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I will, in fact, run to wait

Looking forward to tomorrow. Our student journalists have a big story coming out. It is complex and sensitive and it is well done, a compliment to the people who’ve worked on it. I read it tonight — which is unusual, as an adviser I do not interfere with their editorial decisions, meaning I generally see everything as a regular consumer — and I’m proud of the work they’re doing.

This is a fun, loud, sharp, sarcastic group. They do their work throughout the week and they put their newspaper to bed early on Tuesday nights. But not this week. Tonight was a late night with lots of copy and good quotes and ink on hands. There was plenty of layout experiments and squibble marks and bleary-eyed readings of federal definitions.

The work is good. It is honest and fair and thorough. Our editor-in-chief has spent a lot of time writing it. She’s proven why the job is hers and is proving why she can handle the investigative work. I think she’s going to be proud of it all, after she has put the story to bed and steps away from it for a minute or two.

In the copy room … I’m making copies. I had to re-load the machine with paper. No one ever considers the humble wrapping paper that holds the copy paper together. Maybe we should:

But I always like jam with my paper.

International Paper, under their Hammermill brand, has a program with St. Jude. One of their patients drew the fish.

Now I want to copy more things, to see what is on the next ream of paper.

Things to read … because someone put it on paper. Or a server.

Getting the truly geeky out of the way first: How A/B testing became publishers’ go-to traffic builder.

Journalists’ obituaries are usually a bit self indulgent, but this is a good one about an important figure in the industry: Ben Bradlee, legendary Washington Post editor, dies at 93:

See? Ben Bradlee and ‘the best damn job in the world’.

Few ever think about the importance of Barber, just north of Birmingham, but that place is important: Motorsports museum’s economic impact far reaching.

I’m not going to think about racing for at least a week, but here’s one last important economic story: Talladega Superspeedway impact transcends the track.

In a random musical moment I wondered: Whatever happened to Live?

Turns out they have a new album, their first in something like eight years, coming out next week. Here’s one of the new tracks:

But that’s not Ed Kowalczyk. He’s not been with the band in years. (Apparently it was not an amicable breakup.) He has a solo album out. And, in this just-released video, he smiles. This seems unnerving, somehow:

That’s what happens when you wonder about things from 15 years ago.

Here’s a thought exercise: Isn’t it interesting how things are so different for you than they were 15 years ago? Isn’t it even more interesting how things are so similar? Discuss.

history / music / video / weekend — Comments Off
9
Aug 14

Nixon on the subway

I was raised in a suburban and exurban lifestyle. It was grand. And, like so many Americans, that involved cars. Many cars. A lot of miles. A great deal of time on interstates and highways.

So, when I was however old I was, when I spent time on a mass transit bus and subway systems I noticed something. Everyone on board the thing would rather be somewhere else. Anywhere else. It is an energy-sapping experience and you can see it on everyone’s faces.

I make the joke, which my beautiful wife hates, that it is like “Lord of the Flies.” She hates it because she’s spent plenty of times on the subway, so she always rolls her eyes, which means the jokes continue until someone inevitably brings up the conch shell.

Well. I’m going to take this video as a piece of evidence for my side of the joke. The Broadway cast from “The Lion King” delivered a performance on the subway. Watch the commuters:

In contrast, when the Australian cast did it earlier this year, people actually enjoyed themselves. And they were on a plane:

Which brings up a good idea. If you’re organizing a flash mob — and why are you doing that, again? — you might want to have four or five people who have the very important job of acting shocked and amazed.

If you’re organizing a flash mob, be sure you top this one, which is perhaps the best one ever:

OK, one more video. This was 40 years ago, today, Richard Nixon had resigned amid the Watergate investigations, and was addressing the White House staff. It remains a fine speech lost in all of the important things that were happening.

He was wrong about one thing, well a few things, in that speech. There was a book written about his mother.

I wonder if Nixon would have liked The Lion King. I wonder what he would have been like on the the subway.

Something like this. Thanks, Internet.

family / music — Comments Off
2
Aug 14

Bonnie and Clem

With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;

Ephesians 4:2

And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.

Colossians 3:14

family / music — 1 Comment
1
Aug 14

GrandBonnie

I’ve made every phone call, some three pages of names and numbers of friends and family and churches.

We’ve taken care of all the details that anyone can think of and dozens more.

I’ve vacuumed floors twice and scrubbed hardwoods on my hands and knees more than once.

I’ve made slideshows and PowerPoints and created alternate file formats and backups and hidden Plans C and D, two Plan Es and a Plan F.

I’ve run out of things to do and I’m dizzy and sick about it.

This has gone on for so long, and moved by so fast. But we’re in one of those places where time doesn’t mean a lot, I suppose. The only time that matters is the time you don’t get, the time to hug a little tighter and hold a little longer.

My heart is broken for my grandfather and the little tiny shards that are left are shaved off into dust for my mother and my uncle and after that there are just the particles that won’t form any cohesive bond for this amazing, profound, fathomless grief.

I see the woman who pretty much hung the moon in every corner of her home. I hear her laugh in my head and I’ve been listening to the tone of the nuances of her voice in my imagination. I walk into rooms in her home and turn on a light and expect to see her there. She. Should. Be. Right. There.

And this is all very personal, and I’m sorry, but, just for a while, do me this favor, please: Send a little thought for my folks for some peace and rest and that little bit of human grace we have to always remember the wonderful things we’ve known. It helps fill up the cracks that don’t mend.

And then, for yourself: Hug and kiss and annoy and harass the people that you love just a bit more than you normally do. Tell them one of the stories you share that always makes them laugh. Put on a mischievous smile, break your diet and have dessert with them. Let the words you say to them today be the really important ones.

family / music — Comments Off
31
Jul 14

GrandBonnie

The house was a whirling fury, at times, and that was what she liked, at times.

An old man took the turn into the driveway hesitantly. He parked, pushed against the car door with all his might and shuffled his body of old bones up the long drive. It was maybe 15 feet. I met him at the door, worried he would have trouble negotiating the two steps to the porch.

He said he almost didn’t drive anymore, but he had to get in the car and come down for a visit. His wife had cut my grandmother’s hair for years. He’d cut my grandfather’s. And they, he said, always had a friend in him. You had to speak up, he said as he pointed to his hearing aid, he’d left that in the war with General George Patton. And he and his wife of more than 70 years thought the world of my family.

A woman stopped by who just loved them to pieces. She is my mother’s age, one of the dozens of kids that were raised through this house. It must have been a sight to see. She promised me great tales on my mother, my uncle and my grandparents. We will schedule a day to dish dirt.

And that was the way it went. Food came in all day, from people you knew and names you’d heard and people you couldn’t pick out of a lineup. People stayed and hugged and laughed and left and more people came and hugged and laughed. Stories were told and laughs were shared and I heard of memories that explain basic things, like the way particular words are said in my family, that I’d never heard before.

People to see, people to fuss over. That was the tenor and tone and almost always the expectation. People to tell her stories to and to grimace and laugh with. People to feed and send them on their way so they could come back by again.

It was an almost perfect whirling fury. Almost. Almost, and far from it.