Speaking of studio things, I have been derelict in my embedding duties here in the past few days. Let’s catch up!
Here’s last week’s sports show:
And here’s a show which talks about sports, and, in this episode, the clothing of sports:
This is the morning show. They recently had witches on as guests:
And here’s the election show from the other night:
More tomorrow. Until then, did you know that Phoebe and Poseidon have an Instagram account? Phoebe and Poe have an Instagram account. And keep up with me on Twitter. Don’t forget my Instagram. There are also some very interesting On Topic with IU podcasts for you, as well.
My day started with a three-hour webinar. I have four of those this week. There was another hour of Zooming this afternoon. Plus two hours in the studio, where I watched the news team put together some nice election nice coverage. They’ll be proud of that. Team coverage, in-studio interviews, they pitched it back and forth. It looked awfully nice.
But it made for a full day. Or a full-enough day. (So I’m glad I voted last week, but from the look and sound of it around here, I might have waited longer last Monday than people did today.)
Here’s Noelle, anchoring for us this evening:
She’s so steady, and always does a really nice job.
I got home just after 8 p.m., which is the earliest election night I’ve had since 1996, I think.
My first election night was as a cub at the campus paper, covering local and Senate and congressional watch parties. If you’ve not been to a Democratic watch party in a hotel banquet hall you haven’t really experienced local politics, is all I’ll say. That night I also talked to Bob Riley just after he was tapped for his first term in Congress. I believe his campaign office was a retro-fitted farmers market, if I recall correctly. The Republican would serve there six years and then two terms as the governor of Alabama. I also talked to Jeff Sessions on the phone that night. One of those gentlemen was more cordial than the other.
I was on the air, and still in college, for the 1998 mid-terms. It was ambitious of us, really. In 2000, well, I ended up catching a few minutes of sleep in my car between election events and being on the air the next morning. It was a long night, for sure. Everyone said that, and they said it about the next several weeks.
The 2002 midterms was a gubernatorial election in Arkansas, where I covered Mike Hubbard’s re-election, when he was still mostly normal. Arkansans also elected Mark Pryor to his first term in the U.S. Senate. He’s a family legacy in that state and had been the state attorney general. It wasn’t a coronation, but it was.
The 2004 election I was producing content, but don’t have a big memory of it. We were all just sick of swift boats and Michael Moore and the staid weariness of the Kerry campaign. The 2006 elections taking place around me saw all of the incumbents win re-election and there was nothing really of note beyond that. Back when people wanted a status quo. I edited a lot that night. And I also used the word “wary.” The next day I interviewed reporters and political scientists.
But 2008 was different. I was in a newsroom, but it wasn’t my newsroom. It was my first student newsroom and the mystery wafted away pretty early in the night. Still, a long night in the newsroom watching a paper being put to bed. I had to talk some people into covering, you know, the historic election of their time. Journalism!
In 2010 I watched the students working around a bit of history. The entire state had turned red. Everything in the executive branch, and for the first time since Reconstruction, the Republicans gained a majority in the state legislature. The man who engineered it, rose to become Speaker of the House for Alabama. Corruption charges soon followed him. He was convicted on state ethics law violations in 2016 and appealed and held off his sentence until September of this year. Just today, in fact, he was transferred from county to state custody. (He was also a former employer of mine.)
That year, 2010, also saw the first win for a woman in a contested race in the state. Alabama sent two women to Congress, including the state’s first black woman elected to Congress from Alabama.
In 2012 I walked into the newsroom after a class to find the news editor designing a front page for a Romney win and another for an Obama win. Journalism! I suggested making a question mark-style front page, just in case. Everything was decided before I’d finished eating dinner and so I watched them put finishing touches on that Obama issue long into the night.
I have no recollection whatsoever of the 2014 midterms. All the incumbent congress members were re-elected around me. I was living in two worlds, and so it always felt like I was sleeping over at someone else’s house and never where I belonged. And Robert Bentley was elected governor in Alabama. I think a lot of people would like to have fewer recollections than what comes to mind these days when his name is uttered.
In 2016, well. New school, new newsroom, new building, and I bet you remember your own experience from that night. It was another late night. I think I left after all of our productions were done at about 2:30 a.m. or so. That’s not an un-standard time for me, on election night.
Tonight, it was just after 8 p.m. when I left for the house. Now I have no idea what to do with myself, other than to watching glowing maps on computer monitors and television screens. So I’ll do that.
I’m also watching the work of former students covering the election pretty much everywhere.
I love watching my former students work on election night.
I counted people working in 11 different states covering their local elections tonight. That’s something special, to me.
Here are some photos I took this weekend.
Some amazing weather we’re having right now. Taking advantage of every moment of it while it lasts. And hoping it lasts forever.
Some of those pictures are so nice that one or two of them might wind up as backgrounds on the front page one of these days. Speaking of which, there’s a new look to the front page right now. It looks something like this:
We were in the studio tonight. Look! Here’s proof!
Meredith will graduate this year, and then she’ll start her path to taking over roughly everything. She’s teaching herself the jib in that photo. She learns everything. She does everything. She’s going to take over roughly everything one day.
This was during auditions for a next semesters talk shows. We shot two full shows tonight and then ran three test segments and it was one of those times when everything felt like a smoothly-running machine. It’s really great when that happens.
It rained most of the day, and we’ve needed it. Felt unusual to reach for the umbrella. I had to remember which stick on the side of the steering wheel held the windshield wiper controls. It’s been a while.
And with that in mind we talked candy seemingly all day.
This seeding is questionable, at best, but it works out like this.
(It works out differently if you don't put like vs like in the FIRST ROUND.)
And I’ve now added candy to the list of things people will fight over with no provocation. Mind you, this isn’t about possession of the last treat, just your preferences. People have different tastes or favorites in some parts of life, but not in everything, which is weird. You have a favorite restaurant in town, and I don’t like it? That’s fine. Ask two different people familiar with the place where you should go on your next visit to New Orleans. It will devolve to name calling. You want to talk about plumbers or house contractors, any one will seemingly do. People really vie for selling you on their car mechanic though. Differing choices in candy? Fighting words.
This is me: you can like candy corn or you can hate candy corn. Do you have a strong, loud, vociferous defense about your candy corn preferences? You should reconsider your stance.
Also me: whoever created that seeding doesn’t understand how tournament seeding was intended to work.
Finally, one of my friends is covering this over in Ohio today.
Hey, America.
You're inundated. I get it. It's nasty.
Don't let people hoping to scare you with voting tactics ever try to tell you what we are. You look around and you'll see the best of us everyday.
I am judging high school and junior high news programs this week. There are some really talented young people out there. But we could always say that. Golly gee, kids these days!
Also, I have about 60 of these to work through, so I could say the same thing for the next few days.
Other kids these days:
Someone put a note in their calendar to look up this young man in 25-30 years and let's find out what awesome thing he's doing.
After work I stopped in at the library to pick up a book I had on hold. It’s just two blocks from the office. I walked in, strolled through the alphabetized hold shelves until I found the S area, considering the sign that said “Respect other users privacy, no browsing” until I found my name. And, being careful to not notice anyone else’s titles, I picked up my hardcover book. Oh, the joys of reading fiction. I don’t a lot, but I will over the next few days. Well, once I’m satisfied there are no cooties on the dust jacket.
There’s a self checkout. You scan your library card and input your password on the touchscreen three times. Because the first time you mess it up so convincingly you wonder if your password is, in fact, something else. Once you get that right, you just hold the book under the scanner. There’s no barcode, it just knows what book you have based on some RFID tag or a near field communication trick.
So now I’m done. Two minutes, maybe three. I did nod to someone, but didn’t have to speak to a soul. I left via the nearest door. I was on a different floor from the one where I entered. I knew that, because there was a stairwell at the beginning of this adventure. I exited on a different side of the building than where I entered. Spatially, I was aware that I would be facing a different direction from where I went in, because I’d traversed most of the place and turned left to leave. So walked around the building was no surprise, but I was, of course, still on the ground, even after that long staircase when I entered. That amused me.
Architects must delight in confusing people who aren’t paying perfect attention.
Got home, cleaned off the day, and had a nice long chat with my mom. She’s fine. Everyone’s fine. (If the extended family would take this more seriously, that would be better, but I can’t convince people of the obvious.)
We’re talking about how we can do Christmas, because Thanksgiving is basically off. Maybe we’ll Zoom over turkey leftovers. We’re going to concentrate on the small joys. Visiting is a gift, and everyone is fine and healthy.
So much Covid data to report on our campus. The weekly numbers came out today, and they ticked up ever so slightly, but they remain impressively low, especially considering the county, and particularly in comparison to the state, which is surging ahead with no headlights, brakes or seatbelts.
Also, you’ll learn in the A-block there about how IU’s testing labs are now open. They’re going to be doing something like 8,500 tests a week here now. It’s an extensive, impressive undertaking. The university has really pulled out all of the stops to look after its campus communities and help the cities they all live in. Remember, this is 100,000 students in nine campuses across the state. And while, ultimately, this is not the fall or spring semester any student — or anyone else wanted — the lengths the university is going to during a pandemic are commendable.
They did a costume feature on the pop culture show and I can’t get over how awesome minimalist M&Ms are.
If you didn’t watch that, you should. They did blindfolds and had to guess what their reporters were dressed up as. So now you’ve got gloved, masked, blindfolded hosts. It was pretty silly.
Do you ever do that thing where you start a project on your website and work on it for a while and collect all the parts the project will need and continue to work on it and then think you’re finished with it? And then come back three years later and realize you weren’t finished?
Oh, that’s just me, huh?
Well OK, then.
Guess why this building is important:
It is important because it means we must return to the historic markers section of the site. This is where I where my bicycle all over the county to find the historic signs and take pictures of them, and the place they’re highlighting. I did this one years ago, but realized only this evening, while I was cleaning some old photos from my phone, that I’d never published them.
So go check out The Gables, which is a building that now holds a restaurant, and has some important local history in it. Also, the guy that owns it is a joy, and his food is pretty good, too. It’s just up the street from my office.
Hoagy Carmichael, who is the focus of this particular historic marker, has a statue on campus, and if I had a statue project on the site it would be one of the feature attractions, because it’s an amazing statue.
And the really good news is that we can get four or five more days worth of content out of old pictures and places I’d already thought I’d addressed! So look for another historic marker update next week.
More tomorrow. Until then, did you know that Phoebe and Poseidon have an Instagram account? Phoebe and Poe have an Instagram account. And don’t forget my Instagram. Also, keep up with me on Twitter.
Phoebe was a happy model for today’s addition to Catober. She’s hanging out in the hallway. She likes to sit there and wait for you to walk by so she can stretch out and demand pets. She’s a cute little highway robber of belly rubs.
There’s a little post it note on the door behind her. It’s for Poseidon, who is always trying to get into my home office and cause trouble. The sign is meant to keep him out. That’s why it is posted at cat-eye level. It does not.
We have a debate about whether he can read the sign, or if the verbiage is too sophisticated. He’s obviously just ignoring the sign. Phoebe can come into my office occasionally, because Phoebe is a good girl.
Here’s a talk show from last night. They talked about sports. Sports are what they talked about. Baseball, and it’s 4,725 post season teams, deserve attention, and you can get most of it right here:
And another set of students were hard at work in the studio this morning. They had a great guest and a fun time and things went smoothly for them. And someone has finally added a calendar feature to their programming:
After the show was over and we wiped down all of the consoles and the cameras and everything else everyone touched, they all went about their days, going … wherever they all go. I went to my office and whiled away the day worrying over a To Do List.
I think I cut it down to something manageable for next week. I have an important letter of recommendation to write and dealing with a bunch of file transfers. And about a half dozen meetings already on the books, and some voiceovers to work through and some audio editing to tend to and whatever other things that haven’t appeared yet … It’s nice to know a little about what’s in store next week, is what I’m saying.
Take this weekend, for example. It’s gray and damp and cool this evening and so there wasn’t much to that. There’ll be lunch and a bike ride tomorrow and then a video chat and football. I’ll do some housework. Sunday there’ll be breakfast and looking out the window and a lot of reading and maybe some football and that’s the weekend. It’s nice to know a little about what’s in store. One day the weekend schedule will change itself. I won’t know how to act. They all kind of run together at this point, is what I’m saying.
But things are just grand. Everyone here is healthy. The cats are happy. Dinner was good. I get to sleep in tomorrow.
