This picture tells most of this story.  That's me at about 5 a.m. in the National Convention Center in Managua, Nicaragua the night in 1990 that the Sandinistas were voted out of power.

I am not ashamed to tell you that I was among the dozens, or scores, of reporters that had pretty much written the story of the Sandinista victory during the previous week and we were simply awaiting the final election returns to write the new "top" of the story.

The joke was on us as by 3 in the morning it was clear that Sandinista President Daniel Ortega had, in fact, lost to U.S.-backed candidate Violeta Chamorro. A couple of poor bastards, including Larry Bensky --writing for The Nation-- had already filed their stories proclaming Ortega the winner and wound up seeing their faux pas in print.

I was working for the Village Voice and, indeed, my deadline was that very same morning. As soon as it was clear Ortega was losing, I had to redo ten days worth of reporting in just a few hours. In this picture I am finishing my rewrite at the last moment.

At just about 6 a.m. Ortega made his concession speech to a standing room only crowd in the same room. It was, no doubt, his greatest moment. He gave a great and gracious speech.

For those of you who lost track, he's back in power. And he's a real putz.

For the geeks among you. I believe the computer I am working on was a Toshiba 1100. Or a 1200? The software was probably WordPerfect 5.1. Or 4.2?

Here's another pic from the same week. I'm on the left. In the middle in then-Foreign Minister Father Miguel D'Escoto.