After hours cake in an after-hours newsroom. I passed through the campus paper’s office as they were wrapping up the 155th birthday celebration of the IDS. Think of that, a student newspaper for 155 years! I have a reprint of the original front page, and, today, I had the last piece of cake.
Didn’t taste a day over 135 years old.
Also this week we learned that one of the writers of that august publication was a finalist for a prestigious national Hearst Award, continuing a 12-year consecutive streak of having a finalist or winner from IU. Also, the current editor-in-chief of the paper was named the photojournalist of the year by the Indiana News Photographers Association.
Furthermore, we learned that a podcast two of our interns worked on are nominated for an NAACP Image Award this weekend.
Other students were raising money for a high school newsroom this week. Game design students saw the video game debut at Steam’s Next Fest, and still more game design students rolled out their game for sale this week.
Fight devious rats! Get hired by using your demon powers!
I know, I know, I haven’t shown off the kitties yet this week. Let’s fix that right away! I know! I know! Some of you come here specifically for that.
Phoebe has been enjoying some extra blanket time in the chilly weather.
But Poseidon found some sunshine and contented himself with catching some rays.
He is not happy with my work schedule. Far too much time in the office, not enough time petting him.
And Phoebe says I should stop working at home.
They might be on to something, I don’t know.
One of those not-sure-how-it-got-away-from-you days, but there it was, full and complete and long and mildly interesting. After the day of editing and emails and meetings and Zooms, it was time for a night in the studio. Tonight was a sports night.
They recorded a nice little chat on @iustvsports’ Toss Up about Black athletes — historic figures, current legacies, the future and more.
Those two shows will be up tomorrow. I’ll share them here then, of course. But, right now, I can show you the shows the news division did last night. Here’s the regular news show. It’s a nice, short, tight newscast with tons of information, well packed and delivered.
And here’s the magazine style show.
More tomorrow. Until then, did you know that Phoebe and Poseidon have an Instagram account? Phoebe and Poe have an Instagram account. And keep up with me on Twitter, but don’t forget my Instagram. There are also some very interesting On Topic with IU podcasts for you, as well.
One overused word is narrative. Another is polarized. Right behind those two is experience.
Ummm, no.
One of the downsides to the phone experience since we all got portable phones in the 90s has been the hang up experience. You just can’t slam the phone down. You removed the phone from your face and … pressed a button. This disappointing experience has continued into the smartphone era. Even worse, the other person doesn’t get a dial tone experience.
Similarly, I can’t have a satisfying tab-closing experience. I read that and could only role my eyes and press the X to close the screen — which I could not do fast enough.
I do not need a personalized registration experience. I need only to beat the human rush and avoid lines.
Whatever consultant told the comms and coding people to write that needs a new kind of working experience.
I saw this this morning.
Modernist avant-garde is now ubiquitous and contemporary, and today I sat in that spot just long enough to contemplate it. What do you suppose those are made of? They’re too high up in a ludicrously tall room to tell.
What do you suppose the artist’s intention was? There’s no sign I saw that offered an interpretation.
What do you think the artist was thinking about when they got this commission? When they were planning this out? When they watched hoisted to the ludicrously high ceiling?
That’s always the real question, really.
The other, I suppose, is how many people have contemplated these same questions? And other questions? And what answers did they conjure for themselves? It’s all a new thing, so probably not many, and who knows, and wouldn’t it be worrying to know the answer to that last one?
Though, some sort of interactivity would be nice. An artistic suggestion box, if you will. What did you think when you saw this installation of glass and aluminum and nylon string? You could see the artist saying “I’ll take all of this into consideration on my next project,” until they saw the replies they received.
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.
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.
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 …"
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.
The weather will start coming down in a bit. The forecast has solidified. We stand to get anywhere from three to nine inches of snow and a few quarts of ice. All of the local hardware stores are out of zambonis. Supply line problems, you understand.
All the hula hoops and bathing suits you want. Not a blowtorch can be found. Also, no crackers.
I could go for a good blowtorch just now. Probably be useful for the driveway tomorrow.
This was the view this morning. Grey, foreboding, and not just because we’d grimly stared at this forecast for the last four days.
For whatever reason, just before I ducked into the studio for the evening, the sky was this curious lapis blue.
We’ll all be asleep when it turns. It’s rained all day. As of this writing, temperatures have now dipped to just below freezing and will continue to fall for a few days.
The local school district announced yesterday that they would go virtual for the rest of the week. (And I heard some stories today about how that’s going over with parents, who of course now must make make all sorts of adjustments.) The county closed all of their offices around midday today. Just before 9 p.m. tonight the university announced that campus would stay open, but classes and work would be done virtually tomorrow. One assumes people in the particular office that makes the weather adjustment announcements were also out stocking up on salt and shovels, hence the late decision. Winter weather is a fickle thing and can be notoriously difficult to forecast (at least back home), but again, the National Weather Service sent up signal flares on Saturday and Sunday. I’d already staked out my WFH status. But late word was … reassuring? Is that the word there?
At that point I’m not sure if it mattered. People had made up their minds. Dear friends, we live in the county. They don’t plow out here — well, the roads anyway — and I simply will not tempt fate when ice is in the conversation. From 2021:
Hand it to the boys from the city. Two of their trucks have gone down the road in front of us, plows disengaged, so they can get to the walking path behind us and … plow it.
And that path will be cleaner than any road in the city, guaranteed.
I’m sure plowing an entire city is a challenging task — ots of roads, traffic, changing conditions — but I’ve been assured it is a thing some places achieve.
Maybe it comes down to limited resources. Decisions have to be made, and none of them are about you. Or me! That road in the old tweet above? That’s a four lane highway through the heart of local commerce and the city’s growth pattern.
Tonight the sports crew was in to produce shows about … sudoku puzzles. Fire extinguishers? Ice dispersal? No, sports. I think it was the later, actually.
They’re doing a weekly feature this month they’re calling Historic Hoosiers to coincide with Black History Month.
And they are starting with one of the true greats.
For Black History Month @iustvsports is doing a Historic Hoosiers feature. This week they highlight George Taliaferro.
I told everyone in the studio: football is the LEAST of what the legendary Taliaferro was and they owe it to themselves to learn more and search him on YouTube. pic.twitter.com/9U4tI7HCPg
I tell anyone within earshot about George Taliaferro. And I was talking about him in breaks tonight. They’re all too young to remember him, of course. And, indeed, some of the younger members of IUSTV weren’t even on campus when he passed away in 2018. But they all need to know him. I’m grateful for having had the opportunity to hear his story. I never met him, unfortunately, but there are a lot of really great videos online about him, and I hope they seek him out. His football was impressive, but truly the least important thing about him. We should probably remind ourselves about that of every athlete. I’ll say it about Taliaferro until everyone around here knows his story. Which means I’ll say that about him for as long as I’m here.
And if you’re getting weather, watch these videos on George Taliaferro yourself.
Here, he is telling his story to school children, which he did over and over. And you’ll see why that’s important in just a moment.
The sports shows they produced tonight will be up tomorrow. I’ll put them here. Until then, you can watch the news shows the news folks did last night.
This just needs to be longer, and have more stories and packages in it, really.
And here’s the pop culture show. Did you know all of these things? I did not. Pop culture might be leaving me behind. Maybe this is the year.
“The year” was actually several years ago. But I’m faking my way through it.
Anyway, they wrapped just as the temperatures hovered at 31 and 32. I walked out of the building and toward the car in a fine sleet.
I drove slowly to the house. And arrived safely with a nice peaceful feeling. Everyone is where they should be, and we don’t have to worry about tomorrow. Full day tomorrow, but at least it will be from home.
Good thing I bought a new office chair last month! And thanks to my mother for that.
The daily duds: The last one of these. And this is a good one to retire it on. It was new tie Wednesday. And new pocket square Wednesday. The latter was a Christmas gift from my in-laws.
