Which is funny, because when I first saw American Pickers, which introduced me to that entire group of people, I immediately thought “That’s the job I should have.”
It’s like they invented it for me. You get to prowl and learn things? And there’s money to be made doing those two things?
I’m pretty sure I developed my prowling and curiosity at my grandparents’ place. So many things you didn’t see all of the time, so many things that were different than what little you knew about anything. So many things that spanned ages of time — to a child at least. A lot of stuff got kept by my grandparents — and yet my grandmother also had a clean house.
But the storage building out back … well, I spent all afternoon in there today. We spent time in there as children, probably hide-and-seek and trying to figure out the boxes and stacks of things. I’m sure some of this stuff hasn’t been touched in years, or more. And today I glanced around a few rooms, but concentrated on the books.
Here’s something that belonged to my uncle as a boy. You can buy My Name is Pablo for pennies on Amazon or a few bucks on ebay. But that cover art is great:
This is on the inside cover of the Book of Knowledge, an encyclopedia aimed at elementary and middle school students. My mom told me she would sit and read these for hours. It was one of three encyclopedia sets I found, but it obviously has the best illustrations:
This car art just jumps out:
This is the cover to another book you can buy online for pennies, Fifty Famous Americans. The dust jacket is gone, which is a shame, because it apparently featured a great Wright Brothers illustration.
That book was written in the 1940s and so, happily, there isn’t a single reality TV star listed. Here’s the inside cover:
My grandfather was a ham radio operator and owned an electronics store and was apparently a varied reader. This isn’t a book I’d ever read, but you could see he might have a reason to consult it, also, the cover is terrific:
My grandfather was so cool, he had things like this:
And this just scratches the surface. I learned a fair amount about my grandfather today, just digging through dusty stacks of wonderful old pulp. I’m glad to have the opportunity to see and hold and laugh over some of the things he read and wrote. Inside those many pages there will be plenty more to share. Clearly I’m going to have to revitalize his section of my site.
Had dinner with my mom tonight. She was in town and this was the first time she’s had the opportunity to see my part of campus. We ate Italian and almost closed that place down, and then she got the nickel tour of my office and the newsroom and our department.
She got to meet most of the editorial staff and watched them wrestle with the thorny issue of the day for a tiny bit.
I walked her around and showed her our Wall of Fame and the old newspapers framed in the classrooms. She remembers this and that — and she’s welcome for my not tipping off her age by historical allusion.
She didn’t remember anything from the 1925 paper, of course.
Sadly I remember most of the front pages we display, too. Our students would remember one, but even that only vaguely.
I sat in one of our classrooms and we watched the beginning of the Arab Spring streamed from the BBC. Hard to put a web stream in a frame, unfortunately.
Things to read … because you could print these out and frame them, I guess.
Perhaps houses are like people, after all. They are born, pass through their youngling years, stand in middle age, receive the patina of age, and when it is willed, die – in spite of words like “best” and “progress,” the latter so often ill-defined.
Yesterday we walked through the grounds of the Kilby house on Woodstock Avenue. It was drizzling and in the distance the fine old Georgian house stood before us, its dark green shutters closed, the red brick veiled in mist. And like a trick of the mind it was only as if someone were merely away for a while. Soon there would be returnings; it would all be as it was before–twenty years and more.
The past is a still-life, a moment caught in time: We are 10, perhaps nine, a speck in a fading day. The high-back wicker chairs are on the terrace front. The men are talking. They are talking rather excitedly, it seems to us a child, of the Scouts, the price of cotton, unfair freight rates, political frailties. When will the South recover? They ask. How? When will it EVER recover? And over the pines there is red in the sky and we, a shadow, vaguely listen, for time stretched out forever then, and this was only an afternoon, one late afternoon in a series of noons and afternoons and nights, sitting and listening and watching the sky grow red above the pines.
She had a way about writing about being in a room without being too much in the room. That’s a great compliment for a writer.
More than 600,000 veterans — 10% of all the Veterans Affairs patients — continue to wait a month or more for appointments at VA hospitals and clinics, according to data obtained by USA TODAY.
The VA has made some progress in dealing with the backlog of cases that forced former secretary Eric Shinseki to retire early this year. For instance, the VA substantially cut the overall number of worst-case scenarios for veterans — those who had waited more than four months for an appointment. That figure dropped from 120,000 in May to 23,000 in October. Much of that improvement occurred because patients received care from private providers.
Campaigns like those from Wired, InStyle and Teen Vogue are attractive to advertisers looking for new ways to connect with audiences, said Mr. Shlachter at DigitasLBi. “To breakthrough in the media ecosystem today requires a myriad of tactics,” he added.
But there are also risks involved. A tin-eared brand showing up in a publishers’ social feed might turn off followers. That’s why, for instance, Wired tapped influencers for the Victorinox campaign and InStyle enlists its own staff to create Instagram and Snapchat content for advertisers. “Above all, no matter what you’re doing, be authentic and true to your brand as well as the audience,” Mr. Shlachter said.
USA TODAY announces the launch of The Buzz, a mobile app that delivers customized news to the digital-first generation of students across the country. A first-of-its kind, The Buzz reinvents campus news by offering college students access to targeted and relevant information, incorporating national, world and personalized campus news into one, easy-to-use mobile interface. Content will be specifically gathered from USA TODAY and USA TODAY College, as well as individual college papers. Future product integration will include content from Gannett’s U.S. Community Publishing newspapers and user-generated content.
The Buzz is the mobile extension of USA TODAY’s celebrated Collegiate Readership Program — which originated at Penn State in 1997 and is now present at over 350 campuses — combining USA TODAY’s rich tradition of delivering news and information on the national and local level with the inclusion of a robust digital product. Designed and tailored specifically for each individual school, The Buzz app lets readers search their national, regional, and campus news – most of which is student written, tapping into more than 3,000 USA TODAY College contributors – by topic areas such as news, sports, tech and opinion.
Winter is coming, and months early. But we were warned. Our friendly neighborhood meteorologists and our bombastic national media chicken littles have been trying to get our attention about it for days. I haven’t doubted the forecasts, but it would be hard to believe based simply on your observation.
It was beautiful today. Chamber of commerce weather doesn’t do it justice. Someone struck a Faustian deal for the conditions we enjoyed today and at least one end of that ill-considered deal was upheld. This might be the end of our peak fall.
(It usually lasts about three days to a week.)
Knowing that it would be the last pleasant day for a while — there are models that suggest we won’t be warm again the rest of the month — I went out for a run this evening. I’ve never been on the trail across the street from campus, but I figured out a way to do a little extra and make it a 10K.
I finished up in darkness, on a part of the path where I couldn’t see my feet. Fortunately no ankles were twisted. But I did run through sections where it was remarkably cooler here than it was there. This wasn’t just my perception, I had to run through it twice. It was like being in a canyon where the temperature drops 10 degrees simply based on the terrain. Only I wasn’t in a canyon. More like a tunnel. An office building sealed off the big road artery, woods were on the opposite side and there was a strong tree canopy overhead.
But it was a fine run. I even did some intervals.
Intervals at the end of a six-mile jog. I do not know what is happening.
Things to read … so you’ll know what is happening.
Happy Veterans Day, indeed, and thank you to my many family members and friends who have served or continue to do so. All four of my grandmother’s brothers served. That whole family is full of camo, olive drab and a sprinkling of Air Force blue. I have had the good fortune to be friends with Marine reservists, Army veterans and active duty personnel and I read a lot. All of that tells me only this, the sacrifice others make through hardship, deprivation and loss are things that the rest of us will have difficulty ever knowing. And we’re definitely blessed in what we don’t know; but perhaps we shortchange all of those between us and that by not having a better understanding.
I had the great privilege of seeing these Marines graduate a few years ago:
A friend shared this link today and it is a reminder that it isn’t just the serviceman or servicewoman who is given a sacrifice: A Marine’s Parents’ Story
And, as I said on Twitter this evening, every war is different, indeed every person’s war is different. But if you read nothing else after the story above, I encourage you to read Ernie Pyle’s A long thin line of personal anguish:
Here in a jumbled row for mile on mile are soldiers’ packs. Here are socks and shoe polish, sewing kits, diaries, Bibles and hand grenades. Here are the latest letters from home, with the address on each one neatly razored out – one of the security precautions enforced before the boys embarked.
Here are toothbrushes and razors, and snapshots of families back home staring up at you from the sand. Here are pocketbooks, metal mirrors, extra trousers, and bloody, abandoned shoes. Here are broken-handled shovels, and portable radios smashed almost beyond recognition, and mine detectors twisted and ruined.
Here are torn pistol belts and canvas water buckets, first-aid kits and jumbled heaps of lifebelts. I picked up a pocket Bible with a soldier’s name in it, and put it in my jacket. I carried it half a mile or so and then put it back down on the beach. I don’t know why I picked it up, or why I put it back down.
That line, for a reason I have never been able to explain, punches me, hard, every time. That entire column, like so much of Pyle’s war work, gets right to the heart of what it is to be in a hard time.
David Turnley had so much to say on the matter of street shooting and his experiences of so many decades of work, and I was so overloaded with joy and the relevant information he brought to the table based on real experience from a career as a humanitarian and war photographer, that it was hard to capture everything he was saying, but some important things he shared with us did manage to stick with me.
The task force says radio is “perpetually declared to be a dying medium” but nevertheless attracts dedicated listeners and commercial and public support. The organizers believe radio’s history is a chronicle of our country’s culture and a potential trove for historical researchers, but that much of it is “untapped” because of radio’s live nature and problems of accessibility to content.
Almost every day there’s something in the bygone ether that I wish I could find online. We’ve become great archivists as amateurs, but if you think about the decades of important work that might have disappeared …
TV stations will one day get a large percentage of their breaking news video from viewers, predicted Rebecca Campbell, president and CEO of the Disney ABC Television Station group.
Speaking Friday in a keynote interview at LiveTV:LA, Campbell said producing local TV news is an increasingly interactive affair, with producers using social media to alert followers to breaking news, and viewers shooting video and sending it to newsrooms.
ABC stations are promoting the trend, Campbell added. “Many of our stations brand themselves as ‘Eyewitness News’ and they’ve begun encouraging viewers to become an eyewitness and send in video when they see news,” she said.
The seminars offered police officers some useful tips on seizing property from suspected criminals. Don’t bother with jewelry (too hard to dispose of) and computers (“everybody’s got one already”), the experts counseled. Do go after flat screen TVs, cash and cars. Especially nice cars.
In one seminar, captured on video in September, Harry S. Connelly Jr., the city attorney of Las Cruces, N.M., called them “little goodies.” And then Mr. Connelly described how officers in his jurisdiction could not wait to seize one man’s “exotic vehicle” outside a local bar.
“A guy drives up in a 2008 Mercedes, brand new,” he explained. “Just so beautiful, I mean, the cops were undercover and they were just like ‘Ahhhh.’ And he gets out and he’s just reeking of alcohol. And it’s like, ‘Oh, my goodness, we can hardly wait.’ ”
Carole Hinders at her modest, cash-only Mexican restaurant in Arnolds Park, Iowa. Last year tax agents seized her funds.Law Lets I.R.S. Seize Accounts on Suspicion, No Crime RequiredOCT. 25, 2014
Mr. Connelly was talking about a practice known as civil asset forfeiture, which allows the government, without ever securing a conviction or even filing a criminal charge, to seize property suspected of having ties to crime.
Now that a crucial section of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge has been replaced by a new $6.4 billion span, nobody needs it anymore — nobody except about 800 birds who call the decrepit, 78-year-old segment home.
The double-crested cormorants – protected, though not endangered – have nested along the bridge for decades, and have so far shown no interest in relocating to the shiny new section that replaced the eastern section of the famed bridge. Officials have tried pricey decoys, bird recordings and even specially-made nests installed underneath the new span to lure them roughly 100 feet next door. The effort to demolish the old section, damaged 25 years ago in the massive Loma Prieta earthquake, is being held up by the birds’ unwillingness to move, and critics, who say the delays could cost taxpayers $33 million, are crying fowl.
The first two comments I see on that story?:
Gee I wonder how some moonshiners from Alabama would handle this technical problem? LOL
I guarantee you that Alabama moonshiners would handle it with a lot more logic and common sense than the Californians are handling the problem. By the way, I am not from Alabama so here is no bias on my part.
A few scare shells would probably do the job. Just like the ultimate removal of their preferred structure.
Hey, they’ve already built the birds a replacement home.
I talked about online journalism in class today. I tried to distill the history of the thing into 40 minutes. So I only covered 20 years. My favorite slides included a picture of Kenneth Starr and the text “Starr bypasses the press & distributes a major political document online first — A new relationship between politicians & the public.”
Ahh, the Starr report.
Here’s your trivia for next year. The word hypertext turns 50 next February. Fifty!
There’s another slide that says something like ““Journalism is now a smaller part of the information mix. Advertising works differently online and advertisers may not need journalism as they once did.”
There’s a lot to unpack there. I can’t get to all of that in one class.
Got home to see the in-laws, which was expected. They’ve come to visit for the weekend. This is not a bad thing. They are lovely people. He’s retired and working and she’s an RN. Their daughter took them out to a program about town this afternoon, so I was actually there when they got back in.
We set out for dinner, had barbecue and learned the local high school team found themselves with a 4th and goal from way back. Two incompletions, a 12-yard sack and three penalties for 32 yards forced a punt from their own 46-yard line with 45 seconds remaining. The home team lost by four points in the first round of the playoffs.
A kid who is a junior cried on one team and kids who are seniors on the other team are very happy. We drove by the stadium to see the crowd, but it wasn’t that big, considering. We also let the folks listen to the accents on the high school football broadcasts. We could hear at least four games — down from the regular season numbers. Some of those accents are thicker than others, probably owing to how far in the woods someone is. Sometimes, apparently, you have to be from around here to pick up what was just said. It is pretty amusing.
Things to read … because one of these things will be amusing.
Perhaps you’ve read the resignation email sent this week by a photographer at West Palm Beach CBS affiliate WPEC. Vince Norman didn’t last three months on the job, informing the bosses that “I have reached the limit of what I’m willing to put up with.” My word. What did they do to him?
Here are the inhumane conditions this poor kid was subjected to, as he described in his email.
Robert Frank is 90 years old on Sunday. The great pioneer and iconoclast has become a survivor, celebrated and revered, but still resolutely an outsider. One thing we can be sure of: he won’t be looking back.
“The kind of photography I did is gone. It’s old,” he told me without a trace of regret in 2004, when I visited him at his spartan apartment in Bleecker Street, New York, where a single bread roll and a mobile phone the size of a brick sat forlornly on the kitchen table. “There’s no point in it any more for me, and I get no satisfaction from trying to do it. There are too many pictures now. It’s overwhelming. A flood of images that passes by, and says, ‘why should we remember anything?’ There is too much to remember now, too much to take in.”
The average person now consumes twelve hours of media, checks their phone close to 110 times and sees an estimated 5,000 marketing messages each day. When most of us also regularly put in 8+ hours on the job, it’s no wonder our collective attention span is more taxed than ever.
[…]
As a marketer or advertiser, all this is also a reality check and constant reminder about how precious attention has become. If you’re thinking about what this means for your marketing efforts, or you’re producing a lot of quality content but struggling to get noticed, here are four principles you can apply to win anyone’s attention.
To be sure, the notion that the television may go the way of the Sony Walkman may sound like hyperbole. Some 34.5 million flat-screen televisions were shipped in the United States last year alone, according to figures compiled by IHS Technology, a global market research company — a substantial number, even if sales are down 13.75 percent, from 40 million, since 2010.
Yet by another, more geek-futurist view, it seems easy to start their obituary, even as manufacturers race to keep up to speed by churning out web-enabled smart TVs. The smartphone age has been cruel to devices that perform only one function.
I’m thinking I should perhaps rename things around here “Multiple.” The other day I pointed to a story that hints at the need to consider your multiple audiences on multiple platforms with a unified theme. A week before I offered you an essay with this basic premise: In many companies, smart, connected products will force the fundamental question, “What business am I in?” The answer seemed obvious to me, you’re in multiple businesses. That is the adaptation that technology is offering you — pretty much in every field.
In different ways and for different reasons, those are all big deals.
Finally, a slideshow. I link to Mobile is eating the world because I think Benedict Evans is saying something I’m saying, only more eloquently. He’s arguing that, essentially, you don’t need to define the future of technology and the future of mobile, because they are the same. Technology, he says, is now outgrowing the tech industry.
The first inkling of that I got was when we saw the mobile data outpacing the adaptable — and amazingly fast, rapid-fire — world wide web on growth and standards. To Evans, a strategic consumer technology analyst, this comes down to the availability of tech. (If I understand him correctly, that is.) Those are issues of supply and logistics and resources and global wealth — in the macro sense. This is not, then, the technological singularity. That comes later.
I wonder if that happens on a Friday.
It might. The odds aren’t terrible — one in seven, I’d say — but it isn’t happening tonight.
I’ve been wearing them for me, but hadn’t thought about what I would say if someone asked why I am wearing a pin. Why would anyone ask? Who would care?
I got pins for my mom and my cousin.
My lovely wife gets the idea, even if I’ve only just figured out why I got them.
My grandmother loved hummingbirds. And I am still not ready to think about this in the past tense.
My grandmother’s chair sits right beside the large picture window in her house. And outside, on the long porch, there are several hummingbird feeders. She could sit and watch them hover and fight all day long.
Her oldest friend laughed and told me how my grandmother was, every year, in a competition to get the first hummingbird visit. She delighted in calling and bragging about her hummingbird feeders because they brought the first birds and the biggest and the most colorful. And it was all, no doubt, owing to some secret ingredient (four times the recommended sugar, perhaps) that she put in the syrup.
So there was a hummingbird this and a hummingbird that at the funeral. I was looking for something to hang on to and got a pin for my mom and cousin and, ultimately, me. So I rotate through these four lapel pins. One day a student asked why I was wearing one and I struggled with that. The classroom isn’t the place for all that, after all. On Friday a coworker asked about it, and then that led to a conversation about her grandmother, which was nice.
Later that day, though, I figured all of this out.
It has been a few months — I can’t bear to count the days — but I miss her dearly and completely and in all things. These are the standard laments about time and things to be said and learned and easing the hurt of others close to her. Meanwhile the world moves and I feel stuck. It was days before this and weeks before that and now I’m at a couple of months of random emotional moments.
My mother-in-law said perhaps the most purposeful and explanatory thing on all of this, that the grandparent-grandchild bond is a strong and unique one. Every memory is a bird’s wing, every memory is a prompt and every prompt is a catch in the throat and a watery eye. There is always fluttering to do.
My personal framework is pretty basic: If I did this, would my mother approve? Would my grandmother? Maybe that’s silly, but it always served me well when I abided by it, the opinions of people that matter are important and formative and lasting.
Because of that, whether I was at her home, or living two or four or six hours away, my grandmother was always in my day, always helping or laughing or talking or fussing, always present.
