The natural truth

Six-fifteen a.m. . . .

Six-thirty a.m. . . .

Six-forty-five a.m. . . .

Seven a.m.Nature – the world, and the universe, around us – is by far the No. 1 presenter of moments of truth, and this morning at our house she joined in the debate about the nature of truth: elusive, short-lived, subjective, an approximation.

She seemed to take off this morning from where I began yesterday in the “Memoir” blog: “When truth happens, a person can see it, and see it clearly, just for an instant. In the next instant, unless it is transcribed exactly, that moment of truth becomes memory. Then the trouble starts.”

She also proved the point that is at the heart of that trouble: humans can see the truth, but we are more or less helpless to describe it, or record it faithfully, in any of the native media – sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste – with which we are born. These media can perceive wonderfully, but they don’t communicate or record truth very well at all. That, I believe, is why devising artificial means to preserve truth became such a driving human priority. I would much prefer the natural means. I wish I could portray to you in words an accurate record of what I saw this morning, but my brain, and the words at my disposal, are powerless to do the job.

So I have to use a camera. Karen took the photos, and I look at each of them and rock in silent laughter at the notion that such a moment of truth could be caught in words. What words? Where would I begin? Left? Right? Middle? How would I proceed, and at the speeds required to catch the moment in its unique position in space and time? This kind of slack-jawed capitulation, by a man acknowledging his true place in the world, certainly has been going on every morning for thousands of years and certainly is the spiritual and intellectual source of the technology that lets me share these captured moments of truth with you this moming.

There are four of them, all presented to Karen and me in a single morning before the day has reached 7 a.m. Because we were there, for us they are all complete truths, complete with discovery, anticipation, fulfillment and wonder, all in real time. For you, the camera can only provide a soundless, room-temperature sight snapshot. But you will fill in the rest. Truth is subjective, and no two of us will see, or feel, these moments in exactly the same way. We may, in the end, however, agree to the truth, that moments like these show a man his true place in the world.

A memoir by any name . . .

The truth about truth is that it is elusive. Inexact. Fickle. Subjective. Selective. Short-lived. When truth happens, a person can see it, and see it clearly, just for an instant. In the next instant, unless it is transcribed exactly, that moment of truth becomes memory. Then the trouble starts.

All of those were in play when James Frey wrote his infamous memoir, “A Million Little Pieces,” about his experience as an addict. That’s not why he was called on the carpet last week by Oprah Winfrey and others. For all its ambiguities, the truth is still the truth. Frey in his memoir went beyond that. He lied. He made things up. That’s why he was called out.

But the big after-story is not about Frey’s lies. Hey. There’s a book title: “Frey’s Lies.” Coming soon to a bookstore near you. All the talk, though, since Frey’s public flogging, has been about the future of the truth, in non-fiction publishing, whether in memoirs or everyday news.

And the truth is, truth is an approximation with which the majority agrees. Five people witnessing the same event will result in five versions of that event, no two alike. Unless there is a recording, the factual truth of the event is lost, becoming a matter of who you talk to. At a big football game, a newspaper typically sends three professionals to cover the game: one to write the game story, a second to write the color story, or “sidebar,” and a third, the columnist, to put his or her spin on the game. In the locker room after the game, these three will gather around the coach. One of them will ask why his team lost. The coach will give an answer.

In the next morning’s paper, each writer will quote the coach, and none of the quotes will be exactly alike. What, exactly, did the coach say? No one knows, the morning after, not even the coach. Anyone who has ever been interviewed, and then read the quotes in the morning paper, has had this reaction: “Did I really say that?” Unless there’s a recording to check, you will never know.

That’s how the truth is. It puffs and scatters through your fingers like smoke, because memory, which is nothing more than five-second-old, or 50-year-old, truth, is fickle, and selective. Make a simple 10-word statement into the ear of the person next to you, and ask that person to pass it around the table of 10 people, and when the message gets back to you, it will have changed, according to the unique mysteries occurring at that moment in the minds of the 10 people.

Most truths, as we experience them, are also incomplete. If a man kisses a woman for the first time, and then writes a memoir about it, he can only approximate the truth as he remembers it. Unless he asks her what she felt, and includes that information, then his memory of the truth is not only an approximation, it is incomplete. (Reading the woman’s stand-alone memoir of that same kiss would be astonishing proof of this.)

James Frey wrote about root canals being performed on him without anaesthesia. It must be a lie, we think, but it may be, in part at least, a version of incomplete truth. Did he ask the dentist what he was doing, at each step of the procedure? If not, how could he know he didn’t receive Novocain?

This is a pertinent question to me, about what the truth is, because on Jan. 5 I underwent hip replacement surgery. I truly fear the after-effects of general anaesthesia, so I chose a spinal anaesthetic, even though I would be awake throughout the procedure. I must say it was very interesting (I have a clinical turn of mind). I have been eager to share the experience with others, most of whom were not keen to hear.

But if I did, I would be telling an incomplete truth. I could hear everything, but I couldn’t see anything; my head was tented by green sheeting. If I simply described the sounds, without any other context, you could believe I was writing about a foundry. I have told friends I heard a high-pitched whine, an electric saw, and then resistance, as the saw met bone (hey, if you can spend $15 to read about Frey’s root canals, you can read this).

But it may not have been a saw at all. It may have been a reamer of some kind; I couldn’t know, without seeing, or asking the surgeons (which I thought about but decided against). In the memoir, therefore, if I were thinking like James Frey, I would have had license to choose: saw, or reamer, depending on which would part customers fastest from their 15 bucks.

Frankly I would have chosen the reamer. Would I have been telling the truth? I honestly don’t know. Memoirs are packed, intentionally or not, with such ambiguities. Now Frey has loosed a virus, the Truth Virus, that is likely to delete the genre altogether, even though incomplete truth is probably the best that the best of us can provide about ourselves.

Friday sunrise

Rock and roll quiz

I have said before that nobody cares what the 60-somethings think. Certainly not advertisers, and not most people between 40 and 60, and of course absolutely no one under 40.

In the media, their product development and advertising are aimed at the younger market, the upper age limit of which is about 54. When you hit 60, the media figures you can’t stay awake or concentrate long enough to watch anything more than 30 minutes of evening news, and that’s where they pack all their 60-something advertising, products devoted exclusively to personal body embarrassments.

Imagine my pleasure, therefore, last week, when I was writing about the 1950s and the birth of rock and roll. In my materials I came across a cultural phenomenon that is the exclusive, birthright possession of people 60 and older. Not only that, it is a possession that set into motion a vital part of the world in which today’s young demographic finds so much of its satisfaction.

We were there, geezer brothers and sisters, at the birth of rock and roll music. Take a few minutes, gas-bloated friends, and give the answers to these simple rock and roll questions that the sinewy slick-backed IPodders can only guess at. For them, answers will be published next week.

As he was motoratin’ over the hill, who did he see?

What is it that Long Tall Sally’s got?

How you call your lover boy? And if he doesn’t answer? And if he still doesn’t answer?

What’ll be the day?

What ain’t there no cure for?

How many candles make a lovely sight?

Ain’t what a shame?

What does she do when she does the Ooby Dooby?

Who’s sorry now? Whose heart is aching for breaking each vow?

Who calls the English teacher Daddio?

Why did Little Susie fall asleep?

How black were the eyes of Felina?

You know he can be found where?

Who told Tchaikovsky the news?

They furnished off an apartment with a two-room Roebuck sale. With what did they cram the coolerator?

What can you do in lieu of stepping on my blue suede shoes?

What can stop the Duke of Earl?

Well, did he ever return?

If you want to know if he loves you so, is it in his eyes?

When do your heartaches begin?

Well bless my soul, what’s wrong with me?

Why do I walk the line?

What did he really want to send her? But what could he actually send her, with all that he had in his jeans at the time?

You load 16 tons, what do you get?

Where do fools rush in?

Whose barn? What barn?

What do chantilly lace and a pretty face do? Make the world go round.

Who is dancing to the Jailhouse Rock?

He never ever learned to read and write so well, but how does he play the guitar?

Oh, please, Diana, stay where?

Why is a party doll all he wants?

Who used to play around with hearts that hastened to his call?

Gotta be what kind of music, if you want to dance with me?

Walking - slowly - toward a new life

Three weeks ago today, very early in the morning, I checked into the hospital for hip replacement surgery. The surgery, which took about two and a half hours, was routine. I elected a spinal anaesthetic and was awake throughout. The surgical team was discussing the NFL playoffs as it went about its work. I thought about contributing, but decided against it. I couldn’t see or feel anything, but I could hear everything. It was pretty noisy. After awhile I was humming “John Henry” to myself.

The brute part of the surgery was all post-op. Four days in the hospital, a round of in-patient physical and occupational therapy, then home, where my headquarters became my recliner in the living room. I was prepared for prolonged and intense discomfort and was surprised when it was minimal.

Just going home was heaven. But I couldn’t do anything, other than sit, read, watch television, go on my walker to the bathroom, and do my exercises. I couldn’t carry anything. Karen had to wait on me hand, foot and hip.

I could feel myself getting better every day. The after-effects of the spinal block wore off much more quickly than with a general anaesthesia, which was exactly why I chose the spinal. I had at-home physical therapy, which became easier every day. What discomfort I had was managed easily with Darvocet.

It was progress, but it was just so slow. Four weeks, I had been told, before anything like normalcy might reappear. Last weekend, the end of my second week at home, I was ready for it to be over. But there were two weeks to go. It occurred to me that the prescribed recovery from hip replacement surgery is long enough to give the patient the idea: what if this were permanent? This might be the point where patients with a permanent injury – paralysis or loss of a leg – start to realize their lives are changed forever. Nothing will ever be the same.

It didn’t help that I felt like I had reached a plateau. The usual awareness of daily improvement was absent through the weekend. In fact I was at a plateau. It was time for me to leave the walker behind. The therapist arrived on Tuesday, gave me a couple of lessons with the cane, and commanded me to take a walk with him up the street and back. I was amazed how easy it was. This week I can carry my own coffee. I can sit comfortably in a chair at the computer. I can take a shower. Karen took me to the barbershop yesterday. I am thinking I will be ready to meet my classes next week.

As long as I pay attention to balance and don’t go too fast, I think it is all downhill from here. Hip surgery veterans all tell me it’s like stepping into a new life. I am starting to feel that happen.

First Day of School

Today, spring semester begins at Grossmont College, and this blog is addressed to students attending the first day of my news writing classes. If you are a general visitor to the blog, and you want to know how the first day of a beginning journalism class looks like to a student, read on.

Students: Sorry I can’t be with you this week, but I am in the third week of recovery from hip replacement surgery and I am not mobile enough yet to get to class. I hope to join you next week and think I will be ready. If not, we will continue to meet here and go forward with our work.

This semester, you will study fundamentals of news writing for media, both print and broadcast. The class text is “The Complete Reporter” (Harris-Leiter Johnson), seventh edition. The first half of the semester, you will learn to write news stories for newspapers. The second half of the semester, you will learn to write news stories for television. The two types of stories are very different, yet very much alike. At the end of the semester, in newscast teams of three, you will produce scripts for a studio newscast and tape the newscast in collaboration with the video production class, in our television studio downstairs.

You will find writing stories for print to be unusual, even strange. That is because your demographic doesn’t read newspapers as a rule, and so you are not familiar with the “rhythm” of writing for print. You will find writing for television much easier, because you get most of your news from broadcast, whose story rhythms are quite familiar to you.

You must be able to write solid stories both for print (the 3,000-word version) and for broadcast (the 30-second version), because in the new digital media age, you will always be writing both. Even now, before the convergence of print and broadcast is complete, you will watch a 30-second story on television, then be advised: “For more about this story, go to our Website at cnn.com” (or “cbs.com,” nbc.com,” “10news.com,” whatever). The same reporter wrote both the 30-second and the “for more about” versions of the story. In this class, you will learn to do both, and you will be very valuable in the new digital media industry.

Both print and broadcast news stories begin with analysis of raw information. Is there a news story in that raw information? If so, what kind of story is it? You will learn how to answer those questions. Then you will learn how to organize the information into a good story, and then write the story in standard news style.

In class, you should have received materials (class schedule, etc.) from my sub instructor. The most important document is the Toolbox. This is a collection of tools that journalists use to do their work. With the Toolbox, you will be able to analyze and organize raw information.

Your first assignment is to start memorizing the Toolbox: the Cardinal Rules, the Three Priorities, the Definition of News, the Five W’s, the 12 News Values, the Narrative Style, the Inverted Pyramid, the Five Steps, the Purpose of the Lede, the Four C’s, Simple vs. Complex Stories, Types of Complex Stories, The Nine Dots and the Iceberg Theory. You must memorize the Toolbox in order: in other words, the Second Priority is Content; the First W is Who; the Fourth W is Where; the Second News Value is Progress; the Seventh News Value is Timeliness, and so on. If you know the Toolbox, and how to use it, you will make an A in this class; there’s no way I can stop you.

Your second assignment, due Wednesday for MW and Thursday for TTh, is to imagine you are a reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune. In class you were given the raw information for a story about “Moore.” Write the story for the morning Union-Tribune. Use Word or WP, standard margins, double-spaced. Most of you will get the story right, even on the first day of class, for this simple reason: you already know what the tools of journalism are. They weren’t invented by the media; they were created by people just like you, living thousands of years before the media even existed. Without my teaching you anything, you already know instinctively what the news is. Turn in your stories Wednesday or Thursday, and the instructor will pass them on to me.

That’s all for today. Now please find “Links” in the left column and send me an email at “Contact Me,” confirming you have read this material. Confirmation is mandatory. If you have any questions about the above, include them in your email. I look forward to working with you this semester.

The birth of rock and roll

The first song I ever learned to play on the guitar was “Folsom Prison Blues,” so it was nostalgic and fun when the Johnny Cash movie “Walk the Line” won all those Golden Globe awards this week.

But the movie, focused on the artists’ side, skipped over that history from the consumers’ side, from which a fascinating story should also be told, and a movie made.

In the 1950s in Abilene, Texas, typical of towns in the 50,000 population range, there were two radio stations, both AM. FM radio and what came to be called “narrowcasting” were still a couple of decades away. Whatever an Abilenian’s age or artistic preferences, anything he or she heard on radio came from one of the two stations, KRBC or KWKC.

In 1955, at age 12, on those two stations I listened to everything from “Arthur Godfrey” to “Breakfast Club with Don McNeil,” “Gabriel Heatter,” “Farm Bureau,” “Mixing Bowl,” “The Shadow,” and “Mutual’s Game of the Day,” and, of course, music, particularly popular music. Radio was already publishing “Top 10” lists on those days. The top 10 records for 1953 were “No Other Love” (Perry Como), “Til I Waltz Again with You (Teresa Brewer), “How Much is That Doggie in the Window” (Patti Page), “Song from Moulin Rouge” (Percy Faith), “Vaya con Dios” (Les Paul and Mary Ford), “I’m Walking Behind You” (Eddie Fisher), “You You You” (the Ames Brothers), “Rags to Riches” (Tony Bennett), “Pretend” (Nat King Cole) and “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes” (Perry Como).

If I was lucky, even in Abilene, a couple of times a day I would hear a country song: Hank Williams, Earnest Tubb, the Carters, Sons of the Pioneers. Compared to “No Other Love,” hearing “Your Cheatin’ Heart” was pretty cool. But the really cool stuff was still way in the distance. In 1954, I could hear stations in Oklahoma City, New Orleans and Nashville, whose signal sometimes was very clear in the still-uncluttered sky. On these stations I heard a new, high-energy music coming from people with exotic names like Fats Domino, Bobby Blue Bland, Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley.

That’s the way it was in Abilene, Texas, kids living in an adult culture but with a distant suggestion of change. Then came a Friday night in April, 1955. For the kids, Friday night was “show night” in Abilene. We went to the 1,000-seat Paramount Theater (admission: 9 cents), the classic Moorish castle courtyard design with night sky overhead complete with stars and clouds. Grade school, junior high and high school kids all sat in their traditional sections that had been staked out years before.

The movie this Friday night was “Blackboard Jungle,” starring Glenn Ford and Anne Francis. The kids knew nothing about the movie; they were only there because it was Friday night. First there was the black-and-white newsreel and the cartoon (“Looney Tunes,” etc.), and then the ornate red curtain came down, in preamble to the feature. The effect was to set up anticipation, and in fact the crowd became quiet. There were two or three minutes of relative calm. Then:

“One two three o’clock four o’clock ROCK
“Five six seven o’clock eight o’clock ROCK
“Nine ten eleven o’clock twelve o’clock ROCK
“We’re gonna ROCK around the CLOCK tonight!”

It was music, loud and urgent, and it thundered on into its first verse – “When the clock strikes one, join me hon” – but we all sat, rock-still, stunned, staring at the rising curtain, transfixed by the energy blasting at us from Bill Haley and the Comets. We had heard music like this, coming at us from somewhere else far across the sky. Now we sat in our very own Paramount, with its big speakers and this high-speed music rocketing at us, and for several seconds we were frozen by it. Then we reacted. We jumped up and yelled and the cooler ones got into the aisles and danced. It was a before-and-after moment that no one there would ever forget.

It was the first night in Abilene of a new extension of culture that would become a culture unto itself. The kids who came out of the Paramount that night weren’t the same kids who went in. In “Walk the Line,” that’s what was happening, the other side of the footlights. It changed Johnny Cash’s life, and, even equally so, mine. I tell my students today: you really should have been there, at the birth of rock and roll.

Heavenly Moments

This week has become a series of moments in heaven.

It began Tuesday morning. My sleepy wife, Karen, brought me a cup of coffee into the living room, where I was ensconced in my recliner beneath lamplight. Outside, the gray sky of early dawn was changing to intermediate blue, fading out the overnight sparkle of the downtown skyline in the distance. Puppies, let out for their morning rounds, trotted about the patio, scanning with noses down. A breeze played a light tune in the wind chimes.

The mug was warm in my hands. Steam swirled out. I lifted and sipped. In an instant, the warmth and taste had filled my body, down to my toes.

“Man,” I sighed. “This is heaven.”

It continued an hour later. I had maneuvered, with my still-awkward walker, into the hallway bathroom, accomplished my business, emptied my plastic hospital urinal of its overnight usage, and maneuvered back into the kitchen, and I immediately walkered toward Karen.

“I need a hug,” I said, and we shared one, our first stand-up hug since last Thursday, when we left the house at 5:30 a.m. for the hospital. I held her tight. My lips were next to her ear.

“This is heaven,” they said.

Next came C-Span. I had already been through the newspapers and was looking for distraction. After hip replacement surgery, you have to choose a spot in your house as personal headquarters because, by and large, you’re stuck there. When you’re stuck there, a little bit of “Today,” and “Robert Montgomery Day on TCM” go a long way. But there was C –Span, and the Alito confirmation hearings, and it was interesting!

“This is heaven,” I said. Three moments of heaven in about two hours. I jotted down a few notes.

Then there was the birdsong. I was in the back bathroom, windows open, shaving. Outside, a sparrow struck it up. His song, and the skritch of my razor, were the only sounds in the room. I compared the sparrow’s melody instantly to the previous four days of hospital room beeps and breeps and buzzes.

I thought: what about equipping the IV monitors and scanning machines and pressure readers with notes of birdsong? Bring the outside inside? No, I thought, so instantly reviled that I almost cut myself. That would be the murder of something precious. That would be, as Scout Finch realized, like killing the mockingbird, and not only that, but feeding it to a machine.

These moments of heaven this week are not born of comparison. The comparison – hospital room vs. living room – is there, sure, and completely obvious. Too obvious, to become a moment from heaven. That feeling rises from a deeper, fundamental knowledge that you have escaped from the machine.

You don’t go to a hospital to get well. You go to get something fixed, and with me, the hospital did a good job. Then you go home to get well.

That was never easy. Hospitals have always made you sick. Always, there are both the condition, and the treatment, to be survived. I will be several months, recovering not from arthritis, but from hip surgery. Antibiotics and pain pills make you sick. They are necessary for the sick, but unhealthy for the well. Hospitals have also become systems, whose pressure the patient and the family can feel, constantly. The system requires all subjects – both employees and customers – or in this case, providers and patients – to serve the system first and the situation second.

It is a business model – similar to IKEA – born of business needs, in which there is very little room for souls to connect. At IKEA, the temple of the impersonal, there is no need for such connection. At the hospital, there is that need, existing naturally among humans, who instinctively want to help each other. We tried, my providers and I, in my four days there, and on some level we succeeded. But whenever the decision was between soul and system, the system ruled. We were all simply humans, captives in the machine for the day, patiently, and finally wearily, looking for our moment to escape. I have my nice new hip, and I don’t have to go back any time soon. And that, my friend, is heaven.

Update

Good day, faithful readers! Karen here, with an update on Michael. Yesterday was a great day. Michael came home! He was a star through the surgery, brave as can be, and after 5 days in the hospital, is now most happy to be resting comfortably in his favorite recliner. With a brand new hip! Not much mobility so far, but that means constant care and attention from me, which, of course, he adores. “Not enough to want ‘Hip Replacement on Demand’ though,” he quips. (Refer to his blog “Pneumonia on Demand”).

He was 2-1/2 hours in surgery and 2 hours in recovery. He eschewed the general anesthesia and went with the spinal, and has no regrets. I was the “Nervous Nellie,” not him. I’m sure you will be hearing more about this when he returns. His favorite thing so far is the little silver bell I gave him for when he needs me. "Pace yourself," I said.

Michael thought he’d be able to write to his readers right away when he got home. Now he realizes, wisely, that recovery is king. All his energy and focus must be on getting his strength back. It only comes as it comes. Many thanks to everyone for all your kind thoughts and prayers. I’ve posted another San Diego sunrise for your enjoyment. It is a glorious world we live in!

Warm regards,
Karen

The un-inverted pyramid

Based on information published by The New York Times this week, the business of journalism has come full circle.

The Times reports (Jan. 2 edition) that subjects of stories in both print and broadcast news media are using their Websites to publish every scrap of information about the story: interviews, phone transcripts, email exchanges, pages of notes, etc.

Predictably, the subject didn’t like the story, even if there were no errors in it, and invites readers to look at all the material and decide if the story was fair or not.

That’s fine, but for most stories, there will be a huge volume of material to read, and most people, outside of media professionals, academics and critics, won’t take the time.

Which is exactly why journalism became a business in the first place. A couple of thousand years ago, the world had become such an eventful place that people didn’t have the time or resources to gather the news for themselves. An industry was born, whose workers collected, digested, organized and distributed news to the public, the same way brake shops eventually were born to fix brakes for those people who didn’t have the time or equipment to do it themselves.

Even then, consuming the early media took time. The ancient reporters still collected more information for a story than they would ever use, but they used far more information than we do now. Before the mid-1880s, they wrote all their stories in the narrative style, which is organized chronologically, includes many details (for interest), develops slowly (for drama) and puts the climax (what happened) at the end.

The narrative style is still alive and well. It is the style in which novels, plays and screenplays are written. The old-timey journalists liked it, too, but in 1844, something happened that would revolutionize journalism. Samuel F.B. Morse introduced telegraph technology into the commerce of communications. Before 1844, information could travel no faster than a courier on horseback, or in a railway car, or on a steamship. With Morse, overnight, it became possible to move information through a wire at nearly the speed of light.

Telegraphy was not researched, or developed, or introduced, with the newspaper industry in mind. But newspapers quickly adapted the technology to their needs. By 1848, they were using it to transmit news of the Mexican-American War back to their offices. President Polk first heard of the American victory at Veracruz not from his generals, but from a newspaper editor.

In 1861, the biggest story of the 19th century broke out: the Civil War. Hundreds of reporters were in the field, collecting information and returning to press tents to write their stories, all in the long, detailed narrative style, with who won at the end. They lined up at the telegraph shack, controlled by the military, to send their stories back. But each story took so long to send that waiting reporters complained. The military began kicking reporters out of the shack before their stories were half-sent.

The reporters learned quickly to turn their stories over: climax at the top, edit details, arrange in logical order. The classic inverted pyramid. Even if they got kicked out after five minutes, the reporters knew they had sent the most important information first. They knew all the details couldn’t get in, so they learned to edit details, keeping the most important to put into the story, and saving the others (reporters never throw anything away) for the less-important feature or color stories. Then they arranged the story in logical order of importance, so that no matter when they got kicked out, they knew that the lost part of the story was always less important than what had been sent, no matter where the “cut” was.

The Civil War ended in 1865, and the inverted pyramid was no longer necessary. But it survives to this day for one reason: the public liked it. No longer obligated to read all 100 inches to find out what happened, they happily discovered they could read the first five or six paragraphs and have the heart of the story, with no need to read on unless they wanted to. The inverted pyramid made readers their own editors.

Since 1861, journalists have worked hard to develop and use the values and principles needed to analyze volumes – sometimes huge volumes – of information and organize it into a story that the reader can understand, and believe. Pressures of competition have created all kinds of trouble for the industry, and doubts among its consumers, but the inverted pyramid remains the way that journalism is done. Dismantling the pyramid and presenting the raw information for readers may be interesting for 30 minutes or so, but that kind of blogging will never become an industry. They all need an editor – desperately – and the reader just isn’t going to take on the job.

Finding diamonds

Jan. 4, 7:01 a.m.

A clear morning here, and we watched for the diamond. Every clear morning, for a couple of seconds, the earth wears the sun like a diamond on the rim of the world.

The sun, in those seconds, is as white as a diamond and sparkles like one, glittering rays spilling into view at the moment the first brilliant carat of sun appears.

You can only watch for a couple of seconds, but it is long enough for the symbolism to take place. Every day begins with this ceremony of earth and sun, the earth slipping on the sun’s ring with its signal of all the potential for us that their marriage has to offer, the enormity of our fortune to exist in such a place as this marriage provides, and the opportunity given us to be inspired by it. It’s up to us, what to do with it, but it is always there, every morning.

The sun came up a couple minutes later for us this morning, because it came up behind Tut's hands (more about Tut at another time). Other hilltops, and the downtown skyline to our west, were in sunlight before we were, as the shadow of the hands let the light work toward us and the diamond, cupped in Tut's hands, appeared.

Karen pointed out something very interesting to me yesterday. If you want to see the photo on a larger scale (the diamond will be easier to see) without the text, just click on it. Once that image appears, you can right-click on it and a menu appears. Scroll down to "Set as Background," click on it, and the image becomes your desktop background. I thought it was very cool that every day I can change my desktop background to show that morning's sunrise.

We won't be here for tomorrow's sunrise. I am checking in at 5:30 a.m. for hip replacement surgery. Karen will post photos Friday and through the weekend and I will be home Monday.

Computer champions

There is one thing wrong with college football’s Bowl Championship Series, and that is the word “championship.”

USC and Texas are not playing Wednesday night for a championship. Championships are won on the field, not in a computer. Sometime on Dec. 3 or Dec. 4 – both teams played their last regular-season games on Dec. 3 – data fed into a computer showed that, statistically, these were the best two teams in the nation and that they would meet Jan. 4 – one month later for the “national championship.”

Since then, the teams have not played a single game. They have practiced, but practice isn’t the same. The edge of winning or losing at the end of three hours is not present in practice. Early in the season, coaches strive to push their teams toward mid-season form. They can’t do that in practice. They have to play an opponent every week, which is also trying to reach mid-season form.

All the teams reach mid-season form, of one kind or another, but a few go on to achieve championship form. They play 10, 11, 12 games, and they win a conference championship, in late November or the first Saturday in December.

Then they get invited, or selected to, a bowl game, and they go sit on their championship form for a month. That has been going on for decades, in the bowl game business, and that was fine. Champions weren’t being determined; regional bragging rights were being settled, while the rest of those in the nation who were interested got to see the best of the best play one more time, which was something to do on New Year’s Day even if the teams performed like they hadn’t played in a month.

The BCS process is exactly the same, except the BCS makes deals with television so that some of the teams who haven’t played in a month get to play their bowl game at 10 in the morning or 9 at night. The feeling develops that, in such a system, the game is secondary to the business.

Yet this USC-Texas game is supposed to be for “the national championship.” The only thing wrong with that is the word “championship.” Ask Pete Carroll. The USC coach this week called the BCS a joke.

It wouldn’t be too difficult to organize a college football championship series. If it had happened this season, most teams at the big-time level would have finished their seasons Dec. 3, as USC and Texas did. On Dec. 4, 16 teams – conference champions and three-odd at-large teams – would have been seeded into a bracket. Seeding lets the polls and their computers participate. USC, the Pac-10 champion, would also have topped the polls and been seeded No 1, at the top of the bracket. Texas would have been ranked second nationally and seeded second, at the bottom of the bracket. If form held true, these two teams would win out and meet in the championship game.

The first round of games would have been played Dec. 10. The quarterfinals would have been Dec. 17, and the semifinals Dec. 24. The last two teams standing would have met for the national championship on Jan. 2 (or on Jan. 1 in years when New Year’s Day doesn’t fall on Sunday), with their competitive edges intact. The championship series would be only part of the college football on holiday television – there is no reason why all the fill-in-the-blank bowls, pitting all the 7-4 and 6-5 teams, would not still be played.

But there is a fatal flaw in a championship series: television loses control. College football becomes just like the baseball World Series: you never know when some donkey like the White Sox is going to knock off the glamour seed and mess up the ratings. Advertisers spend millions on wonderful commercials, and millions more on air time, and on Jan. 2, television is going to give them West Virginia vs. Penn State?

No, television has had a month to put the package together, and on Wednesday night, Jan. 4, a day and date steeped in college football tradition, we are going to see two super but stale teams battle for a championship only a computer would recognize.

Clouds at our feet

Jan. 3, 6:57 a.m.

Sometimes the clouds reach down to us, other mornings they are at our feet. Technically it is fog that nestles in the East County valleys when conditions such as this morning’s are in place. Yet to come is a photo – can’t say when – of the entire valley cloaked in fog except for treetops poking through. That happens four or five times a year.

The sun rises relatively early in San Diego, just before 7 a.m. in January, because we are in the eastern range of the Pacific Standard Time zone. Compare this to West Texas, which is in the western extreme of the Central Standard Time zone, and where it is still dark at 7:30 a.m.

The storm at sunset

And this is how a storm passing at sunset appears in our sky. 5:07 p.m., January 2.

First storm at dawn

Rain arrived last night, the first Pacific storm of the season to reach Southern California. At dawn, we are in a lull with the main part of the storm due in later this morning. Maybe even some thunder this afternoon. It is going to rain on the Rose Parade, which makes good TV if nothing else.

We need the rain. Winter is the rainy season on this coastal desert next to the Pacific. In October, Southern Californians get their lawnmowers out of the garage. After 34 years in San Diego, I still can’t get used to that. But the season is starting late this year. November and December were sunny and warm, and everything green was drying out. We will get rain until March or so, then the weathermen won’t have anything to do until fall.

The best storms here form way up in the Gulf of Alaska, then sweep southward across the Pacific to be steered by the jet stream into the northwest (where most of the weather goes) or farther south into California. The San Francisco and Napa Valley areas have been pounded all week by storms riding a jet stream that only over the weekend started to dip south toward us. Ocean temperatures have an effect on the storms and their direction. When the famous El Nino effect is present, the ocean, which is normally cool to cold off Southern California, warms a few degrees, and the warmth is a storm magnet. An El Nino can bring us a lot of storminess. This isn’t an El Nino year.

You can’t see it, but this storm is also very windy, which drives up the cozy quotient. Today will be a good day for glowing hearths and football games.

Happy New Year!

Good morning and Happy New Year from San Diego! This was our New Year’s dawn; first light was about 5:30, these were the colors at 6:30, and the sun rose a couple of minutes before 7.

Karen and I watch these events every morning from the glider on the south porch of our house. We call it “Glider Time.” It is just the finest way to start the day: coffee and the colors of the dawn, and quiet talk about our lives and the day to come.

Our ancient ancestors in the Northern Hemisphere knew about the sun settling lower and lower into the southern sky as the days lost their length and their warmth. It must have seemed to them that the sun was going away and eventually would disappear, leaving them to survive in the dark, which they feared, and the cold, which they knew could kill them.

But then a day arrived when the sun turned around and came back toward them, giving them longer days and gathering warmth. They learned to identify that day, which we know now as the Winter Solstice, and to celebrate it, for their salvation and for the promise of new light and warmth it brought them.

The same is true of every sunrise, bringing new light and warmth to our potential on this earth to make the best of it. A beautiful sunset is the rainbow of a day’s storm passing, promising the sun’s return from darkness. A beautiful sunrise is the fulfillment of that promise, offering us all a blank new day to fill to the best of our potential. The Jan. 1 dawn is the strongest symbol of that potential, coming so soon after the Winter Solstice and on the first morning of the cycle of days by which we measure our lives and our history. We watched the sun’s beautiful heraldry this New Year’s morning, awakening us to the promise of this first day, and of the year to come.

Our intention is to share every San Diego sunrise with you this year and welcome you to join us daily to share the beauty and feel the promise.