It was an 11-and-a-half hour day today. Started with a Zoom meeting where I was actually called upon to talk for a moment. Surprised me a bit, but, yes, I do have something pertinent and important to add to the topic.
Now let me mute myself once more, so I can go back to laying out this, answering that and so on.
In my mid-day meeting I got to tell a lot of jokes and talk philosophy. Somewhere in there the scale of the week set in. A mere mortal would at least be whelmed. I’m just checking things off lists.
I have several lists.
We ran a production test late this afternoon for the Friday show I’m producing. Most of it went off without a hitch. And the organizers of the show got me some more information I need to produce the actual program. It’ll come as dribs and drabs for the next several days, right up until showtime, I’m sure.
Friday at 2 p.m., maybe, if anyone is keeping score.
Here’s Ashton on the news desk. He’s a freshman. Super talented. I’m not jealous at all.
As usual, the shows they produced will be online tomorrow, and I’ll share them here accordingly.
After this evening’s studio time, it was back to my office to do more things for this other program. I got home just after 9:30.
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 full day today. Meetings in the morning, studio in the evening, writing and editing and social media in between. Your standard-issue 21st century media expert type day. More on some of that in a moment.
Let’s visit with the cats, since I neglected this site’s most popular feature yesterday. (If you’re new, this is obvious, right? Cats, the web, etc.)
Phoebe is hard at work.
You have never seen a cat relax as hard as she does. There’s a certain intensity to her lazing about, and her stretches, and her naps.
Poseidon found a bird. He will not let us hear the end of it.
I need some things to drown out the cat, basically. Fortunately, I have some video for you. Here’s a Valentine’s Day dating show some of the students shot last Friday.
I’m not sure if that one was rigged or not. But, as ever, I hope for a followup piece, just to find out how the date experience went. (If I read, in 20 years, how this show made for lifelong friends or started a family or something, I don’t want it to be a total surprise, you know?)
We’re all about trying new things and putting everybody to work, and that means a lot of new shows. This is the third new sports show of the year.
And if I can remember correctly, that’s 11 new shows I’ve helped or watched the students launch over the years. At least seven of them are still running. That’s a nice success record, and the success is entirely to the students’ credit.
Tonight, the news division was in the studio to shoot two shows — two of the three oldest continually running shows they produce. We have a freshman delivering the weather.
How cool is that?
We’ve had three primary atmospheric science students delivering weather forecasts for the last several years. All three of them had landed meteorology jobs before they graduated. One had her job waiting for her after her junior year! Another is working now as a broadcast meteorologist. And, maybe, in three or four years we’ll be saying similar things about the new crop of atmosphere scientists. And, to think, that weather segment started as an experiment, too.
Speaking of freshmen, this guy is too. I’ve done this long enough to see people who could work at this craft and turn it into a career. I’ve watched people who give it a try because they were curious, people who do this stuff because it’s fun, or people that find they don’t like this type of work after all (an incredibly valuable learning experience). I’ve also done this long enough to know that, every so often, you can see a person who you know is going to be great. This young man is closer to that last group than any of the others.
What you do in those instances is you try to take credit for all of their success.
I finished The Women Who Wrote The War last night. Nancy Caldwell Sorel published this in 1999, and from this distance it somehow seems a bit older, still.
But this is a fine book woven full of individual anecdotes. Sorel pulled from primary sources and she interviewed correspondents decades after the war. There are some great gems in here. These reporters were bold, and sometimes felt they had to be even more than their male colleagues. In a war zone, that would heighten the danger, right? Some of these names you may know. It’s hard to be interested in journalism and not be familiar with Martha Gellhorn, but a lot of her contemporaries are due to be lost to history, which is a shame.
Take this woman. Ten million people read her in almost 200 papers across the country. She was the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany in 1934 and was one of the few women news commentators on radio during the 1930s. Her work made her influential. Her stances and her influence sometimes made her a controversial figure. For a time she was called “the First Lady of American Journalism.” Have you ever heard of Dorothy Thompson?
To say that she could write is almost cheapening the power of words.
Have you ever heard of Lee Miller? This book introduces you to her. She was a New York fashion model in the 1920s. She became a photographer in Paris and, during World War2 she shot for Vogue, covering the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris, and concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau. Also, at the end of the war, she used Hitler’s bathtub.
I am mostly struck by how modern that room looks, or how little they’ve changed in the last 75 years.
I could tell you more tales, but Sorel will do it better. If you like those two little stories, scroll back up and buy the book.
And now the hard part is deciding what book to start next. I have an entire book case of Books To Be Read. It is stuffed to overflowing and there’s a small stack growing next to it. There are also about four dozen books on my Kindle app. I want to read them all, but which one first?
I don’t usually see this view, that time of morning, on the mornings when I’m up at that time of the morning.
Of course you wouldn’t see this. That time of day the sun doesn’t enter the house this way. The light was coming from across the way, from a parked car’s headlights. And I was up that early yesterday morning for this view.
Not really, but that was a nice perk. I had a doctor’s appointment. It was time to meet a new doctor! Each of the last three regular doctors I had all promptly left. One retired. One got out of the business entirely, the third moved out of town. I assure you, it was me. So I hoped the new person has put down roots and was in the middle of her career.
I didn’t like her very much. People always say this about their doctors. I like her, I don’t care for him. Whatever. It’s not a social thing. I’m sure if I had the occasion to visit with my mechanic we might have different interests. He probably wouldn’t like me, either. But the mechanic is good at his job, hopefully I’m decent at mine and we all hope the doctors know what they’re doing.
She decided to tell me all of the things to do correctly without ascertaining what I might be doing wrong. Which is a good way to get people to pay attention to you.
Anyway, it was a get-to-know you appointment. And we spent about 20 minutes together. I’ll probably wind up moving over to another doctor in the practice when he gets slots available. Maybe I’ll like him!
Afterward it was downstairs for a blood draw. They’ll do tests to tell me I’m in good health, generally, but could be better if I watch my this or that. My general good fortune is not lost on me.
Nearby was a bike shop, and I also need a new bike shop. Today I needed new bike shoes. So I met a guy who’s forgot more than I’ll ever know and has probably made up more than I’ve yet to learn. And he sold me these early model Specialized Torches.
I got back at lunch time, decided to have a bowl of soup for lunch, I figured, if you have the opportunity to enjoy two warm lunches in one work-week, you jump on it.
Worked the second half of the day, and then came home to try those new shoes.
Couldn’t try those new shoes. Because, somehow, the cleats and the pedals aren’t working. Oh, I tried for a while, got frustrated and then went upstairs, ordered new cleats and, thinking of the rest of the week ahead, called it an early night. The new ones will arrive in the middle of the week, just in time for me to use them next weekend.
That was yesterday. Today I was in the office early to give a tour. Not my normal job, but sometimes it falls to me, and this one fell to me late the night before. This tour made me late for a meeting, which concluded so that many of the same participants could have another meeting.
In the afternoon I had two more meetings stacked on top of one another. The first was brief and productive. The second was long and creative and, hopefully, productive.
And, this evening, it was time to go to the studio. Two news shows tonight. They’ll be online tomorrow, or soon after. But, for now, I can catch you up on stuff the sports gang shot last week.
Here are the highlights!
And here’s a talk show about the Winter Olympics.
These shows seem like a long time ago. I blame the snow. And that they produced them six days ago. I kept for forgetting to share them here with the second half of the week being so disjointed. Again, the snow.
Anyway, it was an 11-and-a-half hour today. And another long one tomorrow. So, tonight it’s dinner, dishes and bed. Probably in that order.
Welcome to the pivotal month. It’s starting out cold, it’ll be cold throughout, and it’ll end that way. But the length of it is perfect, reminding us that all of this will end, eventually. (And in just 10 or 12 more weeks the earth will have shifted enough to feel a little warmth from the sun.) Halfway through the month, we’ll be halfway through it all.
I don’t believe in groundhogs, because they didn’t go to meteorology school. Besides, historical observation and the most rudimentary understanding of planetary science, atmospheric science, oceanography and hydrology, tells me all I need to know. It’s a long way off, spring, but it seems important to stay positive on the first day of the month.
It’s also an honest month, but that’s someone else’s line.
It’s even in the skies! Positivity!
Which means a lot after the Friday snows, and this week’s forecast. There will be snow. And also ice. Since Sunday the weather forecasts have been saying “We’re not saying how bad it’s going to be, but it’s going to be bad. We’ll tell you later, sure, but go ahead and buy a bunch of batteries and bunch of french toast supplies.”
They were talking about up to 10 inches of snow, and a few inches of ice. We’ll see what becomes of it, Wednesday night and Thursday morning, but they’re refining those projections down a bit.
I need to catch you up on television. I remembered that tonight while we were in the television studio.
Here’s a sports show all about swimming and diving.
Here’s a morning show!
And here’s a show dissecting a short film. (It’s also a show about prepositions.)
Those shows will be online tomorrow and, well, you know the drill by now.
The daily duds: This feature wraps up tomorrow, because it hasn’t proved useful or entertaining in any way. But, hey, tonight it was top-ranked Auburn hosting rival Alabama, so I had to break out the orange and blue.
Auburn won, by quite a bit. Must be the neckwear. And, for those guys, it’s one game closer to the really critical month.
