Tuesday

photo / Tuesday — Comments Off on The week with bad titles, part two
1
Dec 20

The week with bad titles, part two

‘Tis the season. ‘Tis the season. Right?

I’m something of a purist with this. The season begins in December, after Thanksgiving if you’re desperate. Respect, as my wife says, the turkey.

But I’ve seen stores where the season begins before Labor Day. And this is right out. Respect, I say, the Halloween candy. And, you know, the joys of autumn.

Anyway, we have put up trees. Because cheer was needed, and how would the cats react?

We have four trees. The cats are fine with them. Minimally interested, actually. It’s odd. They’re into everything, using a sort of one-two, high-low concept. The two cats are like toddler-adolescent versions of the old Ali wind up punch. One is always bluffing for the other. It’s a study in discipline and small group communication, and it happens every day. Each distracts for the other so that one can get where we don’t want them to be, or chasing plastic or food, or the plastic which they seem to think is food. They can hardly be bothered to be in the trees.

I said we can’t put out the good ornaments because these monsters will destroy them. About once a night a cat will go under one of the trees. And you’ll see them sniffing around it then. Once, Poe was goofing around in the lowest branches, probably trying to figure out how he could use them to ambush his sister.

Still, we can’t put out ornaments.

Two are smaller things out by the front door. One has all white lights in the foyer, and that multi-color guy is in the living room, and I rather like the reflection it casts on the television screen.

Poseidon is back under that tree and rustling around it as I write this. So, no ornaments. Definitely adds some cheer. And happy December!

cycling / hobby / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off on Taking these days off seriously
24
Nov 20

Taking these days off seriously

Slept in. Went for a bike ride. It was gray and damp, just a bit of a chill. The Yankee had to do 35 minutes. I forgot to ask about the training idea behind 35 minutes. It takes about 35 minutes to get warmed up.

Anyway, I rode today in just some long cycling pants and a wind breaker and gloves. No gaiter, no gilet, just hoping body heat would get me by. After, you know, warming up.

I never know how to figure out cool temperatures on a bicycle on a chilly day. What is the right amount? And how can I carry the things I shed if I put on too much stuff?

And what’s too cold?

Let’s rephrase that. What’s too cold for the used, not-advanced, non-technical-at-all, cobbled together cold weather kit I have?

Anyway, we did her easy 35 minutes and I followed her back to our neighborhood and then did a bit more, at least as much as the remaining ambient daylight would allow. It was just 16 miles or so, and I kicked myself for not going out earlier. I learn a lot by kicking myself.

Strava tells me I set a PR on one little hill. You turn onto a path and go through two traffic barriers and a small parking lot and then up the road into a nice little suburban neighborhood. It’s a popular hill for cyclists because the bottom has a nice quiet bike path and the top opens up into going any number of directions. Just before I turned onto the path from one direction another rider started up it from the other. Before too long he was standing out of his saddle, dancing on the pedals as they say. I just sat still and stayed in the big ring and passed him, somehow.

I passed someone on a hill. I’m not even riding well, but I got over that hill nicely. Strava tells me I set a personal best on that segment. That’s fine motivation.

In the evening we talked to our friend in Canada, you don’t know her. Maybe you do. She’s a brilliant scholar and we’re all friends and I listened to her and The Yankee talk about future research and tried to occasionally contribute something to the conversation.

I also made some progress on new pocket squares this evening. It’s a two-step project, and after I finish the second step I’ll have 30 bright new colorful options to choose from. I’ll be cleaning up the bits of cloth and stray strings for months. Just in time for spring! A wonderful thought! Snow is in the forecast for next week.

IU / memories / photo / podcast / television / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on Another “We’ll say ‘We knew him when'”
17
Nov 20

Another “We’ll say ‘We knew him when'”

This is, I told Drew, one of my favorite parts. He’s a sports guy. One of the co-directors of the sports division this term. And he’s going to graduate in a few weeks. But he came over to the news shows this evening to do a bit of fill-in work:

He was, of course, ready, prepared, hit all his marks and drilled the delivery of a concise sports segment in a larger newscast. Did it in one take, as cool and as confident and as comfortable in the contrivance of television as someone can be.

It’s one of my favorite parts because I knew I got to watch him present tonight, and I’ll get to see him work one last time on Thursday and then he’ll start making his way out into the world, where the real work and the real learning begin. But I’m not thinking about that. I’m stuck remembering when he showed up as a freshman. When he somehow became the A1, and then talked the upperclassmen into letting him do extra segments if they found extra studio time. So he came to productions camera-ready, just in case, for several weeks. And, finally, he got his chance.

He’d written a new timely segment every week, just on the prospect of getting to stand in front of the cameras. And now it was here and they put him in front of a monitor and ran some graphics over it and he worked through the thing. It was obviously his first time, but he learned a lot, and quickly. He took the advice to heart. And now, three-and-a-half years later, he has a year of those solo social media hits under his belt. He’s taken all the classes, had the internships. He’s done the reporting and live shots. He was a beat reporter for tennis one year and football one year. He’s been a sports director. He’s hosted the talk show for about a year-and-a-half or more, now.

I stood off from the camera and watched him present tonight and thought about all those starts and stops along the way and enjoyed watching him carry himself like the young professional he is. It is, easily, the best part of my job, watching them grow like that. It’s fascinating to see. The really talented people we get, and we get some real talent, you can just see it all blur together for them. First they were halting and then they become dynamic and ready to really hone their skills.

I wish I had more time with those students, focusing on some specialized finishing school stuff, but those that go into broadcasting will get a terrific crucible experience in that new first job. May they all land somewhere exciting and sooner than later.

I did this interview on Friday, I think, and I sound exhausted! I had no idea until I listened to it on playback. Then again, I’m about six weeks into waking up tired. Everyone is pretty much in the same boat right now; keep your stones in your stone satchel.

Sorry, Kyle. It was at the end of a long week near the end of this crazy semester and I had some small degree of sleep and then I got to talk about economics.

But it’s kind of important stuff, as describing forecasts and prospects go.

Despite my exhaustion, economists are fun interviews. If you talk with them consistently you can learn a great deal about economists.

Oh, and I feel much more awake today. It’s only Tuesday, after all. No one is allowed to be tired on Tuesday. By mid-Wednesday, all bets, however, are off.

Here’s the morning show from Monday! Which they shot on Friday! And it’s a semester-ender, so, as is tradition with this show, they got a bit reflective.

They have a good time with it.

Useless fact: they were recording that show while I was talking with the economist. What does it mean? Who can say?

IU / photo / podcast / television / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on Plenty to hear and see
10
Nov 20

Plenty to hear and see

Have you ever had a day that started with the best of intentions, but then the clock did something weird and you don’t get any of the planned morning things done? You’re not sure how, but you’re left saying, Well, today’s list just became Thursday’s.

No? Just me? OK then.

I recorded something yesterday and it’s out there today, so, please, enjoy:

It seemed a logical line of questions to me. Should we do this? What should we do? How should we do this?

And I’ll tell you a little secret, I got into one of these topics and I was just trying to keep the question on track and under control and thinking How can I do Christmas? Should we even be talking like this? and it’s a little bit heart rending. So, as you might imagine, the question wasn’t going so well.

But just as that happened an alarm on my phone went off. And that gave me the opportunity to re-frame and re-phrase the question. And Shandy Dearth, who is the public health professional here, is a total pro. Also, she’s got really solid advice and perspective and you should listen to what she has to say.

I got home tonight, shed the clothes that had been exposed to the elements of semi-public society, took the cleansing and decontaminating shower and came downstairs to a plate almost ready for dinner:

All I had to do was put the meat on the rice. That’s thoughtful, and full service romance.

Also, it was pretty tasty, too. And, I’m told, we’ll have a flaming onion tomorrow …

It was a studio night tonight, which is an excellent reminder for me to get caught up on studio stuff. Here’s a sports show from late last week:

And here’s a talk show, where they talked about the greatest of all time in all the big sports.

I think they should do a greatest of all times in lesser-known-in-America sports. Make them work at the show prep, and really stress having to sell the argument to an audience who already doesn’t think about Tom Brady or Michael Jordan or Lebron James or whomever.

You know what I need to know? I need to know the best flat to ever swim in water polo, and the greatest brakeman in bobsledding history.

Now that’d be a show worth sinking your teeth into.

Until we get that, please scroll back up and listen to that podcast. Please, and thank you. And wear a mask and social distance and stay home when you can.

IU / memories / photo / site / Tuesday / Twitter — Comments Off on Election Day
3
Nov 20

Election Day

My day started with a three-hour webinar. I have four of those this week. There was another hour of Zooming this afternoon. Plus two hours in the studio, where I watched the news team put together some nice election nice coverage. They’ll be proud of that. Team coverage, in-studio interviews, they pitched it back and forth. It looked awfully nice.

But it made for a full day. Or a full-enough day. (So I’m glad I voted last week, but from the look and sound of it around here, I might have waited longer last Monday than people did today.)

Here’s Noelle, anchoring for us this evening:

She’s so steady, and always does a really nice job.

We brought in all the big guns.

I got home just after 8 p.m., which is the earliest election night I’ve had since 1996, I think.

My first election night was as a cub at the campus paper, covering local and Senate and congressional watch parties. If you’ve not been to a Democratic watch party in a hotel banquet hall you haven’t really experienced local politics, is all I’ll say. That night I also talked to Bob Riley just after he was tapped for his first term in Congress. I believe his campaign office was a retro-fitted farmers market, if I recall correctly. The Republican would serve there six years and then two terms as the governor of Alabama. I also talked to Jeff Sessions on the phone that night. One of those gentlemen was more cordial than the other.

I was on the air, and still in college, for the 1998 mid-terms. It was ambitious of us, really. In 2000, well, I ended up catching a few minutes of sleep in my car between election events and being on the air the next morning. It was a long night, for sure. Everyone said that, and they said it about the next several weeks.

The 2002 midterms was a gubernatorial election in Arkansas, where I covered Mike Hubbard’s re-election, when he was still mostly normal. Arkansans also elected Mark Pryor to his first term in the U.S. Senate. He’s a family legacy in that state and had been the state attorney general. It wasn’t a coronation, but it was.

The 2004 election I was producing content, but don’t have a big memory of it. We were all just sick of swift boats and Michael Moore and the staid weariness of the Kerry campaign. The 2006 elections taking place around me saw all of the incumbents win re-election and there was nothing really of note beyond that. Back when people wanted a status quo. I edited a lot that night. And I also used the word “wary.” The next day I interviewed reporters and political scientists.

But 2008 was different. I was in a newsroom, but it wasn’t my newsroom. It was my first student newsroom and the mystery wafted away pretty early in the night. Still, a long night in the newsroom watching a paper being put to bed. I had to talk some people into covering, you know, the historic election of their time. Journalism!

In 2010 I watched the students working around a bit of history. The entire state had turned red. Everything in the executive branch, and for the first time since Reconstruction, the Republicans gained a majority in the state legislature. The man who engineered it, rose to become Speaker of the House for Alabama. Corruption charges soon followed him. He was convicted on state ethics law violations in 2016 and appealed and held off his sentence until September of this year. Just today, in fact, he was transferred from county to state custody. (He was also a former employer of mine.)

That year, 2010, also saw the first win for a woman in a contested race in the state. Alabama sent two women to Congress, including the state’s first black woman elected to Congress from Alabama.

In 2012 I walked into the newsroom after a class to find the news editor designing a front page for a Romney win and another for an Obama win. Journalism! I suggested making a question mark-style front page, just in case. Everything was decided before I’d finished eating dinner and so I watched them put finishing touches on that Obama issue long into the night.

I have no recollection whatsoever of the 2014 midterms. All the incumbent congress members were re-elected around me. I was living in two worlds, and so it always felt like I was sleeping over at someone else’s house and never where I belonged. And Robert Bentley was elected governor in Alabama. I think a lot of people would like to have fewer recollections than what comes to mind these days when his name is uttered.

In 2016, well. New school, new newsroom, new building, and I bet you remember your own experience from that night. It was another late night. I think I left after all of our productions were done at about 2:30 a.m. or so. That’s not an un-standard time for me, on election night.

Tonight, it was just after 8 p.m. when I left for the house. Now I have no idea what to do with myself, other than to watching glowing maps on computer monitors and television screens. So I’ll do that.

I’m also watching the work of former students covering the election pretty much everywhere.

I counted people working in 11 different states covering their local elections tonight. That’s something special, to me.

Here are some photos I took this weekend.

Some amazing weather we’re having right now. Taking advantage of every moment of it while it lasts. And hoping it lasts forever.

Some of those pictures are so nice that one or two of them might wind up as backgrounds on the front page one of these days. Speaking of which, there’s a new look to the front page right now. It looks something like this:

Go check it out.

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