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Covid-19 / family / Friday / photo — Comments Off
17
Dec 21

Let’s start the family holidays

We have arrived in Pennsylvania. We departed Nashville this morning, an airport experience without incident. Checked a bag, got a free offer to check another bag and so we did. From the ticket kiosk to the desk agent, through security, no problem. The Yankee did the pre check and I went the conventional route. We found ourself on the other side of the security checkpoint at almost the same time.

We had plenty of time for the plane, so we sat and read things for a bit. Boarded our plane, and were told about the upcoming turbulence. There was minimal turbulence. Everything was great, except for the people who don’t understand masks. And also the landing. It was a bit hard, but as I’ve been told before, it wasn’t the pilot’s fault, it was the asphalt.

We taxied a bit, and then the plane was brought to a halt. There was, the pilot said a VIP moving through the airport and everything was coming to a halt. Clearly the pilot didn’t know about the guy sitting in 20F, me, who is literally wearing a VIP arm band.

I got a good two minutes of material out of this, which earned polite chuckles from the people around me. The Yankee, meanwhile, had looked it up. How many VIPs could there be, anyway? It was the president, of course. Air Force One was landing at about the same time, and the president was heading home to Delaware. They shut down everything for these sorts of moves. Entire airports, surrounding interstates, and all of that. But it took a while.

I sent him a note.

I did not send him a note. But it got another good chuckle.

And then our plane moved to the terminal, we got off the miraculous flying tube and went through the building and out the front. My godbrother-in-law (just go with it) picked us up and drove us to his home. We’re spending two nights with their family before moving on to other family events.

An event they had scheduled tonight was postponed because of some of the scheduled attendees tested positive and, following the news, this is obviously going to be the theme of the holidays. But there are children involved in all of this and you roll with the punches, and the kids are used it at this point.

So they decorated gingerbread houses and we had lasagna and I taught one of the girls a little bit about volleyball and everyone had fun. There were three couples and five kids, four of them 10-and-under. It was a whirlwind. That will also be a theme!

How are your holidays starting? I hope they’re pleasant and safe and full of promise.

adventures / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
16
Dec 21

‘Like a band of gypsies’

Sometimes images give us their message loud and clear. There’s no mistaking it because of the power of the visual or the gifts of the photographer or the structured nature of the composition. Or sometimes because of chance. Other pieces are less straightforward and much more given to suggestion. It’s the malleability of the image, the impressionable nature of the viewer.

For instance, this looks like bad inside liner art for a record, doesn’t it? I’m thinking upper midwestern band who can’t help but write about the cold and barren land a little too often. You think it’s the diminutive sun. I say it’s the water collected in the rumble strips.

Slow day, until it wasn’t. I slept in. Caught up on the world. Had an early lunch, tidied up a bit, and started packing a suitcase with — it isn’t a useful phrase, but I’ll use it — studied helplessness.

“Studied,” meaning something like “carefully considered or prepared,” or “marked by conscious design or premeditation,” or, my favorite, “achieved by careful and deliberate effort.”

For me, it was about not having a solid deadline for packing. And being completely befuddled by the forecasts for the places in my immediate future. Everything is 120 to 880 miles away from the next place, and there’s nothing requiring being outdoors, except for all of the things that require me to be outdoors in highly variable weather conditions.

Oh, it’s possible I’ve forgotten how to pack. It’s equally likely that I nailed it, or forgot something, or packed far too much. I’ll know before the end of the year.

So that’s the road. And you’ll notice that, in this one, I was careful to time it so that the tree is blocking the sun.

That changes the whole shot. Less desperate; same amount of loneliness. It was both chance and composition, the sun looks like the sun rather than a bad watercolor accident, but otherwise, there’s a lot of chance here, because I was watching the road more than the camera.

There’s a fun community oriented radio station in southern Indiana. I’ve happened upon them running incredibly specific fishing reports: who caught what in which lake, with what lure, and what the fish weighed. It’s terrific.

There was also a promo today about hunters donating deer for hungry neighbors. Bring your whole deer over to this particular place and they’ll process the animal and send the meat off to the community’s food banks. And you’ll be registered to win a new gun, sponsored by … a dentist, I think it was. (One deer, by the way, yields between 40 to 50 pounds of meat, and about 200 meals.)

The afternoon DJ has been there for 30 years. He sounds like he should be there, and that’s not meant to be reductive. He’s got a pitch perfect presentation.

But it was funny to hear that syrupy local accent backselling Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” and Neil Diamond’s “You Make It Feel Like Christmas” before leaning into the Tom Petty/Stevie Nicks duet, “Stop Dragging’ My Heart.”

All of which came right after the comprehensive farm reports. (Wanna know how November soy futures did after the bell?)

It’s a local station — they’ve been owned by the same people since the 1940s — and locally-owned radio is wonderful, is the point.

We also listened to the campus station for the University of Southern Indiana, 95.7 The Spin.

The DJ wasn’t backselling songs, he did frontsell one new song. He did hardly any station branding. He (or they, it’s difficult to tell with campus radio) programmed great music. And he was a GREAT story teller. Over the course of three talk segments, I got a slice of life. It was so charming because there’s not much better than someone earnestly doing good campus radio. It’s one part confessional, one part aspirational, a bit vulnerable, not-at-all pretentious and completely amateurish. The young DJs may be really smart. They’re all clever.

At some point we started losing The Spin’s the signal, and two other stations bled in and out. It felt like every bad representation of schizophrenia you’ve seen in movies.

Here’s Twista! And Stone Temple Pilots! And Twista! And STP! And Twista! And … Brooks and Dunn?

By this time it was well into the evening, and The Yankee suggested we play my favorite car radio game. (She secretly likes it, too.) So we DXed stations and listened to …

650 WSM Nashville
660 WFAN New York
670 WSCR Chicago
700 WLW Cincinnati
710 WOR New York
720 WGN Chicago
730 WFMW Madisonville, KY
740 KRMG Tulsa
750 WSB Atlanta
760 WJR Detroit
780 WBBM Chicago
850 KOA Denver
870 WWL New Orleans
890 WLS Chicago
950 WAKM Franklin, TN
1000 KTOK Oklahoma City
1040 WHO Des Moines
1060 KYW Philadelphia
1100 WTAM Cleveland
1120 KMOX Kansas City
1200 WOAI San Antonio
1230 WHOP Hopkinsville, KY
1670 WMGE Macon, GA

Fourteen states, makes for a pretty good hour! Two lifetimes ago, I reported on a dozen or more of those stations for ABC. Lots of tornados and murders and corrupt judges and the like.

Anyway, we’re near here, until we aren’t. Which will be before you read this.

Things move improbably fast this time of year.

IU / Monday / photo / television / video — Comments Off
14
Dec 21

Alright Monday, let’s do this!

All caught up? Or just getting behind? That’s always the question of Mondays. And Fridays. And probably most of the days in between. And at the holidays, well, if you ask that question you’re just asking for trouble, bub.

You know, over Instagram, I’ve been noting the skies … this weekend we had some rather delightful surprises. This was the view on Saturday evening.

And Sunday morning was simply brilliant.

Last night gave us some interesting colors, as well.

Today? Also bright and blue. And warmer than you might expect for December. All it took was a light jacket. Now, if it stays more or less like this through March I would not complain at all. I fear we will have less of the more, and more of the less.

Winter makes a boy a bit sardonic, I guess.

We didn’t check in on the cats last week because of the hustle and the bustle. We must fix that! Kitties, and my site traffic, demands it! So, here’s Poseidon, getting wacky with his taco toy.

And here is Phoebe, not judging him at all for it.

She’s totally judging him for it. We all do.

This is something like a three-episode arc now, I can appreciate the effort that went into that. If you want to know where it is going next, you’re just going to have to watch.

That’s the late night crew, which shoots in the late evening. And this is the morning show, which shoots … in the morning. (Sorry.)

Which means there’s should be just one more show to share for the semester. They do go so fast.

He said, about Mondays in December.

We put up two Christmas trees. Well, four if you count the exterior sentry trees. No ornaments anywhere, just lights, because of the cats. We thought about soft ornaments for a moment, until we looked around at all of their toys on the floor. That, we decided, would be confusing for everyone. So a lot of lights. And the shine nicely.

Except one of the trees had a strand with a problem and the top third of the tree was unlit. For a few days I thought we should say it’s a regional tradition. This evening, however, I decided to try to solve the mystery of modern electricity.

We didn’t check the lights before hanging them on the tree, you see, so the thing had to be unwound and on and on. Ultimately, I just decided to find some more lights, so I climbed into the attic and found a great big ball of lights, which commenced the great trials known to all who hang Christmas lights.

Some 25 minutes later the knot was undone, and in the meantime I’d brainstormed two new ways to store lights that wouldn’t avoid tangles, wondered how weird it’d really look in May if I left the trees up year-round, and also just thought about buying new lights every year.

Christmas lights, I figured, have to be near the height of American consumerism.

When I got the extra lights untangled I found that both ends refused to light, but the middle was delightful. I pulled five bulbs from the old set and got the whole thing to shine. We strung those lights, not with care, but in a haphazard fashion.

There’s not a bright resolution to this little story, but now I have this other long string of lights, some of which work. And I wonder if I should just pull all the bulbs out and save them for the future, or find out how many on that string need replacing.

I could always look on Pinterest for ideas about using half a string of lights.

Yep. There are posts about that. You might say they are … enlightening.

adventures / Friday / IU / memories / photo / television / video — Comments Off
10
Dec 21

Some things to get you to the weekend

More Savannah stuff! The last of the Savannah stuff! It’d be bad form to try to make you jealous for more than a few days, I’ve decided. And since we got back on Tuesday, I’m sure I’ve worked through those days, and your patience! At the same time, I took a lot of pictures.

This is from Byrd’s Cookies.

And not far away, this is where people buy all of that shade they keep throwing on people.

And, if you need to upgrade your floors while you’re at it, then it’s one-stop shopping.

To me, Savannah will always be about the beautiful buildings — among other things. And, one of those things are the trees! Look at this beautiful nature-is-amazing moment!

And this one is in Chippewa Square.

If all of those old oaks could talk … they’d probably ask, “Where does this Spanish moss come from, anyway?”

(Wind and birds, mostly.)

Back here in the regular world, I spent almost the full day in the studio. First there was the morning show, which will be online next Monday. And then there was a big game design video program. All of the students that work on video games pitch their projects to industry professionals. It’s a four camera, two location, three Zoom shoot. (It just grows and grows, each year, this thing.)

For whatever reason, it has been decided to just put programs like this on Zoom, which means you’d need the link, which means you’d a.) need to know about it beforehand, and b.) have the ability to watch it live. So I can’t show you the live show we produced this afternoon, but it was a good one.

All of the students presenting did a nice job. Some of the games were simply incredible, even in their current form. One of them, it looked like the experts wanted to buy right there during the presentation. And you could see why. It was different, had a pleasing, soothing pace and was absolutely gorgeous.

I had two students playing the role of Ryan Seacrest and Carson Daly. We were doing entrance and exit standups as the design teams went into the studio. I didn’t get any photos of this because I was working, but take my word for it, they did a really fine job. Everyone was complimentary of their efforts, and we were all quite proud of how they kept the program moving along.

So that was about seven hours of my day, studio stuff. And here are some other studio things I haven’t yet shared here.

A sports show! This one is a little different, it has a different feel and a bit of spunk. I like where they are going with this.

We talked, on Wednesday, about the last show of two of our graduating seniors. Here is that show.

And one more sports show, another talker, where they are unpacking the Major League Baseball lockout. The short version seems to be: If it can be messed up, baseball will mess it up.

adventures / IU / memories / photo / television / Thursday / video — Comments Off
9
Dec 21

Look at this lovely sign, and all of these fun videos

The question isn’t “Can he pad out a full weekend from his short trip?” The question is “How long should he do it for?”

I think at this rate I could drag it out another three or four days, but we’ll wrap it up tomorrow. Wouldn’t want to be too showy, right?

We walk by this theater every time we visit Savannah. I really do enjoy their signage. And as we walked by in the daytime early in this recent trip I said I’d like to see it again at night.

On the last evening of our trip we made a special walk back over that way. It’s nice when you can accomplish some of your humbler goals.

Oh, did you notice the snowman in the box office in the first photo? I think he’s there every year.

Did I shoot video of all the blinking lights? Of course I did! Do I have something planned for it?

Not yet! But eventually!

Meanwhile, here on campus, it is time to catch up on all the videos we’ve missed in the last week or so. There are quite a few, so settle in. And, no they won’t all be for you, but there is something for most everyone here. Allow me to interest you in one or two.

This is a sports talk show, and they’re breaking down the end of the regular season of college football. This was a really enjoyable show.

More sports! This is the show that starts at the radio station. Here they are talking about Indiana football and basketball. After they do it live on radio, they take the cameras down and put the footage up.

The late night show goes full holiday! And partial Grinch. And there’s an important post-credit scene, so you’ll want to stick with it.

Speaking of the holidays, it’s time to decorate gingerbread houses. And you can get present-shopping tips from the morning show crew:

Behind the Curtain looks at a new student film. Yes, an honest-to-goodness film. Some people are still shooting on that. As I am not an expert I assume the reason has to do with “artistic choice.” But there’s much more here on all of that.

And here’s the news show I watched on Tuesday night. I mentioned that our meteorologist signed off here. She’s been with the show since her freshman year, but now she’s graduating. A senior at the green screen, but a freshman at the desk. The circle is also revolving. And, because it’s a news show, there’s a lot of news here.

Time for the haps and pop culture … haps …

Remember, Tuesday, when I told you about the all female a capella group, Ladies First? They sang two songs on this show. And there’s a nice interview with a few of the members of the group, as well.

That show has done a good job of varying up their guests and that’s a nice little feather in their cap. This semester they’ve also had an Olympic silver medalist Andrew Capobianco, a student from the university’s Latino Cultural Center, the student government president, local mask makers, and more. They’ve also shot all kinds of people-on-the-street pieces and lots of studio fun. They’re always hustling, which is a lesson that serves us all well.

And that’ll do for now.

Tomorrow, we’ll be freshening up the front page of the website. And there will be a few other things to help point us to the weekend. Be sure to stop back by!