Tuesday

books / photo / podcast / Tuesday — Comments Off on A podcast, a new setup, and a new book
24
Aug 21

A podcast, a new setup, and a new book

Want to record something? I spent most of my evening re-building my audio recording gear. I put in a new mixer, plugged in the old Sennheiser MD 421-II microphone — a classic when I got it in 2003 or thereabouts — and played with audio drives and test checks ’til my heart’s content, or at least until dinner time.

Much later in the evening I figured out all the issues and everything is solved. I started adding new sound effects to my setup, just because I made cool musical-sounding sounds (please forgive the technical term) that were burning a hole in my hard drive.

I tested a new acoustic foam treatment. This should kill all of the echoing sound in a quiet room. It should also be small enough to move and store away. My current setup is clunky, but works. Except for those times when it is liable to fall on my head in the middle of an interview. Clearly, I’m in the R&D phase for new styles.

All of this, any of this, is better than how I spent my free time last night, rearranging a closet.

My office closet is a process. It isn’t clean, mind you, but it’s one tiny little step closer. One very small step. You can step into my storage closet now, around the many neatly stacked boxes and bins, is what I’m saying.

Now I need a better writing chair, because my 12-year-old office desk chair has done just about all it can. After that, perhaps some LED lights for atmosphere. This home office is starting to come together, or it will in many more months.

This is a podcast I recorded last week. We’ve rolled it out today in honor of Women’s Equality Day, which is observed this Thursday.

I saw Women’s Equality Day coming up on the calendar and found the appropriate faculty member. The stars lined up: an important day, interesting topic, and an especially impressive scholar to talk about equality, the 19th Amendment, where we are culturally in this long march. Only the professor begged off. Too busy. But, she said, you might try this person, or that person. And both of those people have equally impressive biographies. Ultimately, Dean Deborah Widiss agreed to take me on. So I talked with three brilliant female scholars about what this interview should cover. I asked some students about it. And I talked to some other thoughtful women, as well. Eventually, I distilled all of that down to this 20-minute conversation.

Women’s Equality Day, and the 101st anniversary of the 19th Amendment guaranteeing American women the right to vote, is on Thursday. Listen to this before then.

I finally started Bruce Catton’s The Coming Fury. It’s the first volume in the author’s trilogy, the Centennial History of the Civil War. This installment delves into the social, economic and political causes of the war and runs through the year prior to the First Battle of Bull Run.

We’re just getting started. This is the beginning of the second section of the first chapter, 12 pages in, and he’s already set his tone. A modern eye could mistakenly project this tension onto their own time. That’s more about the writing than the history.

It’s no wonder people hold this work in such high regard. Kirkus’ unsigned 1961 review called it “history at its best.” No small compliment. Every sentence is declarative. Every statement is pure and thorough. Any of them could be a thesis statement. It is confident and declarative in every phrase, at every turn. Young writers could learn a great deal just studying the sentence structure Catton uses. It makes for wonderful reading.

adventures / books / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off on Shoo, fly
17
Aug 21

Shoo, fly

My lovely bride — who is as strong as they come and smarter than she realizes — and I have a joke in our house. Whenever there is an insect she asks me to handle the situation.

We all have things we don’t want to do, so this is fine. I say, make sure people you spend your time with have complimentary tastes and services. Not everyone should be scared of, say, clowns, to the point of immobility. Someone present should be able to handle the situation.

But that’s not really what this is. She lets me address the insect and that lets me let the critter outside, or meet it’s untimely fate, and then we make a joke about how I saved her life. From the millipede, or whatever we are dealing with.

Well, today was no millipede. And after I’d returned from a long and fruitful day at the office we were chatting as people do and in the middle of the conversation she says, “Oh, I need a very thin piece of cardboard.” I produce something from the recycling stack in the garage and ask her why. “I trapped the world’s largest house fly under a plastic bowl and you need to slide the cardboard under it to carry it outside.”

OK, not a problem. Paperboard, bowl, we’ve all been there. The flooring that the insect was on was dark, so I couldn’t see it properly until I got outside to notice we had trapped and were releasing a female Tabanus atratus.

Look at that scissoring mouth! And why are we finding horseflies indoors?

She flew off to do horsefly things. We sat outside, for some reason, and I was thinking about how they use their six piercing mouth parts and — this part is unnecessarily gross, apologies — the sponge-like labrum used to lap up blood.

Horseflies don’t often bite people. But you don’t want to be bitten by a horsefly.

Back to my evening reading selection. I’m about to wrap this up.

It’s been a fine read. Again, it’s like an in-depth Wikipedia entry on a given subject from the period. Most of the chapters are about 20-something pages. It’s a great overview. And I have found things in Lord’s book that will prompt me to look for more thorough accounts, but other subjects I’ve read the 20 or 30 pages and felt like I had enough for now.

What was fun this evening was reading a bit about this particular moment in the American culture … through the lens of a 1960s writer.

Riding bikes! Swimming! Smoking! Pants! You knew how that had evolved, but it’s a treat to see little anecdotes like that which help to spell out how it could be liberating and befuddling. It all really stands out, 110 years-and-more later, of course, but just imagine being in the moment. Or consider that the next time something is different compared to the things to which you’ve long been accustomed. Makes you wonder what the social mores will be like in another five generations.

books / history / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on Not everything here is from the last century
10
Aug 21

Not everything here is from the last century

I’m reading through this book right now. It’s the 1960 version of a long-winded, well written Wikipedia series. Each chapter covers one particular moment, almost all of which can and do have several tomes you can dig up. This book is the city bus tour of the historical period. It’s a great read to get an overview, an easy way to discover a new interest.

The San Francisco earthquake and fire gets 24 pages. And, for me, for that, it was plenty.

I’ve read three of the definitive biographies on Teddy Roosevelt, and two on the Wright Brothers, you see, it’s the subject, not the period. Some things are just more interesting than others. There’s one chapter here about a particular insurance man and his social life. Didn’t do much for me. There’s another on how J.P. Morgan forced the American banking system into avoiding a an economic collapse by force of will. It was intriguing, but you got the gist. Right now I’m reading about Peary’s sixth Arctic expedition. I’d probably enjoy a bit more of that. Here’s a bit from the chapter on the Great White Fleet, and a full telling of this story would probably be worth trying. Roosevelt sent the vessels around the world as a projection of American naval power — 16 battleships, 14,000 sailors on board them and their escort with ports of call on six continents — it was one of the first signals of the American century.

I’ve looked a fair amount. Several accounts refer to these cheers, but no one seems to know where they are from. I Assume some Chilean naval officer went to Cornell and brought all of that back. And when the Americans arrived in January of 1908, that was just part of the fanfare. A surrealistic bit of home for the American sailors who’d been on this mission for a month, making just their third port of call.

I wonder how many of the Americans recognized them. Cornell was a big player in early 20th century athletics, but still there wasn’t a lot of opportunities to Google this sort of thing in 1908.

This is from the same chapter. Walter Lord diverged a bit, which is rare in this book, but his point was what the returning sailors came home to after their historic circumnavigation. It was one of those moments where things were changing quickly in the culture.

If you’ve read about Europe in this period, or the American experience just before entering the Great War, you can see an entire world-shaking bit of foreshadowing going on there. It’s a good book. Written in 1960, when some of these things were frozen in memory, rather than frozen in amber. And while new perspectives and information have no doubt come along in the intervening years — Lord was much closer to his subject than we are to him here — the book holds up. Click on the cover, above, and pick up a copy for yourself.

And if you’re not interested in that …

Here’s a bit of Poseidon, god of water, bathtub mortal.

Achilles had his heel, Poseidon has his back paws, I guess.

I like to think he’s not fascinated by the water, but by the physics of the water’s retention and movement.

history / IU / journalism / memories / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on Ernie Pyle Day
3
Aug 21

Ernie Pyle Day

Five years ago, I took this photograph. This is Ernie Pyle’s statue, just outside of our building on the IU campus.

These days, the celebrated reporter’s desk is one floor above my office at The Media School. He’s the patron saint of journalism around here. Today is now recognized Ernie Pyle Day, and this is the fourth one. (Today is his birthday.)

Today, to the literal minute, I took this photograph of the Ernie Pyle statue. Not much has changed. In some respects, a lot of things have changed.

But things are changing still. That’s the way of it.

Eight years ago this very week we visited The Newseum, it was still in D.C., and we saw Pyle’s old Corona typewriter. He carried it into Europe and the Pacific islands and typed his World War II stories right there.

Now this typewriter, Pyle’s Underwood, is on display here in Franklin Hall. That and more of his effects, his field jacket, his entrenching tool, a pipe and other items, are on display just around the corner.

Happy Ernie Pyle day.

baseball / Tuesday / Twitter / video — Comments Off on Recycling a Twitter thread
27
Jul 21

Recycling a Twitter thread

I pulled all of this together right after Cleveland announced their new team name. I like these montages and appreciate the work that goes into these rollouts. In this case they’re doing nothing less than staking out their new identity in front of a multinational audience. It’s no small thing, and worthy of a bit of study.

(And if you think this is nerdy, ask me about the breakdown I used to do with the more effective Super Bowl spots as a classroom exercise.)

Anyway, I let this sit and breathe for a few days. I watched the video again and was pleased with my off-the-cuff impressions. And since I don’t have anything good for you here, please enjoy the new Cleveland Guardians video.

More on Twitter, check me out on Instagram and did you know that Phoebe and Poseidon have an Instagram account? Phoebe and Poe have an Instagram account.

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