adventures / cycling / Monday / photo / television / video — Comments Off on The third half of winter
21
Feb 22

The third half of winter

It is about time I thought on my walk from the car to the building this morning, to see a fake signal. And as I walked by one of the little patches of soil that separates the parking lot from the sidewalk, I saw it. Right on time, just like every other year we’ve been here, trying to trick me.

Even though I misinterpret it (“Spring!”) I will not be tricked. We have more cold and some snow flurries and ice this week and who knows what else in the next … six or eight weeks.

He said with the world’s most predictable sigh.

But, hey, the days are getting longer. The coats are getting lighter. And the cold is, for now, a bit milder.

This was the sun on our walk yesterday. I was only wearing a medium-weight coat.

And here are two more pictures from that walk, because I am fascinated by the idea that so many things look better in real life than they do in photographs. For instance, this sycamore is really popping in the late-day sun. And, yet …

Same with this tree, which I think is just dead. The sun is playful, the limbs are colorful, but the photographic result leaves something to be desired.

You know what else leaves something to be desired? My ability to keep things up-to-date. This show is from Wednesday night and went online Thursday and I forgot to post it here. Shame on me.

And here’s the talk show, where they focused on baseball and softball.

Which brings us to today, and here are the shows the entertainment division released today. And it seems like the late night show was evicted after a troublesome conclusion to their last episode.

That show continues to evolve in the most fascinating ways. One day they’re going to invent their own genre, I’m pretty sure.

And here’s the morning show, a production which I missed entirely, unfortunately.

I walked in from a meeting just as the students were breaking down the studio. And I am lesser for it. Watch it now, and you will be justly enriched.

I tried a new Zwift route on Saturday. I quickly regretted it. But at least I got a nice shot of my avatar in an aerotuck.

It was one of the fictional routes, and required a lot of climbing which I am clearly not good at or prepared for. But at the end of it all there’s a map. This is always amusing to me. It’s a fictional route. This is a real island in the South Pacific.

Two islands, actually. I mentioned one of them, Teanu, which is the bulk of the route you see in the graphic above, last Monday. But that part where it dips south, is Vanikoro. Apparently about 1,300 people live there, two distinct groups, in different villages, but you can’t see much from Google Maps.

Google Reviews, though … someone wrote “There is no TV 3 stars.”

That settles it for me.

cycling / Friday / IU / photo — Comments Off on Come, let us weekend!
18
Feb 22

Come, let us weekend!

It was sunny. But it was cold. We’ll take it because it is Friday.

But only for so much longer, by which I mean about a week, a week-and-a-half.

These are the stages of winter for me: resignation, ignoring it, wearied by it, a brief sense of optimism, and then a sort of disbelieving vexation which is where I will say, more than once, “When will this end?”

The answer is About seven weeks too late.

If it seems like I’ve said this before, that’s because I have. If it seems like I’ve said it this winter, that’s because I most assuredly hav.

I did go outside for a few minutes today. I decided to walk across part of the campus to take a Covid test. This was entirely an excuse to get outside and under the sunshine for a few minutes in between hours under florescent lights. So on with the big jacket, and I walked the four-tenths of a mile from our building to a gym in the School of Public Health, where all of the spitting takes place. Swipe your ID card, answer the three questions — they used to ask about whether you’d eaten anything in the last half hour, whether you had symptoms or had been asked to quarantine, now the staffer there just points to the sign. Only then do they give you permission to move on to the next table where a modern printer with ancient software eventually spits out the little ID label. You must recite the high holy numbers, your birthday, to get the little plastic tube. Then, go around the corner, stand in this converted gym and fill the container. Saliva, not foam, if you please.

And then the walk back. See! The proof of being outdoors in the middle of the day!

I’m still negative. They do the lab work here on campus and the turnaround is usually around four hours. It’s an impressive set up, really.

This is my ride through the northern English countryside. I’m in Yorkshire. This is part of the 2019 world championship course.

An hour doing this was a great way to start the weekend. Usually when I share these silly things I’ve cropped out the graphics, but this is the normal screen view.

That’s a lot to look through, and you can’t make changes. There’s always a chat feature, and for the life of me I don’t know how people can pedal fast and type at the same time. It’s all I can do to sing along to the music.

cycling / photo / Thursday — Comments Off on Making my way through the Makuri Islands
17
Feb 22

Making my way through the Makuri Islands

Rainy today, all day, and getting colder by the hour.

A great day, then, to stay inside!

So I left the office and got on the bike and rode around some fictional place. I had read about this course on Makuri Islands earlier in the day and so naturally I decided to take the hilliest route.

You get out of a fictional city and into the countryside, which was much more fun, even if I was moving faster through the city segment.

Did I mention this was the hilliest route in Makuri? This bit was a seven percent incline, which was fine. There were harder areas. I think I need to reset my power trainer, basically. Somehow, the level parts near the end seemed more impossible than the ramps at the beginning.

See those blossoming cherry trees? I’m pretty sure they weren’t blooming when the ride started. I rode through the whole blooming cycle!

I’m still dialing in the positioning of the cleats of my new shoes. This is precision stuff and I am doing it by guesswork. I’m also the princess and the pea on the bicycle, so it takes a good long while.

Much like this ride! Which I may never ride again.

books / history / IU / journalism / photo / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off on The downhill of Wednesday
16
Feb 22

The downhill of Wednesday

Another day hanging out with the great Ernie Pyle. I wonder what he’d say to me today, if he could.

He’d say “I’m almost 122 years old. What do you want from me? And why are you hanging around this statue anyway? Maybe you could go write something.”

The joke is on him. I’m mostly editing today.

I had to give a tour today, actually, and I walked our guest by the little display of Ernie Pyle artifacts, which is when I always say he grew up in a small place about 80 miles to the west. His dad was a tenant farmer there, and the town of Dana was bigger then (population 893) than it is today (population 570).

Then, as now, it’s a sleepy rural community. Today Dana is still a farming community, but maybe also a commuter’s exurb.

If you travel down Maple Street, the one road that the Google Maps car visited in Dana in 2008, you’ll see this.

I did not mention that to our visitor from Chicago, but only because I had to discuss the Roy Howard papers, the Cold War photographs and the paintings from the university’s collection that adorn nearby walls.

A look in the control from this evening’s sports shoots.

They produced two shows tonight, of course. The highlight show, which included segments on the upcoming games, a historic Black Hoosier athlete and this week’s athlete of the week.

They’ve been adding all kinds of elements to that show. And, of course, there’s also the talk show. They discussed Indiana baseball and Indiana softball, which are both kicking off their seasons this week.

Those two shows will be up later this week, and I’ll share them here.

Until then, here’s a look at a few of the other IUSTV shows that they’ve put online in the last day or so. (They keep very busy!)

Here’s the pop culture and campus events show. There’s a subtle little thing in the interview that most people won’t catch, but I was especially proud of, and a new segment that’s just about jokes.

And here’s the news show. I think everything in this episode was done in one take. Easy, casual. Just needs more.

And here’s the film show, which I teased in this space last week.

And that gets us through most of the day, which was an easy 10-hour work day. After the last few works of busyness two 10-hour days in a row doesn’t seem that challenging.

If you find yourself saying things like that “You must ask yourself, ‘Why?’”

I will celebrate by reading myself to sleep. Back to reading Kluger. I got this book for Christmas a few years ago. I read most of it last year, but set it down for some reason or another. As I wrote about a third of the way through it …

I’m in the last 50 or so pages now, and we’re actually in the trial. This is an insightful treat. It’s early-18th century colonial America, the printer has published some mean things about a governor and that’s against the rules in a way that seems draconian to modern American sensibilities. But we learn that, even then, the legal system of the day was still wrestling with the philosophical nature of truth. How can you decide what libel is without understanding what truth might be. It’s a narrowly defined world.

Kluger has the records of trial, and he’s quoting the lawyers verbatim. Some of the themes they were wrestling with then are reflective of the arguments being made right now in Sarah Palin’s lawsuit against the New York Times. Whereas today it seems the court is weighing what appears to amount to negligence brought on by deadlines against the legal concept of libel, the judges in the Zenger trial are tasked with trying to decide whether carefully written and coded letters published in a backwater colonial newspaper could cause a king to lose confidence in his government officials.

The way the law was framed and the arguments made in such a way that the king seems was a delicate flower, and that his fragility was to be protected at all times. A convenient political and legal cover of the times, I’m sure. The published letters weren’t about the king, but rather about his appointed governor of New York (who was often appointed just to get him out of London, it seems). And since, as Kluger demonstrates, the governor was slotting judges into this trial in the hopes of getting a desired outcome, maybe the letter writers had a point.

Gov. Cosby had been a military officer of some success, married well, and then worked his way up to being appointed the governor of a small Mediterranean island. A personal gains scandal eventually followed him there, and in New York and New Jersey there were salary issues, and oppression and some land problems. Typical colonial stuff, the things that, just a generation later, led to revolution. So you wonder what became of all of these people’s grandsons.

Oh, the letter writers were some of Zenger’s legal representation.

There’s not a moment of Euro-American history in New York that doesn’t work like this, I’m convinced.

books / history / IU / photo / television / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on I created a new banner, just for this
15
Feb 22

I created a new banner, just for this

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?

These are the dilemmas that I must work through.

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