journalism « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

journalism

Art off the bike

I managed to get on the bike just in time for a quick 20-mile evening ride. When I got home there was about 15 minutes of daylight left, so that was well-timed.

I rode my bike to the bank. (I’m doing errands! On a bicycle! So ecologically sound!) I did the local time trial route and then climbed up one side of the town’s biggest hill. (Big is relative. It is actually fairly small.) At the top of that hill I changed my plan and turned left instead of right. And, before long, I saw this:

What is that? And where is that? You can almost make it out in the pond’s reflection. The building behind the art is the local art museum. It is now 10 years old. It is a fine museum. It has this weird, rusted, house.

And the house seems to have thrusters attached. Which explains the satellite dish on the side.

But not the spare tire or the cinder block on the front porch of the rusted house space ship.

Or the chicken wire and large (for scale) water valve:

The medium is, in part, called Found Objects. Which means the artist, professor Robbie Barber had this stuff in his or his neighbors’ yard or an abandoned lot, repurposed it, or recycled, or re-used it to earn an honorable mention in this juried art contest. And we’ll get to see it for a year.

About the art, called Dreams of Flying:

Influenced by science fiction, toy design, both folk and outsider art, and found objects in general, Barber fuses these influences to create hybrid objects of fantasy, the results of which are often humorous, ironic or visually poetic in nature. Dreams of Flying depicts a shotgun shack that is transformed into a spacecraft of dubious reliability. While reminding us of the inherent dangers of space travel, this sculpture also depicts the ultimate escapist dream of flying.

What did you get out of it? I perceived the inherent dangers of going into space in a poorly conceived home. (This was Prince Lonestar’s other spaceship, I guess.) I liked the curved display stand best of all.

Earlier this week Lileks said:

I was going to say something broad and silly like “every type of modern art has failed, except architecture,” but that sounds simplistic. Except it’s true. Atonal music? No one cares. Abstract painting? It had its vogue, reduced everything down to a canvas consisting of one color (Red #3 – a title of a Great Work, or an FDA additive designation?) Modern literature flirted with styles that required no particular aptitude – automatic writing, cutting up bits of newsprint and rearranging them – but words require structure, or it’s phoneme salad. Modern sculpture masked its irrelevance by substituting size for detail, so you’d be overwhelmed into thinking this enormous hunk of metal that looked like the Hulk broke out of a boxcar had significance, but eventually it turned into “installations” and “assemblages” that relied on the artist’s ability to recombine instead of create.

And you nod in understanding, even if you don’t agree. But most of us do. And the rest of us are just too good to acknowledge it, maybe, or smarter than others. You may not know what art is, but you know that an assemblage of pipes, siding and shingles and rust. You know that stuff when you see it. And now you know it can remind you of the perils of interstellar travel

Other works are on display outside the museum. I’m going to show them off on Sunday.

We ran into the owner of our local bike shop out and about tonight. It was every bit one of those situations where your mind recognizes some facial aspect in an encoded memory file. But the file is locked away because you are actually in the next town over. It is night. He’s in a nice shirt. This is a Chinese restaurant (I wanted soup) and he belongs in a polo behind a counter tapping keys and turning wrenches and talking about races.

Context means so much, but you’re relieved because you can see the neurons in his head scrambling to make the exact same connections.

We’re all constructs to one another, in some ways. We were at a dinner party last week and talking about this very thing. When was the first time you saw a school teacher of yours in some place that didn’t have “School” at the end of the name? Mine was at a movie theater. Changed my relationship with that lady forever. She was suddenly more than the person with a classroom at the end of the hall. Now she had interests, great passionate pursuits and a crystalline sense of humor.

I was young. It took a lot to overcome that teachers-exist-only-at-school construct, but only a little to prove the point.

Then earlier today we saw one of the other guests at that dinner party walking down the street. “She looks familiar … Oh that’s … ”

I wonder if she knows Danny, who runs the bike shop.

I wonder if either of them have seen the art at the museum. Probably the woman has. She was an art professor.

Things to read, which I found interesting today … One of our students wrote this about another student. It is a moving piece on a challenging topic. I’m pretty proud for her. Breast health: sophomore’s high risk leads to tough choices.

Matt Waite flies his drone at a journalism conference, and he makes a keen observation.

Here is Waite’s drone journalism manual, if you are interested.

Three tremendous paragraphs, in Life Magazine, written about one of the most contemporaneously important photographs published in the middle of the 20th century. Still important, too.

Why print this picture, anyway, of three American boys dead upon an alien shore? Is it to hurt people? To be morbid?

Those are not the reasons.

The reason is that words are never enough. The eye sees. The mind knows. The heart feels. But the words do not exist to make us see, or know, or feel what it is like, what actually happens. The words are never right. . . .

Quick hits:

Hard numbers, chilling facts: What the government does with your data

Teaching media entrepreneurship: What works, and what gets in the way

And one from the multimedia blog. You saw that one here, first.

Hope you have a great weekend! Come back here tomorrow for football. More in between, of course, on Twitter.

journalism / links / things to read / Thursday — Comments Off
17
Oct 13

Where it seems I’m making a habit of finding ridiculous stories

Thursdays, for which I have a lot of respect, are the days that really hold the week together. They maintain the decorum of the week. They give you permission to look forward to Friday afternoon. They are sometimes the days when government workers go back to work.

You wonder what those first conversations back in the office would be like after those long breaks from the routine. How much paperwork has accumulated, how much more efficiently things will move under the wheels of power. Or how much of the afternoon will be spent in nonessential chatter.

Nonessential was the best work of the entire foolhardy exercise, wasn’t it? Who in which office was nonessential? Who was judged nonessential and then someone in the national security apparatus decided, “You know, now that we think about it, security might be essential. You should come back to the office.” And of course someone had to apply this to everyone under their charge, which must have made for some miserable lunches and awkward office parties in the future.

I’m still stuck with my initial thought. Everyone somehow went about all of that shutdown business in the wrong way. And, ultimately, just lays the groundwork to be in the same spot again in a few months.

As people slip back into their routines now, I’m not sure that it impacted me directly. Probably much of America share that non-experience. All of it was essential, of course.

Things to read, which I found interesting today …

Here’s your trifecta of headlines: It is unnecessarily long, it asks a rhetorical question and it offers you nothing in SEO. Just what is in the bill Congress passed to end the government shutdown, increase the debt ceiling?

Here’s a list of some of the other items the legislation included:

A $174,000 payment to the widow of former Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J)

$3.1 million for the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The board addresses privacy concerns over laws and regulations related to fighting terrorist threats.

An increase in authorization for spending on construction on the lower Ohio River, something people are calling the “Kentucky Kickback” because of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Kty.) involvement

Back pay for federal workers furloughed because of the shutdown

Compensation for states that paid for federal programs to continue to run when the government shutdown

More on that Kentucky dam … McConnell-Reid Deal Includes $3 Billion Earmark for Kentucky Project:

Here’s this week’s example of how student media matters. Ohio high school journalists push for records, break a story:In September, two Ohio high school journalists broke the story that an alleged assault at Shaker Heights High School was actually an alleged rape, and they did it with public records.

[…]

The Shakerite reported last year that the school has had three sexual assaults in the last five years. Following the September story, SPLC reports, the school began examining strengthening their security.

Just dumb. Erin Cox, Massachusetts Teen, Punished By School After Trying To Drive Home Intoxicated Friend:

When Massachusetts high school senior Erin Cox went to pick up an intoxicated classmate from a party, she thought she was doing the right thing. However, administrators at North Andover High School are punishing her for the deed, citing the school’s zero tolerance policy on drugs on alcohol.

Cox, an honor student and volleyball star, received a cell phone message from an intoxicated friend asking for a ride home from a party earlier this month, according to the Boston Herald. However, Cox arrived at the party at the same time as the police, who were arresting a slew of students for underage drinking.

While Cox was cleared by police who recognized her sobriety, her school has given her a harsh punishment. The 17-year-old was stripped of her title as captain of the volleyball team, and she was suspended from five games.

She’s apparently a volleyball star, and who knows how this has hampered her collegiate hopes. But some right-thinking people in her community have established a scholarship even as her “educators” have failed. “Educators” have impacted a student for doing something off school property, during off-school hours, not at a school function and socially and civically upright. “Educators” have left a 17-year-old feeling “defeated.”

Quick hits:

Re-birthing radio

Like it or not, this is the future of American journalism

Skull Suggests Single Human Species Emerged From Africa, Not Several

cycling / friends / iPhone / journalism / links / things to read / Wednesday — Comments Off
16
Oct 13

I found a new photo tool

This is from some recent ride. Certainly not the one I had this evening. I know where the side roads on tonight’s ride go. I did not know where this road went.

I’m going to post that photo again as a test of a new tool I’ve just discovered, an immersive, interactive photo sharing tool called ThingLink.

There’s something of an unwritten rule (and we have many rules) about the unknown road. You don’t look on a map. You don’t ask a fellow rider. If you want to know where that road goes, you travel that road. And before you do that you stand at the head of it, take a photo and then run it through a filter. Then you ride down the road.

It was a dead end.

If you please, put your mouse over that photo. See those little circles? They are all interactive. Most are just notes. There’s one link and one video. And so it is apparent to me right away, this is a useful tool.

Anyway, I rode 20 miles today, I discovered a new tool there and did some other things, all less interesting than those.

Things to read, which I found interesting today …

Speaking of useful tools, this is a link to save: New Google site highlights journalism tools on offer

Smart people doing amazing things, right up the road. Here’s how Alabama scientists helped prove that Voyager 1 has left the Solar System

Also in Alabama: Nearly 200,000 Alabamians will fall into Affordable Care Act ‘coverage gap’. It seems the Kaiser people have cornered the market on this research.

I’ve been wondering lately, if you were building from the ground up, what would your marketing/newsroom/studio/entity’s goal be? Or, what era are you building to? Online TV/video market to be worth $35BN by 2018

You find a century-old film in a barn. What do you do? Restoring Mary Pickford’s Lost Film.

The government is “back”? The government is back. $174,000 to a Senator’s Widow and Other Surprises in the Fiscal Compromise Bill. Not that it ever left.

I had a terrific conversation this weekend, one of those where the other person really crystalizes your thinking in a spare sentence or two. That conversation, with an Army major of strong personal convictions, had to do with standing up for the smaller, weaker, more vulnerable person, and it applies to this terrible story, a sad tale where that did not happen. Felony Counts for 2 in Suicide of Bullied 12-Year-Old:

Brimming with outrage and incredulity, the sheriff said in a news conference on Tuesday that he was stunned by the older girl’s Saturday Facebook posting. But he reserved his harshest words for the girl’s parents for failing to monitor her behavior, after she had been questioned by the police, and for allowing her to keep her cellphone.

“I’m aggravated that the parents are not doing what parents should do: after she is questioned and involved in this, why does she even have a device?” Sheriff Judd said. “Parents, who instead of taking that device and smashing it into a thousand pieces in front of that child, say her account was hacked.”

[…]

“Watch what your children do online,” Sheriff Judd said. “Pay attention. Quit being their best friend and be their best parent. That’s important.”

And, finally one post on the multimedia blog.

We had deer burgers on the grill tonight. First time I’ve had deer that way. Adam came and prepared the patties, an animal he’d taken himself. The Yankee made fries and sauteed onions. I started the fire, easily the weakest part of the meal. But the burgers were incredible.

We watched Game of Thrones. He is now through the end of the second season. Don’t spoil it for him.

It was a good day.

adventures / cycling / history / iPhone / journalism / links / Samford / things to read / Tuesday — Comments Off
15
Oct 13

A learned man says things to us, let’s listen

This morning we heard historian David McCullough speak. He filled up a little under one-half of the Arena, which demonstrated that there’s not a good mid-sized venue on campus:

I’ve read McCullough since I was in college, Truman was his first work I bought. He read letters from Mary Jane Truman, complaining to her brother, the president, about how much of an imposition all of this president business had become, his point being “History is about life, not about boring textbooks. It shouldn’t be taught with boring textbooks. It is about humans.”

McCullough also discussed John Adams, the subject of his other Pulitzer winning book. Adams was brilliant, even though most of what you learn about him in school — if even this — were the alien and sedition acts. An unfortunate series of legislation, for certain, but not all the man was by a long stretch. Perhaps you’ve heard about him on HBO. But that wasn’t the extent of the second president, either. McCullough mentioned reading the works of his subjects, and discovering that in his diary Adams would often write one line, “At home thinking.”

“Oh to know what was going on in that wonderful mind,” which gave his audience a little insight into the romantic notion of knowing the people he’s writing about better than he knows anyone else.

History is the best trainer, he said, no matter your field. It was a tough speech, in a way, because there were plenty of older folks in the audience, a few college students and a large group of high schoolers. The landscape was far and wide, then, but he had some universal lessons. I liked this one, which he directed at the large group of high school students who were there, “What a delight to be caught up in the love of learning.”

I use a similar line from time to time. Learning the joy of learning is the true education.

“History is an anecdote to the hubris of the present. It is an aid to navigation in difficult times.”

And then he got chipper. He’d already talked about how we are soft compared to our ancestors, comparing our troubles with previous generations. Think of any medical example and you’ll be on the same page. Everyone with any age on them in the crowd knew what he was getting at. (Meaning people who’ve never used the #FirstWorldProblems configuration before.)

“A lot of people feel our country is in decline. I don’t think so. Our history shows when we have problems we solve them … I am an optimist. I feel the best is yet to come. And on we go,” he said, wrapping up a nice little 40 minute talk.

(Some other good McCullough books I’ve read: 1776, The Great Bridge and The Path Between the Seas.)

Got in a quick 20 mile ride in the evening, suffering the entire way. It has been too long since I’ve been in the saddle and it felt like it, especially in my knee. What does it mean when there’s a numbed, hollow feeling where you’d expect a ligament to be?

But it was a nice ride, out through the neighborhood, past the state park and down the waterfall hill. That let’s you cost for almost a mile. But then you have to ride back up another side of that hill, which is about two miles of gentle climbing which is topped by church where there is frequently lots of praying: Please let this hill end. Another turn and then you fall down to the creek bed, over a new bridge and then back out again. A few more miles puts you back in the neighborhood and then you’re just racing daylight.

Tonight I made recruiting calls, which I am convinced are one of those things that make the world go ’round. Think of it. The world is a big place. It takes a lot of things to move the world around. Me calling students and singing praises about our beautiful campus and all of the potential in our program is one of them.

Twice tonight I called, got the voicemail, started leaving a message and then had that person return my call before I’d completed the voicemail. I do not understand this. I prefer to allow a moment to pass, discover what, if anything, the person on the other end of the call would like to share with me. After which, of course, I can turn to the mediated correspondence of choice and contribute my portion, as necessary. Otherwise I’m just making people repeat themselves.

Things to read which I found interesting today … Someone found an 18-foot-long creature in the sea and thought “I must physically haul this monster to the surface and shore, so that others might note its splendor.” So, naturally, you run the smallest version of the photo possible. The monster is big, the photo is tiny and that dog has no camera sense.

It all makes sense if you click the link. And squint.

This is a bit old, but … House members forced to reuse gym towels. I do not think they realize how these quotes play at home, or with the people that are currently out of work — and, thus, at home — because of the shutdown. Politics aside, there’s something to be said about thinking about the quotes you offer media. Skim some of the comments, by the way.

This fellow, hopefully this hale fellow, is shocked by what he’s lately learned. Obamacare will double my monthly premium (according to Kaiser):

My wife and I just got our updates from Kaiser telling us what our 2014 rates will be. Her monthly has been $168 this year, mine $150. We have a high deductible. We are generally healthy people who don’t go to the doctor often. I barely ever go. The insurance is in case of a major catastrophe.

Well, now, because of Obamacare, my wife’s rate is gong to $302 per month and mine is jumping to $284.

[…]

I never felt too good about how this was passed and what it entailed, but I figured if it saved Americans money, I could go along with it.

I don’t know what to think now. This appears, in my experience, to not be a reform for the people.

Lot of that going around these days.

Me? Still haven’t been told, which is nice. (Is anyone running a Tumblr on these then and now prices? Someone should.)

Most important: Syrup Sopping is this weekend. Grab some biscuits, get to Loachapoka.

Can’t wait.

history / journalism / links / Monday / things to read — Comments Off
14
Oct 13

Happy Columbus Day

Happy Columbus Day!

I’ve never been to a town named Columbus. To my recollection I’ve never met anyone named Christopher.

I’ve known several Italians. As far as I know none of them worked for any Spanish royalty.

I’ve seen the ocean, but usually on a motorized vessel, and never in ships of three.

I’m not a fan of subjugation, tyranny or any of the other things that we’ve lately come to attach to the explorer.

He was apparently tall. Six feet says the Internet. He weighed 237 pounds. Or 159 pounds. These things all seem difficult to know, particularly since we don’t know what he looked like.

Clearly I have nothing.

Things to read, which I found interesting today …

We live in the future. ‘Bionic Man’ Walks, Breathes With Artificial Parts

Well, yeah. Walmart shelves in Springhill, Mansfield, cleared in EBT glitch:

Shelves in Walmart stores in Springhill and Mansfield, LA were reportedly cleared Saturday night, when the stores allowed purchases on EBT cards even though they were not showing limits.

The chaos that followed ultimately required intervention from local police, and left behind numerous carts filled to overflowing, apparently abandoned when the glitch-spurred shopping frenzy ended.

The “Salute Seen Around The World” Wounded Ranger Salutes Commander Despite Injuries:

Despite being in intense pain and mental duress, Josh remained alert and compassionate to the limited Rangers that were allowed to visit his bedside. Prior to Josh being moved to Germany for his eventual flight to America, we conducted a ceremony to award him with the Purple Heart for wounds received in action.

A simple ceremony, you can picture a room full of Rangers, leaders, doctors, and nurses surrounding his bedside while the Ranger Regimental Commander pinned the Purple Heart to his blanket. During the presentation the Commander publishes the official orders verbally and leaned over Josh to thank him for his sacrifice.

Josh, whom everybody in the room (over 50 people) assumed to be unconscious, began to move his right arm under the blanket in a diligent effort to salute the Commander as is customary during these ceremonies. Despite his wounds, wrappings, tubes, and pain, Josh fought the doctor who was trying to restrain his right arm and rendered the most beautiful salute any person in that room had ever seen.

Maybe because he is a Ranger, but that story reminded me of this one, from 2009.

And they are both stories we should never forget.

On the other side of the spectrum of the human condition, email is hard. Technology and the College Generation:

Morgan Judge, a sophomore at Fordham University in New York, said she thought it was “cool” last semester when a professor announced that students could text him. Then she received one from him: “Check your e-mail for an update on the assignment.”

“E-mail has never really been a fun thing to use,” said Ms. Judge, 19. “It’s always like, ‘This is something you have to do.’ School is a boring thing. E-mail is a boring thing. It goes together.”

[…]

Brittney Carver, 20, a junior at the University of Iowa, said she checks her e-mail once a day, more if she’s expecting something. Before college, she used e-mail mostly for buying concert tickets. She said she would never use it if she could avoid it.

“I never know what to say in the subject line and how to address the person,” Ms. Carver said. “Is it mister or professor and comma and return, and do I have to capitalize and use full sentences? By the time I do all that I could have an answer by text if I could text them.”

I feel bad for these students insofar as they don’t realize how these quotes come off in the story. But the piece’s general observation is sound. Students don’t often react to email the way that email senders would want them to. That’s a real problem, though I’d never considered email as hard.

Soon we’ll be Snapchatting all of our coursework, one supposes.

I will not be Snapchatting coursework.

Happy Columbus Day!