Well, now they know about Chuck Moser in Sydney, Australia.
A couple of months ago, an order for “Warbirds” came in from Stephen Dunne, who identified himself as a football (American football, not soccer) coach in Sydney.
In case you don’t know, I published “Warbirds” two years ago as an historical documentary of the 1954-57 Abilene High School Eagles football team, which at the end of the century was named “Team of the Century” in Texas high school football. The Eagles, under Coach Chuck Moser, won 49 straight games and three straight state championships from 1954-57.
I conceived the book simply as a reconstruction of the details of the streak, most of which were long since forgotten. But I wasn’t very far into the work when I saw that the details may have been about the streak, but the heart of the book was how the Eagles played the game. The book was more about the coach than it was the team.
The book was shipped to Stephen Dunne, and last week I heard from him again.
“Coach Moser is shown in such a wonderful light,” he said. “His attitude and strength comes through in the book. I'm head coach of Sydney University Lions down here in Sydney, Australia. We've made six straight State Championship games, winning the last three. The last two seasons have been undefeated and we are on a 31 game winning streak. When reading I looked for some keys to Coach Moser's success as well as what motivates the players to succeed.”
Sports in Australia are organized not so much along high school or university lines as along “club” lines. I’m not sure what that means. I visited the Sydney University Website and had a hard time figuring out who might be eligible to play for Coach Dunne’s team. Their season is also reversed from ours. In March, it’s fall in Australia, and teams this weekend are playing their fourth games of the season. The Sydney University Cubs (colors: maroon and gold) are playing the Northwestern Pumas at 7 tonight (Sydney time) at the UNSW Hockey Complex in Little Bay. Last week, the Cubs beat the UTS Gridiron Gators, 30-14.
“I had read another book about Coach Moser (before I found out about yours) and it was very disappointing,” Coach Dunne said. “No details on the football, not even what offense they ran (I'm also a collector and student of 50s football, Spilt T offenses and such.) The other book also gave no clear picture of what Coach was like. I was so glad to read a version that did justice to the subject. My congratulations.”
Well, shucks. Music to my ears.
“It's a book I will be returning to,” he said, “and - I hope you'll be happy to know - I will slip in some references to Coach Moser when talking to the team.”
The team could do worse. Chuck Moser didn’t start with X’s and O’s, but with values and principles. There were rules of football, and also of living. From these he developed a program that was designed simply to give his team its best chance to win. Now that word is reaching a football team in Sydney, Australia. Am I happy to know? Yes, I think so. I press the book to my chest and thank God I had something to do with making that happen.
March 31, 2006
March 23, 2006
How kids complete us
Mark me down in favor of chasing ducks.
I am sure that my two kids chased a duck or two in their time, and I am sure that I let them. I know I didn’t coach them to do this, as fellow San Diego columnist David Moye has done, and has caught some flack for. I know I would have been surprised if my kids didn’t take out after any duck, or gull, or goose or eagle, that came closer than 20 yards to them.
I was also confident that if a kid managed to get too close to a duck, the duck would know what to do. Then it would have been me, chasing out to shoo the duck off the kid and coo over her that it was just a duck and there was no need to be traumatized for life. Of course I would be preaching to the choir, because there would be no chance of the kid ever again chasing a duck. Likewise, I would assume that a traumatized duck would never again come within chasing distance of a kid. So many of them do, though, that I wonder if they think about it at all.
I am glad other publications have someone who writes about kids. He reminds me of writing about, and fathering, mine. I am reminded deliciously of the kind of secret love that exists only at an objective distance, such as is felt by a father in a dark bedroom, standing with a hand on a crib in which his child is soundly sleeping. The father must make a contract with himself, not to share the moment with anyone, so personal is its power.
Kids complete us, you know. When my daughter was born in 1974, I became a parent. Obvious as that statement seems, it is also worthy of the greatest respect. Parents are everywhere, but the only way to become one is to have a child. It is like joining the oldest and most revered guild.
A human being can’t know anything distinct about being a parent until he becomes one. Before 1974, I walked among fields of parents, socialized with them, befriended them, visited them in their homes, without the slightest clue about who they were. In total ignorance, I made judgments about them.
When I became one of them, that started to change. It took a child. Watching this child, and later her brother, cute, fat, little babies with their raging appetites for love and knowledge and independence, I started to see someone else, another child. Me. Parents can almost see through their kids’ eyes, because they have been there. Hanging out with these kids provided me the opportunity to revisit my own childhood, but with the experience of all my accumulated years.
It was enlightening. Through my kids, I came to a totally new and original understanding of a childhood that I had already lived. It was like a circle closing. A parent’s children complete his childhood.
When that happened, of course, I had to reconsider my parents. Who were they? I thought I knew. They were loving, autocratic, opinionated, inconsistent, nosy. But those were only my judgments of them. I lived with parents, bonded to them and shaped by them, from the day I was born until the days they died, and there were such vital things I never knew about them.
Until I became one. Then, watching my children, I saw myself as a child. Through those eyes, I saw my parents in a completely new way. A second circle was being closed. For the first time, I thought I could understand my parents. To understand did not mean to accept. I am not the parent that my parents were. Many of their ways, I have rejected, and modified others. What I came to understand was how those decisions were made. Many times, my parents were flying by the seat of their pants.
Then, looking at my parents, through this new childhood perspective that my children had provided me, I saw someone else. Me, again. This time as a parent. A third circle was closing. Having kids let me see my own childhood more clearly, my parents more clearly, and myself more clearly as a parent. Dr. Spock himself could not have taught me that.
Here was some new understanding that I could use. Growing up, my kids were living with a father they didn’t really know. They had judgments of me, but they were their judgments. There were vital things they didn’t know about me, and couldn’t until one day they walked in my shoes.
The best I could do was provide them clues about me, let them know me as best I could. Much of that I did by writing about them, and about me. Now another publication has a father doing that very thing, and I am glad.
I am sure that my two kids chased a duck or two in their time, and I am sure that I let them. I know I didn’t coach them to do this, as fellow San Diego columnist David Moye has done, and has caught some flack for. I know I would have been surprised if my kids didn’t take out after any duck, or gull, or goose or eagle, that came closer than 20 yards to them.
I was also confident that if a kid managed to get too close to a duck, the duck would know what to do. Then it would have been me, chasing out to shoo the duck off the kid and coo over her that it was just a duck and there was no need to be traumatized for life. Of course I would be preaching to the choir, because there would be no chance of the kid ever again chasing a duck. Likewise, I would assume that a traumatized duck would never again come within chasing distance of a kid. So many of them do, though, that I wonder if they think about it at all.
I am glad other publications have someone who writes about kids. He reminds me of writing about, and fathering, mine. I am reminded deliciously of the kind of secret love that exists only at an objective distance, such as is felt by a father in a dark bedroom, standing with a hand on a crib in which his child is soundly sleeping. The father must make a contract with himself, not to share the moment with anyone, so personal is its power.
Kids complete us, you know. When my daughter was born in 1974, I became a parent. Obvious as that statement seems, it is also worthy of the greatest respect. Parents are everywhere, but the only way to become one is to have a child. It is like joining the oldest and most revered guild.
A human being can’t know anything distinct about being a parent until he becomes one. Before 1974, I walked among fields of parents, socialized with them, befriended them, visited them in their homes, without the slightest clue about who they were. In total ignorance, I made judgments about them.
When I became one of them, that started to change. It took a child. Watching this child, and later her brother, cute, fat, little babies with their raging appetites for love and knowledge and independence, I started to see someone else, another child. Me. Parents can almost see through their kids’ eyes, because they have been there. Hanging out with these kids provided me the opportunity to revisit my own childhood, but with the experience of all my accumulated years.
It was enlightening. Through my kids, I came to a totally new and original understanding of a childhood that I had already lived. It was like a circle closing. A parent’s children complete his childhood.
When that happened, of course, I had to reconsider my parents. Who were they? I thought I knew. They were loving, autocratic, opinionated, inconsistent, nosy. But those were only my judgments of them. I lived with parents, bonded to them and shaped by them, from the day I was born until the days they died, and there were such vital things I never knew about them.
Until I became one. Then, watching my children, I saw myself as a child. Through those eyes, I saw my parents in a completely new way. A second circle was being closed. For the first time, I thought I could understand my parents. To understand did not mean to accept. I am not the parent that my parents were. Many of their ways, I have rejected, and modified others. What I came to understand was how those decisions were made. Many times, my parents were flying by the seat of their pants.
Then, looking at my parents, through this new childhood perspective that my children had provided me, I saw someone else. Me, again. This time as a parent. A third circle was closing. Having kids let me see my own childhood more clearly, my parents more clearly, and myself more clearly as a parent. Dr. Spock himself could not have taught me that.
Here was some new understanding that I could use. Growing up, my kids were living with a father they didn’t really know. They had judgments of me, but they were their judgments. There were vital things they didn’t know about me, and couldn’t until one day they walked in my shoes.
The best I could do was provide them clues about me, let them know me as best I could. Much of that I did by writing about them, and about me. Now another publication has a father doing that very thing, and I am glad.
March 20, 2006
Some anniversary
Wow, the third anniversary of the beginning of the invasion of Iraq. There’s something to drink to. I wish it would hurry up and be over, so the country could spend that money on the war on terrorism.
Imagine, having $200 billion, the cost of the Iraqi action so far, available to fight the war on terrorism. The main network, the Osama network, might have been totally smoked out by now.
It is aggravating to know bin Laden is still at large and plotting various forms of doom for the Westerners. He must feel either very lucky, that the U.S. has burned the $200 billion in Iraq, or very smug. Could he have known that one of the consequences of 9/11 would have been the Bush administration’s decision to attack the wrong enemy?
It is interesting to wonder how much bin Laden did understand, about how deeply the 9/11 hit would wound this country. Destruction of icons, yes, and installation of fear, and he no doubt knew about the financial records that would be destroyed in the attack, and the immediate blow to U.S. financial institutions.
But did he foresee airline bankruptcies? Insurance industry crises? Security paranoia, and accompanying political polarization? Administration attacks on the Constitution? Polls showing 60-plus percent disapproval ratings of the President of the United States? The U.S. Treasury being bled dry, through all these holes blasted into it by 9/11?
Saddam Hussein was no Mr. Rogers, but if in 2003 you stood him side-by-side with Osama bin Laden, and handed the average American a rifle, it’s not hard to predict who would have gotten shot first. By calling it a “war on terror,” Mr. Bush must have meant he was at least aiming at bin Laden. How did he miss him, and hit Saddam?
That question was not meant to be funny. It’s still hard to suppress a chuckle, though, when you remember Mr. Bush aiming at a Supreme Court nominee and hitting Harriet Miers instead, or aiming at disaster leadership and saying, “Brownie you’re doing a heck of a job,” or watching his own political army duck and beg him please to put the gun down before the fall elections.
Strange to suppose, that the strongest voice for Iraq withdrawal would turn out to be the Bush political base. A strange way to get out, but totally appropriate, given the way we got in. Let’s just do it, stop the drain, give bin Laden some disappointment for a change.
Imagine, having $200 billion, the cost of the Iraqi action so far, available to fight the war on terrorism. The main network, the Osama network, might have been totally smoked out by now.
It is aggravating to know bin Laden is still at large and plotting various forms of doom for the Westerners. He must feel either very lucky, that the U.S. has burned the $200 billion in Iraq, or very smug. Could he have known that one of the consequences of 9/11 would have been the Bush administration’s decision to attack the wrong enemy?
It is interesting to wonder how much bin Laden did understand, about how deeply the 9/11 hit would wound this country. Destruction of icons, yes, and installation of fear, and he no doubt knew about the financial records that would be destroyed in the attack, and the immediate blow to U.S. financial institutions.
But did he foresee airline bankruptcies? Insurance industry crises? Security paranoia, and accompanying political polarization? Administration attacks on the Constitution? Polls showing 60-plus percent disapproval ratings of the President of the United States? The U.S. Treasury being bled dry, through all these holes blasted into it by 9/11?
Saddam Hussein was no Mr. Rogers, but if in 2003 you stood him side-by-side with Osama bin Laden, and handed the average American a rifle, it’s not hard to predict who would have gotten shot first. By calling it a “war on terror,” Mr. Bush must have meant he was at least aiming at bin Laden. How did he miss him, and hit Saddam?
That question was not meant to be funny. It’s still hard to suppress a chuckle, though, when you remember Mr. Bush aiming at a Supreme Court nominee and hitting Harriet Miers instead, or aiming at disaster leadership and saying, “Brownie you’re doing a heck of a job,” or watching his own political army duck and beg him please to put the gun down before the fall elections.
Strange to suppose, that the strongest voice for Iraq withdrawal would turn out to be the Bush political base. A strange way to get out, but totally appropriate, given the way we got in. Let’s just do it, stop the drain, give bin Laden some disappointment for a change.
March 18, 2006
Directions to a new blog
Today I inaugurated a new blog at http://www.michaelgrant.com/newsblog/. The blog below, “Conjugating the News,” is the introductory blog at the new site and is offered here as your reference to this new work. This blog will continue in its general essay form, and the new blog has a specific focus, explained below. I hope to see you there, as well as here. MG
Conjugating the News
Most Americans have a strange, but innocent, belief about how the news media decides what is and isn’t news.
Growing criticism of the media at the beginning of the new century has encouraged many of them to give voice to that belief, and the voice is instructive. One critic, in a recent letter to the editor n San Diego, CA, found the heart of the issue in a single sentence.
“It’s strange to me,” said the reader, Stuart Jewell, “that almost all columnists and reporters assume the talent of being able to define what ‘the people’ want to know and how urgently they want to know it.”
It’s not strange at all. Columnists and reporters don’t assume anything. They go to journalism school, where they learn the definitions of what the people want to know, and how urgently they want to know it. The study of journalism is no mystery; it is as black-and-white as mathematics. Journalism uses definitions, rules and values that are as clear-cut as the conjugation of verbs. If first-year journalism students can’t define what news is by the end of the semester, and its relative levels of urgency, then they flunk the class.
This “talent” appears strange to the general public, who Stuart Jewell represents so well, because they never studied “News” in school. Not their fault; it isn’t taught. But it should be, right alongside English, civics and computer literacy. In this age, of all ages, the study of “News” should not be confined to journalism studies; it should be a core social sciences class in every American high school. In the Introduction to its 2001 book, “The Element of Journalism,” the Committee of Concerned Journalists states: “In the new century, one of the most profound questions for democratic society is whether an independent press survives. The answer will depend on whether journalists have the clarity and conviction to articulate what an independent press means, and whether, as citizens, the rest of us care.” The answer from citizens, according to Stuart Jewell, is that citizens have no idea what to care about. They have never been taught what their role is.
That is the purpose of this course of instruction. Welcome to one journalist’s attempt to articulate what an independent press means. It is time for the public to learn its responsibility in the media-public relationship, as a step in accepting that responsibility. If a course in civics equips students with the information and means to participate in a democratic society, “Conjugating the News” will provide students the knowledge and background to become discerning consumers of information, in which they are immersed every single day. Their subject of study will be the same subject that media professionals have been studying for years.
Actually, my first-year journalism students never flunk my class because they don’t know what news is. They may flunk because they can’t spell, can’t punctuate, and slide around grammar as if it were a greased flagpole. But they don’t flunk the news part, because of a wonderfully elegant wrinkle: they know what the news is before they ever get to my class.
I didn’t understand that until about five years ago. I had been teaching, for some years, the survey “Mass Media and Society” course. Doing that work, it became clear to me that the definition of “news,” and the values and categories of news, were not created by the media. They were created by early humans, tens of thousands of years before the media existed. Taken together, they constituted a “reaction package,” that humans from the earliest days to the present, carry around with them all the time. The media simply took that reaction package, starting about 3,500 years ago, and turned it into a business.
It made me curious. I wanted to test it. Back in my “Introduction to News Writing” classes, on the first day of the next semester, I said, “Before I teach you a single thing in this class, you already know what the news is.” I gave them a page of notes, several lines of details, arranged randomly, as if they were notes in a reporter’s notebook, about an event that had “happened” that day.
“Imagine you are reporters for the morning paper. I want you to look at this information, then write the first sentence of the story – what this information is about – and bring it with you to our next class. I will ask you to read your sentence, and we will see if you know what the news is.”
Their rate of success was about 90 percent, and after five years – 10 semesters – of testing, it remains steady at about that level. They were carrying the reaction package around all along. It must mean that most – practically all – of the American population knows what the news is. It must mean that Stuart Jewell knows what the news is. So what is it, about what columnists and reporters do, that seems strange to him?
It brings us back to the beginning: education. A free press is vital to the survival of a democracy, so vital that it predates the Constitution. Very interesting to realize that the Constitution did not create press freedom. The First Amendment states, in part: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press.” The key word is “abridging,” which means to reduce in scope, or diminish. That means the framers understood, in the infant democracy after the Revolution, that freedom of the press already existed.
The First Amendment guarantees the press almost absolute power to do its job. Now we have evidence, more than 200 years later, of citizens to whom this work, of columnists and reporters, seems “strange.” I remember that strangeness very well, leafing through an algebra book that had just been issued to me and thinking, “I’ll never learn this stuff.” But I did, and I was allowed to move on toward graduation.
What is strange to me is that if algebra is required for high school graduation in the United States of America, then news – this conscious-unconscious reaction package that we all carry, that the media turned into a business – sure as hell should be, too. Public knowledge of where news comes from is vital to a basic understanding, and a basic acceptance, of how this enormously powerful, beyond abridging, press, the mainstream media, does its job. That acceptance is at the heart of the “profound question” posed by the Committee of Concerned Journalists for democratic society in the 21st century.
There is something else the public needs to understand. The media originally turned the human “reaction package” into a business to keep people informed. But a second media function, totally separate and distinct from information and news, has evolved. The reaction package makes people vulnerable to manipulation. Over time, the media, and groups (entertainment, marketing, political) who are expert in using media, learned and developed extremely sophisticated ways to use the package to manipulate public reactions. That second, enormously powerful, function of the media, is a powerful second reason for public education in the conjugation of the human responses that started it all.
Conjugating the News
Most Americans have a strange, but innocent, belief about how the news media decides what is and isn’t news.
Growing criticism of the media at the beginning of the new century has encouraged many of them to give voice to that belief, and the voice is instructive. One critic, in a recent letter to the editor n San Diego, CA, found the heart of the issue in a single sentence.
“It’s strange to me,” said the reader, Stuart Jewell, “that almost all columnists and reporters assume the talent of being able to define what ‘the people’ want to know and how urgently they want to know it.”
It’s not strange at all. Columnists and reporters don’t assume anything. They go to journalism school, where they learn the definitions of what the people want to know, and how urgently they want to know it. The study of journalism is no mystery; it is as black-and-white as mathematics. Journalism uses definitions, rules and values that are as clear-cut as the conjugation of verbs. If first-year journalism students can’t define what news is by the end of the semester, and its relative levels of urgency, then they flunk the class.
This “talent” appears strange to the general public, who Stuart Jewell represents so well, because they never studied “News” in school. Not their fault; it isn’t taught. But it should be, right alongside English, civics and computer literacy. In this age, of all ages, the study of “News” should not be confined to journalism studies; it should be a core social sciences class in every American high school. In the Introduction to its 2001 book, “The Element of Journalism,” the Committee of Concerned Journalists states: “In the new century, one of the most profound questions for democratic society is whether an independent press survives. The answer will depend on whether journalists have the clarity and conviction to articulate what an independent press means, and whether, as citizens, the rest of us care.” The answer from citizens, according to Stuart Jewell, is that citizens have no idea what to care about. They have never been taught what their role is.
That is the purpose of this course of instruction. Welcome to one journalist’s attempt to articulate what an independent press means. It is time for the public to learn its responsibility in the media-public relationship, as a step in accepting that responsibility. If a course in civics equips students with the information and means to participate in a democratic society, “Conjugating the News” will provide students the knowledge and background to become discerning consumers of information, in which they are immersed every single day. Their subject of study will be the same subject that media professionals have been studying for years.
Actually, my first-year journalism students never flunk my class because they don’t know what news is. They may flunk because they can’t spell, can’t punctuate, and slide around grammar as if it were a greased flagpole. But they don’t flunk the news part, because of a wonderfully elegant wrinkle: they know what the news is before they ever get to my class.
I didn’t understand that until about five years ago. I had been teaching, for some years, the survey “Mass Media and Society” course. Doing that work, it became clear to me that the definition of “news,” and the values and categories of news, were not created by the media. They were created by early humans, tens of thousands of years before the media existed. Taken together, they constituted a “reaction package,” that humans from the earliest days to the present, carry around with them all the time. The media simply took that reaction package, starting about 3,500 years ago, and turned it into a business.
It made me curious. I wanted to test it. Back in my “Introduction to News Writing” classes, on the first day of the next semester, I said, “Before I teach you a single thing in this class, you already know what the news is.” I gave them a page of notes, several lines of details, arranged randomly, as if they were notes in a reporter’s notebook, about an event that had “happened” that day.
“Imagine you are reporters for the morning paper. I want you to look at this information, then write the first sentence of the story – what this information is about – and bring it with you to our next class. I will ask you to read your sentence, and we will see if you know what the news is.”
Their rate of success was about 90 percent, and after five years – 10 semesters – of testing, it remains steady at about that level. They were carrying the reaction package around all along. It must mean that most – practically all – of the American population knows what the news is. It must mean that Stuart Jewell knows what the news is. So what is it, about what columnists and reporters do, that seems strange to him?
It brings us back to the beginning: education. A free press is vital to the survival of a democracy, so vital that it predates the Constitution. Very interesting to realize that the Constitution did not create press freedom. The First Amendment states, in part: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press.” The key word is “abridging,” which means to reduce in scope, or diminish. That means the framers understood, in the infant democracy after the Revolution, that freedom of the press already existed.
The First Amendment guarantees the press almost absolute power to do its job. Now we have evidence, more than 200 years later, of citizens to whom this work, of columnists and reporters, seems “strange.” I remember that strangeness very well, leafing through an algebra book that had just been issued to me and thinking, “I’ll never learn this stuff.” But I did, and I was allowed to move on toward graduation.
What is strange to me is that if algebra is required for high school graduation in the United States of America, then news – this conscious-unconscious reaction package that we all carry, that the media turned into a business – sure as hell should be, too. Public knowledge of where news comes from is vital to a basic understanding, and a basic acceptance, of how this enormously powerful, beyond abridging, press, the mainstream media, does its job. That acceptance is at the heart of the “profound question” posed by the Committee of Concerned Journalists for democratic society in the 21st century.
There is something else the public needs to understand. The media originally turned the human “reaction package” into a business to keep people informed. But a second media function, totally separate and distinct from information and news, has evolved. The reaction package makes people vulnerable to manipulation. Over time, the media, and groups (entertainment, marketing, political) who are expert in using media, learned and developed extremely sophisticated ways to use the package to manipulate public reactions. That second, enormously powerful, function of the media, is a powerful second reason for public education in the conjugation of the human responses that started it all.
March 17, 2006
Delivering the mail
Back in the day, it was Life, Look and The Saturday Evening Post, crammed into the bag, and they were heavy. We didn’t have scooters, either. Rain, snow, dark of night, they were all foot routes.
We had plenty of compensation, though. People loved to see us coming. We might have a letter for them. It was a good feeling to slip a couple of letters into the mailbox.
These days, it’s duplicate copies to most households of catalogues from L.L. Bean, Land’s End, Victoria’s Secret, Macy’s, whoever. But the letter compensation is dwindling. People don’t write letters anymore. They send emails. The Post Office says “personal mail” has dropped off by a third in the last 25 years, to an average of 1.1 personal letter per household per week. That sounds high to me. Our household gets about one personal letter for every 1,267 Victoria’s Secret catalogues.
Our mailman can’t get much joy from that. With the possible exception of the Sears catalogue, there is not one thing (even scooters) about today’s mail carrier that I would choose over my days, 40 years ago, on the routes.
Being a mailman was the second-best job I ever had. Being an essay writer is the best. Teaching is so noble, and I wish it came in at least second, but it only finishes third, because there is so damn much work.
I was a substitute carrier, which made it even better. Something new every day. I got different routes every day. Never knew where the dogs were. Never knew what people would leave me in their mailboxes, or give to me as they greeted me at their screen doors. It was fun, and poignant, seeing the doubt flicker in their sweet faces as they stood there at the screen door and saw me arrive.
“Where’s Jim?” they would say, looking forward to their regular carrier. “Off today,” I would say, smiling. “Oh,” they would say, disappointed, suddenly self-conscious about the couple of peaches, or apricots, in their hands. “Well. Here,” they would always say, and push open the screen and hand over the fruit, or muffin, or pie. I would always take it, of course, even if it were only a couple of shriveled apricots (not my favorites, even without the worm holes).
The letters were the best. Because we carried so much mail, carriers knew things about the mail that an ordinary citizen might never see in a lifetime. Not everybody on the route received a letter that also, on the back of the envelope, carried a message for the carrier: “Postman, postman, don’t be slow; be like Elvis, go man, go.” What letter carrier with a heart wouldn’t practice diligent and dedication, in rain, snow or dark of night, to speed this letter from an author so eager to see it delivered into the hands of the recipient?
You just don’t get that in an email. Yes, I know you can send attachments with emails, or email a greeting card complete with motion and music, but it is not nearly the same as a letter I delivered one day from someone with artist’s skills vacationing in Paris, who had sketched, on front and back of the envelope, in a rainbow of colored pencil, a map, complete with features (tower, arc, etc.) of central Paris.
You could tell the love letters, because they were thick. Three pages (you could tell two pages from three, or four, by the feel) on average, all hand-written. Compare that as a labor of love to an email, however amorous. And when the letter was marked, across the flap on the back, “S.W.A.K.,” you knew it had been sealed with a kiss, the sender’s lip DNA right there on the envelope. You can’t kiss an email, and “Sealed With A Keystroke” has none of the fire of the old analog technique. You young hipsters who sneer at stationery, envelopes and longhand, you might think about that.
We had plenty of compensation, though. People loved to see us coming. We might have a letter for them. It was a good feeling to slip a couple of letters into the mailbox.
These days, it’s duplicate copies to most households of catalogues from L.L. Bean, Land’s End, Victoria’s Secret, Macy’s, whoever. But the letter compensation is dwindling. People don’t write letters anymore. They send emails. The Post Office says “personal mail” has dropped off by a third in the last 25 years, to an average of 1.1 personal letter per household per week. That sounds high to me. Our household gets about one personal letter for every 1,267 Victoria’s Secret catalogues.
Our mailman can’t get much joy from that. With the possible exception of the Sears catalogue, there is not one thing (even scooters) about today’s mail carrier that I would choose over my days, 40 years ago, on the routes.
Being a mailman was the second-best job I ever had. Being an essay writer is the best. Teaching is so noble, and I wish it came in at least second, but it only finishes third, because there is so damn much work.
I was a substitute carrier, which made it even better. Something new every day. I got different routes every day. Never knew where the dogs were. Never knew what people would leave me in their mailboxes, or give to me as they greeted me at their screen doors. It was fun, and poignant, seeing the doubt flicker in their sweet faces as they stood there at the screen door and saw me arrive.
“Where’s Jim?” they would say, looking forward to their regular carrier. “Off today,” I would say, smiling. “Oh,” they would say, disappointed, suddenly self-conscious about the couple of peaches, or apricots, in their hands. “Well. Here,” they would always say, and push open the screen and hand over the fruit, or muffin, or pie. I would always take it, of course, even if it were only a couple of shriveled apricots (not my favorites, even without the worm holes).
The letters were the best. Because we carried so much mail, carriers knew things about the mail that an ordinary citizen might never see in a lifetime. Not everybody on the route received a letter that also, on the back of the envelope, carried a message for the carrier: “Postman, postman, don’t be slow; be like Elvis, go man, go.” What letter carrier with a heart wouldn’t practice diligent and dedication, in rain, snow or dark of night, to speed this letter from an author so eager to see it delivered into the hands of the recipient?
You just don’t get that in an email. Yes, I know you can send attachments with emails, or email a greeting card complete with motion and music, but it is not nearly the same as a letter I delivered one day from someone with artist’s skills vacationing in Paris, who had sketched, on front and back of the envelope, in a rainbow of colored pencil, a map, complete with features (tower, arc, etc.) of central Paris.
You could tell the love letters, because they were thick. Three pages (you could tell two pages from three, or four, by the feel) on average, all hand-written. Compare that as a labor of love to an email, however amorous. And when the letter was marked, across the flap on the back, “S.W.A.K.,” you knew it had been sealed with a kiss, the sender’s lip DNA right there on the envelope. You can’t kiss an email, and “Sealed With A Keystroke” has none of the fire of the old analog technique. You young hipsters who sneer at stationery, envelopes and longhand, you might think about that.
March 15, 2006
Parking lot prop
I drove to a shopping center today, and I was sorry I forgot my cane.
Actually, I don’t need the cane. About 10 days ago, I left another plateau in the process of healing after hip replacement. Two weeks before that, I had felt confident enough to go without the cane. Most of the time I was fine. The other five percent, just as I was rising from sitting at a desk, or getting out of the truck after driving, I was awful.
It didn’t take much inactivity for the hip to tighten up. I am in the middle third of a process of regrowth, of ligaments and muscle that secure the hip joint, both the original, and this new one, in place. The growth is steady, but slow. Right now, my hip feels very loose, and my leg actually wobbles as I walk, as if it had no sure moorings. Which it doesn’t. The ligament-muscle capsule provides that control, and the capsule is still being restored.
Three weeks ago, after inactivity, the knitting process was sensitive to stretching. Every time I stood up and tried to walk, it hurt. When I thought I could go without the cane, it was 10 steps before the structure was stretched enough to walk without pain. In the space of those 10 steps, considerable stress was placed on my right hip, and that side started to hurt.
So I went back on the cane. And I stayed on it awhile, on a plateau. One morning the week before last, I stood up out of bed and noticed a change. I was stronger. One step, or two, and I was good to go. I still used the cane, but I was not dependent on it. I went to Price Club one day, came out, loaded the truck, and was home in the carport before I missed the cane. Back to Price Club, where I found the cane still in the cart where I had left it.
The cane is now parked against a wall at home. I never remember it, and I don’t need it, except when I am going to a shopping center with the intention of parking in a handicapped zone. I have a red sticker, good until June, and I don’t feel bad about using it even though my strength is increasing.
I do feel bad about parking in a reserved space and getting out and walking as if I had two good legs beneath me. Today I wished I had the cane as a prop. If anyone ever challenges me, I will just have to show them my scar.
Actually, I don’t need the cane. About 10 days ago, I left another plateau in the process of healing after hip replacement. Two weeks before that, I had felt confident enough to go without the cane. Most of the time I was fine. The other five percent, just as I was rising from sitting at a desk, or getting out of the truck after driving, I was awful.
It didn’t take much inactivity for the hip to tighten up. I am in the middle third of a process of regrowth, of ligaments and muscle that secure the hip joint, both the original, and this new one, in place. The growth is steady, but slow. Right now, my hip feels very loose, and my leg actually wobbles as I walk, as if it had no sure moorings. Which it doesn’t. The ligament-muscle capsule provides that control, and the capsule is still being restored.
Three weeks ago, after inactivity, the knitting process was sensitive to stretching. Every time I stood up and tried to walk, it hurt. When I thought I could go without the cane, it was 10 steps before the structure was stretched enough to walk without pain. In the space of those 10 steps, considerable stress was placed on my right hip, and that side started to hurt.
So I went back on the cane. And I stayed on it awhile, on a plateau. One morning the week before last, I stood up out of bed and noticed a change. I was stronger. One step, or two, and I was good to go. I still used the cane, but I was not dependent on it. I went to Price Club one day, came out, loaded the truck, and was home in the carport before I missed the cane. Back to Price Club, where I found the cane still in the cart where I had left it.
The cane is now parked against a wall at home. I never remember it, and I don’t need it, except when I am going to a shopping center with the intention of parking in a handicapped zone. I have a red sticker, good until June, and I don’t feel bad about using it even though my strength is increasing.
I do feel bad about parking in a reserved space and getting out and walking as if I had two good legs beneath me. Today I wished I had the cane as a prop. If anyone ever challenges me, I will just have to show them my scar.
March 13, 2006
March 11, 2006
Stormy weather
Regular lines of showers and thundershowers are bursting across San Diego County today. It started just before 3 this morning with lightning flashes that were white through closed eyes.
I got up to hush puppies – they hate thunder – but also to watch. I love weather. One of the most beautiful places on earth is a Texas country road about five miles ahead of a line of thunderstorms.
San Diego County doesn’t have thunderstorms the way Texas has thunderstorms, and certainly not as often. If we get three episodes of thunder a year, it starts deserving mention of going into the record books. The thunder that began just before 3 this morning was over by 3:10.
At least two of the storm lines after sunrise have brought more thunder, so we are looking at record books here. This is a very cold storm, with snow levels down to 1,500 feet (Texans don’t know what a snow level is) and a couple of times our house has been peppered with granular showers of hail. It is a big storm, too, riding a powerful and persistent jet stream, and I hope it lasts through tomorrow.
But I know it won’t. Tomorrow will be partly cloudy with residual showers in the forecast, but it won’t rain.
I love weather for the drama. That is why I miss my native Texas storms so. Other people like weather for their own reasons. They must like it, because it is one of the few events in our lives that never misses a day in the media. Even big, important newspapers give a half-page or more to the weather every day, and local television news productions have devoted half an hour or more of air time to the weather before the day is out.
I think the appeal is change. People like change, or the threat of change. Change, or the threat of change, in fact are the core definition of news, that evolved in the minds of humans long before the media, and what we call “news,” came into existence. On most of the world’s land mass, the inhabitants there can count on the weather to provide regular change, or the threat thereof. (In fact, weather is a bigger “threat” story than a “change” story. When weather happens, and it is big enough, it will make the news programs. But the weather forecast – the threat to change – gets its half page or half hour every day, no matter what.)
In San Diego, 85 percent of our weather forecasts read as follows: “Night and early morning low clouds or fog, otherwise sunny.” When the weather bureau talks about a cold storm and a powerful jet, weatherheads in this part of the world plan parties around it.
This has been such a day. The threat was great, and the change spectacular. And it isn’t over yet.
I got up to hush puppies – they hate thunder – but also to watch. I love weather. One of the most beautiful places on earth is a Texas country road about five miles ahead of a line of thunderstorms.
San Diego County doesn’t have thunderstorms the way Texas has thunderstorms, and certainly not as often. If we get three episodes of thunder a year, it starts deserving mention of going into the record books. The thunder that began just before 3 this morning was over by 3:10.
At least two of the storm lines after sunrise have brought more thunder, so we are looking at record books here. This is a very cold storm, with snow levels down to 1,500 feet (Texans don’t know what a snow level is) and a couple of times our house has been peppered with granular showers of hail. It is a big storm, too, riding a powerful and persistent jet stream, and I hope it lasts through tomorrow.
But I know it won’t. Tomorrow will be partly cloudy with residual showers in the forecast, but it won’t rain.
I love weather for the drama. That is why I miss my native Texas storms so. Other people like weather for their own reasons. They must like it, because it is one of the few events in our lives that never misses a day in the media. Even big, important newspapers give a half-page or more to the weather every day, and local television news productions have devoted half an hour or more of air time to the weather before the day is out.
I think the appeal is change. People like change, or the threat of change. Change, or the threat of change, in fact are the core definition of news, that evolved in the minds of humans long before the media, and what we call “news,” came into existence. On most of the world’s land mass, the inhabitants there can count on the weather to provide regular change, or the threat thereof. (In fact, weather is a bigger “threat” story than a “change” story. When weather happens, and it is big enough, it will make the news programs. But the weather forecast – the threat to change – gets its half page or half hour every day, no matter what.)
In San Diego, 85 percent of our weather forecasts read as follows: “Night and early morning low clouds or fog, otherwise sunny.” When the weather bureau talks about a cold storm and a powerful jet, weatherheads in this part of the world plan parties around it.
This has been such a day. The threat was great, and the change spectacular. And it isn’t over yet.
March 09, 2006
A healthy tip
After weeks of nursing me back from hip surgery, Karen took a few days of rest and relaxation at a spa. She gained enough rest and muscle to haul back several crates of spa cookbooks, spices and groceries with which to sustain the spa’s “healthy eating” designs at home.
Fortunately I am a veteran of the healthy eating wars. The trick is to find ways to bring the two loci – healthy eating, and pleasure eating – closer together. Healthy eating eliminates most fat and salt and makes the food tasty with various combinations of spices and vials of powders with strange names. Pleasure eating is a wedge cut out of the edge of a Pittsburgh-style porterhouse, so that the bite includes both steak and a sizzling strip of fat.
Those are the extremes. Where is the middle ground? There has to be a middle ground, because healthy eating created solely with spices and powders tastes like spices and powders. And pleasure eating creates too stormy a climate of guilt, when one of you has brought home crates of cookbooks, produce, spices and powders.
Karen was fair about it. No declarations of “a new lifestyle,” when she had caught her breath enough to talk again. She simply asked me to participate, to join her in preparing and consuming healthy stuff, but I could still have a porkchop on the side.
It is working out pretty well, though every time I open the refrigerator door, a plastic container, or a plastic bag, or a plastic bottle, of healthy foodstuffs tumbles out and onto the kitchen floor. I think the logistics will settle down, once we are deeper into the routine, but the first week of a new eating lifestyle is pure hell on storage.
Our first shot was Chicken Fajitas. It is amazing what you can do to chicken’s reputation with a few healthy spices and powders. As it happened, the phone rang when I was halfway done; it was Tyler, my son, with a report from Baton Rouge (see previous blog), of the best seafood dinner he had ever had. The benefit to me was to see that the remaining half of my Chicken Fajitas had hardened (best word to use) onto my plate so that my fork and knife were useless without repeated floodings of hot water. It was not unreasonable of me to flush the material down the disposal.
The Fajitas had been made in a rush. Karen got home in the afternoon, and by the time we got her unloaded, it was too late to cook with contemplation. The next day was better, and the secret was one that I always use in pleasure eating. You have to scorch something: just a little. Usually it is some onion. Chop a third of a medium onion, put it in a pot with a teaspoon of olive oil (or even water), and let the onion start to brown, and create a brown glaze in the bottom of the pot. Stir in half a cup of coffee to “deglaze” the pot and create a browned-onion liquid.
Then continue cooking whatever it is that you are cooking. On the second night, it happened to be chicken again, braised-baked (special oven technique) for an hour and a half with onions, mushrooms and brown rice (I snuck in a tablespoon of white rice too, just for meanness.) Karen said it was the best chicken she had ever eaten, healthy or pleasure.
Three chicken breasts made eight servings. Five of them are still stacked in the freezer and we either have to finish it before I make the Snapper Vera Cruz, or go buy more freezer containers and another refrigerator. We are on our way.
Fortunately I am a veteran of the healthy eating wars. The trick is to find ways to bring the two loci – healthy eating, and pleasure eating – closer together. Healthy eating eliminates most fat and salt and makes the food tasty with various combinations of spices and vials of powders with strange names. Pleasure eating is a wedge cut out of the edge of a Pittsburgh-style porterhouse, so that the bite includes both steak and a sizzling strip of fat.
Those are the extremes. Where is the middle ground? There has to be a middle ground, because healthy eating created solely with spices and powders tastes like spices and powders. And pleasure eating creates too stormy a climate of guilt, when one of you has brought home crates of cookbooks, produce, spices and powders.
Karen was fair about it. No declarations of “a new lifestyle,” when she had caught her breath enough to talk again. She simply asked me to participate, to join her in preparing and consuming healthy stuff, but I could still have a porkchop on the side.
It is working out pretty well, though every time I open the refrigerator door, a plastic container, or a plastic bag, or a plastic bottle, of healthy foodstuffs tumbles out and onto the kitchen floor. I think the logistics will settle down, once we are deeper into the routine, but the first week of a new eating lifestyle is pure hell on storage.
Our first shot was Chicken Fajitas. It is amazing what you can do to chicken’s reputation with a few healthy spices and powders. As it happened, the phone rang when I was halfway done; it was Tyler, my son, with a report from Baton Rouge (see previous blog), of the best seafood dinner he had ever had. The benefit to me was to see that the remaining half of my Chicken Fajitas had hardened (best word to use) onto my plate so that my fork and knife were useless without repeated floodings of hot water. It was not unreasonable of me to flush the material down the disposal.
The Fajitas had been made in a rush. Karen got home in the afternoon, and by the time we got her unloaded, it was too late to cook with contemplation. The next day was better, and the secret was one that I always use in pleasure eating. You have to scorch something: just a little. Usually it is some onion. Chop a third of a medium onion, put it in a pot with a teaspoon of olive oil (or even water), and let the onion start to brown, and create a brown glaze in the bottom of the pot. Stir in half a cup of coffee to “deglaze” the pot and create a browned-onion liquid.
Then continue cooking whatever it is that you are cooking. On the second night, it happened to be chicken again, braised-baked (special oven technique) for an hour and a half with onions, mushrooms and brown rice (I snuck in a tablespoon of white rice too, just for meanness.) Karen said it was the best chicken she had ever eaten, healthy or pleasure.
Three chicken breasts made eight servings. Five of them are still stacked in the freezer and we either have to finish it before I make the Snapper Vera Cruz, or go buy more freezer containers and another refrigerator. We are on our way.
March 08, 2006
Craving a Captain's Platter
My son Tyler called with important news from Baton Rouge, where his band was playing a gig.
“Dad,” he said, “I just had the best seafood dinner of my life. The ‘Captain’s Platter’.”
He went on to describe it, but he didn’t have to. Fried gulf shrimp. Fried gulf oysters. Fried scallops. Fried fish, probably gulf snapper. French fries. Cole slaw. Lots of lemon.
“Damn,” I said, in complete admiration, which, of course, incorporated resentment. “Reminds me of the best lunch I ever had.”
“Yeah, I knew it would,” he said.
That was in 1978, and Tyler wasn’t there. He was only two at the time. But I have told him about it often enough. Monsieur’s No. 2, a dark, high-ceiling, shotgun space in downtown Shreveport, LA. A dozen oysters on the half-shell, shucked right there at the bar. A platter of fried gulf shrimp. An oyster po’ boy, which is the one item I would take to a deserted island with me. Fries, slaw, and pints of beer.
I couldn’t finish it today. Oh, the dozen on the half-shell, sure. And the oyster po’ boy, without a doubt: fried oysters on a soft French roll with shredded lettuce and cocktail sauce. But I might manage only three or four of the shrimp, just a couple of fries, a bite of slaw. A glass of red wine instead of beer. We have to listen to our bodies as we grow older.
Which brings me to my problem. Since Tyler hung up, I have been craving a Captain’s Platter. In Baton Rouge, you can find one on every street corner. In San Diego, the market for fried seafood is less demanding. I did have a nice plate of fried calamari at the Fish Market last week. They started calling calamari the “poor man’s abalone” 25 years ago when abalone, which may be the best bite of food you will ever put in your mouth, became so scarce that it went to $35 on local menus and then disappeared altogether. It was back on the menu last week at the Fish Market, but the price now is $69.50.
Do you know how many Captain’s Platters you could buy in Baton Rouge for $69.50?
“Dad,” he said, “I just had the best seafood dinner of my life. The ‘Captain’s Platter’.”
He went on to describe it, but he didn’t have to. Fried gulf shrimp. Fried gulf oysters. Fried scallops. Fried fish, probably gulf snapper. French fries. Cole slaw. Lots of lemon.
“Damn,” I said, in complete admiration, which, of course, incorporated resentment. “Reminds me of the best lunch I ever had.”
“Yeah, I knew it would,” he said.
That was in 1978, and Tyler wasn’t there. He was only two at the time. But I have told him about it often enough. Monsieur’s No. 2, a dark, high-ceiling, shotgun space in downtown Shreveport, LA. A dozen oysters on the half-shell, shucked right there at the bar. A platter of fried gulf shrimp. An oyster po’ boy, which is the one item I would take to a deserted island with me. Fries, slaw, and pints of beer.
I couldn’t finish it today. Oh, the dozen on the half-shell, sure. And the oyster po’ boy, without a doubt: fried oysters on a soft French roll with shredded lettuce and cocktail sauce. But I might manage only three or four of the shrimp, just a couple of fries, a bite of slaw. A glass of red wine instead of beer. We have to listen to our bodies as we grow older.
Which brings me to my problem. Since Tyler hung up, I have been craving a Captain’s Platter. In Baton Rouge, you can find one on every street corner. In San Diego, the market for fried seafood is less demanding. I did have a nice plate of fried calamari at the Fish Market last week. They started calling calamari the “poor man’s abalone” 25 years ago when abalone, which may be the best bite of food you will ever put in your mouth, became so scarce that it went to $35 on local menus and then disappeared altogether. It was back on the menu last week at the Fish Market, but the price now is $69.50.
Do you know how many Captain’s Platters you could buy in Baton Rouge for $69.50?
March 07, 2006
On turning 63
I turned 63 yesterday, March 6 (which is also Michelangelo’s birthday, and the day the Alamo fell).
It was one of those “tagged” birthdays. On the day I turned 50, I felt the cool, unmistakable breeze of mortality on my neck. On the day I turned 60, I looked in the mirror and said, “Too late to plant any more trees.”
Yesterday, at 63, I looked in the mirror and said: how could all this change have happened in so short a time? I was assisted by a studio portrait of me that my wife has hung in the bathroom next to the vanity. In the photo, I am about four years old, wearing a white long-sleeved shirt, shorts, striped socks and brown, lace-up shoes. “Buster Brown shoes,” we called them.
I looked at him on the wall, and at myself in the mirror, and felt that the time between us was so very short. “Fifty-nine years,” I said. I could still see the world through his eyes. Outside the photo studio was parked a big black sedan with rounded fenders, running boards, and a cavernous back seat. We would drive home in that car, where before dinner I would listen to “Sky King” on the radio. Driving home, we would cross South 1st Street, which was also U.S. Highway 80, as it passed through town on its way from San Diego in the west to Savannah in the east, two-lane, all of it, and passing through towns and cities large and small, just like mine. On that highway, a traveler could proceed only as fast as the slowest truck or bus, and stop at all the stoplights in the towns every 50 miles or so.
Only fifty-nine years between us, yet in worlds so different. He lived on another planet. He had no idea what television was. His big media event was “Sky King” on the radio. At home, when she wanted groceries delivered, his grandmother called Baldwin’s Grocery on a heavy black dial phone in the dining room. Our telephone number was 7973. Four digits! How did we get from four digits to Google in only 59 years? When did all this stuff happen? There has just not been enough time.
It was one of those “tagged” birthdays. On the day I turned 50, I felt the cool, unmistakable breeze of mortality on my neck. On the day I turned 60, I looked in the mirror and said, “Too late to plant any more trees.”
Yesterday, at 63, I looked in the mirror and said: how could all this change have happened in so short a time? I was assisted by a studio portrait of me that my wife has hung in the bathroom next to the vanity. In the photo, I am about four years old, wearing a white long-sleeved shirt, shorts, striped socks and brown, lace-up shoes. “Buster Brown shoes,” we called them.
I looked at him on the wall, and at myself in the mirror, and felt that the time between us was so very short. “Fifty-nine years,” I said. I could still see the world through his eyes. Outside the photo studio was parked a big black sedan with rounded fenders, running boards, and a cavernous back seat. We would drive home in that car, where before dinner I would listen to “Sky King” on the radio. Driving home, we would cross South 1st Street, which was also U.S. Highway 80, as it passed through town on its way from San Diego in the west to Savannah in the east, two-lane, all of it, and passing through towns and cities large and small, just like mine. On that highway, a traveler could proceed only as fast as the slowest truck or bus, and stop at all the stoplights in the towns every 50 miles or so.
Only fifty-nine years between us, yet in worlds so different. He lived on another planet. He had no idea what television was. His big media event was “Sky King” on the radio. At home, when she wanted groceries delivered, his grandmother called Baldwin’s Grocery on a heavy black dial phone in the dining room. Our telephone number was 7973. Four digits! How did we get from four digits to Google in only 59 years? When did all this stuff happen? There has just not been enough time.
March 02, 2006
Conjugating the News
Last week in this space, I wrote a short tutorial blog of how mainstream media – or MSM, in the current media shorthand – works, and how vital it was that the public understand those workings. That piece brought a response from a San Diego reader who found the heart of the issue in a single sentence.
“It’s strange to me,” said the reader, Stuart Jewell, “that almost all columnists and reporters assume the talent of being able to define what ‘the people’ want to know and how urgently they want to know it.”
It’s not strange at all. Columnists and reporters don’t assume anything. They go to journalism school, where they learn the definitions of what the people want to know, and how urgently they want to know it. The study of journalism is no mystery; it is as black-and-white as mathematics. Journalism uses definitions, rules and values that are as clear-cut as the conjugation of verbs. If my “Introduction to News Writing” students at Grossmont College can’t define what news is by the end of the semester, and its relative levels of urgency, then they flunk the class.
This “talent” appears strange to the general public, who Stuart Jewell represents so well, because they never studied “News” in school. Not their fault; it isn’t taught. But it should be, right alongside English, civics and computer literacy. In this age, of all ages, the study of “News” should not be confined to journalism studies; it should be a core curriculum class in every American high school.
Actually, my students never flunk my class because they don’t know what news is. They may flunk because they can’t spell, can’t punctuate, and slide around grammar as if it were a greased flagpole. But they don’t flunk the news part, because of a wonderfully elegant wrinkle: they know what the news is before they ever get to my class.
I didn’t understand that until about five years ago. I had been teaching, for some years, a survey course titled “Mass Media and Society.” Doing that work, it became clear to me that the definition of “news,” and the values and categories of news, were not created by the media. They were created by early humans, tens of thousands of years before the media existed. Taken together, they constituted a “reaction package,” that humans from the earliest days to the present, carry around with them all the time. The media simply took that reaction package, starting about 3,500 years ago, and turned it into a business.
It made me curious. I wanted to test it. Back in my “Introduction to News Writing” classes, on the first day of the semester, I said, “Before I teach you a single thing in this class, you already know what the news is.” I gave them a page of notes, several lines of details, arranged randomly, about an event that had “happened” that day.
“Imagine you are reporters for the morning paper. I want you to look at this information, then write the first sentence of the story – what this information is about – and bring it with you to our next class. I will ask you to read your sentence, and we will see if you know what the news is.”
Their rate of success was about 90 percent, and after five years – 10 semesters – of testing, it remains steady at about that level. They were carrying the reaction package around all along. It must mean that most – practically all – of the American population knows what the news is. It must mean that Stuart Jewell knows what the news is. So what is it, about what columnists and reporters do, that seems strange to him?
It brings us back to the beginning: education. A free press is vital to the survival of a democracy, so vital that it predates the Constitution. Very interesting to realize that the Constitution did not create press freedom. The First Amendment states, in part: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press.” The key word is “abridging,” which means to reduce in scope, or diminish. That means the framers understood, in the infant democracy after the Revolution, that freedom of the press already existed.
The First Amendment guarantees the press almost absolute power to do its job. Now we have evidence of citizens to whom this work, of columnists and reporters, seems “strange.” I remember that strangeness very well, leafing through an algebra book that had just been issued to me and thinking, “I’ll never learn this stuff.” But I did, and I was allowed to move on toward graduation.
What is strange to me is that if algebra is required for high school graduation in the United States of America, then news – this conscious-unconscious reaction package that we all carry – sure as hell should be, too. It is vital to a basic understanding, and a basic acceptance, of how this enormously powerful, beyond abridging, press, the mainstream media, does its job.
There is something else the public needs to understand. The media originally turned the human “reaction package” into a business to keep people informed. But that same reaction package makes people vulnerable to manipulation. Over time, the media, and groups (entertainment, marketing, political) who are expert in using media, learned and developed extremely sophisticated ways to use the package to manipulate public reactions. That is a second, and also enormously powerful, function of the media, and a powerful second reason for public education in the conjugation of the human responses that started it all.
“It’s strange to me,” said the reader, Stuart Jewell, “that almost all columnists and reporters assume the talent of being able to define what ‘the people’ want to know and how urgently they want to know it.”
It’s not strange at all. Columnists and reporters don’t assume anything. They go to journalism school, where they learn the definitions of what the people want to know, and how urgently they want to know it. The study of journalism is no mystery; it is as black-and-white as mathematics. Journalism uses definitions, rules and values that are as clear-cut as the conjugation of verbs. If my “Introduction to News Writing” students at Grossmont College can’t define what news is by the end of the semester, and its relative levels of urgency, then they flunk the class.
This “talent” appears strange to the general public, who Stuart Jewell represents so well, because they never studied “News” in school. Not their fault; it isn’t taught. But it should be, right alongside English, civics and computer literacy. In this age, of all ages, the study of “News” should not be confined to journalism studies; it should be a core curriculum class in every American high school.
Actually, my students never flunk my class because they don’t know what news is. They may flunk because they can’t spell, can’t punctuate, and slide around grammar as if it were a greased flagpole. But they don’t flunk the news part, because of a wonderfully elegant wrinkle: they know what the news is before they ever get to my class.
I didn’t understand that until about five years ago. I had been teaching, for some years, a survey course titled “Mass Media and Society.” Doing that work, it became clear to me that the definition of “news,” and the values and categories of news, were not created by the media. They were created by early humans, tens of thousands of years before the media existed. Taken together, they constituted a “reaction package,” that humans from the earliest days to the present, carry around with them all the time. The media simply took that reaction package, starting about 3,500 years ago, and turned it into a business.
It made me curious. I wanted to test it. Back in my “Introduction to News Writing” classes, on the first day of the semester, I said, “Before I teach you a single thing in this class, you already know what the news is.” I gave them a page of notes, several lines of details, arranged randomly, about an event that had “happened” that day.
“Imagine you are reporters for the morning paper. I want you to look at this information, then write the first sentence of the story – what this information is about – and bring it with you to our next class. I will ask you to read your sentence, and we will see if you know what the news is.”
Their rate of success was about 90 percent, and after five years – 10 semesters – of testing, it remains steady at about that level. They were carrying the reaction package around all along. It must mean that most – practically all – of the American population knows what the news is. It must mean that Stuart Jewell knows what the news is. So what is it, about what columnists and reporters do, that seems strange to him?
It brings us back to the beginning: education. A free press is vital to the survival of a democracy, so vital that it predates the Constitution. Very interesting to realize that the Constitution did not create press freedom. The First Amendment states, in part: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press.” The key word is “abridging,” which means to reduce in scope, or diminish. That means the framers understood, in the infant democracy after the Revolution, that freedom of the press already existed.
The First Amendment guarantees the press almost absolute power to do its job. Now we have evidence of citizens to whom this work, of columnists and reporters, seems “strange.” I remember that strangeness very well, leafing through an algebra book that had just been issued to me and thinking, “I’ll never learn this stuff.” But I did, and I was allowed to move on toward graduation.
What is strange to me is that if algebra is required for high school graduation in the United States of America, then news – this conscious-unconscious reaction package that we all carry – sure as hell should be, too. It is vital to a basic understanding, and a basic acceptance, of how this enormously powerful, beyond abridging, press, the mainstream media, does its job.
There is something else the public needs to understand. The media originally turned the human “reaction package” into a business to keep people informed. But that same reaction package makes people vulnerable to manipulation. Over time, the media, and groups (entertainment, marketing, political) who are expert in using media, learned and developed extremely sophisticated ways to use the package to manipulate public reactions. That is a second, and also enormously powerful, function of the media, and a powerful second reason for public education in the conjugation of the human responses that started it all.
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