Seat 22A. Directly over the wing. I didn't care. We had negotiated 60 miles of freeway from Kenosha, Wisconsin, to O'Hare, heavy snowfall in a rental car with bad wipers, weaved around big trucks with flashing yellow lights, huge plows on the front and spitting salt out the back, and managed to avoid Illinois motorists who were driving like this was a sunny July day.
And then O'Hare was practically deserted. Not many people were flying on the Friday after Christmas. The plane boarded an hour and a half late, but shoot, in Chicago that would never be a picture in the paper. Our plane, an American S-80, had sat at the gate for at least three hours – the length of time that we were there – but we couldn't go until a crew arrived from St. Louis. The window by 22A was three-quarters covered over with snow, and the wing looked to have about a three-inch accumulation with fat flakes still falling. Parked behind the wing, I could see, was a de-icing truck. Coming home was turning into a real adventure.
We got de-iced with foamy pink spray, followed by some kind of green slime shot onto the wings, and we were off, with only 10 departures ahead of us at the end of the runway. No doubt we were living a charmed life this day, to escape a snowy O'Hair so smoothly. We climbed through a very thick cloud tier, then shot into the clear, sunny sky above a lumpy cloud deck a thousand miles around.
Full airplane. In front of us, an exit row. Good. Exit row seatbacks do not recline. This was very good, considering our very cramped seats. American has won customers with increasing leg room on their airplanes, but these were cramped. Maybe it was because we were behind an exit row. Maybe it was because this was an older S-80. Oh well. We would make do.
Suddenly the seatback shot back. If I had been leaning forward for something from the seatback pocket, it might have broken my nose. So these days exit row seatbacks DO recline. I was not informed. Seated straight up, I placed my thumb on the end of my nose and extended my hand in a span toward the seatback. My little finger almost touched. In the seat was a mature woman, smallish, steel-gray coif in a Winnetka bob. On the aisle sat her husband, sixty-something, whitish hair, a bit shaggy on the neck, a large left ear with a certain graceful curve to it that I wanted to describe, but couldn't. It made me think of the word "curette." I am sure, if I had approached his wife this closely in any other circumstance, he would have assaulted me. As it was, he was unfolding The Chicago Tribune. Before we reached San Diego, he and I would read his Trib, The New York Times, The Sun-Times, The Wall Street Journal, and a Chicago business magazine.
His wife liked to do things with her hands. She folded them behind her head, They were small, regular, neatly manicured except for a bit of hangnail on her ring finger, left hand, that I wanted to nod toward and bite off. Other times, as she was reading ("Little Saigon"), she twirled her hair in the fingers of her left hand. I kept track of her hands. She raised them frequently to her head, as if to stretch, and if the trajectory adjusted just a fraction toward the back, she would whack me on the forehead.
I was not giving her very high marks for consideration, or compassion. Yes, I could have reclined my seatback, but I hate to do that. Besides, it was an interesting distraction, appropriate to the day. At some point she sat forward, turned, looked toward the back of the plane. She was bespectacled, wire-rimmed, not as attractive as I might have hoped. Our eyes met squarely. Hers were pale. I did not smile or frown. She didn't, either. She didn’t appear to regard me, or judge me, in any way. She turned, settled back in her seat, sat forward again, pulled on a muted chocolate cardigan, settled back again. I took pleasure in noting my 22A air nozzle, which was quite cool and trained toward my lap, was blowing in her hair.
The flight was long. They all are, going home. Partly this is because the outbound adventure part is over. Partly it is because when home is San Diego, going home is always long, particularly after navigating Illinois snowstorms. I was counting the minutes to when we could be in our house, and open the French doors to the westerly evening breeze off the Pacific. At San Diego, we were absolutely the only plane at either of the two West Terminal concourses. Lindbergh Field was totally deserted. Our luggage reached the baggage carousel almost as soon as we did. How unusual could events become? Karen's suitcase, I swear, was the third piece off the conveyor. Mine was immediately behind it, wide open. It must have been inspected, then they couldn't get it zipped again. It is an old bag, a valise actually, leather and canvas construction, that you might see in an airline magazine ad from 1949.
All I could see was the bag flapping open, my red scarf, my green corduroy shirt, and bundles of white that I knew to be dirty underwear, scrolling out of the valise and onto the carousel. A kind man to my right helped me scoop up all on the first sweep and get it off where we stood instead of my having to chase it. A nice final touch. An adventurous trip home, really. One last Christmas gift.
December 29, 2007
December 21, 2007
News from the Youth Universe
Children – that is, any person age 25 or younger – live in a world so different from the adult world that it could almost be described as a parallel universe.
This is nothing new. It was as true of my generation, in the 1940s, 1950s and into the 1960s, as it is today, except in the matter of degree. I am now 64. When I was 25 and younger, it was popular to say, “Never trust anybody over 30.” Yet we had to live with, and live like, the old fogies, because that is the only kind of living there was.
In America in the 1950s, American post-war mainstream culture, and the companies that marketed to it, was still adult-oriented, and in goods and services, movies and entertainment, the kids wore and watched and listened to the same things as their parents because that’s all there was. It was very much a youth culture that convened at the movies and in the hamburger joint parking lots, but the movie was "Three Coins in the Fountain," and Perry Como, Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney, Eddie Fisher and Patti Page sang practically all of the music coming out of the car radios. In the youth of that era, it set up the sort of angst that began to show up in movies like “Blackboard Jungle,” and “Rebel Without a Cause.”
That all started to change after 1954, with the arrival in the youth awareness of Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry, and with the spread of television. But compared to 2005, the 1950s in America might as well have occurred on another planet. Recently, in the comic strip “Zits,” Jeremy’s mom has asked him to take out the trash. Jeremy, not moving from the couch, says, “Ages 14-25, $94 billion in discretionary spending.” His mom counters by offering to freeze his allowance. In the last panel, Jeremy, dumping the trash in the can, says, “The retail industry respects me more than my parents do.”
That’s not generally true, but it is true in most cases that the retail industry pays at least as much (and frequently more) attention to children than their parents do. The kids are spending the $94 billion on things they want and have been manufactured, created, or organized for them. If parents researched their kids one-tenth as much as the retail industry does, millions of parent-child relationships would change.
In 1954, parents didn’t have to pay attention to what was out there; it was all the same. In 2007, parents can’t keep up with what’s out there, even the ones who try. When my kids were teenagers, I watched MTV regularly, because it was the best way to find out what was going on in my kids’ world. I also tried to watch “The Simpsons.” But I failed. Bart didn’t interest me as entertainment. Neither did MTV, though it was fun to mute the sound and play old Patti Page LPs while Madonna and Aerosmith tore up the screen.
I had it easy. I only had to check in on a few cable channels. Parents today, if they are to remain aware of the youth universe have numerous cable channels, tons of magazines, and of course the Internet to keep up with. All are swollen with opportunities aimed at the 8-to-18-year-old demographic. It gives kids today terrific power. They have the retail industry wrapped around their little finger, and the media furiously develops product that shows children in control of their, if not the, world. In their world, the 2007 kids find it popular to say to anyone outside that world, that is, anyone over 30, “Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to.”
I have heard chatter coming from that world lately. In our college newspaper staff meeting, a female student-reporter said female students in her classes have adopted anti-intellectualism as a tool of popularity. Apparently they are expending quite a bit of energy at their desks, affecting and maintaining an air of indifference. My student-reporter said when she raises a hand to contribute to the class discussion, the girls behind her roll their eyes at each other and say, “There she goes again.”
Then in the San Diego media, a story developed about a high school girl posing for artsy photos in a student-produced “literary” magazine. The girl was also a professional (though very much still at the portfolio-building stage) model. The story developed when her parents, who knew about her professional activities, became angry when the “lit mag” was published without their knowledge. Apparently the girl never told them about the project.
And now, this week, being 16 years old and pregnant has landed a teen idol named Jamie Lynn Spears (she is Britney's sister) on the cover of OK! Magazine. And that story inspires a teen-world reaction story on the front page of The New York Times. Talk about a fame party!
But that's another story. The story here is about three recent examples of activity in the parallel-universe youth world that give us fogies useful, if occasionally terrifying, information about that world. It is possible that kids in their youth world believe in their power, and that their power is greater than ours. They no longer are obligated to check with us, or to participate with us, and don’t expect us, or want us, to speak unless we are spoken to.
Troubling. In “Lord of the Flies,” the little beasts, murderous in their power lust, become little boys again the instant an adult appears. Jamie Lynn Spears is not fictional, and she appears to really, really like it.
This is nothing new. It was as true of my generation, in the 1940s, 1950s and into the 1960s, as it is today, except in the matter of degree. I am now 64. When I was 25 and younger, it was popular to say, “Never trust anybody over 30.” Yet we had to live with, and live like, the old fogies, because that is the only kind of living there was.
In America in the 1950s, American post-war mainstream culture, and the companies that marketed to it, was still adult-oriented, and in goods and services, movies and entertainment, the kids wore and watched and listened to the same things as their parents because that’s all there was. It was very much a youth culture that convened at the movies and in the hamburger joint parking lots, but the movie was "Three Coins in the Fountain," and Perry Como, Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney, Eddie Fisher and Patti Page sang practically all of the music coming out of the car radios. In the youth of that era, it set up the sort of angst that began to show up in movies like “Blackboard Jungle,” and “Rebel Without a Cause.”
That all started to change after 1954, with the arrival in the youth awareness of Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry, and with the spread of television. But compared to 2005, the 1950s in America might as well have occurred on another planet. Recently, in the comic strip “Zits,” Jeremy’s mom has asked him to take out the trash. Jeremy, not moving from the couch, says, “Ages 14-25, $94 billion in discretionary spending.” His mom counters by offering to freeze his allowance. In the last panel, Jeremy, dumping the trash in the can, says, “The retail industry respects me more than my parents do.”
That’s not generally true, but it is true in most cases that the retail industry pays at least as much (and frequently more) attention to children than their parents do. The kids are spending the $94 billion on things they want and have been manufactured, created, or organized for them. If parents researched their kids one-tenth as much as the retail industry does, millions of parent-child relationships would change.
In 1954, parents didn’t have to pay attention to what was out there; it was all the same. In 2007, parents can’t keep up with what’s out there, even the ones who try. When my kids were teenagers, I watched MTV regularly, because it was the best way to find out what was going on in my kids’ world. I also tried to watch “The Simpsons.” But I failed. Bart didn’t interest me as entertainment. Neither did MTV, though it was fun to mute the sound and play old Patti Page LPs while Madonna and Aerosmith tore up the screen.
I had it easy. I only had to check in on a few cable channels. Parents today, if they are to remain aware of the youth universe have numerous cable channels, tons of magazines, and of course the Internet to keep up with. All are swollen with opportunities aimed at the 8-to-18-year-old demographic. It gives kids today terrific power. They have the retail industry wrapped around their little finger, and the media furiously develops product that shows children in control of their, if not the, world. In their world, the 2007 kids find it popular to say to anyone outside that world, that is, anyone over 30, “Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to.”
I have heard chatter coming from that world lately. In our college newspaper staff meeting, a female student-reporter said female students in her classes have adopted anti-intellectualism as a tool of popularity. Apparently they are expending quite a bit of energy at their desks, affecting and maintaining an air of indifference. My student-reporter said when she raises a hand to contribute to the class discussion, the girls behind her roll their eyes at each other and say, “There she goes again.”
Then in the San Diego media, a story developed about a high school girl posing for artsy photos in a student-produced “literary” magazine. The girl was also a professional (though very much still at the portfolio-building stage) model. The story developed when her parents, who knew about her professional activities, became angry when the “lit mag” was published without their knowledge. Apparently the girl never told them about the project.
And now, this week, being 16 years old and pregnant has landed a teen idol named Jamie Lynn Spears (she is Britney's sister) on the cover of OK! Magazine. And that story inspires a teen-world reaction story on the front page of The New York Times. Talk about a fame party!
But that's another story. The story here is about three recent examples of activity in the parallel-universe youth world that give us fogies useful, if occasionally terrifying, information about that world. It is possible that kids in their youth world believe in their power, and that their power is greater than ours. They no longer are obligated to check with us, or to participate with us, and don’t expect us, or want us, to speak unless we are spoken to.
Troubling. In “Lord of the Flies,” the little beasts, murderous in their power lust, become little boys again the instant an adult appears. Jamie Lynn Spears is not fictional, and she appears to really, really like it.
December 18, 2007
Nothing Strange About Media Assumptions
In the United States, there really are two groups of people. People who know how the media works – media professionals – and people who don't – the public.
This divide, in the information age, has created problems severe enough that they make news. Media professionals use the media tools, that they learned in journalism school and other media schools – public relations, marketing, film, etc. The general public knows nothing about these tools. They write letters to the editor, like this one by San Diegan Stuart Jewell, which go to the heart of the issue in a single sentence:
“It’s strange to me," Jewell began, "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 college “Introduction to News Writing” 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, or at least hasn't been. 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 university journalism studies; it should be at least introduced in elementary school, and become a core curriculum class in every American high school.
Though that goal is not around the corner, the availability of media to children in the digital world is attracting the attention of public school educators. The Alliance for a Media Literate America was founded in 2001 with the mission "to stimulate growth in media literacy education in the United States by organizing and providing national leadership, advocacy, networking, and information exchange. To become a successful student, responsible citizen, productive worker, or competent and conscientious consumer, individuals need to develop expertise with the increasingly sophisticated information and entertainment media that address us on a multi-sensory level, affecting the way we think, feel, and behave."
One of the alliance founders, Dr. Renee Hobbs of Temple University, in March published a book, "Reading the Media: Media Literacy in High School English," a study of high school teachers who incorporated media analysis – journalism, television, movies, and Internet media – into the English curriculum. That is a logical step, and in the right direction, though understanding the media tools might require a curriculum unto itself.
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 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 like notes in a reporter's notebook, about an event that had “happened” that day.
I said: “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 10 years – 20 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. The press assumed, and certainly now maintains, a huge presence in the lives of Americans. But nowhere in American history was education provided to citizens about how the huge presence worked, or went about its work. Now we have evidence, more than 200 years later, of citizens to whom this work, of columnists and reporters, seems “strange.” I remember that kind of strangeness very well, in the ninth grade, 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 media tools – you could call it "media algebra," or even, "the media code" – sure as hell should be, too. This knowledge 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, terrorists) 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 media education.
When people learn to use the media tools in reading the media, they become more informed consumers, whether the product is news, entertainment or persuasion. Informed consumers have the best chance to make choices they will feel good about. When the media starts to realize that the consumers know what is going on, it will move the media-public relationship toward a more honest balance of power. To change the media, change the audience. The goal of my work is to give you the knowledge to read the media like a book, just as the media has always read you.
Cross-posted to The Moderate Voice.
This divide, in the information age, has created problems severe enough that they make news. Media professionals use the media tools, that they learned in journalism school and other media schools – public relations, marketing, film, etc. The general public knows nothing about these tools. They write letters to the editor, like this one by San Diegan Stuart Jewell, which go to the heart of the issue in a single sentence:
“It’s strange to me," Jewell began, "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 college “Introduction to News Writing” 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, or at least hasn't been. 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 university journalism studies; it should be at least introduced in elementary school, and become a core curriculum class in every American high school.
Though that goal is not around the corner, the availability of media to children in the digital world is attracting the attention of public school educators. The Alliance for a Media Literate America was founded in 2001 with the mission "to stimulate growth in media literacy education in the United States by organizing and providing national leadership, advocacy, networking, and information exchange. To become a successful student, responsible citizen, productive worker, or competent and conscientious consumer, individuals need to develop expertise with the increasingly sophisticated information and entertainment media that address us on a multi-sensory level, affecting the way we think, feel, and behave."
One of the alliance founders, Dr. Renee Hobbs of Temple University, in March published a book, "Reading the Media: Media Literacy in High School English," a study of high school teachers who incorporated media analysis – journalism, television, movies, and Internet media – into the English curriculum. That is a logical step, and in the right direction, though understanding the media tools might require a curriculum unto itself.
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 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 like notes in a reporter's notebook, about an event that had “happened” that day.
I said: “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 10 years – 20 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. The press assumed, and certainly now maintains, a huge presence in the lives of Americans. But nowhere in American history was education provided to citizens about how the huge presence worked, or went about its work. Now we have evidence, more than 200 years later, of citizens to whom this work, of columnists and reporters, seems “strange.” I remember that kind of strangeness very well, in the ninth grade, 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 media tools – you could call it "media algebra," or even, "the media code" – sure as hell should be, too. This knowledge 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, terrorists) 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 media education.
When people learn to use the media tools in reading the media, they become more informed consumers, whether the product is news, entertainment or persuasion. Informed consumers have the best chance to make choices they will feel good about. When the media starts to realize that the consumers know what is going on, it will move the media-public relationship toward a more honest balance of power. To change the media, change the audience. The goal of my work is to give you the knowledge to read the media like a book, just as the media has always read you.
Cross-posted to The Moderate Voice.
December 17, 2007
Grieving Barkeley
When you decide to love, you agree to grieve. It's a hard deal, but not too bad. Love renews and theoretically could go on forever. Grieving fades, in a ratio to the time spent in love, a ratio that has actually been measured by social scientists. One year of grieving for every 10 years of love, something like that.
For Barkeley, that means about a year and a half. I fell in love with Barkeley in 1993, when she was a fuzzy puppy. She puppy-trotted across her breeder's patio, over to where I sat on the ground, and she bit me on the toe, claiming me forever. Later that afternoon, she began her long tenure at Alta Mira.
She was named for love, for a place called Camp Barkeley, Texas, a World War II training base on the outskirts of my hometown. My father was a trainee there when he met my mother, who was an Abilene girl. Besides the toe, Barkeley was chosen because she was a Sheltie. They are good inside dogs, and they stay at home. Alta Mira is a curious hillside property impossible to fence, so stay-home puppies were essential.
Shelties look like miniature Collies. In fact strangers admiring Barkeley called her "Little Lassie." Shelties normally have floppy ears, but Barkeley's were pointed and furry. I called them mouton ears, after a type of winter coat beautiful high school girls wore in the 1950s. Barkeley was a color of tan called "sable" by Sheltie faithful, with black highlights. She had the signature white ruff, but only over her left shoulder and down across her throat. For that, I called her "Lefty" sometimes.
Barkeley was the second dog in my life who knew what I was thinking, and knew what I needed at any given moment. The first was Terry the Pup, a black cockapoo mutt I hung out with in the '80s. Terry would come alongside, where I sat on the stoop, and forced her nose between my arm and side, to let me know she was there, and ready. Barkeley approached from the front and sort of gently rested her muzzle on my leg, and bounced it a time or two.
Don't get me wrong. With Barkeley, it was food first, people second, and she was not inclined to patronize in exchange for an ear scratch. Still, she gained a reputation. She became distinguished by the regard her human friends had for her. She took you in through the eyes. She was small – 28 pounds – but with soft, huge, luminous brown eyes, set off by golden lashes and a touch of natural mascara. She had Bette Davis eyes.
She was fast, and a good chaser, and of course a natural herder. She would herd me out to get the paper, then wait at a ledge by the steps where, coming back, we could greet at the ledge and she would let me give her a full hug around the neck. That was our ritual for years. I noticed it starting to end three or four months ago. She lost her hearing and her eyes were turning cloudy. She was in her 90s, after all. Then she developed a tumor, maybe cancerous, maybe not, on the outside of her jaw. The vet said the normal procedure was to surgically remove the tumor, but, malignant or not, it would quickly grow back.
The treatment, in other words, would be worse than the condition. I thought maybe she could be with us through Christmas, but it didn't work out. This time she asked us to know what she was thinking. She was worn out, and she was disconnecting. Karen knew, and so did I, but it took me a few days to let go. Last week we took shovels out to the windy corner of the lot – she loved the wind in her face – finished our work there, carried her to the vet, she went to sleep, we carried her back home and laid her in her place on the corner, facing the wind. I hate it that she is gone. But I love it even more, that she was here.
For Barkeley, that means about a year and a half. I fell in love with Barkeley in 1993, when she was a fuzzy puppy. She puppy-trotted across her breeder's patio, over to where I sat on the ground, and she bit me on the toe, claiming me forever. Later that afternoon, she began her long tenure at Alta Mira.
She was named for love, for a place called Camp Barkeley, Texas, a World War II training base on the outskirts of my hometown. My father was a trainee there when he met my mother, who was an Abilene girl. Besides the toe, Barkeley was chosen because she was a Sheltie. They are good inside dogs, and they stay at home. Alta Mira is a curious hillside property impossible to fence, so stay-home puppies were essential.
Shelties look like miniature Collies. In fact strangers admiring Barkeley called her "Little Lassie." Shelties normally have floppy ears, but Barkeley's were pointed and furry. I called them mouton ears, after a type of winter coat beautiful high school girls wore in the 1950s. Barkeley was a color of tan called "sable" by Sheltie faithful, with black highlights. She had the signature white ruff, but only over her left shoulder and down across her throat. For that, I called her "Lefty" sometimes.
Barkeley was the second dog in my life who knew what I was thinking, and knew what I needed at any given moment. The first was Terry the Pup, a black cockapoo mutt I hung out with in the '80s. Terry would come alongside, where I sat on the stoop, and forced her nose between my arm and side, to let me know she was there, and ready. Barkeley approached from the front and sort of gently rested her muzzle on my leg, and bounced it a time or two.
Don't get me wrong. With Barkeley, it was food first, people second, and she was not inclined to patronize in exchange for an ear scratch. Still, she gained a reputation. She became distinguished by the regard her human friends had for her. She took you in through the eyes. She was small – 28 pounds – but with soft, huge, luminous brown eyes, set off by golden lashes and a touch of natural mascara. She had Bette Davis eyes.
She was fast, and a good chaser, and of course a natural herder. She would herd me out to get the paper, then wait at a ledge by the steps where, coming back, we could greet at the ledge and she would let me give her a full hug around the neck. That was our ritual for years. I noticed it starting to end three or four months ago. She lost her hearing and her eyes were turning cloudy. She was in her 90s, after all. Then she developed a tumor, maybe cancerous, maybe not, on the outside of her jaw. The vet said the normal procedure was to surgically remove the tumor, but, malignant or not, it would quickly grow back.
The treatment, in other words, would be worse than the condition. I thought maybe she could be with us through Christmas, but it didn't work out. This time she asked us to know what she was thinking. She was worn out, and she was disconnecting. Karen knew, and so did I, but it took me a few days to let go. Last week we took shovels out to the windy corner of the lot – she loved the wind in her face – finished our work there, carried her to the vet, she went to sleep, we carried her back home and laid her in her place on the corner, facing the wind. I hate it that she is gone. But I love it even more, that she was here.
The Speed of Journalism
Nobody expects the general public to know how the news media works; it isn’t taught in school. But sometimes it is astonishing to realize how little even the professionals understand, or forget, about the craft.
Writing in The San Diego Union-Tribune last week, reader’s representative Carol Goodhue expressed awed surprise at the success of The U-T’s online news team. Not only that, other big-city news organizations were awed, too, by the U-T’s success, she said, including Washingtonpost.com, who called with questions.
She wrote: “The actual query may be ‘How does it work?’ but I think the unspoken one is ‘How do so few do so much so quickly?’ ”
An astonishing statement to have been made, by a journalist, about journalists, and journalism.
But sort of understandable. For 500 years, newspapers journalists had 24 hours to work with in any given news cycle, and it was unthinkable to expect them to do more. Morning papers had their staffs, and evening papers had their staffs. With all that time, it was reasonable that newspaper guys would forget exactly how fast journalism is designed to work.
Until a big story broke. In 1978, a mid-air collision of airplanes over a San Diego neighborhood killed 144 people, in the planes and on the ground. It happened at 9 in the morning. By shortly after noon, the Evening Tribune, San Diego’s former evening newspaper, was on the streets with a first edition that would win a Pulitzer Prize for spot reporting.
That’s how fast journalism is designed to work. We felt it also on the Union side that morning. There was an instant shifting of gears, in which the Union newsroom accelerated from a normal workaday pace to a speed of 150 miles per hour. This happened with no one having to be told, or reminded, what to do. We just started covering the crash story. We were trained for this. We had the tools of the trade, and we simply responded, as smoothly as musicians dusting off instruments and sitting down to play.
Music provides a useful parallel. The general public listens to music every day without the slightest idea of how the music is made, the same way people read news media with no awareness at all of the process. With the dawn of online newspaper teams and their deadlines every minute, citizens have unprecedented opportunity to encounter the news actually being covered, and reporters have the same opportunity to encounter standard public reaction to news people. The public likes to accuse the news media of arrogance in claiming to know what the news is. Encountering this, the online news teams can provide on-the-spot education, to the benefit of both parties. U-T online reporter Greg Gross said people "have an image of us as imperious and arrogant, and when they find out we’re human beings just like they are, it’s a shock.” The only difference between them is that the news people human beings have been to journalism school.
To journalists now working for online news teams – the U-T’s was created in May, 2005 – it must be like a really cool rediscovery of their natural speed, and how easy it is to do journalism at 150 mph. Said Goodhue: “They don’t wait for assignments or debate whether to head out for a promising story. Karen Kucher, one of the original members of the team, and an assistant editor, said, ‘Our default is supposed to be go. . . When something big happens, it’s amazing how everybody just sort of figures out how to cover the news. It’s seamless.’ ”
It always was. Television news types in the last 30 years have claimed speed as their territory, where in reality there is not the slightest distinction to be made, for speed getting the job done, between a newspaper journalist, and a broadcast journalist. The tools are the same, on both sides of the aisle.
This blog has been cross-posted to The Moderate Voice.
Writing in The San Diego Union-Tribune last week, reader’s representative Carol Goodhue expressed awed surprise at the success of The U-T’s online news team. Not only that, other big-city news organizations were awed, too, by the U-T’s success, she said, including Washingtonpost.com, who called with questions.
She wrote: “The actual query may be ‘How does it work?’ but I think the unspoken one is ‘How do so few do so much so quickly?’ ”
An astonishing statement to have been made, by a journalist, about journalists, and journalism.
But sort of understandable. For 500 years, newspapers journalists had 24 hours to work with in any given news cycle, and it was unthinkable to expect them to do more. Morning papers had their staffs, and evening papers had their staffs. With all that time, it was reasonable that newspaper guys would forget exactly how fast journalism is designed to work.
Until a big story broke. In 1978, a mid-air collision of airplanes over a San Diego neighborhood killed 144 people, in the planes and on the ground. It happened at 9 in the morning. By shortly after noon, the Evening Tribune, San Diego’s former evening newspaper, was on the streets with a first edition that would win a Pulitzer Prize for spot reporting.
That’s how fast journalism is designed to work. We felt it also on the Union side that morning. There was an instant shifting of gears, in which the Union newsroom accelerated from a normal workaday pace to a speed of 150 miles per hour. This happened with no one having to be told, or reminded, what to do. We just started covering the crash story. We were trained for this. We had the tools of the trade, and we simply responded, as smoothly as musicians dusting off instruments and sitting down to play.
Music provides a useful parallel. The general public listens to music every day without the slightest idea of how the music is made, the same way people read news media with no awareness at all of the process. With the dawn of online newspaper teams and their deadlines every minute, citizens have unprecedented opportunity to encounter the news actually being covered, and reporters have the same opportunity to encounter standard public reaction to news people. The public likes to accuse the news media of arrogance in claiming to know what the news is. Encountering this, the online news teams can provide on-the-spot education, to the benefit of both parties. U-T online reporter Greg Gross said people "have an image of us as imperious and arrogant, and when they find out we’re human beings just like they are, it’s a shock.” The only difference between them is that the news people human beings have been to journalism school.
To journalists now working for online news teams – the U-T’s was created in May, 2005 – it must be like a really cool rediscovery of their natural speed, and how easy it is to do journalism at 150 mph. Said Goodhue: “They don’t wait for assignments or debate whether to head out for a promising story. Karen Kucher, one of the original members of the team, and an assistant editor, said, ‘Our default is supposed to be go. . . When something big happens, it’s amazing how everybody just sort of figures out how to cover the news. It’s seamless.’ ”
It always was. Television news types in the last 30 years have claimed speed as their territory, where in reality there is not the slightest distinction to be made, for speed getting the job done, between a newspaper journalist, and a broadcast journalist. The tools are the same, on both sides of the aisle.
This blog has been cross-posted to The Moderate Voice.
November 21, 2007
Media Tools for Rookies
If there is going to be not only a trend, but a distinct business decision to “open up” newspapers to community participation via the Internet, then I think the community participators need at least a flash course in Journalism 101.
I say this as a man who has been in the journalism profession since 1969, both as a newspaperman and a college instructor. When you do this work long enough, you realize that you may be original, and get great stories, and inform and influence the citizenry, but what you really are, at the end of the day, is a defender of principles.
These are the principles that I want known to citizens in Lawrence, Kansas, and Greensboro, N.C., two places where newspapers are introducing what they call “participatory journalism,” or “citizen journalism,” and also here in San Diego, at the online Voice of San Diego, whose very name mandates such participation.
It scares me to read, in The New York Times, that such newspapers mean to become “a virtual town square, where citizens have a say in the news and where every reader is a reporter,” without some assurance that those readers are least are familiar with journalism principles that are older than the Constitution and are the bedrock for the First Amendment.
The Founding Fathers knew that. Concerning the press, the First Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press.” Since “abridge” means reduce or diminish, it means the authors understood that freedom of the press already existed in this country and was not created, but simply protected, by the First Amendment.
This nation’s principles don’t come any more basic than that, and I, for one, don’t hold with hordes of yahoos tromping all over this hallowed space without some understanding of that.
Journalists go to school to learn their trade, and the first thing they learn are the tools, rules and definitions which we use to defend journalism principles. Most people know about the famous Five W’s: Who, What, When, Where, Why.
The actual tools and realities used every day in this business are not known, however, to the general public, because they aren’t taught anywhere but journalism school. These are the tools that I insist on exposing to the coming generation of “hands-on readers,” as The Times calls them, but there is another even more compelling reason that they become generally known. These same tools are at the heart of every sitcom, every commercial, every movie, every talk show, every media product offered in a world that has become flooded with media products.
People blame the media for the flood, and for such dubious results of this flood such as reality television, the Bush Administration’s scripted town halls, and Paris Hilton, without the slightest idea of what is going on.
Media producers know exactly what is going on and use journalism’s basic tools in ways that become more sophisticated all the time. Consumers need to know those tools, too, and understand how they work, because if they do, then the media will know that the consumers know what is going on, and that will start to change the media-consumer relationship.
There is a blinding irony at work here. The media did, in fact, create a couple of the tools it uses. The rest were created by people. Almost all of the tools, definitions and rules of journalism were created by people thousands of years before the media came into existence. The media only took those ancient tools and turned them into a business.
In the Media Toolbox, you will find 10 news, or event, values. They are Conflict, Progress, Disaster, Consequence, Prominence, Proximity, Timeliness, Human Interest, Novelty, and Sex & Sensationalism.
There are three media realities in the Toolbox: Balance, Professionalism and Competition. There are also three public realities: Information, Demographics and Curiosity.
And there are two laws of media: 1) The media is a business; 2) The media is an exercise in the power of small numbers.
More about this after Thanksgiving. Speaking of which, have a happy one!
I say this as a man who has been in the journalism profession since 1969, both as a newspaperman and a college instructor. When you do this work long enough, you realize that you may be original, and get great stories, and inform and influence the citizenry, but what you really are, at the end of the day, is a defender of principles.
These are the principles that I want known to citizens in Lawrence, Kansas, and Greensboro, N.C., two places where newspapers are introducing what they call “participatory journalism,” or “citizen journalism,” and also here in San Diego, at the online Voice of San Diego, whose very name mandates such participation.
It scares me to read, in The New York Times, that such newspapers mean to become “a virtual town square, where citizens have a say in the news and where every reader is a reporter,” without some assurance that those readers are least are familiar with journalism principles that are older than the Constitution and are the bedrock for the First Amendment.
The Founding Fathers knew that. Concerning the press, the First Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press.” Since “abridge” means reduce or diminish, it means the authors understood that freedom of the press already existed in this country and was not created, but simply protected, by the First Amendment.
This nation’s principles don’t come any more basic than that, and I, for one, don’t hold with hordes of yahoos tromping all over this hallowed space without some understanding of that.
Journalists go to school to learn their trade, and the first thing they learn are the tools, rules and definitions which we use to defend journalism principles. Most people know about the famous Five W’s: Who, What, When, Where, Why.
The actual tools and realities used every day in this business are not known, however, to the general public, because they aren’t taught anywhere but journalism school. These are the tools that I insist on exposing to the coming generation of “hands-on readers,” as The Times calls them, but there is another even more compelling reason that they become generally known. These same tools are at the heart of every sitcom, every commercial, every movie, every talk show, every media product offered in a world that has become flooded with media products.
People blame the media for the flood, and for such dubious results of this flood such as reality television, the Bush Administration’s scripted town halls, and Paris Hilton, without the slightest idea of what is going on.
Media producers know exactly what is going on and use journalism’s basic tools in ways that become more sophisticated all the time. Consumers need to know those tools, too, and understand how they work, because if they do, then the media will know that the consumers know what is going on, and that will start to change the media-consumer relationship.
There is a blinding irony at work here. The media did, in fact, create a couple of the tools it uses. The rest were created by people. Almost all of the tools, definitions and rules of journalism were created by people thousands of years before the media came into existence. The media only took those ancient tools and turned them into a business.
In the Media Toolbox, you will find 10 news, or event, values. They are Conflict, Progress, Disaster, Consequence, Prominence, Proximity, Timeliness, Human Interest, Novelty, and Sex & Sensationalism.
There are three media realities in the Toolbox: Balance, Professionalism and Competition. There are also three public realities: Information, Demographics and Curiosity.
And there are two laws of media: 1) The media is a business; 2) The media is an exercise in the power of small numbers.
More about this after Thanksgiving. Speaking of which, have a happy one!
Joe Gandelman and TMV
Joe Gandelman and I were colleagues at the old San Diego Union, before it was merged with the old, and moribund, Evening Tribune, in the early 1990s.
We both left the paper, went our own ways, and I always remembered Joe for his energy. First and foremost, Joe Gandelman was energetic. I had no idea how energetic, though, until years later, when I discovered his blog, "The Moderate Voice." I have a blog, yes, but I am not a classic blogger. I post essays, and I post them when I feel like it. A classic blogger posts in stream-of-consciousness rhythm, pouring out thoughts and observations in such volume that I don't know when they eat or sleep.
Joe was doing this, when I found him again a couple of years ago. At that time, I also discovered that he was a ventriloquist. He does shows, mostly for kids, all over the country. During and after our October fires in San Diego, he was going to evacuation sites, doing his show to distract kids, and others, from their fears.
Joe is now editor-in-chief of "The Moderate Voice," or, TMV. If you have visited the blogosphere, you know that it is highly politicized and opinionated, or at least it can be. There is endless shouting in the blogosphere, from the left and from the right, much of it from people who represent a majority of one. These are the MOOs. A blogger can make a gentle observation, such as, "Water is wet," and count on streams of abuse from MOOs.
Joe's niche is moderation, politically and vocally. A centrist voice, he calls it. I have contributed a couple of pieces to TMV in the past year, and Joe has occasionally linked to my blog. This week, we took another step. One of the constant blogosphere themes is the media. In a long career as a journalist and educator, the media – what it is, and how it works, and how the general public doesn't know what it is, or how it works – has become a major personal theme.
As he regularly does for people with serious content to contribute, Joe offered to make me a "co-blogger" at TMV. I accepted, and contributed my first co-blog this week, four paragraphs at TMV, and an invitation to read the rest here, at my own blog. Practically all of my TMV co-blogs will concern media, which of course will be posted in their entirety here (see above), while also allowing me to wax on non-TMV issues which are important to me, such as turkey surgery (see below).
We both left the paper, went our own ways, and I always remembered Joe for his energy. First and foremost, Joe Gandelman was energetic. I had no idea how energetic, though, until years later, when I discovered his blog, "The Moderate Voice." I have a blog, yes, but I am not a classic blogger. I post essays, and I post them when I feel like it. A classic blogger posts in stream-of-consciousness rhythm, pouring out thoughts and observations in such volume that I don't know when they eat or sleep.
Joe was doing this, when I found him again a couple of years ago. At that time, I also discovered that he was a ventriloquist. He does shows, mostly for kids, all over the country. During and after our October fires in San Diego, he was going to evacuation sites, doing his show to distract kids, and others, from their fears.
Joe is now editor-in-chief of "The Moderate Voice," or, TMV. If you have visited the blogosphere, you know that it is highly politicized and opinionated, or at least it can be. There is endless shouting in the blogosphere, from the left and from the right, much of it from people who represent a majority of one. These are the MOOs. A blogger can make a gentle observation, such as, "Water is wet," and count on streams of abuse from MOOs.
Joe's niche is moderation, politically and vocally. A centrist voice, he calls it. I have contributed a couple of pieces to TMV in the past year, and Joe has occasionally linked to my blog. This week, we took another step. One of the constant blogosphere themes is the media. In a long career as a journalist and educator, the media – what it is, and how it works, and how the general public doesn't know what it is, or how it works – has become a major personal theme.
As he regularly does for people with serious content to contribute, Joe offered to make me a "co-blogger" at TMV. I accepted, and contributed my first co-blog this week, four paragraphs at TMV, and an invitation to read the rest here, at my own blog. Practically all of my TMV co-blogs will concern media, which of course will be posted in their entirety here (see above), while also allowing me to wax on non-TMV issues which are important to me, such as turkey surgery (see below).
Best Turkey: Shot, and Smoked
For the 26th straight Thanksgiving Day, the findings of the Kettner Blvd. College of Turkey Surgeons and Airport Relocation Committee remain unchanged.
The surest way to have a moist, flavorful turkey for Thanksgiving is to shoot it and smoke it.
If you are new to the debate, the KBCTSARC was created to research answers to two dilemmas of our time:
Is there a way to make turkey moist?
Where should San Diego locate its new airport?
The first issue is universal, or at least as widespread as those regions on the planet where turkey is cooked and served.
The second issue is local. I was born in Texas, where you can put an airport almost anywhere, but since 1972 I have lived in San Diego, California. Sometime in the 1930s, San Diegans started talking about the need to relocate their airport from Lindbergh Field to some better location.
Three-quarters of a century later, that question is still in the hands of a committee (not the KBCTSARC) which meets regularly to discuss potential locations as disparate as the Imperial Desert (a two-hour drive) and the Pacific Ocean (airport built on piers or pontoons).
The KBCTSARC, meanwhile, goes about its business casually, a pace consistent with our motto: “Not likely to happen in our lifetimes.” Our current airport relocation advice is: leave it where it is.
Regarding the turkey, a fresh bird (not frozen, or previously frozen) is best, about 18 pounds. You will need a large syringe, used originally by large-animal veterinarians but now a popular item in kitchenware stores and catalogues. And you will need a Weber kettle cooker, the 22-inch size, and a bag of charcoal briquets laced with mesquite. With the syringe, inject into the bird’s breasts and thighs a mixture of melted butter, chicken stock, and a couple tablespoons of sherry. In this mixture, saturate a clean dishcloth and place it over the bird.
Build small, 20-briquet fires on either side of the fire grate. Close the kettle and lid vents halfway. Place the bird, unstuffed, in the center of the grille, to create indirect-heat cooking. Moisten the cloth every 45 minutes and tend the fires, adding a few briquets each time. Remove the cloth the last hour of cooking and inject the bird again. Cooking time should be about four hours. When a thigh wiggles freely, he is done. When he is finished, he will come out with a deep mahogany glaze.
But he won’t taste “barbecued.” He will have a smoky essence, but he will be all turkey. Turkey is like hamburger; it remains turkey no matter what you do to it. Thus the usual accompaniments are correct. Roast a big pan of dressing, with oysters and walnuts in it. Make a mess of giblet gravy, and sprinkle a quarter-cup of leftover coffee on the giblets as they are sautéing. Make a big pan of oven-roasted (350 degrees) vegetables: new potatoes, onions, carrots, red and green bell peppers, broccoli stalks, all chunked and tossed with a little olive oil, salt and pepper. When these are starting to get tender, add the broccoli florets and plenty of crimini mushrooms and let it go another 15 minutes.
Have fresh white bread and a full jar of mayonnaise ready for the turkey sandwiches on Friday. Always the best part of Thanksgiving dinner.
The surest way to have a moist, flavorful turkey for Thanksgiving is to shoot it and smoke it.
If you are new to the debate, the KBCTSARC was created to research answers to two dilemmas of our time:
Is there a way to make turkey moist?
Where should San Diego locate its new airport?
The first issue is universal, or at least as widespread as those regions on the planet where turkey is cooked and served.
The second issue is local. I was born in Texas, where you can put an airport almost anywhere, but since 1972 I have lived in San Diego, California. Sometime in the 1930s, San Diegans started talking about the need to relocate their airport from Lindbergh Field to some better location.
Three-quarters of a century later, that question is still in the hands of a committee (not the KBCTSARC) which meets regularly to discuss potential locations as disparate as the Imperial Desert (a two-hour drive) and the Pacific Ocean (airport built on piers or pontoons).
The KBCTSARC, meanwhile, goes about its business casually, a pace consistent with our motto: “Not likely to happen in our lifetimes.” Our current airport relocation advice is: leave it where it is.
Regarding the turkey, a fresh bird (not frozen, or previously frozen) is best, about 18 pounds. You will need a large syringe, used originally by large-animal veterinarians but now a popular item in kitchenware stores and catalogues. And you will need a Weber kettle cooker, the 22-inch size, and a bag of charcoal briquets laced with mesquite. With the syringe, inject into the bird’s breasts and thighs a mixture of melted butter, chicken stock, and a couple tablespoons of sherry. In this mixture, saturate a clean dishcloth and place it over the bird.
Build small, 20-briquet fires on either side of the fire grate. Close the kettle and lid vents halfway. Place the bird, unstuffed, in the center of the grille, to create indirect-heat cooking. Moisten the cloth every 45 minutes and tend the fires, adding a few briquets each time. Remove the cloth the last hour of cooking and inject the bird again. Cooking time should be about four hours. When a thigh wiggles freely, he is done. When he is finished, he will come out with a deep mahogany glaze.
But he won’t taste “barbecued.” He will have a smoky essence, but he will be all turkey. Turkey is like hamburger; it remains turkey no matter what you do to it. Thus the usual accompaniments are correct. Roast a big pan of dressing, with oysters and walnuts in it. Make a mess of giblet gravy, and sprinkle a quarter-cup of leftover coffee on the giblets as they are sautéing. Make a big pan of oven-roasted (350 degrees) vegetables: new potatoes, onions, carrots, red and green bell peppers, broccoli stalks, all chunked and tossed with a little olive oil, salt and pepper. When these are starting to get tender, add the broccoli florets and plenty of crimini mushrooms and let it go another 15 minutes.
Have fresh white bread and a full jar of mayonnaise ready for the turkey sandwiches on Friday. Always the best part of Thanksgiving dinner.
November 20, 2007
Reading Media
It is time for Americans to learn how to read media.
“Reading Media” certainly means reading newspapers, magazines and books – and now Websites – and watching television and movies, and listening to radio.
But “Reading Media” also means understanding a second level of whatever you are looking at or listening to that is always there. At that level are the reasons that someone decided to write the story, or the sitcom, or the movie, or the book, or the commercial.
Those reasons are all about you. Media professionals can “read” you like a book. They know what pushes your buttons, what pulls your triggers. They go to journalism and media schools to learn how to read you, using a system of tools and definitions that I call a Toolbox. Then they become professionals in one of the three media production industries: information, entertainment, and persuasion.
Unfortunately, the Toolbox isn’t part of regular education in the United States. If it was, the general public would understand why news is news. People would understand the difference between news and entertainment (a difference that many media pros are working very hard to blur these days). And they would understand the reactions they have to things they see in media, and that understanding is very important. In everything from beer commercials to political programming, the media uses the Toolbox to manipulate people, to create persuasion that leads to choices.
People know they are feeling something when they see this content: happiness, anger, satisfaction, disgust, agreement, disagreement, connection, alienation. But they may not understand the feeling, where it comes from. Seinfeld mugs an old lady just to get a loaf of rye bread, and people laugh and laugh.
Why do people laugh at a mugging? The answer is in the Toolbox. When people use the Toolbox to read media, they become more informed consumers, whether the product is information, entertainment or persuasion. Informed consumers have the best chance to make choices they will feel good about. When the media starts to realize that the consumers know what is going on, it will move the media-public relationship toward a more honest balance. To change the media, change the audience.
“Reading Media” certainly means reading newspapers, magazines and books – and now Websites – and watching television and movies, and listening to radio.
But “Reading Media” also means understanding a second level of whatever you are looking at or listening to that is always there. At that level are the reasons that someone decided to write the story, or the sitcom, or the movie, or the book, or the commercial.
Those reasons are all about you. Media professionals can “read” you like a book. They know what pushes your buttons, what pulls your triggers. They go to journalism and media schools to learn how to read you, using a system of tools and definitions that I call a Toolbox. Then they become professionals in one of the three media production industries: information, entertainment, and persuasion.
Unfortunately, the Toolbox isn’t part of regular education in the United States. If it was, the general public would understand why news is news. People would understand the difference between news and entertainment (a difference that many media pros are working very hard to blur these days). And they would understand the reactions they have to things they see in media, and that understanding is very important. In everything from beer commercials to political programming, the media uses the Toolbox to manipulate people, to create persuasion that leads to choices.
People know they are feeling something when they see this content: happiness, anger, satisfaction, disgust, agreement, disagreement, connection, alienation. But they may not understand the feeling, where it comes from. Seinfeld mugs an old lady just to get a loaf of rye bread, and people laugh and laugh.
Why do people laugh at a mugging? The answer is in the Toolbox. When people use the Toolbox to read media, they become more informed consumers, whether the product is information, entertainment or persuasion. Informed consumers have the best chance to make choices they will feel good about. When the media starts to realize that the consumers know what is going on, it will move the media-public relationship toward a more honest balance. To change the media, change the audience.
November 12, 2007
Writers 7, Reality 0
Did you happen to watch the Chargers-Colts game on national television Sunday night?
The game was entirely scripted by the Writers' Guild. The writers have been out on strike for a week now. For a group of people accustomed to coming up with funny sketches on deadline, a week of idleness was maddening, cruel and unusual. So the NFL and NBC came up with this way to give the writers some relief. It was a win-win for the league and the network, making the best of the kinds of scheduling gaffes that regularly occur when prime-time matchups are scheduled months in advance on old expectations.
They provided the writers a simple premise: "The Colts can field only 17 players on offense. The Chargers couldn't beat the Montessori junior varsity. Give us a 60-minute script."
The result was impressive, a three-hour show that only seasoned television writers could dream up. It had a soap-opera pace, the barest relationship to the reality of football as it is played by professionals, heroes and tragic figures popping up unexpectedly, turning tides, Baskerville atmosphere, slow dramatic development with a late shock, and, of course, no ending. Nobody won. I have never seen a football game that engendered such despair in the winning fans.
Of course that was the genius of the script. The writers had Mr. Clutch, Adam Vinatieri, miss a 29-yard field goal at the end. If he makes it, everyone reacts normally. Indy fans sigh, Chargers fans scream, and a terrific script is wasted.
So the script has Vinatieri missing, and haunting conflict settles over all. In Indianapolis, where last year's Super Bowl trophy sits on a shelf, a fan writes to say he has hauled all Colts materials out of his house and is waiting for the trashman to pick it up. In San Diego, fans say, we won, so why do I feel so bad? "Chargers won," writes a fan, "but, how embarrassing!!!!"
You just don't find conflict like that in real life. My hat is off to the writers. I wonder how they got compensated? Official Tom Brady jerseys maybe. They can sell them on eBay to buy groceries until the strike is over. I, for one, hope it is over soon. I never want to sit through another football game like that.
The game was entirely scripted by the Writers' Guild. The writers have been out on strike for a week now. For a group of people accustomed to coming up with funny sketches on deadline, a week of idleness was maddening, cruel and unusual. So the NFL and NBC came up with this way to give the writers some relief. It was a win-win for the league and the network, making the best of the kinds of scheduling gaffes that regularly occur when prime-time matchups are scheduled months in advance on old expectations.
They provided the writers a simple premise: "The Colts can field only 17 players on offense. The Chargers couldn't beat the Montessori junior varsity. Give us a 60-minute script."
The result was impressive, a three-hour show that only seasoned television writers could dream up. It had a soap-opera pace, the barest relationship to the reality of football as it is played by professionals, heroes and tragic figures popping up unexpectedly, turning tides, Baskerville atmosphere, slow dramatic development with a late shock, and, of course, no ending. Nobody won. I have never seen a football game that engendered such despair in the winning fans.
Of course that was the genius of the script. The writers had Mr. Clutch, Adam Vinatieri, miss a 29-yard field goal at the end. If he makes it, everyone reacts normally. Indy fans sigh, Chargers fans scream, and a terrific script is wasted.
So the script has Vinatieri missing, and haunting conflict settles over all. In Indianapolis, where last year's Super Bowl trophy sits on a shelf, a fan writes to say he has hauled all Colts materials out of his house and is waiting for the trashman to pick it up. In San Diego, fans say, we won, so why do I feel so bad? "Chargers won," writes a fan, "but, how embarrassing!!!!"
You just don't find conflict like that in real life. My hat is off to the writers. I wonder how they got compensated? Official Tom Brady jerseys maybe. They can sell them on eBay to buy groceries until the strike is over. I, for one, hope it is over soon. I never want to sit through another football game like that.
October 27, 2007
Community
Saturday morning. I went to a morning business meeting in San Diego and no one felt much like doing business. They didn't feel like doing anything. They felt flat, dragged out, no energy, depleted.
Including me. "I think we're all enervated," I said. "Just like after you've had an orgasm."
Not everyone identified with that. But the enervation I felt was identical to the post-orgasm kind. It made sense to me. I don't think anything focuses a person quite like the runup to orgasm. But the fires had an approximate effect. People in San Diego may have tried to involve themselves with other focuses this week, but somewhere in their minds, there was a constant presence of fire. Doubt, fear, anxiety, blood pressure, expectation, hope, flight in many cases, preparation for flight in many others, long black nights trimmed in bright orange. It has been a hell of an affair this week, shared by three million people.
In 1978, in San Diego, there was a midair collision of airplanes over the North Park section of the city. A Pacific Southwest Airlines 727 overtook and collided with a Cessna 172. The Cessna and its two souls on board were knocked straight down to the ground. The 727 crashed, in a near-vertical attitude, at the corner of Dwight and Nile streets in North Park. In the planes and on the ground, 144 people were killed.
After its investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded in its compulsory "Survival Aspects" paragraph: "This accident was not survivable." It was the greatest disaster in San Diego to that date. Thousands of us remember 9:01 a.m., Sept, 25, 1978, and the stories and images that followed. To this day, in San Diego, people all over the city watch jetliners on approach to Lindbergh Field in a more than impersonal way.
One of the stories I wrote after the crash addressed community involvement. I interviewed Dr. Michael Mantell, chief psychologist for the San Diego Police Dept. He said that after such a crash, people experience three emotional stages: shock or disbelief; a "cataclysm" of emotions (anger, fear, guilt), and, finally, equilibrium.
He said a city reacts in the same way. After the crash, San Diego suffered its own collective emotional passage, also defined by stages of shock, emotional chaos, and finally equilibrium. In San Diego today, some number of people, torn from homes that then were torn from them, no doubt are still in deep shock. Others, probably most, of us, felt shock giving way to vigilance and emotional chaos by Tuesday or Wednesday. A member of our business meeting this morning told of a friend, forced to evacuate on the first day, by the third day was insisting on buying and delivering goods to other evacuation centers.
Yesterday, Friday, we started to see a chance to breathe, carefully, because the air quality over this beautiful region was dangerous, from the mountain foothills to the beaches. The media and the people are entering the post-mortem stage, looking back, summing up, some with pride, some with anger, but all in more or less total connection to their community.
Equilibrium? Out there somewhere. Dr. Mantell said equilibrium arrives when the city can think about the disaster without the urge to "do" something. He said reaching equilibrium takes time and effort, for both individuals and the city.
He said there is also an anniversary effect. What a strange future this city has. This October's fires started on Oct. 21. The 2003 Cedar Fire, another true disaster, started on Oct. 24. Next October will be the Cedar's fifth anniversary, and the Witch/Harris's first, both major anniversaries in the human process of remembering and observing.
I remember the Cedar's first anniversary, in 2004. I remember watching the weather as Oct. 24 approached, praying to God to wake up that day to blue, clear skies. Instead, it was dark that morning, low, gray clouds from an early storm arriving from the Gulf of Alaska, that poured rain on the county for two days. I remember the relief like it was yesterday.
Including me. "I think we're all enervated," I said. "Just like after you've had an orgasm."
Not everyone identified with that. But the enervation I felt was identical to the post-orgasm kind. It made sense to me. I don't think anything focuses a person quite like the runup to orgasm. But the fires had an approximate effect. People in San Diego may have tried to involve themselves with other focuses this week, but somewhere in their minds, there was a constant presence of fire. Doubt, fear, anxiety, blood pressure, expectation, hope, flight in many cases, preparation for flight in many others, long black nights trimmed in bright orange. It has been a hell of an affair this week, shared by three million people.
In 1978, in San Diego, there was a midair collision of airplanes over the North Park section of the city. A Pacific Southwest Airlines 727 overtook and collided with a Cessna 172. The Cessna and its two souls on board were knocked straight down to the ground. The 727 crashed, in a near-vertical attitude, at the corner of Dwight and Nile streets in North Park. In the planes and on the ground, 144 people were killed.
After its investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded in its compulsory "Survival Aspects" paragraph: "This accident was not survivable." It was the greatest disaster in San Diego to that date. Thousands of us remember 9:01 a.m., Sept, 25, 1978, and the stories and images that followed. To this day, in San Diego, people all over the city watch jetliners on approach to Lindbergh Field in a more than impersonal way.
One of the stories I wrote after the crash addressed community involvement. I interviewed Dr. Michael Mantell, chief psychologist for the San Diego Police Dept. He said that after such a crash, people experience three emotional stages: shock or disbelief; a "cataclysm" of emotions (anger, fear, guilt), and, finally, equilibrium.
He said a city reacts in the same way. After the crash, San Diego suffered its own collective emotional passage, also defined by stages of shock, emotional chaos, and finally equilibrium. In San Diego today, some number of people, torn from homes that then were torn from them, no doubt are still in deep shock. Others, probably most, of us, felt shock giving way to vigilance and emotional chaos by Tuesday or Wednesday. A member of our business meeting this morning told of a friend, forced to evacuate on the first day, by the third day was insisting on buying and delivering goods to other evacuation centers.
Yesterday, Friday, we started to see a chance to breathe, carefully, because the air quality over this beautiful region was dangerous, from the mountain foothills to the beaches. The media and the people are entering the post-mortem stage, looking back, summing up, some with pride, some with anger, but all in more or less total connection to their community.
Equilibrium? Out there somewhere. Dr. Mantell said equilibrium arrives when the city can think about the disaster without the urge to "do" something. He said reaching equilibrium takes time and effort, for both individuals and the city.
He said there is also an anniversary effect. What a strange future this city has. This October's fires started on Oct. 21. The 2003 Cedar Fire, another true disaster, started on Oct. 24. Next October will be the Cedar's fifth anniversary, and the Witch/Harris's first, both major anniversaries in the human process of remembering and observing.
I remember the Cedar's first anniversary, in 2004. I remember watching the weather as Oct. 24 approached, praying to God to wake up that day to blue, clear skies. Instead, it was dark that morning, low, gray clouds from an early storm arriving from the Gulf of Alaska, that poured rain on the county for two days. I remember the relief like it was yesterday.
October 26, 2007
Media and the Fire
People tend to have their news media preferences, which is a good thing when the news is going 150 miles per hour, as it has this week in San Diego County.
For local news, I prefer Channel 39, which is San Diego's NBC affiliate. Preferences are always personal, and are founded in all the demographic minutiae from which an individual personality is composed. Age is part of my mix that accounts for an NBC preference. I can remember the novelty of waking up in the morning in the 1950s and watching the original "Today" show on NBC, with Dave Garroway.
So I still like the "Today" show, and so I watch Channel 39 locally. Other San Diegans this week have favored Channel 6, or 8, or 9, or 10, which is good. With news proceeding at 150 mph, it is not a good idea to channel-surf.
Why? Confusion. I did surf some this week, because I am in the media business. Regularly, what I heard on Channel 39 did not square with what Channel 8 was saying, and those both were different from 9, or 10, etc. This was to be expected.
In the news media, as in any enterprise, there is always a tension between principles and realities. The first news media principle is accuracy. Accuracy is also the second and third principle of news media, and it is so important because of credibility. Lose accuracy, lose credibility, forfeit consumer trust, and the consumer remotes off to another channel.
But the news media also must acknowledge reality. When a news story is going 150 mph, accuracy tends to suffer. This is a particularly mean reality for television news organizations. A vital component of accuracy is editing – checking facts – and when stories happen at speed, editing can't keep up. Principles become overrun by realities, just as fire overruns dreams. It can happen even in newspapers, with their overnight cushion, but it happens on the fly, on television, and nothing can be done about it.
A consumer watching Channel 39 will hear these inconsistencies as they happen, and two or three members in a family will look at each other and ask: "What did he (she) say?" It doesn't help that people typically also hear things differently. When 10 people witness the same event, they will present 10 differing reports of what they saw and heard. Thus it is difficult enough to follow a 150-mph story on a single channel. Surf across three or four, each with its own inconsistencies (both on the part of the channel and the viewers), and you see the kind of confusion that can result by the end of the day.
I had an interesting moment on Wednesday morning, just at dawn. First light had risen in the east, but the horizon was still in silhouette, and obscured in places by smoke. I saw flames, bright in the darkness, in the area of the Jamul community, where I used to live. In the line of flame, I could see the silhouette of a ridgeline that I believed to be Vista Grande, a populated hilltop just to the west of Jamul. Where I lived, Vista Grande was literally just across the road. Wednesday morning, were I to believe what I was seeing, the relationship of the fire to Vista Grande meant that the fire was in Mexican Canyon, directly below the house where I lived. My ex-wife still lives there.
I feared for her, and her husband. The fire must be directly below them, not 200 yards down the hill. But then the accuracy principle kicked in. Positively identifying Vista Grande was not possible, in the darkness and the smoke. So I called my daughter, who was in touch with her mom, and learned that the flame line actually was a couple of miles south of what my eyes had wanted to tell me. Taking the time to call was a form of editing, and accuracy was the result.
All this being said, I think all the channels did a pretty good job this week, with this story, particularly my channel, 39. On Wednesday, they were showing an aerial view from a helicopter, and Bill Menish, the 39 morning news anchor, said, "That is Channel 8's chopper, might as well go ahead and give them credit." I thought that was very cool. Another news media reality is competition, which drives networks, particularly, to be first with the news, and accuracy be damned. The San Diego channels actually pooled their identities this week, which for the news media is a fabulous direction in which to head.
Many channels also augmented their reporter staffs by bringing in reporters from others cities: Dallas, Chicago, etc., which was a great idea. Finally, as I was surfing on Wednesday, I saw all the channels except 39 zeroed in on yet another news briefing by local and state officials that was five percent information and 95 percent backslapping. Channel 39 ignored the briefing. Good for them.
For local news, I prefer Channel 39, which is San Diego's NBC affiliate. Preferences are always personal, and are founded in all the demographic minutiae from which an individual personality is composed. Age is part of my mix that accounts for an NBC preference. I can remember the novelty of waking up in the morning in the 1950s and watching the original "Today" show on NBC, with Dave Garroway.
So I still like the "Today" show, and so I watch Channel 39 locally. Other San Diegans this week have favored Channel 6, or 8, or 9, or 10, which is good. With news proceeding at 150 mph, it is not a good idea to channel-surf.
Why? Confusion. I did surf some this week, because I am in the media business. Regularly, what I heard on Channel 39 did not square with what Channel 8 was saying, and those both were different from 9, or 10, etc. This was to be expected.
In the news media, as in any enterprise, there is always a tension between principles and realities. The first news media principle is accuracy. Accuracy is also the second and third principle of news media, and it is so important because of credibility. Lose accuracy, lose credibility, forfeit consumer trust, and the consumer remotes off to another channel.
But the news media also must acknowledge reality. When a news story is going 150 mph, accuracy tends to suffer. This is a particularly mean reality for television news organizations. A vital component of accuracy is editing – checking facts – and when stories happen at speed, editing can't keep up. Principles become overrun by realities, just as fire overruns dreams. It can happen even in newspapers, with their overnight cushion, but it happens on the fly, on television, and nothing can be done about it.
A consumer watching Channel 39 will hear these inconsistencies as they happen, and two or three members in a family will look at each other and ask: "What did he (she) say?" It doesn't help that people typically also hear things differently. When 10 people witness the same event, they will present 10 differing reports of what they saw and heard. Thus it is difficult enough to follow a 150-mph story on a single channel. Surf across three or four, each with its own inconsistencies (both on the part of the channel and the viewers), and you see the kind of confusion that can result by the end of the day.
I had an interesting moment on Wednesday morning, just at dawn. First light had risen in the east, but the horizon was still in silhouette, and obscured in places by smoke. I saw flames, bright in the darkness, in the area of the Jamul community, where I used to live. In the line of flame, I could see the silhouette of a ridgeline that I believed to be Vista Grande, a populated hilltop just to the west of Jamul. Where I lived, Vista Grande was literally just across the road. Wednesday morning, were I to believe what I was seeing, the relationship of the fire to Vista Grande meant that the fire was in Mexican Canyon, directly below the house where I lived. My ex-wife still lives there.
I feared for her, and her husband. The fire must be directly below them, not 200 yards down the hill. But then the accuracy principle kicked in. Positively identifying Vista Grande was not possible, in the darkness and the smoke. So I called my daughter, who was in touch with her mom, and learned that the flame line actually was a couple of miles south of what my eyes had wanted to tell me. Taking the time to call was a form of editing, and accuracy was the result.
All this being said, I think all the channels did a pretty good job this week, with this story, particularly my channel, 39. On Wednesday, they were showing an aerial view from a helicopter, and Bill Menish, the 39 morning news anchor, said, "That is Channel 8's chopper, might as well go ahead and give them credit." I thought that was very cool. Another news media reality is competition, which drives networks, particularly, to be first with the news, and accuracy be damned. The San Diego channels actually pooled their identities this week, which for the news media is a fabulous direction in which to head.
Many channels also augmented their reporter staffs by bringing in reporters from others cities: Dallas, Chicago, etc., which was a great idea. Finally, as I was surfing on Wednesday, I saw all the channels except 39 zeroed in on yet another news briefing by local and state officials that was five percent information and 95 percent backslapping. Channel 39 ignored the briefing. Good for them.
October 25, 2007
DC-10
Yesterday afternoon I saw something that ordinarily you would think could only come to you in a dream. I saw a DC-10 used as a tactical aircraft.
Channel 39 in San Diego had its chopper up, over the "Harris Fire," which continues to plague the back country east of where we are. It is the fire we have been watching since Monday, and the "mother fire" responsible for the Mt. Miguel fire that was within five miles of us on Tuesday.
So suddenly, about 4:15 p.m. yesterday, on our screens we see a DC-10, white with red markings, cruising at treetop level above one of the hot spots east of Jamul, out by Barrett Lake. A DC-10 has three engines, is 180 feet long, and a wingspan of 160 feet. As a passenger airliner, it could seat almost 400 people. And here it was, orbiting a smoky drop spot in a wide counterclockwise circle, no more than 500 feet off the ground. From the chopper camera, we were looking down at it.
You can tell when one of these firefighter aircraft, large or small, is about to make its drop. It orbits a couple of times, coordinating with a fire boss in a helicopter hovering above, deciding exactly where the drop should be. This week, all the drops we have seen, both from water helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, have been awesome in their accuracy. Like the PGA commercials say about pro golfers, these guys are good.
After the second orbit, the aircraft settles into a nose-up glide, like a hen positioning herself over a nest of eggs. The DC-10 did this, gliding on, and we could see the drop starting, red fire retardant starting to trail from tanks underneath the fuselage. And then the plane disappeared. We realized it was flying into a narrow gully, between the backdrop mountainside and a ridgeline in the middle distance. I don't know who was flying that DC-10, but he (or she) could work for Steven Spielberg.
It was a long gully, and finally the DC-10 emerged at the other end, still trailing retardant. Then the retardant was spent, and the jet climbed sharply, banked left, and climbed. If it had been a movie, the music would have swelled, suggesting a corner had been turned.
A corner has in fact been turned, thanks to time, weather and firefighters including the crew of that DC-10, but fires are still burning everywhere today. We can no longer see any fires from our house in La Mesa, which has a 270-degree view from northeast around to west. The wind has calmed and turned, now coming off the ocean, which is good and bad. It is now blowing the fires back on themselves, but also increasing a new danger of the fires spreading east instead of west. Our picturesque mountain town of Julian has been evacuated and much of the effort today is to stop the Witch Creek fire, which started just west of Julian, four days later to turn back and enter the town.
This morning another impressive aircraft, Air Force One, appeared from the east through smoky haze and touched down at Miramar Naval Air Station. President Bush got off, shook hands all around, and got into a helicopter with Arnold to go inspect the devastation. There was some commentary about how important it was for Bush to respond quickly and completely to our fires, after his performance after Katrina. Oddly, two years ago he was in San Diego, on the evening of the Monday when Katrina hit New Orleans, and it was on his way back to D.C. from San Diego that his infamous indifference to the Katrina disaster first began to show. Air Force One touching down here now represented an interesting circle closing.
Say what you will about Bush, that huge aircraft, representing the office of the President of the United States of America, picked spirits up here as it settled toward the runway and then touched down.
Channel 39 in San Diego had its chopper up, over the "Harris Fire," which continues to plague the back country east of where we are. It is the fire we have been watching since Monday, and the "mother fire" responsible for the Mt. Miguel fire that was within five miles of us on Tuesday.
So suddenly, about 4:15 p.m. yesterday, on our screens we see a DC-10, white with red markings, cruising at treetop level above one of the hot spots east of Jamul, out by Barrett Lake. A DC-10 has three engines, is 180 feet long, and a wingspan of 160 feet. As a passenger airliner, it could seat almost 400 people. And here it was, orbiting a smoky drop spot in a wide counterclockwise circle, no more than 500 feet off the ground. From the chopper camera, we were looking down at it.
You can tell when one of these firefighter aircraft, large or small, is about to make its drop. It orbits a couple of times, coordinating with a fire boss in a helicopter hovering above, deciding exactly where the drop should be. This week, all the drops we have seen, both from water helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, have been awesome in their accuracy. Like the PGA commercials say about pro golfers, these guys are good.
After the second orbit, the aircraft settles into a nose-up glide, like a hen positioning herself over a nest of eggs. The DC-10 did this, gliding on, and we could see the drop starting, red fire retardant starting to trail from tanks underneath the fuselage. And then the plane disappeared. We realized it was flying into a narrow gully, between the backdrop mountainside and a ridgeline in the middle distance. I don't know who was flying that DC-10, but he (or she) could work for Steven Spielberg.
It was a long gully, and finally the DC-10 emerged at the other end, still trailing retardant. Then the retardant was spent, and the jet climbed sharply, banked left, and climbed. If it had been a movie, the music would have swelled, suggesting a corner had been turned.
A corner has in fact been turned, thanks to time, weather and firefighters including the crew of that DC-10, but fires are still burning everywhere today. We can no longer see any fires from our house in La Mesa, which has a 270-degree view from northeast around to west. The wind has calmed and turned, now coming off the ocean, which is good and bad. It is now blowing the fires back on themselves, but also increasing a new danger of the fires spreading east instead of west. Our picturesque mountain town of Julian has been evacuated and much of the effort today is to stop the Witch Creek fire, which started just west of Julian, four days later to turn back and enter the town.
This morning another impressive aircraft, Air Force One, appeared from the east through smoky haze and touched down at Miramar Naval Air Station. President Bush got off, shook hands all around, and got into a helicopter with Arnold to go inspect the devastation. There was some commentary about how important it was for Bush to respond quickly and completely to our fires, after his performance after Katrina. Oddly, two years ago he was in San Diego, on the evening of the Monday when Katrina hit New Orleans, and it was on his way back to D.C. from San Diego that his infamous indifference to the Katrina disaster first began to show. Air Force One touching down here now represented an interesting circle closing.
Say what you will about Bush, that huge aircraft, representing the office of the President of the United States of America, picked spirits up here as it settled toward the runway and then touched down.
October 24, 2007
Fire
We had been in Berkeley for the weekend and were flying south Sunday afternoon. Passing Los Angeles we saw two thick chimneys of smoke rising and then blowing toward the ocean. The strong Santa Ana had been predicted, and when you live in Southern California on a hot, clear October day, you always watch for smoke.
It was discouraging, but not surprising, to hear the pilot's San Diego weather report: warm, clear, but visibility only four miles because of smoke. Going downwind and turning back to our airport, we saw several origins of smoke. The sun was low and diffused by smoke to the extent that our pilot "couldn't get a good fix on the runway," as he put it, and he aborted the landing and went around again.
On the ground, thin smoke hung above the airport and turned the sun a signature raspberry color. Driving home, though, we entered a blue wedge of clear sky between smoke streams to the north and to the south. The radio said the wind was blowing from the northeast, and fires in the Ramona area were blowing smoke across our view from our La Mesa house toward the ocean, and a fire near the Mexican border was producing the southern smoke.
The wedge has persisted since. We have been watching due east, for any sign of a new fire that might threaten us, but so far so good.
We did, Tuesday morning, wake up at 1:30 a.m. to see Mt. Miguel, about five miles south of us, on fire. There is only one word to describe a Southern California wildfire at close range at night, and that word is "dramatic." It may be the drama that makes the fire appear closer than it is. I have seen this effect several times before, when I lived in Jamul, farther east in the foothills. We had begun some evacuation preparation on Monday, watching fires force the evacuation of 250,000 people. Watching Mt. Miguel flames fill our bedroom window at 2 a.m., we completed those preparations, loading both cars and saving the "three P's" – puppies, paintings, and 'puters – until the last moment.
Now it is Wednesday morning, and the last moment has not come. Media coverage has been intimidating. Media reports are like fire at night. They make the event appear closer than it actually is. My experience has taught me two things, about media appearance, and map appearance. In Italy, I learned that maps often have a weak relationship to what is actually on the ground. In Southern California, in fire season, I have learned that media reports often have a weak relationship to what is actually on the ground. The lesson: always believe the ground. Events on the ground, even the sight of Mt. Miguel burning five miles away, convinced me we have not been in direct danger. When they do, the cars are packed, we'll grab the Three P's, and be gone. At this point, knock on wood, I don't think that is going to happen.
In the meantime, we watch fires growing elsewhere, fires even worse than the catastrophic Cedar Fire in 2003. The Cedar Fire was a thoroughbred, racing at 6,000 acres per hour. This fire, or cocktail of fires, is a marathoner, covering a mile at a time until the miles start to reach from the inland foothills clear to the ocean. This morning, a finger of the fire jumped Interstate 5 in Camp Pendleton, right on the ocean. Astonishing. But the real headline of this story is the movement of people. More than half a million people have been forced to evacuate, and new evacuation orders are being announced this morning.
The firefighters and other response personnel are writing heroic chapters, working 24-hour stretches to save what they can. Like the Cedar Fire, though, this is a fire that humans can't stop. The ocean can stop it, and a change in the wind can slow it to a point where the fighters can beat it. After the Cedar Fire four years ago, I wrote a commentary about humans arriving to live in a land where fire previously had unlimited space to roam on the winds, which it did, regularly. I sent that commentary to our San Diego paper on Monday, and it was published yesterday. In that story, I wrote that whatever humans learn about fighting fire, the next fire that they can't fight is already out there, waiting. Now it is here. On hot October nights, we in Southern California listen to the wind rising, and rattling the windows, and always hope, in our land of wind and fire, that we wake up to a clear dawn. This October, hope wasn't enough.
It was discouraging, but not surprising, to hear the pilot's San Diego weather report: warm, clear, but visibility only four miles because of smoke. Going downwind and turning back to our airport, we saw several origins of smoke. The sun was low and diffused by smoke to the extent that our pilot "couldn't get a good fix on the runway," as he put it, and he aborted the landing and went around again.
On the ground, thin smoke hung above the airport and turned the sun a signature raspberry color. Driving home, though, we entered a blue wedge of clear sky between smoke streams to the north and to the south. The radio said the wind was blowing from the northeast, and fires in the Ramona area were blowing smoke across our view from our La Mesa house toward the ocean, and a fire near the Mexican border was producing the southern smoke.
The wedge has persisted since. We have been watching due east, for any sign of a new fire that might threaten us, but so far so good.
We did, Tuesday morning, wake up at 1:30 a.m. to see Mt. Miguel, about five miles south of us, on fire. There is only one word to describe a Southern California wildfire at close range at night, and that word is "dramatic." It may be the drama that makes the fire appear closer than it is. I have seen this effect several times before, when I lived in Jamul, farther east in the foothills. We had begun some evacuation preparation on Monday, watching fires force the evacuation of 250,000 people. Watching Mt. Miguel flames fill our bedroom window at 2 a.m., we completed those preparations, loading both cars and saving the "three P's" – puppies, paintings, and 'puters – until the last moment.
Now it is Wednesday morning, and the last moment has not come. Media coverage has been intimidating. Media reports are like fire at night. They make the event appear closer than it actually is. My experience has taught me two things, about media appearance, and map appearance. In Italy, I learned that maps often have a weak relationship to what is actually on the ground. In Southern California, in fire season, I have learned that media reports often have a weak relationship to what is actually on the ground. The lesson: always believe the ground. Events on the ground, even the sight of Mt. Miguel burning five miles away, convinced me we have not been in direct danger. When they do, the cars are packed, we'll grab the Three P's, and be gone. At this point, knock on wood, I don't think that is going to happen.
In the meantime, we watch fires growing elsewhere, fires even worse than the catastrophic Cedar Fire in 2003. The Cedar Fire was a thoroughbred, racing at 6,000 acres per hour. This fire, or cocktail of fires, is a marathoner, covering a mile at a time until the miles start to reach from the inland foothills clear to the ocean. This morning, a finger of the fire jumped Interstate 5 in Camp Pendleton, right on the ocean. Astonishing. But the real headline of this story is the movement of people. More than half a million people have been forced to evacuate, and new evacuation orders are being announced this morning.
The firefighters and other response personnel are writing heroic chapters, working 24-hour stretches to save what they can. Like the Cedar Fire, though, this is a fire that humans can't stop. The ocean can stop it, and a change in the wind can slow it to a point where the fighters can beat it. After the Cedar Fire four years ago, I wrote a commentary about humans arriving to live in a land where fire previously had unlimited space to roam on the winds, which it did, regularly. I sent that commentary to our San Diego paper on Monday, and it was published yesterday. In that story, I wrote that whatever humans learn about fighting fire, the next fire that they can't fight is already out there, waiting. Now it is here. On hot October nights, we in Southern California listen to the wind rising, and rattling the windows, and always hope, in our land of wind and fire, that we wake up to a clear dawn. This October, hope wasn't enough.
October 10, 2007
Introducing The Write Outsource
Click here, please, when you are ready: http://www.writeoutsource.com/
The link will take you to my online writing service, "Michael Grant – The Write Outsource," which is now open for business.
Have a look around. See what the business is about. It is the natural passage from my long career as a journalist, columnist, essayist, writer and editor, into my new career as a provider of services to people who need something written, but don't want to, or know how to, write it themselves.
Their solution: outsource it to me, via the Internet, from anywhere in the country, or around the planet. The site will show you how it works, and who it works for. Do you need any of these services yourself? Come on in. Does anyone you know need such services? Thousands of your friends possess all kinds of skills, talents, genius, ideas, all that need to be communicated to someone else. But writing is hard for them, a struggle they try to avoid, but can't.
What should they do? Outsource it! Click on http://www.writeoutsource.com/, tell us what you need, and go do your really important stuff. I'll have your written materials back to you, ready for your approval and distribution, on the timetable that matches your need.
I've been doing this kind of work for years. In the old days of journalism, we called it "rewrite." Someone developed information and phoned it to the "rewrite man," who turned it into a top-notch story, on deadline, for the newspaper's next edition. Rewrite men are famous in journalism lore, for their skills in turning raw information into polished stories.
In those days, it was specialized work, exclusive to newspapers, requiring a source, a phone, and a writer, working on deadline. The service was not generally available, between a business and a writer, for example, because communications were slow and could not handle raw information that was either voluminous or complex. In that world, the word "outsource" didn't exist. The information had to be delivered overland, and the finished stories returned the same way. Businesses had to create and maintain on-site departments of writers, in their public relations and marketing departments.
The arrival of the computer age started to change that, and it really changed when Tim Berners-Lee developed the code that created the Internet. This global sharing of information evolved commercially into the World Wide Web, and today the information being routinely shared globally includes beleaguered individuals such as corporate executives outsourcing writing needs to old pros like me.
In other words, "Michael Grant – The Write Outsource" is an idea whose time has come. Go see http://www.writeoutsource.com/ and let me know what you think.
September 18, 2007
Deconstructing Flat Buns
Too frequently, the public takes the media way too seriously, which is exactly what media producers want the public to do.
It is a situation that calls for deconstruction. Let’s call it “Deconstructing Media.” By deconstructing media products, the public can get a picture of how the media does its work to inform, entertain and manipulate mass audiences. The public sorely needs educating in this subject – none of it is taught in K-12 – and I will make Deconstructing Media a regular feature in this blog.
The Carl’s Jr. television commercial for its “Flat Buns” hamburger is a good product with which to begin. Its release a couple of weeks ago created quite a stir, which was one of the goals of the producers.
Like all media products – information, entertainment, manipulation – this commercial was constructed by professionals using a set of media codes. The codes in play here are sex (very popular media code), conflict, proximity, demographics, and the television revenue formula.
The mission: get boys ages 10 to 18 (the demographic) to buy at least one of the new Carl’s Jr. Flat Buns Patty Melts. Like every patty melt before it, the Carl’s Jr. version is made on rye bread, which wouldn’t spark much interest in the 10-to-18 libido or palate. “Flat buns,” though, has a sex connection. First, the media producers wrote a rap song about flat buns (“Flatness makes a better rear, Stand sideways girl, you disappear”) that appealed musically, and maybe anatomically, to the demographic.
The company had success with the Flat Buns angle as a radio commercial, so they ordered a television version. The rap music would still work, but using flat buns as a visual hook might not. That, obviously, from their selection of the “schoolteacher” in the commercial, was the producers’ conclusion. She had round buns and a tight skirt. Blonde hair. About 25. Black patent pumps, five-inch heels. Danced on the desk. Like no schoolteacher you ever saw. Sex, when she was on-screen, was more important than flat buns; that connection was achieved by boys chalking round buns on the blackboard and then erasing them “flat.” It was pretty corny.
People who were upset said the woman “demeaned” teachers, and education, and the classroom. But she wasn’t a teacher. She was a professional entertainer and a good one. She was a model and a dancer and probably has played roles in Shakespeare. The two rapper boys weren’t really rapper boys; they were young actors, with years of hard study behind them to land such roles in a national commercial.
The people in the commercial were only acting, and their roles were written around sex, conflict (classroom setting, rap, sex) and emotional proximity to the demographic (“Don’t you wish our classrooms were like that?”), to get the demographic to identify, and want flat buns, too.
How many boys did identify, do you think? Census estimates at the end of 2006 show about 21 million boys in the 10-19 age group. It is never the intention of a media producer to capture the entire audience. In marketing, a response rate of 3 percent is most satisfactory, particularly in television marketing, which is an exercise in the power of small numbers. It also means that 97 percent of the boys did not respond, which is a good number to remember when you start worrying about the effect of the commercial on the future of civilization.
Enough people did worry, though, for the commercial to make news, which the media producers love, because it means more people know about the commercial, which almost always drives sales up. Making news is how Madonna made herself so famous.
It is a situation that calls for deconstruction. Let’s call it “Deconstructing Media.” By deconstructing media products, the public can get a picture of how the media does its work to inform, entertain and manipulate mass audiences. The public sorely needs educating in this subject – none of it is taught in K-12 – and I will make Deconstructing Media a regular feature in this blog.
The Carl’s Jr. television commercial for its “Flat Buns” hamburger is a good product with which to begin. Its release a couple of weeks ago created quite a stir, which was one of the goals of the producers.
Like all media products – information, entertainment, manipulation – this commercial was constructed by professionals using a set of media codes. The codes in play here are sex (very popular media code), conflict, proximity, demographics, and the television revenue formula.
The mission: get boys ages 10 to 18 (the demographic) to buy at least one of the new Carl’s Jr. Flat Buns Patty Melts. Like every patty melt before it, the Carl’s Jr. version is made on rye bread, which wouldn’t spark much interest in the 10-to-18 libido or palate. “Flat buns,” though, has a sex connection. First, the media producers wrote a rap song about flat buns (“Flatness makes a better rear, Stand sideways girl, you disappear”) that appealed musically, and maybe anatomically, to the demographic.
The company had success with the Flat Buns angle as a radio commercial, so they ordered a television version. The rap music would still work, but using flat buns as a visual hook might not. That, obviously, from their selection of the “schoolteacher” in the commercial, was the producers’ conclusion. She had round buns and a tight skirt. Blonde hair. About 25. Black patent pumps, five-inch heels. Danced on the desk. Like no schoolteacher you ever saw. Sex, when she was on-screen, was more important than flat buns; that connection was achieved by boys chalking round buns on the blackboard and then erasing them “flat.” It was pretty corny.
People who were upset said the woman “demeaned” teachers, and education, and the classroom. But she wasn’t a teacher. She was a professional entertainer and a good one. She was a model and a dancer and probably has played roles in Shakespeare. The two rapper boys weren’t really rapper boys; they were young actors, with years of hard study behind them to land such roles in a national commercial.
The people in the commercial were only acting, and their roles were written around sex, conflict (classroom setting, rap, sex) and emotional proximity to the demographic (“Don’t you wish our classrooms were like that?”), to get the demographic to identify, and want flat buns, too.
How many boys did identify, do you think? Census estimates at the end of 2006 show about 21 million boys in the 10-19 age group. It is never the intention of a media producer to capture the entire audience. In marketing, a response rate of 3 percent is most satisfactory, particularly in television marketing, which is an exercise in the power of small numbers. It also means that 97 percent of the boys did not respond, which is a good number to remember when you start worrying about the effect of the commercial on the future of civilization.
Enough people did worry, though, for the commercial to make news, which the media producers love, because it means more people know about the commercial, which almost always drives sales up. Making news is how Madonna made herself so famous.
September 17, 2007
Acorn Fever 2007
In some parts of the world, it is hurricane season. In Southern California it is Acorn Fever season, and this year it looks like we may have dodged a bullet.
Acorn Fever is serious. It happens when we get our first little cool snap. In Southern California, near the coast, that can happen anywhere from mid-August on. After weeks of heat and monsoon humidity, temperatures will drop overnight into the 50s at the coast and the 60s inland, with cloud cover and a thick, drizzly cloud deck we call the "marine layer."
The danger is in feeling a need to pull on sweaters and sweat pants, first thing when you get out of bed in the morning. That is the first symptom of Acorn Fever. Other symptoms include oatmeal for breakfast, a compulsion to build a fire, an urge to rake leaves, a sudden craving for apple pie, and an impulse to get into the car and drive to one of our nearby mountain (low mountains) towns and drink apple cider.
When it hits, a person with Acorn Fever will wear tweeds, woolens, sweaters and scarves to work. People may even turn on their car heaters. It is very dangerous. It feels good at first, and there is a strong suggestion of welcome coziness on downtown streets, watching workers entering buildings with their chins snuggled into Burberry scarves.
The problem is, by noon the temperature may be back up to 80-85 degrees, and even warmer inland. Acorn Fever victims get caught in the heat, and pretty soon the emergency vehicles start to roll, the responders looking for heaps of soggy woolens on the sidewalks, and smoke curling from chimneys, or residents in Pendletons out on the lawn, raking imaginary leaves.
Some years are worse than others, of course depending on weather conditions. This year, it looks like we'll get away easy. Two or three weeks ago, we had a hot spell that drove temperatures into the 90s even at the coast. In that scenario, Acorn Fever could be sparked by temperatures dropping into the low 70s. Two days after the hot spell broke, I in fact wore my sweatshirt outside to get the papers. I checked the temperature on the porch. It was 71 degrees. The virus can't exist in temperatures above 67, so I knew this was a faux fever.
Warm, but not hot, days, followed, with lower humidities. Thank goodness. An August outbreak can be critical, with September traditionally being one of our hottest months of the year. Now it is Sept. 17, and temperatures are trending down again. It was very cool and breezy overnight. This morning I thought about, but didn't don, sweat pants. The weather bureau says tomorrow will be slightly warmer, but then a system coming down the coast could bring very cool weather – even some rain – by Friday. I can guarantee the smell of woodsmoke over the city on Saturday, and an increase in mountain-bound traffic. It will be a day to watch weather patterns developing for next week. If we get through that, I think we may get home scot-free.
Acorn Fever is serious. It happens when we get our first little cool snap. In Southern California, near the coast, that can happen anywhere from mid-August on. After weeks of heat and monsoon humidity, temperatures will drop overnight into the 50s at the coast and the 60s inland, with cloud cover and a thick, drizzly cloud deck we call the "marine layer."
The danger is in feeling a need to pull on sweaters and sweat pants, first thing when you get out of bed in the morning. That is the first symptom of Acorn Fever. Other symptoms include oatmeal for breakfast, a compulsion to build a fire, an urge to rake leaves, a sudden craving for apple pie, and an impulse to get into the car and drive to one of our nearby mountain (low mountains) towns and drink apple cider.
When it hits, a person with Acorn Fever will wear tweeds, woolens, sweaters and scarves to work. People may even turn on their car heaters. It is very dangerous. It feels good at first, and there is a strong suggestion of welcome coziness on downtown streets, watching workers entering buildings with their chins snuggled into Burberry scarves.
The problem is, by noon the temperature may be back up to 80-85 degrees, and even warmer inland. Acorn Fever victims get caught in the heat, and pretty soon the emergency vehicles start to roll, the responders looking for heaps of soggy woolens on the sidewalks, and smoke curling from chimneys, or residents in Pendletons out on the lawn, raking imaginary leaves.
Some years are worse than others, of course depending on weather conditions. This year, it looks like we'll get away easy. Two or three weeks ago, we had a hot spell that drove temperatures into the 90s even at the coast. In that scenario, Acorn Fever could be sparked by temperatures dropping into the low 70s. Two days after the hot spell broke, I in fact wore my sweatshirt outside to get the papers. I checked the temperature on the porch. It was 71 degrees. The virus can't exist in temperatures above 67, so I knew this was a faux fever.
Warm, but not hot, days, followed, with lower humidities. Thank goodness. An August outbreak can be critical, with September traditionally being one of our hottest months of the year. Now it is Sept. 17, and temperatures are trending down again. It was very cool and breezy overnight. This morning I thought about, but didn't don, sweat pants. The weather bureau says tomorrow will be slightly warmer, but then a system coming down the coast could bring very cool weather – even some rain – by Friday. I can guarantee the smell of woodsmoke over the city on Saturday, and an increase in mountain-bound traffic. It will be a day to watch weather patterns developing for next week. If we get through that, I think we may get home scot-free.
September 07, 2007
A Southwest circle closes
Kyla Ebbert just tried to take her long legs and Hooters waitress body onto a Southwest Airlines flight 35 years too late.
Kyla, a 23-year-old college student in San Diego and, yes, a Hooters waitress, wanted to fly from San Diego to Tucson recently. After she had boarded and taken her seat, she was motioned to the front by a Southwest employee named Keith. At the front, Keith said Kyla was not dressed appropriately and would have to leave the aircraft.
Kyla, blonde and tanned, was wearing a bra, a white tank top, a sort of short-sleeved green sweater that buttoned underneath her Hooters credentials, and a decidedly short white denim miniskirt. After a chat, and then an argument, in hearing range of passengers, Kyla was permitted to remain on the plane to make an important appointment in Tucson. She said she was deeply embarrassed. From Tucson, she called her mother in tears. From there, the story found its way into Gerry Braun's column in The San Diego Union-Tribune, and then, this morning, onto the "Today" show.
Kyla said all she wanted was an apology. Thirty-five years ago, she might have received an invitation to become a Southwest flight attendant.
I remember flying Southwest when it was a start-up, serving Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. This was in the early '70s. Southwest was the way to go. They flew jets, early-generation Boeing 737s. They were cheap, they were on time, and they were fun. If you've flown Southwest, you have heard the echo of the old good-time spirit that pulled the airline's first passengers onboard all those years ago.
It was a short flight between any of Southwest's original cities, so management figured if drinking time was short, it only made sense to pour doubles, if a passenger wanted a cocktail. The doubles were served in real glasses, with lots of ice, and they were $2 each. You didn't get that on Braniff or American or Continental.
Whisking the cocktails up and down the aisles were stewardesses – a 1970s term for flight attendants – in outfits still worn onto airplanes in 2007 by San Diego college students named Kyla. Orange short shorts. I don't remember miniskirts as part of the uniform, but I remember the short shorts, and the high (well, 2-inch) heels, tight tops, and cleavage. I figured Southwest management decided Texas wasn’t much to look at through the window, so they'd give us something to look at inside.
I hope Gerry Braun is already on the telephone to a Southwest stew from the early days. His story is already stirring up a lot of coverage, so to speak, and happy reminiscences. My pal Jon Standefer flew Southwest a lot. We were talking about Kyla's plight today, and we agreed that the old Southwest outfits looked very much like early Hooters. He told me one day he was on a flight leaving Dallas for Houston. But they had to hold the flight on the tarmac while a mechanical problem was fixed. It wound up taking a couple of hours, but nobody cared. Inside, the lead stew had announced the delay and said, "Drinks on the house."
Is that any way to run an airline? Lord, it was. I have a sort of bond with Herb Kelleher, who was a Southwest founder and didn't retire until just recently. On my desk is a wrapped roll of Scott Tissue from one of Southwest's airplanes, and it is inscribed: "For Emergency Use Only! – Herb Kelleher."
That's another story. For now, I think I'll ask if he can dig up Southwest shorts and top, circa 1973, to send to Kyla. And I'll take a $2 double.
Kyla, a 23-year-old college student in San Diego and, yes, a Hooters waitress, wanted to fly from San Diego to Tucson recently. After she had boarded and taken her seat, she was motioned to the front by a Southwest employee named Keith. At the front, Keith said Kyla was not dressed appropriately and would have to leave the aircraft.
Kyla, blonde and tanned, was wearing a bra, a white tank top, a sort of short-sleeved green sweater that buttoned underneath her Hooters credentials, and a decidedly short white denim miniskirt. After a chat, and then an argument, in hearing range of passengers, Kyla was permitted to remain on the plane to make an important appointment in Tucson. She said she was deeply embarrassed. From Tucson, she called her mother in tears. From there, the story found its way into Gerry Braun's column in The San Diego Union-Tribune, and then, this morning, onto the "Today" show.
Kyla said all she wanted was an apology. Thirty-five years ago, she might have received an invitation to become a Southwest flight attendant.
I remember flying Southwest when it was a start-up, serving Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. This was in the early '70s. Southwest was the way to go. They flew jets, early-generation Boeing 737s. They were cheap, they were on time, and they were fun. If you've flown Southwest, you have heard the echo of the old good-time spirit that pulled the airline's first passengers onboard all those years ago.
It was a short flight between any of Southwest's original cities, so management figured if drinking time was short, it only made sense to pour doubles, if a passenger wanted a cocktail. The doubles were served in real glasses, with lots of ice, and they were $2 each. You didn't get that on Braniff or American or Continental.
Whisking the cocktails up and down the aisles were stewardesses – a 1970s term for flight attendants – in outfits still worn onto airplanes in 2007 by San Diego college students named Kyla. Orange short shorts. I don't remember miniskirts as part of the uniform, but I remember the short shorts, and the high (well, 2-inch) heels, tight tops, and cleavage. I figured Southwest management decided Texas wasn’t much to look at through the window, so they'd give us something to look at inside.
I hope Gerry Braun is already on the telephone to a Southwest stew from the early days. His story is already stirring up a lot of coverage, so to speak, and happy reminiscences. My pal Jon Standefer flew Southwest a lot. We were talking about Kyla's plight today, and we agreed that the old Southwest outfits looked very much like early Hooters. He told me one day he was on a flight leaving Dallas for Houston. But they had to hold the flight on the tarmac while a mechanical problem was fixed. It wound up taking a couple of hours, but nobody cared. Inside, the lead stew had announced the delay and said, "Drinks on the house."
Is that any way to run an airline? Lord, it was. I have a sort of bond with Herb Kelleher, who was a Southwest founder and didn't retire until just recently. On my desk is a wrapped roll of Scott Tissue from one of Southwest's airplanes, and it is inscribed: "For Emergency Use Only! – Herb Kelleher."
That's another story. For now, I think I'll ask if he can dig up Southwest shorts and top, circa 1973, to send to Kyla. And I'll take a $2 double.
September 02, 2007
The Fifty-ninth Grade
In September of 1949, I entered first grade.
In September of 2007, I am entering the 59th grade. I will learn things this year that I didn't know in 58th grade; some good, some bad, all interesting. This year I will achieve a balance that I have been courting since the 36th grade. In that year, I decided it would be the best of worlds to have the imagination of a six-year-old, and the experience of a 65-year-old.
In March of the 59th grade, I will become 65 years old. There are liabilities associated with becoming 65 that I did not start to learn about until about the 55th grade, when the fair wear and tear of aging started to set in. I didn't much like it when some of my original parts started to fail. I could not possibly have known about this in the reckless days of 36th grade, but I think I would have been enthusiastic about being six and 65, all the same. What can happen, when imagination and experience have all day to play?
Keeping the imagination of a six-year old has required some study. Six-year-olds, of course, live their whole lives outside the box. Calvin, of "Calvin and Hobbes," the old comic strip, is our king. Calvin's pal is Hobbes, a tiger, and quite a tiger he is: funny, erudite, worldly, mischievous, playful, charming. He and Calvin have a heck of a time, out there outside the box. Then one of Calvin's parents comes in, and Hobbes becomes what he is inside the box: a stuffed animal.
That is the altogether healthy and worthwhile magic of being six, and I believe, because of Calvin, and an experience at Disneyland, that I have learned how to be six in my 60s. The Disneyland lesson occurred one day in the early 1980s. I was walking down Main Street toward Sleeping Beauty's Castle. On earlier visits, the castle had soared into the sky, spires reaching for the clouds, just like the real fantasy castles of Europe.
Only this day, maintenance was being done on the castle. Scaffolding was up. From long experience, I knew the dimensions of scaffolding. This scaffolding, overlaying the castle like a grid, betrayed the castle's true size, which was very small. It didn't soar at all, and its spires were barely adequate to reach for the top of a telephone pole.
This was a major disappointment. I looked at my kids, who were then about six and eight. They didn't see the scaffolding. Rather, they didn't see the size of the scaffolding. They had no way of knowing. And then it struck me: if Walt Disney had ever had the slightest evidence that a six-year-old knew the dimensions of scaffolding, the scaffolding would come down every morning before opening time, and not go up again until after closing.
So the problem was data. When we turn six, we go into first grade, and we start to acquire data, which starts to overlay imagination, and choke it down to size. It is the birth of the box, which it is so important to think outside of. Here's a graphic that helps describe the secret to being six in your 60s. Put nine dots on a piece of paper: three across the top and bottom, three on each side, one in the middle, so that it looks like a box with a dot in the middle. Now connect the nine dots with four straight lines, without taking your pencil off the paper.
The solution: start at the upper left-hand dot, draw a line across the top row of dots, and keep going beyond the right-corner dot. Go out far enough to draw a line through the middle dots in the right and bottom sides, to a point where a line drawn straight up will connect the left-side dots. Once back at the upper-left dot, draw the fourth line through the middle dot to the lower-right dot.
The secret is to let your brain think beyond the upper-right dot, and take the line out to the point where the second line can connect the right and bottom middle dots. That extension of the first line, out beyond the dot, is where imagination reigns. Out there, anything is possible. Out there, Hobbes and Calvin live. Out there resides a magnificent talking animal who presides over an international multi-billion-dollar entertainment kingdom. Do we believe this animal can talk? We surely do; by the tens of thousands, people put up $65 a ticket to go to Disneyland and talk to Mickey.
I wander out beyond the dot a lot, and see the most amazing, impossible, perfectly real, things, smack in the middle of otherwise ordinary days. In my readings in the last several grades, I am discovering how justifiable this is. I read that physicists, in trying to understand the universe, are starting to arrive at a point where all their data breaks down. It stops making sense. To go farther, they have to use . . . imagination. Beautiful.
In September of 2007, I am entering the 59th grade. I will learn things this year that I didn't know in 58th grade; some good, some bad, all interesting. This year I will achieve a balance that I have been courting since the 36th grade. In that year, I decided it would be the best of worlds to have the imagination of a six-year-old, and the experience of a 65-year-old.
In March of the 59th grade, I will become 65 years old. There are liabilities associated with becoming 65 that I did not start to learn about until about the 55th grade, when the fair wear and tear of aging started to set in. I didn't much like it when some of my original parts started to fail. I could not possibly have known about this in the reckless days of 36th grade, but I think I would have been enthusiastic about being six and 65, all the same. What can happen, when imagination and experience have all day to play?
Keeping the imagination of a six-year old has required some study. Six-year-olds, of course, live their whole lives outside the box. Calvin, of "Calvin and Hobbes," the old comic strip, is our king. Calvin's pal is Hobbes, a tiger, and quite a tiger he is: funny, erudite, worldly, mischievous, playful, charming. He and Calvin have a heck of a time, out there outside the box. Then one of Calvin's parents comes in, and Hobbes becomes what he is inside the box: a stuffed animal.
That is the altogether healthy and worthwhile magic of being six, and I believe, because of Calvin, and an experience at Disneyland, that I have learned how to be six in my 60s. The Disneyland lesson occurred one day in the early 1980s. I was walking down Main Street toward Sleeping Beauty's Castle. On earlier visits, the castle had soared into the sky, spires reaching for the clouds, just like the real fantasy castles of Europe.
Only this day, maintenance was being done on the castle. Scaffolding was up. From long experience, I knew the dimensions of scaffolding. This scaffolding, overlaying the castle like a grid, betrayed the castle's true size, which was very small. It didn't soar at all, and its spires were barely adequate to reach for the top of a telephone pole.
This was a major disappointment. I looked at my kids, who were then about six and eight. They didn't see the scaffolding. Rather, they didn't see the size of the scaffolding. They had no way of knowing. And then it struck me: if Walt Disney had ever had the slightest evidence that a six-year-old knew the dimensions of scaffolding, the scaffolding would come down every morning before opening time, and not go up again until after closing.
So the problem was data. When we turn six, we go into first grade, and we start to acquire data, which starts to overlay imagination, and choke it down to size. It is the birth of the box, which it is so important to think outside of. Here's a graphic that helps describe the secret to being six in your 60s. Put nine dots on a piece of paper: three across the top and bottom, three on each side, one in the middle, so that it looks like a box with a dot in the middle. Now connect the nine dots with four straight lines, without taking your pencil off the paper.
The solution: start at the upper left-hand dot, draw a line across the top row of dots, and keep going beyond the right-corner dot. Go out far enough to draw a line through the middle dots in the right and bottom sides, to a point where a line drawn straight up will connect the left-side dots. Once back at the upper-left dot, draw the fourth line through the middle dot to the lower-right dot.
The secret is to let your brain think beyond the upper-right dot, and take the line out to the point where the second line can connect the right and bottom middle dots. That extension of the first line, out beyond the dot, is where imagination reigns. Out there, anything is possible. Out there, Hobbes and Calvin live. Out there resides a magnificent talking animal who presides over an international multi-billion-dollar entertainment kingdom. Do we believe this animal can talk? We surely do; by the tens of thousands, people put up $65 a ticket to go to Disneyland and talk to Mickey.
I wander out beyond the dot a lot, and see the most amazing, impossible, perfectly real, things, smack in the middle of otherwise ordinary days. In my readings in the last several grades, I am discovering how justifiable this is. I read that physicists, in trying to understand the universe, are starting to arrive at a point where all their data breaks down. It stops making sense. To go farther, they have to use . . . imagination. Beautiful.
August 16, 2007
A New Religion
Billboard Magazine's No. 1 single in 1954 was Kitty Kallen's "Little Things Mean a Lot."
Billboard's No. 1 single in 1956 was Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel."
Do you see how the world changed?
Elvis didn't start it. But he was the one who nailed it down. If it had just been Bill Haley and Chuck Berry, the culture wouldn't have shifted the way it did. Rock and roll needed a king, and Elvis Presley was it.
It is 30 years today since Elvis died. I remember where I was. Can't say that about Kitty Kallen (if she is no longer with us) or Bill Haley, or even Buddy Holly. Just JFK and Elvis Presley.
Elvis fulfilled his destiny in four years. He did it with beauty, sex and records. He was exactly the right figure, in exactly the right place, at exactly the right time. Just like Jesus. The two men grew in public consciousness because of unique sets of qualities. Take away one of those qualities, and maybe history doesn’t happen. When Elvis walked out of Memphis, practitioners of a new movement circled around him. They knew they were only rock and roll disciples, and they gave thanks for this beautiful white boy who could sing like a black man, and for his outrageous name, Elvis Presley, and the way he walked, and held himself, and twitched. He had everything that Uncle John need, oh boy. They could see this individual was going to make news, and for them it was good news.
Elvis made news with his looks, sex appeal and attitude. The music was great, but that's not what drove a huge wedge between kids and their parents, particularly girls. Parents were dead serious when they wondered if their daughters should be listening to this guy alone in cars. The teen rebel mood, that had started showing up in "The Wild One," "Blackboard Jungle," and "Rebel Without a Cause," fed smoothly into the Elvis image and created the kind of 24/7 demand for Elvis that gave rock and roll its first real air time. In the 1950s, only the really big cities had more than one or two radio stations, and car radios were clogged with stuff that let only a few minutes of rock and roll get through on any given day.
Elvis blew the clog plumb out, and by 1957, new stations were going on the air to play nothing but Elvis and the disciples, and a new religion was certified. There were no more Elvises, and only one band of Beatles, so the worship has mostly been about music and attitude. With Elvis, on his death anniversaries, it is never just about the music. "Jailhouse Rock" is a great song, and so many of them – "Any Way You Want Me," "Tryin' to Get to You," "Baby Let's Play House" – still make your hair stand on end. But "Jailhouse Rock" is not complete without the movie, this god who looks like Elvis Presley, black hair and lips and skinny, singing "Jailhouse Rock" and doing that dead-man-walk thing with his legs and hips. You have to see that, to know what happened.
I didn't pay much attention to Elvis after 1958. He got drafted, served his Army time, came back and for the rest of his life made bad movies and ordinary music. He didn't seem to care. His work was done.
Billboard's No. 1 single in 1956 was Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel."
Do you see how the world changed?
Elvis didn't start it. But he was the one who nailed it down. If it had just been Bill Haley and Chuck Berry, the culture wouldn't have shifted the way it did. Rock and roll needed a king, and Elvis Presley was it.
It is 30 years today since Elvis died. I remember where I was. Can't say that about Kitty Kallen (if she is no longer with us) or Bill Haley, or even Buddy Holly. Just JFK and Elvis Presley.
Elvis fulfilled his destiny in four years. He did it with beauty, sex and records. He was exactly the right figure, in exactly the right place, at exactly the right time. Just like Jesus. The two men grew in public consciousness because of unique sets of qualities. Take away one of those qualities, and maybe history doesn’t happen. When Elvis walked out of Memphis, practitioners of a new movement circled around him. They knew they were only rock and roll disciples, and they gave thanks for this beautiful white boy who could sing like a black man, and for his outrageous name, Elvis Presley, and the way he walked, and held himself, and twitched. He had everything that Uncle John need, oh boy. They could see this individual was going to make news, and for them it was good news.
Elvis made news with his looks, sex appeal and attitude. The music was great, but that's not what drove a huge wedge between kids and their parents, particularly girls. Parents were dead serious when they wondered if their daughters should be listening to this guy alone in cars. The teen rebel mood, that had started showing up in "The Wild One," "Blackboard Jungle," and "Rebel Without a Cause," fed smoothly into the Elvis image and created the kind of 24/7 demand for Elvis that gave rock and roll its first real air time. In the 1950s, only the really big cities had more than one or two radio stations, and car radios were clogged with stuff that let only a few minutes of rock and roll get through on any given day.
Elvis blew the clog plumb out, and by 1957, new stations were going on the air to play nothing but Elvis and the disciples, and a new religion was certified. There were no more Elvises, and only one band of Beatles, so the worship has mostly been about music and attitude. With Elvis, on his death anniversaries, it is never just about the music. "Jailhouse Rock" is a great song, and so many of them – "Any Way You Want Me," "Tryin' to Get to You," "Baby Let's Play House" – still make your hair stand on end. But "Jailhouse Rock" is not complete without the movie, this god who looks like Elvis Presley, black hair and lips and skinny, singing "Jailhouse Rock" and doing that dead-man-walk thing with his legs and hips. You have to see that, to know what happened.
I didn't pay much attention to Elvis after 1958. He got drafted, served his Army time, came back and for the rest of his life made bad movies and ordinary music. He didn't seem to care. His work was done.
August 15, 2007
Playing with a Brand
I appreciate Jim McDonald's comment on the branding Abilene blog. He is another member of the Abilene High Class of 1961, which is a damn good group if I do say so. Re the fee for the Abilene brand, I waxed sentimental about those roots and briefly considered setting my fee for "Abilene, Texas Style" at $61,616.161, tacking on the tenth of a cent, like the gas pumps do, to preserve symmetry.
Then I decided against it. My fee is firm, $99.999.99, one cent less than the six figures the Abilene authorities are willing to pay North Star Destinations. That name – "North Star Destinations" – pops to mind another possibility for the Abilene brand: "Lone Star Destination."
But you can't do as much with that as Abilene, Texas Style. I know the deal is done, but it is still fun to play with the thing. Right, Jim? On a yellow pad, I doodled everything that Abilene, Texas Style, might go with, in setting Abilene apart in the global mind. "Global" includes Tye, Potosi, Hawley, Hamby, View. Global starts at the front door, and it's as vital that "Abilene, Texas Style" means something in Colorado City, as much as it does in London, Paris or Dallas. Imagine, Dallasites driving 180 miles for a weekend of "Abilene, Texas Style." Getting somebody to leave Dallas for a weekend wouldn't take all that much, actually, but that is a direction for another day.
So I doodled.
Thanksgiving, Abilene, Texas Style
Christmas Parade, Abilene, Texas Style
Fourth of July, Abilene, Texas Style
Easter Sunday, Abilene, Texas Style
Education, Abilene, Texas Style
Football Classic, Abilene, Texas Style
Football playoffs, Abilene, Texas Style
Golf tournament, Abilene, Texas Style
Resort Ranch, Abilene, Texas Style
Weekend getaway, Abilene, Texas Style
Corporate retreat, Abilene, Texas Style
Regional Outlet Mall, Abilene, Texas Style
Filming location, Abilene, Texas Style
Senior prom weekend, Abilene, Texas Style
Culture, Arts, Music, Abilene, Texas Style
Broadway road show, Abilene, Texas Style
Concerts, Abilene, Texas Style
Championship rodeo, Abilene, Texas Style
Livestock shows, Abilene, Texas Style
Horse shows, Abilene, Texas Style
Any kind of celebration, Abilene Texas Style
Barbecue championship, Abilene, Texas Style
Premier, Abilene, Texas Style
Partnership, Abilene, Texas Style
Conventions, Abilene, Texas Style
Drag racing, Abilene, Texas Style
NASCAR, Abilene, Texas Style
Worship, Abilene, Texas Style
Leadership, Abilene, Texas Style
Patriotism, Abilene, Texas Style
Business, Abilene, Texas Style
Caring telethon, Abilene, Texas Style
Historical pageant, Abilene, Texas Style
Lifestyle, Abilene, Texas Style
Pride, Abilene, Texas Style
So there are things that can be done with it. The project has not turned out to be a burning issue in the Abilene community. I've counted about a dozen letters to the editor, some in favor, some opposed, most against paying anybody money to create a brand. There were a couple of offers to do it for free, or have a community contest with the winner receiving not much more than recognition and a few free dinners at participating restaurants.
I would never do it for free, and no one else should, either. I do think six figures to Tennessee thinkers is excessive, but there is a thing called "perceived value," which gives a thing value in the public mind simply by placing a value on it. Branding Abilene is something that will have to have value, both in the public mind and the participators' mind. This is a business deal. A brand should prove to be worth millions of dollars to whatever the branded thing is. To a city like Abilene, it should be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, to spend on infrastructure, schools, culture, subsidized water rates, rehabbing the near north side before the wind blows it over. Whoever conceives it, the brand should not be cheap, and it certainly should not be provided free by its creator.
While we're on the subject, does Abilene have a city flag?
Then I decided against it. My fee is firm, $99.999.99, one cent less than the six figures the Abilene authorities are willing to pay North Star Destinations. That name – "North Star Destinations" – pops to mind another possibility for the Abilene brand: "Lone Star Destination."
But you can't do as much with that as Abilene, Texas Style. I know the deal is done, but it is still fun to play with the thing. Right, Jim? On a yellow pad, I doodled everything that Abilene, Texas Style, might go with, in setting Abilene apart in the global mind. "Global" includes Tye, Potosi, Hawley, Hamby, View. Global starts at the front door, and it's as vital that "Abilene, Texas Style" means something in Colorado City, as much as it does in London, Paris or Dallas. Imagine, Dallasites driving 180 miles for a weekend of "Abilene, Texas Style." Getting somebody to leave Dallas for a weekend wouldn't take all that much, actually, but that is a direction for another day.
So I doodled.
Thanksgiving, Abilene, Texas Style
Christmas Parade, Abilene, Texas Style
Fourth of July, Abilene, Texas Style
Easter Sunday, Abilene, Texas Style
Education, Abilene, Texas Style
Football Classic, Abilene, Texas Style
Football playoffs, Abilene, Texas Style
Golf tournament, Abilene, Texas Style
Resort Ranch, Abilene, Texas Style
Weekend getaway, Abilene, Texas Style
Corporate retreat, Abilene, Texas Style
Regional Outlet Mall, Abilene, Texas Style
Filming location, Abilene, Texas Style
Senior prom weekend, Abilene, Texas Style
Culture, Arts, Music, Abilene, Texas Style
Broadway road show, Abilene, Texas Style
Concerts, Abilene, Texas Style
Championship rodeo, Abilene, Texas Style
Livestock shows, Abilene, Texas Style
Horse shows, Abilene, Texas Style
Any kind of celebration, Abilene Texas Style
Barbecue championship, Abilene, Texas Style
Premier, Abilene, Texas Style
Partnership, Abilene, Texas Style
Conventions, Abilene, Texas Style
Drag racing, Abilene, Texas Style
NASCAR, Abilene, Texas Style
Worship, Abilene, Texas Style
Leadership, Abilene, Texas Style
Patriotism, Abilene, Texas Style
Business, Abilene, Texas Style
Caring telethon, Abilene, Texas Style
Historical pageant, Abilene, Texas Style
Lifestyle, Abilene, Texas Style
Pride, Abilene, Texas Style
So there are things that can be done with it. The project has not turned out to be a burning issue in the Abilene community. I've counted about a dozen letters to the editor, some in favor, some opposed, most against paying anybody money to create a brand. There were a couple of offers to do it for free, or have a community contest with the winner receiving not much more than recognition and a few free dinners at participating restaurants.
I would never do it for free, and no one else should, either. I do think six figures to Tennessee thinkers is excessive, but there is a thing called "perceived value," which gives a thing value in the public mind simply by placing a value on it. Branding Abilene is something that will have to have value, both in the public mind and the participators' mind. This is a business deal. A brand should prove to be worth millions of dollars to whatever the branded thing is. To a city like Abilene, it should be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, to spend on infrastructure, schools, culture, subsidized water rates, rehabbing the near north side before the wind blows it over. Whoever conceives it, the brand should not be cheap, and it certainly should not be provided free by its creator.
While we're on the subject, does Abilene have a city flag?
July 26, 2007
Branding Abilene
My hometown, Abilene, Texas, is seeking to establish itself as a brand, to better compete in the state, national, and international, public consciousness for the purpose of attracting business and tourism.
A "brand" is a term, phrase, or symbol that makes a product or service unique in the public consciousness ("Xerox," "Google," "Neiman's"). Examples of branded cities are "The Big Apple," "Big D," "Cowtown," "Vegas," and "L.A." Abilene had an original brand, "The Key City of West Texas," and now uses "The Friendly Frontier." The first has lost its scope, and the second is restrictive and not memorable. "Abilene" is the title of a famous song by George Hamilton IV, which rightly describes Abilene as pretty, but lies about the women there, and does not provide any other information.
Abilene has proven attributes which include location, seasons, civic pride and motivation, existing attractions and opportunities, opportunities for new attractions, savvy, future-oriented municipal, civic and business management, a favorable business climate, affordable cost of living, three universities and affiliations with others, strong traditions but no longer straitlaced, and friendliness. Abilene could truthfully adopt a slogan: "America's Home Town." "Abilene" is also a very pretty name, and easy to remember.
I first learned of Abilene's branding effort a few weeks ago in a story in The Abilene Reporter-News. The Abilene Branding Partnership, a consortium of five civic entities, had called for a Statement of Qualifications from eleven marketing companies. I have affection for Abilene, and the Reporter-News, where I began my career in 1969, and I have interest in how people feel about Abilene. In researching a book about Abilene history three years ago, I had the opportunity to spend time there on several visits, and talk to Abilenians about the city's present strengths and weaknesses.
Thus was I compelled to stick my branding iron into the fire. Three or four days later, I had an idea. On June 21, I emailed the Abilene Branding Partnership, but I was too late. The June 14 deadline for submitting my Statement of Qualifications had passed. I asked to be considered if the search was reopened, and that was agreed to.
Today, the Reporter-News reported that the consortium has agreed to hire North Star Destination Strategies, out of Nashville, Tennessee, to develop an Abilene brand, and a branding strategy, for a fee in the "low six figures," should the money be found locally and a contract signed. North Star was one of only three companies, out of the 11, responding to Abilene's call for a Statement of Qualifications.
So the deal is done, and I can publish my idea. For a penny less than six figures - $99,999.99 – I would have provided Abilene all rights to a three-word brand that co-opts an already global brand, has four distinct applications and one state of mind, and it offers multiple branding strategies.
It would identify a place.
It would identify a thing.
It would identify an event.
It would identify a product.
It would identify a state of mind.
It would be:
"Abilene, Texas Style"
Published, copyrighted, protected. North Star will earn its money and give Abilene something that works better than "Friendly Frontier." And I will always know "Abilene, Texas Style" was good, and came in in an x-way tie for second place.
A "brand" is a term, phrase, or symbol that makes a product or service unique in the public consciousness ("Xerox," "Google," "Neiman's"). Examples of branded cities are "The Big Apple," "Big D," "Cowtown," "Vegas," and "L.A." Abilene had an original brand, "The Key City of West Texas," and now uses "The Friendly Frontier." The first has lost its scope, and the second is restrictive and not memorable. "Abilene" is the title of a famous song by George Hamilton IV, which rightly describes Abilene as pretty, but lies about the women there, and does not provide any other information.
Abilene has proven attributes which include location, seasons, civic pride and motivation, existing attractions and opportunities, opportunities for new attractions, savvy, future-oriented municipal, civic and business management, a favorable business climate, affordable cost of living, three universities and affiliations with others, strong traditions but no longer straitlaced, and friendliness. Abilene could truthfully adopt a slogan: "America's Home Town." "Abilene" is also a very pretty name, and easy to remember.
I first learned of Abilene's branding effort a few weeks ago in a story in The Abilene Reporter-News. The Abilene Branding Partnership, a consortium of five civic entities, had called for a Statement of Qualifications from eleven marketing companies. I have affection for Abilene, and the Reporter-News, where I began my career in 1969, and I have interest in how people feel about Abilene. In researching a book about Abilene history three years ago, I had the opportunity to spend time there on several visits, and talk to Abilenians about the city's present strengths and weaknesses.
Thus was I compelled to stick my branding iron into the fire. Three or four days later, I had an idea. On June 21, I emailed the Abilene Branding Partnership, but I was too late. The June 14 deadline for submitting my Statement of Qualifications had passed. I asked to be considered if the search was reopened, and that was agreed to.
Today, the Reporter-News reported that the consortium has agreed to hire North Star Destination Strategies, out of Nashville, Tennessee, to develop an Abilene brand, and a branding strategy, for a fee in the "low six figures," should the money be found locally and a contract signed. North Star was one of only three companies, out of the 11, responding to Abilene's call for a Statement of Qualifications.
So the deal is done, and I can publish my idea. For a penny less than six figures - $99,999.99 – I would have provided Abilene all rights to a three-word brand that co-opts an already global brand, has four distinct applications and one state of mind, and it offers multiple branding strategies.
It would identify a place.
It would identify a thing.
It would identify an event.
It would identify a product.
It would identify a state of mind.
It would be:
"Abilene, Texas Style"
Published, copyrighted, protected. North Star will earn its money and give Abilene something that works better than "Friendly Frontier." And I will always know "Abilene, Texas Style" was good, and came in in an x-way tie for second place.
July 17, 2007
Mary Galbraith
This morning, I learned that Mary Galbraith had died.
I could not believe it. I'm having a hard time with it, not so much emotionally as physically. Mary Galbraith, dead? Not possible. People die. Physical laws do not. If Mary Galbraith has gone, she has only disappeared from this dimension with a force that has sucked all the air out of the space she occupied.
It is that vacuum that I'm trying to understand. I know about death. Mother, father, icons, wife. I have mourned, grieved, raged, denied, processed, adjusted. This thing with Mary is new. She was fantastic, and those she knew will miss her always, but that's not it. Mary was energy posing as matter. Energy cannot be lost. Or so the physicists say. How, then, to explain the space I'm in, where Mary Galbraith was? What has changed in the universe this morning?
I didn't know the complete Mary. Her third child, Dub, and I became close friends in the seventh grade and remained so until his death in 1981 in a highway accident. I knew Mary from the time I spent at her house, 1349 Ross Ave., which was considerable. If statistics had been kept, I believe that 1349 would rank first in visitor traffic, from 1952 through 1961, in Abilene, and maybe in Texas. Mary and Gubo had six kids, Gail, Gervis, Dub, Julia, Kandy and Deborah. Gail was head cheerleader and Gervis was a quarterback in the middle 1950s, when Abilene High was on a long, historic winning streak, and all those kids loved to come to Mary's house, and Dub and our gang then took their place. I wonder how many people feel as I do, a member of an extended family before which Mary placed thousands of bologna and mayonnaise sandwiches and gallons of iced tea. Her funeral is Saturday in Abilene, at the cavernous First Baptist Church, and I wonder how many of those kids will be there.
Mary was brunette and loved music, loved to dance. She could be a little rambunctious. She would much rather have been one of us. She had the lowest threshold of pleasure of anyone I have known. She did not have an off switch. When it was just them, her kids might have had to beg her for some peace and quiet, and not the other way around.
She never lost a friendship, that I know of. Ours continued after Dub's death, and my move to Southern California. I would see her for iced tea and a visit and nine million laughs when I was in Abilene. Pictures would never do Mary justice; you need the sound track, too. In the 1960s, I said to her, "You look like Suzanne Pleshette." She laughed and took to it, and after that, whenever I called or saw her, I said, "Hi, Suzanne." I loved having a unique connection with her.
After Gubo died, she moved into a house on Blair Street, filled it up with photos and memorabilia and lived alone. I don't imagine she was hard-up for company. If it were up to me, I would position an easel in the church on Saturday, and on it place an enlarged photo of Mary, just her face, looking up at the moment more kids are trooping into her kitchen at 1349 Ross. In that face, you will see the energy that this morning has created a strange void, like air displaced behind lightning. No doubt Mary's life was a bolt of lightning. Now that it's over, the air is closing behind her, just taking awhile following along behind a bolt that was decades long. It will reach us as thunder. When I hear it, I will know that it is her, and what a unique experience I've had. If thunder rumbles through First Baptist on Saturday, it's the sound track.
I could not believe it. I'm having a hard time with it, not so much emotionally as physically. Mary Galbraith, dead? Not possible. People die. Physical laws do not. If Mary Galbraith has gone, she has only disappeared from this dimension with a force that has sucked all the air out of the space she occupied.
It is that vacuum that I'm trying to understand. I know about death. Mother, father, icons, wife. I have mourned, grieved, raged, denied, processed, adjusted. This thing with Mary is new. She was fantastic, and those she knew will miss her always, but that's not it. Mary was energy posing as matter. Energy cannot be lost. Or so the physicists say. How, then, to explain the space I'm in, where Mary Galbraith was? What has changed in the universe this morning?
I didn't know the complete Mary. Her third child, Dub, and I became close friends in the seventh grade and remained so until his death in 1981 in a highway accident. I knew Mary from the time I spent at her house, 1349 Ross Ave., which was considerable. If statistics had been kept, I believe that 1349 would rank first in visitor traffic, from 1952 through 1961, in Abilene, and maybe in Texas. Mary and Gubo had six kids, Gail, Gervis, Dub, Julia, Kandy and Deborah. Gail was head cheerleader and Gervis was a quarterback in the middle 1950s, when Abilene High was on a long, historic winning streak, and all those kids loved to come to Mary's house, and Dub and our gang then took their place. I wonder how many people feel as I do, a member of an extended family before which Mary placed thousands of bologna and mayonnaise sandwiches and gallons of iced tea. Her funeral is Saturday in Abilene, at the cavernous First Baptist Church, and I wonder how many of those kids will be there.
Mary was brunette and loved music, loved to dance. She could be a little rambunctious. She would much rather have been one of us. She had the lowest threshold of pleasure of anyone I have known. She did not have an off switch. When it was just them, her kids might have had to beg her for some peace and quiet, and not the other way around.
She never lost a friendship, that I know of. Ours continued after Dub's death, and my move to Southern California. I would see her for iced tea and a visit and nine million laughs when I was in Abilene. Pictures would never do Mary justice; you need the sound track, too. In the 1960s, I said to her, "You look like Suzanne Pleshette." She laughed and took to it, and after that, whenever I called or saw her, I said, "Hi, Suzanne." I loved having a unique connection with her.
After Gubo died, she moved into a house on Blair Street, filled it up with photos and memorabilia and lived alone. I don't imagine she was hard-up for company. If it were up to me, I would position an easel in the church on Saturday, and on it place an enlarged photo of Mary, just her face, looking up at the moment more kids are trooping into her kitchen at 1349 Ross. In that face, you will see the energy that this morning has created a strange void, like air displaced behind lightning. No doubt Mary's life was a bolt of lightning. Now that it's over, the air is closing behind her, just taking awhile following along behind a bolt that was decades long. It will reach us as thunder. When I hear it, I will know that it is her, and what a unique experience I've had. If thunder rumbles through First Baptist on Saturday, it's the sound track.
July 11, 2007
Dodging bullets
It is 12:37 p.m. I am second in line at the pickup window behind a low-end white Toyota Tercel with dirty windows. The driver is smallish. I can only see the top half of her head over the headrest. I take her to be a woman, by the length of her hair, which is being blown by a strong current. The Tercel's windows are down, but the afternoon is relatively calm. She must have the fan blowers turned up to high. Her head is in constant movement, swiveling. I see no evidence of anyone else in the car. Somehow all this bodes ill for the speed with which I will be getting home with my Jumbo Jack.
She extends her arm out the window. In her hand is a card. Maybe a coupon. Damn. Coupons mean trouble. Now she reaches the card toward a device mounted on the lip of the pickup window. She turns the card sideways and vertical. I see a magnetic strip. Oh, my God. It's a credit card!
I am screwed. A smallish, nervous woman in a dirty low-end Toyota with the fans turned up high is trying to use a credit card at a fast-food pickup window. I didn't even know they took plastic! I have never before seen a card reader at the window!
Into my mind flashes recent television commercials for Visa cards. One is at a nursery, one is at – yes – a fast-food place! As long as everyone is using a Visa card, business flows smoothly, like clockwork, and everyone is happy. Then some Luddite cretin pays with cash. The clockwork slows and stops. Plants wither in the delay. Lettuce rots in the fast-food tacos. In the line, happiness turns to dismay. The offender notices and appears to feel small. At last he is gone and the happy Visa choreography returns.
Ahead of me, the woman, leaning halfway out the Tercel window, slides the card. She waits, turns the card over so the name side is toward me, slides it again. I wince, and look away. Look down. In my left hand are three dollar bills, exactly what my order will cost, unless inflation kicks in before this woman can get her food paid for. Into my mind flashes the small world wars I routinely witness between credit card users and card readers at the supermarket checkout.
Now the woman has handed the card to a hand appearing in the pickup window. I sigh and wonder if I should just cut off the engine. Then, just as quickly, the card is handed back. Out the window is handed what appears to be a cup of coffee and a small sack. I feel I have dodged a bullet. After the usual moments of receiving, positioning, and preparation to drive, the Tercel pulls forward, and I am grateful.
Of course the bullet I have dodged comes in many calibers. Sometimes, and you don't see this much anymore, it is a woman watching her groceries go through, purse slung over her shoulder, and not until the total is rung does she take the purse off her shoulder, look in it for her checkbook, and start to write the check. Sometimes it is a wad of coupons, being scanned one at a time, and every third one needing some kind of extra attention. Sometimes it is someone's diabolical need to pay in cash, down to the penny, counting out thirty-eight cents one coin at a time.
I am always glad when it is over, and I am smiling at the clerk's apologetic shrug. And behind the Toyota, seeing the difference between real life and the Visa commercial, was really funny. And therein, of course, is the truth, or the fib, about the commercial. It isn't a Visa card that creates a clockwork life. It would have to be clockwork people. I really don't think I would want to live that way. I wouldn't want to be a bullet to dodge, either. It's an interesting tension.
She extends her arm out the window. In her hand is a card. Maybe a coupon. Damn. Coupons mean trouble. Now she reaches the card toward a device mounted on the lip of the pickup window. She turns the card sideways and vertical. I see a magnetic strip. Oh, my God. It's a credit card!
I am screwed. A smallish, nervous woman in a dirty low-end Toyota with the fans turned up high is trying to use a credit card at a fast-food pickup window. I didn't even know they took plastic! I have never before seen a card reader at the window!
Into my mind flashes recent television commercials for Visa cards. One is at a nursery, one is at – yes – a fast-food place! As long as everyone is using a Visa card, business flows smoothly, like clockwork, and everyone is happy. Then some Luddite cretin pays with cash. The clockwork slows and stops. Plants wither in the delay. Lettuce rots in the fast-food tacos. In the line, happiness turns to dismay. The offender notices and appears to feel small. At last he is gone and the happy Visa choreography returns.
Ahead of me, the woman, leaning halfway out the Tercel window, slides the card. She waits, turns the card over so the name side is toward me, slides it again. I wince, and look away. Look down. In my left hand are three dollar bills, exactly what my order will cost, unless inflation kicks in before this woman can get her food paid for. Into my mind flashes the small world wars I routinely witness between credit card users and card readers at the supermarket checkout.
Now the woman has handed the card to a hand appearing in the pickup window. I sigh and wonder if I should just cut off the engine. Then, just as quickly, the card is handed back. Out the window is handed what appears to be a cup of coffee and a small sack. I feel I have dodged a bullet. After the usual moments of receiving, positioning, and preparation to drive, the Tercel pulls forward, and I am grateful.
Of course the bullet I have dodged comes in many calibers. Sometimes, and you don't see this much anymore, it is a woman watching her groceries go through, purse slung over her shoulder, and not until the total is rung does she take the purse off her shoulder, look in it for her checkbook, and start to write the check. Sometimes it is a wad of coupons, being scanned one at a time, and every third one needing some kind of extra attention. Sometimes it is someone's diabolical need to pay in cash, down to the penny, counting out thirty-eight cents one coin at a time.
I am always glad when it is over, and I am smiling at the clerk's apologetic shrug. And behind the Toyota, seeing the difference between real life and the Visa commercial, was really funny. And therein, of course, is the truth, or the fib, about the commercial. It isn't a Visa card that creates a clockwork life. It would have to be clockwork people. I really don't think I would want to live that way. I wouldn't want to be a bullet to dodge, either. It's an interesting tension.
June 10, 2007
To Paris in a handbasket
So many opportunities lately to review the media codes at work. If you are wondering about media coverage of the Paris Hilton situation, the codes are working pretty much as they are supposed to, just as they did three or four months ago after the death of Anna Nicole Smith.
Both stories would be tragic, if they had happened to just anybody. Since they happened to Paris and Anna Nicole, they made news. And the news made news.
People seem forever mystified by the media and how it works, but it is only a relatively simple matter of ages-old media codes at work. The codes are a collection of values, definitions and principles that the media uses to do its work. A few of the codes were developed by mass media, after its introduction to civilization in the 15th century, but most of the codes were already at work tens of thousands of years before that. All the media did was take those ancient codes and turn them into a business.
In fact that is the first key to understanding media. When you wonder why the paparazzi would chase Diana into a tunnel, or swarm over a squad car to get photos of an airhead in anguish, remember the First Law of Media: the media is a business. Paparazzi regard Paris Hilton with the same impersonal professionalism fishermen regard a prize tuna. The catch will sell for a lot of money to the purveyors, who know there is a select and faithful clientele for it. When you can think of CNN as a popular sushi joint, then you are starting to understand the Paris Hilton media coverage.
In the age of the Internet, with its very low production overhead, it starts to make good media business sense to focus exclusively on the Paris types. Hence the success of tmz.com. The vast majority may call it tripe, but tmz.com doesn’t care about the vast majority. Its customers love tripe, and it wants to be the best menudo café in town. It's only business.
Given that reality, the media stories about the media stories about Anna Nicole, and now Paris, are amazing in their stances of bemused befuddlement, and cautionary clucks of concern. Media professionals – reporters, editors, critics – go to school and get four-year degrees in the media codes. Surely they understand that which they profess not to. So the media stories about the media stories must also be a business deal, based on an audience they know is there. This is the audience, and it is a significant one, of people angrily demanding that the media explain itself. Those people are serious about that, because they honestly have no clue about the media codes, and how the media does its job. That is perfectly normal; they didn't study it in school. The New York Times took that audience seriously enough to place a Paris story on its Saturday Page One, one-column, left bottom of the page.
A meaningful media story about the Paris media stories would simply explain that it is media business as usual, nothing to worry about, that the nation is not in danger of falling in line to be led by Paris Hilton into the slimy bog of celebrity hugging at the end of civilization. Yet in its first paragraph, The Times spoke of a "national obsession with celebrity." If you check the CNN and Fox ratings for last Friday, the Paris peak day, you probably will find Neilsen ratings in the 3 range, translating into maybe eight million viewers, meaning 97 percent of viewers, or 292 million of the population, was doing something somewhere else.
I would not credit eight million people with constituting a national obsession. They do make a crowd at the menudo café, though, which is fine for the tripe lovers (hey, millions of people love hockey), who are not going away however much the "story about the story" audience may tremble for the nation. That audience, whatever its rating size, is only a spike audience, good for one or two newspaper editions or evening news segments. Then it will disappear, as the Paris story becomes old, which it will, as old as the Anna Nicole story, which was four months ago.
Both stories would be tragic, if they had happened to just anybody. Since they happened to Paris and Anna Nicole, they made news. And the news made news.
People seem forever mystified by the media and how it works, but it is only a relatively simple matter of ages-old media codes at work. The codes are a collection of values, definitions and principles that the media uses to do its work. A few of the codes were developed by mass media, after its introduction to civilization in the 15th century, but most of the codes were already at work tens of thousands of years before that. All the media did was take those ancient codes and turn them into a business.
In fact that is the first key to understanding media. When you wonder why the paparazzi would chase Diana into a tunnel, or swarm over a squad car to get photos of an airhead in anguish, remember the First Law of Media: the media is a business. Paparazzi regard Paris Hilton with the same impersonal professionalism fishermen regard a prize tuna. The catch will sell for a lot of money to the purveyors, who know there is a select and faithful clientele for it. When you can think of CNN as a popular sushi joint, then you are starting to understand the Paris Hilton media coverage.
In the age of the Internet, with its very low production overhead, it starts to make good media business sense to focus exclusively on the Paris types. Hence the success of tmz.com. The vast majority may call it tripe, but tmz.com doesn’t care about the vast majority. Its customers love tripe, and it wants to be the best menudo café in town. It's only business.
Given that reality, the media stories about the media stories about Anna Nicole, and now Paris, are amazing in their stances of bemused befuddlement, and cautionary clucks of concern. Media professionals – reporters, editors, critics – go to school and get four-year degrees in the media codes. Surely they understand that which they profess not to. So the media stories about the media stories must also be a business deal, based on an audience they know is there. This is the audience, and it is a significant one, of people angrily demanding that the media explain itself. Those people are serious about that, because they honestly have no clue about the media codes, and how the media does its job. That is perfectly normal; they didn't study it in school. The New York Times took that audience seriously enough to place a Paris story on its Saturday Page One, one-column, left bottom of the page.
A meaningful media story about the Paris media stories would simply explain that it is media business as usual, nothing to worry about, that the nation is not in danger of falling in line to be led by Paris Hilton into the slimy bog of celebrity hugging at the end of civilization. Yet in its first paragraph, The Times spoke of a "national obsession with celebrity." If you check the CNN and Fox ratings for last Friday, the Paris peak day, you probably will find Neilsen ratings in the 3 range, translating into maybe eight million viewers, meaning 97 percent of viewers, or 292 million of the population, was doing something somewhere else.
I would not credit eight million people with constituting a national obsession. They do make a crowd at the menudo café, though, which is fine for the tripe lovers (hey, millions of people love hockey), who are not going away however much the "story about the story" audience may tremble for the nation. That audience, whatever its rating size, is only a spike audience, good for one or two newspaper editions or evening news segments. Then it will disappear, as the Paris story becomes old, which it will, as old as the Anna Nicole story, which was four months ago.
May 25, 2007
An idol's centennial
John Wayne's 100th birthday is tomorrow. Sort of. The name on the birth certificate issued to this individual on May 26, 1907, was Marion Morrison.
Morrison did not become John Wayne until some time later. He had moved to California with his family, played football at USC, and was attracted to playing in the movies. At that point, Marion Morrison started to morph into John Wayne.
John Wayne himself called it "the Wayne thing," in an anniversary piece in last Sunday's New York Times:
“When I started, I knew I was no actor, and I went to work on this Wayne thing. I figured I needed a gimmick, so I dreamed up the drawl, the squint and a way of moving meant to suggest that I wasn’t looking for trouble but would just as soon throw a bottle at your head as not. I practiced in front of a mirror.”
I wish I could tell you how many times I did exactly the same thing – practice the Wayne thing – when I walked out of the Metro Theatre into the sunlight after a Saturday John Wayne double feature. Lord, I wish I had pictures. I didn't want to be myself: I wanted to be John Wayne. I sort of moseyed up to the bicycle rack, arms flexed slightly away from my sides, my head as still as I could hold it, mouth open, lips drawn back, feet shuffling forward as if against some kind of resistance. Not looking for trouble, brother. But look out, anyway.
Pulled the bike out of the rack, pulled its head around, left foot on the pedal, leg up and over, settling easy into the saddle. Glanced over my shoulder at the pilgrims, said, "Yeo-o-o-o," under my voice so nobody could hear, and headed out for Tucson, which in my case was one block over and 10 blocks down.
I was good for about 10 minutes of this, then a plane would fly over, and I was distracted into some other realm. Marion Morrison was good for it for about 50 years, and he became an American idol. The mirror was the key. People believe what they see in a mirror. I couldn't tell you how better I look in a mirror than in a photograph. In the photograph my jaw is a tiny bit soft. In the mirror, its line has remained distinct for six decades.
They don't call them "vanity mirrors" for nothing. That's unsettling enough for me. Imagine if you were Marion Morrison, looking in the mirror in your 60s and seeing John Wayne there, as chiseled as the Ringo Kid in the mirror, compared to what Rooster Cogburn looked like up there on the screen.
I don't know. It makes me think of Willie Nelson. If you have ever listened to your voice recorded, you know it doesn't sound like you. Years ago I started to worry about Willie, never really knowing what that voice of his sounded like. In an interview I asked him about it, actually fearful he would say, "Yes, I really would like to know what I sound like." Instead, he said he'd been listening to himself so long, he had been able to reconcile the two sounds.
I hope Marion Morrison had the same luck. I hope he remembered what he looked like, before John Wayne became his idol in the mirror.
Morrison did not become John Wayne until some time later. He had moved to California with his family, played football at USC, and was attracted to playing in the movies. At that point, Marion Morrison started to morph into John Wayne.
John Wayne himself called it "the Wayne thing," in an anniversary piece in last Sunday's New York Times:
“When I started, I knew I was no actor, and I went to work on this Wayne thing. I figured I needed a gimmick, so I dreamed up the drawl, the squint and a way of moving meant to suggest that I wasn’t looking for trouble but would just as soon throw a bottle at your head as not. I practiced in front of a mirror.”
I wish I could tell you how many times I did exactly the same thing – practice the Wayne thing – when I walked out of the Metro Theatre into the sunlight after a Saturday John Wayne double feature. Lord, I wish I had pictures. I didn't want to be myself: I wanted to be John Wayne. I sort of moseyed up to the bicycle rack, arms flexed slightly away from my sides, my head as still as I could hold it, mouth open, lips drawn back, feet shuffling forward as if against some kind of resistance. Not looking for trouble, brother. But look out, anyway.
Pulled the bike out of the rack, pulled its head around, left foot on the pedal, leg up and over, settling easy into the saddle. Glanced over my shoulder at the pilgrims, said, "Yeo-o-o-o," under my voice so nobody could hear, and headed out for Tucson, which in my case was one block over and 10 blocks down.
I was good for about 10 minutes of this, then a plane would fly over, and I was distracted into some other realm. Marion Morrison was good for it for about 50 years, and he became an American idol. The mirror was the key. People believe what they see in a mirror. I couldn't tell you how better I look in a mirror than in a photograph. In the photograph my jaw is a tiny bit soft. In the mirror, its line has remained distinct for six decades.
They don't call them "vanity mirrors" for nothing. That's unsettling enough for me. Imagine if you were Marion Morrison, looking in the mirror in your 60s and seeing John Wayne there, as chiseled as the Ringo Kid in the mirror, compared to what Rooster Cogburn looked like up there on the screen.
I don't know. It makes me think of Willie Nelson. If you have ever listened to your voice recorded, you know it doesn't sound like you. Years ago I started to worry about Willie, never really knowing what that voice of his sounded like. In an interview I asked him about it, actually fearful he would say, "Yes, I really would like to know what I sound like." Instead, he said he'd been listening to himself so long, he had been able to reconcile the two sounds.
I hope Marion Morrison had the same luck. I hope he remembered what he looked like, before John Wayne became his idol in the mirror.
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