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.
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