Another day hanging out with the great Ernie Pyle. I wonder what he’d say to me today, if he could.
He’d say “I’m almost 122 years old. What do you want from me? And why are you hanging around this statue anyway? Maybe you could go write something.”
The joke is on him. I’m mostly editing today.
I had to give a tour today, actually, and I walked our guest by the little display of Ernie Pyle artifacts, which is when I always say he grew up in a small place about 80 miles to the west. His dad was a tenant farmer there, and the town of Dana was bigger then (population 893) than it is today (population 570).
Then, as now, it’s a sleepy rural community. Today Dana is still a farming community, but maybe also a commuter’s exurb.
If you travel down Maple Street, the one road that the Google Maps car visited in Dana in 2008, you’ll see this.
I did not mention that to our visitor from Chicago, but only because I had to discuss the Roy Howard papers, the Cold War photographs and the paintings from the university’s collection that adorn nearby walls.
A look in the control from this evening’s sports shoots.
They produced two shows tonight, of course. The highlight show, which included segments on the upcoming games, a historic Black Hoosier athlete and this week’s athlete of the week.
For the Hoosier Highlight Athlete of the Week @iustvsports’ @karaadams2_ introduces us to @IndianaSB’s @brittanyford33. #Team49 @iustv pic.twitter.com/LU7bwt5U1R
— Kenny Smith 🌳🧻🐅 (@kennysmith) February 17, 2022
They’ve been adding all kinds of elements to that show. And, of course, there’s also the talk show. They discussed Indiana baseball and Indiana softball, which are both kicking off their seasons this week.
Those two shows will be up later this week, and I’ll share them here.
Until then, here’s a look at a few of the other IUSTV shows that they’ve put online in the last day or so. (They keep very busy!)
Here’s the pop culture and campus events show. There’s a subtle little thing in the interview that most people won’t catch, but I was especially proud of, and a new segment that’s just about jokes.
And here’s the news show. I think everything in this episode was done in one take. Easy, casual. Just needs more.
And here’s the film show, which I teased in this space last week.
And that gets us through most of the day, which was an easy 10-hour work day. After the last few works of busyness two 10-hour days in a row doesn’t seem that challenging.
If you find yourself saying things like that “You must ask yourself, ‘Why?’”
I will celebrate by reading myself to sleep. Back to reading Kluger. I got this book for Christmas a few years ago. I read most of it last year, but set it down for some reason or another. As I wrote about a third of the way through it …
And after 145 pages* of incredible German, English and colonial New York 18th century background, it begins.
*On page one, no kidding, a sentence begins "And yet, posterity knows very little about Peter Zenger …"
It's terrific, is what I'm saying. pic.twitter.com/7t77ORJk6e
— Kenny Smith 🌳🧻🐅 (@kennysmith) March 1, 2021
I’m in the last 50 or so pages now, and we’re actually in the trial. This is an insightful treat. It’s early-18th century colonial America, the printer has published some mean things about a governor and that’s against the rules in a way that seems draconian to modern American sensibilities. But we learn that, even then, the legal system of the day was still wrestling with the philosophical nature of truth. How can you decide what libel is without understanding what truth might be. It’s a narrowly defined world.
Kluger has the records of trial, and he’s quoting the lawyers verbatim. Some of the themes they were wrestling with then are reflective of the arguments being made right now in Sarah Palin’s lawsuit against the New York Times. Whereas today it seems the court is weighing what appears to amount to negligence brought on by deadlines against the legal concept of libel, the judges in the Zenger trial are tasked with trying to decide whether carefully written and coded letters published in a backwater colonial newspaper could cause a king to lose confidence in his government officials.
The way the law was framed and the arguments made in such a way that the king seems was a delicate flower, and that his fragility was to be protected at all times. A convenient political and legal cover of the times, I’m sure. The published letters weren’t about the king, but rather about his appointed governor of New York (who was often appointed just to get him out of London, it seems). And since, as Kluger demonstrates, the governor was slotting judges into this trial in the hopes of getting a desired outcome, maybe the letter writers had a point.
Gov. Cosby had been a military officer of some success, married well, and then worked his way up to being appointed the governor of a small Mediterranean island. A personal gains scandal eventually followed him there, and in New York and New Jersey there were salary issues, and oppression and some land problems. Typical colonial stuff, the things that, just a generation later, led to revolution. So you wonder what became of all of these people’s grandsons.
Oh, the letter writers were some of Zenger’s legal representation.
There’s not a moment of Euro-American history in New York that doesn’t work like this, I’m convinced.
