Thursday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Thursday

markers / photo / site / Thursday / video — Comments Off
3
Aug 17

There’s a lot of odd stuff in this post, so, the usual

Do you know the significance of this building? It has some important history.

You’ll learn about this building on the most recent addition to the historic markers site. If you just can’t get enough of the historical markers you can see them all right here.

Today I helped put stickers on cameras for a few minutes. All of that Sunday school training paid off. Except for on the few stickers that were a millimeter or two off-center here or there. (But don’t tell.) Four stickers per camera. One on the body, one on the lens, another on the power adaptor — it does a slow focus pull in video mode — and another on the external microphone.

This is the funniest cruel thing — is it the funniest, cruel thing or the cruelest, funny thing? — that I’ll watch. The premise is the expert explains the topic over hot peppers. Some people get through it just fine, this lady tells an interesting story and she’s really hurting. And I’m sympathetic to her plight. But I learned some neat things:

We watched this last night. Just an incredible hour of television, which took place in 2005 and I just discovered. It is amazing, in a way, that this made it to network television. And it was the fourth highest rated episode of the last season of West Wing. And of course, this would never happen in real life, ever. But it is a fun watch:

The West Wing S 7 Ep 07 – The Debate

Or maybe you just have to be a certain kind of viewer to appreciate that. But I enjoyed that, didn’t want it to end. I dreaded it ending, and how often do you say that about a single episode of television? I realized why Alan Alda is there and put away, for an hour, my Unifying Theory of Alda, because this was more important, than that. Which is saying something for a fictitious debate in a non-existent presidential campaign in a world that we don’t live in — with issues similar to ours.

But, then, I spent a lot of my master’s degree working on debates and writing and researching campaign material, so maybe you have to be an especially specific kind of viewer. I’m going to have to stop it during the opening credits right now, or I’ll end up watching the thing again …

IU / journalism / memories / Thursday — Comments Off
27
Jul 17

Of timeless news men

I once worked with a man who (last year) retired after 61 years on the same station. I watched and admired another gentleman at the end of his career of 63 years on the air. And I’ve read columns by writers who spent their last days on memories of games or people that happened 40 years ago because they or their editors thought that was what their audience was interested in.

Even if you’re mailing in a memories column, even if you’re working part time broadcasting at the end of your career in a station where everyone calls you “Mr.” on air in deference to your time in the business, even if the new kid is printing things out for you because printers are a mystery to you … if you spend that long in the media, you’ve done something.

So I’d like to introduce you to David Perlman:

David Perlman was born in 1918 — a decade before the discovery of penicillin and the Big Bang Theory.

And, for the majority of his career, he covered scientific progress in the 20th century and beyond, writing thousands of articles about everything from the beginning of the space age to the computer age.

Until now.

The 98-year-old science editor is retiring from The San Francisco Chronicle after nearly seven decades at the newspaper, a decision he said had been coming for a while.

It is too easy to say “end of an era” but that is truly the case at the Chronicle. I hope all the young people on the staff there were smart enough to spend some time with Perlman. The man no doubt has plenty to teach us all.

And then there’s the next generation. I gave a tour of Franklin Hall to 15 members of the local Boys and Girls Club. It was a sort of last minute thing: Can you show these kids around in half an hour?

So they show up and they are younger than I expected. Know your audience and all of that, so I showed them the giant screen, the television studio and the video game design labs. Fourteen of them said they wanted to move in. Most did not seem dissuaded by the idea that there are no beds or showers or a real kitchen in the building.

I think they just liked that we could play Xbox or Playstation games on the giant screen.

One of them asks how old you have to be to come to college. And then she decides that’s too far off. Oh, but if you study hard and do well in school, my young friend, you too can sit here with us and watch the giant TV.

I wonder what Perlman would say to a gaggle of elementary school children who stopped by his corner of the newsroom in his last days on the job.

photo / Thursday — Comments Off
20
Jul 17

This post needs a cat farming joke

I had to visit the hardware store — the local place, because they are closer and their prices are so far comparable on everything except for light bulbs. I needed heavier nails. And in walking around the little store checking out the paint samples, listening to the chicks cheep and wondering where the nails were stocked, I found this:

You’d figure ERTL, who have been making farm toys since the end or World War II, would know that kids are going to supply their own dirt.

Plus, what about all the carpet farming that kids do? Does Mom really want to introduce this sort of thing? Kids plowing in the shag, the fake mud and the real dirt mix and the next thing you know the low pile is a big problem in the living room.

And then there’s the back 40, the good, new carpet in the seldom-used dining room, where kids can run their tractors with less disturbance and more mud.

Allie does not like tractors, but she does enjoy a good tunnel:

She’s more into birds and fish than row crops.

Maybe I’ll introduce her to fisheries.

photo / Thursday — Comments Off
13
Jul 17

I had the red beans and sausage

I walked to a restaurant a few blocks from the office for lunch today. Saw these flowers in a lovely flowerbed planted at a church between here and there:

The restaurant has tabletops with giant photos of city posters or people. I always sit at a table highlighting people. This, then, is who I had lunch with today:

I’m going with Doris Day. But I’d be more than happy for someone to tell me who these people are. I’m going to feel like I should have known the answer, but there’s only so much second-half of the 20th century you can keep in your brain at one time.

Especially when your brain is hurting. My brain hurts. Or maybe just larger head part. Sinuses are now a July thing, it seems.

memories / Thursday / video — Comments Off
6
Jul 17

I don’t think I have published these here

These videos went elsewhere to the various social media places which you should follow, of course. They never made it here, though. So let’s fix that.

A few nights ago Allie had a very big play session, which means video, which means Allie’s theme song:

The original version of that was just for my in-laws, but I figured I’d “worked hard enough” to synch up the last bit of the music that I should use the footage elsewhere, so I put the tags on it, uploaded it and now I am using it to pad out a Thursday post.

This video was from the weekend before last. We’d gone up to Muncie for a bike ride where, at a park, we started out just behind a miniature tractor parade. “What are we supposed to do with this bit of Americana?” The Yankee asked, which was a line I laughed at for about 10 miles until I had to really start chasing her. Hey, we passed five moving tractors at the beginning of a 50-something mile ride. So that was good for the ego.

On the way back to the house after the ride, though, we found ourselves stopped at an intersection, by this fire truck that was controlling traffic for another parade of tractors. And, no kidding, on the local radio station at the same time:

My answer to the question about how to deal with that sort of Americana is that you follow them. The person on the tractor knows where the food is.