day, smoked them in her toaster oven and – at her own expense – mailed them to Peru where they helped feed Shining Path communist insurgents.

That dedication to Marxist principle is ultimately what prompted Bonnie-Bon Jovi to abandon her literary situation and resume the health professional’s white uniform and callous demeanor. Upon completing a medical refresher course and several weeks of re-indoctrination at a guerilla camp deep in the Honduran jungle, Benjamin-Skopinski will make her way to Cuba and bend her healing powers to the rehabilitation of that troubled island’s ailing despot.

Sick in love

“We hahd a thing a few years bahk when Ah was giving aid and comfort to the Sahndahnistah’s in Nicahraguah,” BBJBS explains. “Ah figure Ah owe Fifi that much, aht least.”

Yet even in that benighted land, Senora Bonita will contribute to the reading world’s intellectual advancement as Aunt Bunny, wiring her acclaimed recipe column from “Los Capitalista Estubido,” a cyberbar in Havana’s colorful port district. Her submissions are expected to arrive dripping with acidic commentary and morally corrosive computer viruses.

The gaping lesion that Bonnie’s absence will leave suppurating upon the ashen skin of the Canyon Courier newsroom will be mirrored at the Columbine Courier office, in that murky corner for so long brightened by the relentless optimism and loud computer-Solitaire games of Nancy Hepzubah Hull.

Wichita Ag College

Graduating with a degree in pre-industrial robotics from Wichita Agricultural College, Nancy – or Nan, as she insists that everyone call her – came to Colorado about four years ago in search of a slumbersome backwater where she could escape the frenetic activity and soul-destroying progressiveness of her home state, Kansas. By virtue of her great talent, even temperament and a Polaroid she got somewhere of editor Ken Eiseman during an unguarded moment with a goat, Nan landed Evergreen Newspaper’s coveted education-reporter slot. Gifted with a Kansananian’s native opportunism, Nan supplemented her generous LCNI wage by using her access to Jeffco schools to build a thriving trade in methamphetamines and unregistered handguns.

Among journalists working at weekly newspapers on Coal Mine Avenue, Hull is most famed for her willingness to suffer for a story. To breathe life into her magnum opus – a gritty depiction of bird watching’s seamy underbelly – Nan spent nearly a year living as an ivory-billed woodpecker – eating bugs and beetles, sleeping with her head under her arm and defecating on copies of the Golden Transcript spread on her kitchen floor.

Method writing

“To write about the bird, I had to get inside its feathers, you might say,” she explains, sitting at her soon-to-be-vacant desk and slathering her arms with finch-mite cream. “It’s called method-writing.”

With the introduction of drug-sniffing dogs to Jeffco schools, Hull has decided to return to Wichita and accept a public relations position. Coincidentally, she’ll be working for prominent Wichita banker Festus T. Millet, the 71-year-old business associate of her father’s to whom she was promised on her third birthday, a common practice in the Sunflower State.

Meet the Mister

Nan’s absence will be keenly felt in other quarters, as well. Learning of Hull’s planned departure, Foothills Parks and Recreation District Executive Director Bob Easton actually rose from his wheelchair and, overcome by strong emotion, danced a halting jig of despair.

Doug Bell, the recently-crowned Shirley Temple of Evergreen media’s Good Ship Lollipop, says he supports employees’ efforts at self-improvement and celebrates Benjamin-Skopinski’s and Hull’s rosy prospects. Despite his legendary empathy, however, Bell feels that minor fine-tuning of editorial policies will ensure a seamless transition and help Evergreen Newspapers maintain the high standards for which its known in the industry.

“Resignations are no longer being accepted,” says the unrepentant Welshman, blinking the mist from his eyes and reaching for a Kleenex-brand facial tissue. Bell wears his natural empathy like a spiky leather collar. “If you work here, get used to it. You’re not going anywhere unless you leave in a box.”

Readership is up 63%

Still, the news is a harsh mistress and Bell is already processing the paperwork for Bunny’s and Nan’s replacements, a pair of hard-working primates from Zaire’s Mbutu-Kinshazi Chimpanzee Sanctuary.

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