Remembering Bob Watts

Jan. 5, 2008 | I don't think I'll ever forget the Salon art department at the time -- Mignon Khargie, Elizabeth Kairys and Karen Templer -- gushing at an editorial meeting about this person who'd applied to be an intern. He was making a midlife career change, and they couldn't say enough about him. One of them said to the boss, David Talbot, "Can we keep him?" The answer was yes.

Bob had a lot to live up to after that introduction, and he more than lived up to it. Of course he became a fantastic artist for Salon. He was one of those guys who could be good at pretty much anything that interested him, and it seemed like everything interested him. He's the only person I've ever known who was fascinated by art, technology, music, kids, photography, food -- and horse racing. And that's just the stuff I know about and remember. And I've already said too much without using the words "kindness," "creativity" and "fearlessness."

He was always surprising you. Once in my music days I mentioned playing a gig at a county fair, and some version of the Temptations was playing the main stage. Bob was from Detroit. "The Temptations," he said, like he was about to tell me what he'd had for lunch. "They played my prom."

He surprised us one last time because most of us hadn't known how sick he was. He kept that private, for the most part. I don't think he liked people to make over him too much. But I hope he knew how much he was loved and appreciated around here.

-- King Kaufman

* * *

Bob was so brave in the face of his illness, so determined to carry on with his life, that it was easy to forget what he was dealing with for so long. He was just always there. If he wasn't in the cubicle next to me, then his self-portrait was reassuringly there on my buddy list. I admired him tremendously for his courage, but also for his story: He was an incredibly talented guy who made himself indispensable through his hard work and artistic chops. But that was just his Salon story; if you got Bob talking about his life, you found that he had a million more, many surprising, all interesting. And I'm sure I barely scratched the surface.

I'm going to miss Bob's friendship. He was an anchor in the office, someone to talk to in the morning, to share music and photos and books with, to gripe with about work. His enthusiasm for music especially was infectious. And he was generous and calm, with a great sense of humor. He was so uniquely Bob. It's hard to believe he won't be back with us.

-- Ruth Henrich

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The thing that really pissed me off about Bob was that it was so hard to get sick around him. Living with a pint-size germ carrier and her germ-carrying friends means that lots of colds and other stuff get passed around in this outpost. And here I was working with Mr. Stoic: try complaining about a sinus headache when your co-worker was feeling the after-effects of a four-hour chemo drip. Which, on the rare occasion he let something slip, I'd learn about well after the worst was past. Jeez, Bob.

What I absolutely loved was our breaking-news chemistry, when a story would hit and we'd lunge for IM at the same time, fingers flying: "You take Reuters, I'll do AP!" That and the fact that he was reliable. Which, unless you understand what I mean, may sound a little lame. He was always available, for whatever, whenever. We have the sort of jobs where one or both of us always needs to be on call, and our long association taught us we could completely rely on the other. Even with all the odd hours we'd sometimes keep, and his long, long battle, he never lost his good humor, and we'd end up laughing and trading jokes about why we did what we did for as long as we'd both been doing it. (Note to self: Tell Lori to burn Bob's IM logs)

He got tired and grumpy at times, sure. We all did. But I never felt the full weight of this job on my shoulders because he carried his share, and then some. He loved Salon, and I'd like to think it helped keep him alive these past few years.

-- Mignon Khargie

* * *

I'm at a loss as to what to do or say, really, other than to go over some of my favorite memories of Bob. We shared an obsession with Apple products; every January, around this time, we'd have fun conversations about what Apple might be releasing at Macworld. Afterward he was usually more impressed than I, and we'd tangle over whether the company could really, this time, get anyone interested. (He won that argument.) Once I was lamenting that I couldn't draw, and he showed me how you didn't really need to know how to draw if you used Adobe Illustrator -- you could trace an image from a photograph. To prove it, he pulled out his camera and took a picture of me, and then spent a half-hour showing me the software. The next day he sent me an awesome illustration of my mug. What I loved most was telling him some vague idea for art -- something like, "Can you show something that says people love iPods?" or, "This is about neuroscience and music" -- and then getting knocked off my chair with his perfect interpretation. Bob was such a wonderful person that it was easy to forget that he was also a computer graphics ninja.

We sat near each other at every Salon office I've worked at; I can't imagine the place without him.

-- Farhad Manjoo

* * *

The first day I walked into Salon, there was Bob in the cube across from mine. I hadn't seen him in almost 20 years. When he found out I had been hired as managing editor he had dug into his files and found a color xerox photo of the old '69 VW bus I drove around when he and I worked together long ago at a small environmental organization in S.F. called the Planet Drum Foundation. He presented it to me when I arrived and the faded photo of my old bus from 1984 was the first thing I hung on my cube walls in 2005. The gesture was so Bob, not only considerate, but poetic. As I would see him do it over and over again in his illustrations of Salon articles. He had found an image that told a larger story, in this case, reminding me, ever so sweetly, of the long journey, over many bumpy roads, in often less than luxurious conditions, that I'd been on to get to Salon. When I saw Bob sitting there, smiling warmly, looking as svelte and understatedly fashionable as ever, I felt at home.

Bob was only a few years older than me but when I met him while still in college he was a savvy 26-year-old who turned me on to great literature and music, especially REM and the Smiths. At Planet Drum we worked in a musty basement updating mailing lists of bioregional activists around the country using white-out and a Selectric typewriter. Bob edited the organization's newsletter, Raise the Stakes, and for an article about geomancy we spent an amazing rainy day together with a dowsing expert in Golden Gate Park running a quivering divining rod over the ground attempting to detect underground water and mineral deposits. That was one of the first interviews I ever did and still one of the most fascinating -- all under Bob's wing. I was often overwhelmed and a little lost in those days. After all, we were trying to build a bioregional movement, to tear down state and national borders and refashion a society based on the natural boundaries of watersheds. Goodbye, California -- hello, Shasta and Sonora bioregions! This was heady stuff, to say nothing of seriously fringe, and I could count on Bob, with his wry intelligence and great sense of style (not to be underestimated in post-hippie times), to help me make sense of it all. Although not from Northern California originally, Bob was very at home in the Shasta bioregion. Long before we became the new Tuscany and everything local became hip, he knew what to do with an Eel River salmon, Amador zin or bag of Humboldt homegrown.

Bob, thank you for that photo. I will miss you very much.

-- Jeanne Carstensen

* * *

This is a terrible loss. Bob was a great human being. I'll never forget him, and neither will anyone else who was fortunate enough to know him. His gracious, kind, and humble spirit will always inspire us all.

-- Gary Kamiya

* * *

Since we moved to the Rincon center a couple years back my desk was right across from Bob's, and every time I'd come in and he was there he'd always look up and smile and say hello in his quiet, jovial way. And it lit me up every single time because it always fully contained his incredible spirit and sense of humor and intelligence. He would never let his illness eclipse those qualities. He was a creative force and a kind friend, and I cannot believe he's gone; it's an astonishing and awful loss. We will not be the same without him, but his spirit will stay with us for sure.

Bob's artistic talent and intuition often made good Salon stories great. One recent example was with a cover story we ran looking at how financial donations to Bill Clinton might become a liability for a Hillary Clinton presidency. A worthy subject ... but hardly a sexy one. How to draw readers in? I remember fiddling and going around in circles with the display copy just as Bob sent the art over. Not only did he nail it, his summary riff tickled me as much as the image did: "Made him the East Wing house mom baking up big donations." From there the headline was a breeze ... ("Will Bill's dough make trouble for Hillary?") As an editor, you always knew you were in good hands when Bob was going to be delivering the art to accompany a story.

Bob was also remarkably generous with his time, despite the huge demands placed on the tiny art department here. One time I wanted to send an old archived Salon story to an interested colleague, but since it had been published the original art had gone missing due to Salon's formatting changes, and the story was lesser for it. (Bob had done the art.) I asked him about it, though also urged him that it was hardly a priority. After all, we had a daily issue to produce and a million other things going on, as usual. Nor was it an easy fix to that archived story -- but Bob tracked down the original art for it and had it back in there and ready to go for me the same afternoon. That's the kind of guy he was.

-- Mark Follman

* * *

I don't share the long history with Bob that many people do at Salon. But, as my cubicle neighbor for the last two years, he radiated an enviable warmth and Zen-like calm. Each morning that he came into the office he offered up a modest smile that was genuinely kind and unusually down-to-earth. As a Salon newbie and young'un, he kindly offered me basic, unadorned encouragement and praise. He was engaged, open and real -- human in a way that few of us seem to achieve.

-- Tracy Clark-Flory

* * *

Reading these tributes to Bob -- many from people who worked with him longer or more recently than I did -- I'm struck especially by the comments about knowing him through IM. When Mignon and Elizabeth and I were looking for an intern all those years ago, and I was screening the résumés, Bob's stood out for reasons almost inexplicable. We were looking for someone with certain skills, of course, but also someone who was detail-oriented and who would make a good addition to our small and unusually close-knit staff. We got a lot of boring and typo-ridden letters and résumés, and I liked Bob's for not containing a single error. I also liked that he had an uncommon background and diverse interests and was looking for new ways to explore them. And I'm not bullshitting you when I say that he had a fantastic spirit and that it was somehow evident right there in his résumé (just as it apparently was in his IM messages). We invited him in for an interview and, as you've read, we fell immediately in love with him. Bob had a beautiful soul and a beautiful wife and a beautiful daughter -- he lived a beautiful life. It never surprised me that he went from that intern position to running the department, and it doesn't surprise me to see all of these heartfelt tributes. That's the kind of guy Bob was.

-- Karen Templer

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