IU / journalism / television / Tuesday — Comments Off on And now, two quick television stories
10
Dec 19

And now, two quick television stories

When I got here smilin’ Joe Canter was a freshman. He was probably born good at this, but he’s gotten better at it. And someone here, no one seems to remember who now, has given him a franchise he can carry for years: Banter With Canter.

This was the last Banter With Canter on the last show of his college career. He’s graduating in a few days. It’s been a pleasure to work with him, to watch him grow and develop a very steady confidence. Plus, he’s just an all around pleasant guy. Some newsroom is going to get a good one with him.

And of course we took the “So I can say I knew him when” photo.

He told us tonight — it is a bit of a tradition now, I guess, sharing this news with the crew at our last productions — the stations he’s been interviewing with recently. It is exciting to see the notice our crew gets right out of the gate. I’m eager to see where he lands. Of course you can follow people pretty closely these days, but there will come a day, in two or four years, when he will make a market change. And maybe then, or in the year or two after that, he’ll make a big market change. And I’m excited to see what that’s like for him.

Speaking of sports, which is what Joe does, my old be-ready-at-every-moment anecdote around here used to be about sports, but now it is about weather. The old story was that the sports guy didn’t turn up one night. He’d taken ill, apparently, and we only realized this at the last minute. So a producer stepped in. And she’s was, and remains, one of these people that does everything well. She wasn’t a close follower of sports, she said, but you wouldn’t know it by how she just did the job that night. And they chose her to fill-in because she was awesome anyway, but also because she was camera-ready. It’s a good story. (And today, she is a producer in a top 35-market, which is a nice place to land in your second job still freshly out of school.)

Well now I can update that story to weather. My friend Charlee is a pop culture show host, but when the student who is actually training to be a meteorologist couldn’t make it this evening, Charlee stepped in. And, being another one of these people that does everything well, she also drilled it.

She won’t be a meteorologist anytime soon — that takes some science and know how — but if she isn’t updating her LinkedIn account this week and figuring out how to parlay that into a job interview anecdote then I didn’t sell her hard enough on how she should be updating her LinkedIn account and figuring out how to parlay that into a job interview anecdote.

And with that, the calendar year and another semester of television wraps. A tweet-sized summary:

More details fleshing out the numbers at some later date.

More on Twitter and please check me out on Instagram as well.

books / journalism / Monday / photo — Comments Off on A random assortment from Monday
09
Dec 19

A random assortment from Monday

On Saturday, Poseidon had the howling cat blues:

He looks like a different animal with his mouth open. It’s weird.

Phoebe, meantime, was unimpressed.

What’s nice is that, as you can just see from that side view of the window, it was a gorgeous day. You can even see it based on the light bouncing off this Chick-fil-A window:

That’s one merry dairy cow, I said on Instagram. And not enough people appreciated that word play and my taking advantage of every chance possible to point out that, for decades now, Chick-fil-A has been using the wrong breed of cattle in their promos.

But it was a lovely day to make that argument. Today, today was less attractive in every way.

I used to count how many times I’d seen someone leave their cart in this particular parking lot’s handicapped spots. It’s a rural area. There are a lot of older people shopping in those particular stores. I visit once a week, or so, on a regular errand and I have met plenty of people that might take advantage of that spot.

The last thing anyone that needs a handicapped spot wants to deal with, besides the rain and the cold and whatever condition they feel like that particular day, is the laziness of a person who can’t push the cart to the corral not 25 feet away.

I’m sure you were just in a hurry.

So I pushed the cart up to the store. Someone ought to.

Every once in a great while you get to read a real treat of a story. I consume a lot of news, part of the job, and over the years I’ve written or read almost every kind of formula covering most any kind of story you can put in front of your eyes on any given day. They still have value, but you sometimes just know where a story is going.

But once in a great while, you get a treat. Here’s one now.

The first time he spoke to her, in 1943, by the Auschwitz crematory, David Wisnia realized that Helen Spitzer was no regular inmate. Zippi, as she was known, was clean, always neat. She wore a jacket and smelled good. They were introduced by a fellow inmate, at her request.

Her presence was unusual in itself: a woman outside the women’s quarters, speaking with a male prisoner. Before Mr. Wisnia knew it, they were alone, all the prisoners around them gone. This wasn’t a coincidence, he later realized. They made a plan to meet again in a week.

On their set date, Mr. Wisnia went as planned to meet at the barracks between crematories 4 and 5. He climbed on top of a makeshift ladder made up of packages of prisoners’ clothing. Ms. Spitzer had arranged it, a space amid hundreds of piles, just large enough to fit the two of them. Mr. Wisnia was 17 years old; she was 25.

You can’t excerpt a story like this, to give it justice, and you will find yourself glancing over at the scroll bar and sad to see how you only have so much of the story to go. You’re going to want it to go on, like a great book. You’re going to run through almost every emotion possible. And you’re going to want to keep reading it. So go read it.

Speaking of books …

It’s dense. It’s detailed. We’re starting to catch up to the period on electricity. I’m going to finish that one, some day.

Friday / friends / IU / photo / Twitter — Comments Off on Friends, let us weekend
06
Dec 19

Friends, let us weekend

My friend Bryce took this picture of me, outside the studio this morning. It was an ambush job which, as a shutterbug myself, I appreciate. This was somehow the only pose I could imagine at the moment:

I assume that was because my mind had already been melted for the day after an early meeting.

Also, in looking at it, this is the photograph that told me I needed a haircut. And some go-to poses for photographs.

Anyway, the morning show was in the studio this morning. It was their last show of the term. We have one more night of productions, next week, shooting our last two shows of the semester.

I’ve been looking for a new fall guy for stories. Somehow, this never occurred to me until today:

It’s a big fib. My roommate was a great guy. He dated nice people. But it’s just far enough removed to not seem mean-spirited, but close enough to feel plausible.

I mean there was that one young woman he dated from back home. She really worked him over at one point. Set him free for other people though, but not until after many, many nights of ballads and conversations trying to figure out what just happened.

What just happened was … hang on … let me check his social media. OK, good, that’s not the woman he married.

See? Seems realistic.

Got in a nice little 5K this evening. And then I got the laundry in the washer. I did this because I like having laundry done before the weekend, but completely forgot about that fact on Thursday. So I’m doing laundry on the weekend. It’s a nice domestic feeling, knowing the clothes hamper is empty, the dresser and closets are full and there’s no noise coming from the laundry room.

It’s better than the alternative, washing clothes tonight, wondering if I’ll forget to finish all of this and have to put clothes away on Sunday night. What a modern sadness: I must go to the office tomorrow, I must sort the socks tonight.

Thursday, then, is an ideal time for laundry. Someone please remind me of this every other week.

But now it is time for the best part of postseason football:

friends / IU / photo / Thursday — Comments Off on Revved up
05
Dec 19

Revved up

I saw this car at lunch today.

I was walking downtown to meet a former student. He graduated in the spring and moved to California and has an interesting-sounding job that should set him up nicely for networking and he’s enjoying California and snow and surfing and taking photographs. He gave me a hug. He showed me his new camera.

This is a 1945-ish Plymouth. It’s difficult to say, because this basic body design dominated the decade for the car maker. The engine was pushed forward, the trunk was bigger, there was more glass. And it boasted, boasted, 84 to 91 horsepower.

Just parallel parked outside a little pizza joint, as one does. It is difficult to imagine seeing people preserving 1977 Toyota Celicas, taking them downtown for a slice.

It was nice to see an old friend, even if it only seems he’s been gone for a few minutes. He said he got a good deal on a red eye and decided to come make a few rounds. I wonder if that’s a thing people in California do, to tell others about it.

Two former students of mine are working out there now. Graduate, point the car west. I’m sitting here. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. How could you not? Their Instagram accounts are full of the beauty of things. At least we saw the sun today.

That’s two days in a row!

Tomorrow? Cloudy. Chance of rain.

I guess all the clouds are good to help reduce the chance of paint oxidation on old cars.

Instagram / running / Wednesday — Comments Off on To shine a light on my thinking
04
Dec 19

To shine a light on my thinking

This is where I am on running, on having to sit it out for most of the year: I can now move around a bit. I am not always winded. I have to re-remember how to run uphill. I’m still slow, but then I haven’t been fast since high school, but I can manufacture a little burst every now and then. My foot feels much better, which is the best part of it all. I haven’t taped it up in a few days in a row, and I’m running without binding the thing, too.

And while I’m probably still months removed from wanting to run — it’s funny, I see people riding their bikes and I think “I’m jealous,” I’ve never seen a person running and thought “I wish I could be doing that right now — there is a certain meditative quality of a good run, when you can move the body without too much suffering.

Maybe it was the evening or the circumstance, but I remembered that this evening.

The light is great, mind you. The photo is blurry because I took that, mid-stride, running downhill. Even with all of those limitations, you can still easily see your way. The view is even cleaner with the eye.

The light is this one. You wear it on your head. It’s lightweight, has an adjustable strap and all that. You don’t forget it is there, but it isn’t an encumbrance. I don’t think I could ride a bike with it, which I’d like to do, because you’d probably outrun the light. But it’s perfect for night runs. They cast a brilliant light to see where your feet are going, and it makes you visible to people coming your way — as if they couldn’t hear me huffing and shuffling from a great distance.

Where I also am on running: I’m not yet back to doing great distances. Oh tonight I was going to run four miles. Four whole miles! But then precisely at the 5K mark, or 3.1 miles, my knee felt a twinge. And as I am trying to get my various joints to work happily and, perchance to dream, in harmony, I called it a run. It didn’t hurt — my rationale, that is — that I came to this conclusion just in front of the neighborhood. So I finished my run at the 5K mark, turned off the head lamp and walked home by porch light. It was in the low 40s, which felt like a slight chill after a little run. The crickets are gone, the bullfrogs are quiet, the kids are all inside. That’s also meditative.

I focus on spring, when I won’t have to miss the sound of insects and the aural landscape that comes with a happier season, when the sun sticks around longer, when I can a bike or run, or both!

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