This entire day has felt like that moment just before you release the sigh, he said, not fully knowing what that means.
Or … I could try that again.
This entire day has felt like that moment just before you release the sigh, he sighed, knowing exactly what that meant.
Each time I went outside the sky was this light, slate gray. Even the grays couldn’t be bothered to bring a full palette. Like the sky said “Ya know … forget about it.”
So it was that I found myself bending over to study the leaves on the ground, where there was some actual color. I picked up a few to bring inside for a picture, but I’m not sure why.
All of this probably sounds like I am in a mood, but I am not. Well, I am in a mood, but it can safely be categorized as “good.” I’ve just not been especially impressed by the day.
There was a class though, and there was a newspaper meeting and then some time signing things and copying things and marking up papers. Last night I solved a networking problem. One computer wouldn’t reach anything, a student said. The ethernet cable had been removed. Broken clips sink ships. Today I’m dealing with a scanner problem. Bad software helps the enemy everywhere. Technical support is not my job, but I suppose it is really all of our jobs these days, not unlike wartime security and the old propaganda posters.
I love those old posters. At the Churchill Museum in London I was confronted with an entire room of them I could purchase. My wife and her mother, who were also in the museum, knew I was a lost cause and left me there to go do something else. A friend and former boss owns the poster printing company linked above, with tons of great old art. I’ve spent a lot of time pouring through those as well. In both cases I’ve never managed to buy anything. The next one is always better. There’s that moment before the sigh again, I guess.
Anyway, I can’t make the scanner work with the new computer. I’ve downloaded the things and read all of the forums and installed, changed, rebooted and all of that. I know how to have a good time, boy. Ultimately, though, I’ll need the actual tech folks — the real heroes in any business — come and get this situated.
So I may as well go back to looking through ancient posters — here’s one with a guy in an arm cast and sling in the background with text that says “Don’t get hurt.” In the foreground there’s a GI sprawled out, dead. “It may cost his life.” What a crazy poster to have hanging in the factory —
Suddenly, there’s a big squealing sound. Not the speakers, not the phone, but the scanner, which is in between them. Unplug the scanner, the squeal goes away. Try to scan again, it still will not initialize. There will be no beaming of data this day. We’ll have to send the shuttlecraft, keptin.
This can only mean that later, or some time tomorrow, that random squeal will start again.
Things to read … because reading is never random. (You’ll see. One day.)
Now the posturing sound of people trying to tell you what it all means … Recapping the GOP’s Historic Night:
If Democrats were going to hold off a Republican tsunami, they needed their base voters to come out to the polls and pull the lever for the president’s party. That didn’t happen where Democrats needed it to. Especially with young voters. Nationally, Democratic base groups — young voters, single women, African-Americans and Latinos — posted numbers that looked more like the Democrats’ 2010 midterm “shellacking” than Obama’s 2012 re-election victory. Most strikingly, voters 18-29 nationwide were only 13% of the electorate in 2014 (compared with 22% for GOP-leaning seniors.) In the 2010 midterms, young voters made up 12% of the voting public. In contrast, during Obama’s re-election victory in 2012, 19% of the electorate was under 30.
Locally, it was an uninspired turnout. Alabama voter turnout lower than normal:
Nearly complete election results indicate that about 41 percent of Alabama’s nearly 2.9 million active registered voters participated. A gubernatorial election traditionally attracts more than half of Alabama’s voters.
Maybe if the Democrats would put someone on the statewide ballots …
What did you do freshman year? West Virginia Elects America’s Youngest State Lawmaker:
A West Virginia University freshman who did most of her campaigning out of her dorm room became the youngest state lawmaker in the nation Tuesday.
Republican Saira Blair, a fiscally conservative 18-year-old, will represent a small district in West Virginia’s eastern panhandle, about 1½ hours outside Washington, D.C., after defeating her Democratic opponent 63% to 30%, according to the Associated Press. A third candidate got 7% of the vote.
In a statement, Ms. Blair thanked her supporters and family, as well as her opponents for running a positive campaign. “History has been made tonight in West Virginia, and while I am proud of all that we have accomplished together, it is the future of this state that is now my singular focus,” she said.
Ms. Blair campaigned on a pledge to work to reduce certain taxes on businesses, and she also holds antiabortion and pro-gun positions. She defeated Democrat Layne Diehl, a 44-year-old Martinsburg attorney, whose top priorities included improving secondary education and solving the state’s drug epidemic.
Maybe I share that story with students. No pressure, folks.
CBS to Launch Digital News Channel Tomorrow:
CBS plans to launch its new digital news channel tomorrow, an effort to get the broadcast network into 24-hour news. CBS Interactive head Jim Lanzone confirmed the company’s plans for the news video site during an onstage interview with me at the Web Summit in Dublin, Ireland
If they do something different with that, they could find some success. If the plan is simply to be a 24-hour news channel online … CNN or MSNBC awaits.
And, finally, one I shared with my class today, Social media, journalism and wars: ‘Authenticity has replaced authority’:
The panel stressed that not all of the old values have been swept away. “It’s really old-fashioned: can I find it out, is it true, can I stand by it? That level of trust is really important,” said Sutcliffe. “I’ve got a story, but does it stand up, is it true, what are my sources?”
“There will be two types of parallel journalism going on – the facts on the ground from people who are there, foreign correspondents, and people like us who filter,” said Little.
Some of the filters will be the same media organisations who employ on-the-ground correspondents, though. Time, for example, has a division focused on breaking news, which is deliberately kept separate from its foreign correspondents.
“We’ve hired a bunch of very young people in New York and Hong Kong and they’re essentially aggregating as a breaking news service: when anything appears from a reliable news organisation, quickly write two or three paragraphs and get it out there,“ he said.
Every quote in that piece is worth reading. I hope the students will give it a glance. You should too.
And then let go of that sigh. Tomorrow is Thursday, and yours is going to be great.
