Before chili became a culture unto itself, it was a stretch-cooking technique for making meat go farther, and for preserving the meat longer.
I have never made two batches of chili exactly the same way. Chili has only two constants: it never stops evolving, and you never put beans in it. You can put beans in it, but it changes the flavor of the chili, and of the beans, and that is something that a fan of chili, and of beans, would never want to do.
The basic chili recipe that follows originated with an assignment, in the 1980s, to write about chili for the food section of my newspaper. The food editor stood at my desk, brow furrowed in thought, and said, “New wave. Write a story about new-wave chili.”
Thus did “Bouillabaise Chili” come into being. More about that recipe another time. What it contributes to this recipe is the idea of broiling the peppers, peeling off the blackened skins, and pureeing the flesh in a blender or processor. It worked so well in the Bouillabaise Chili that I brought it into a new evolution of the basic chili recipe. Here it goes:
2 T whole cumin seeds
2 pounds chuck roast, on the lean side
2 pounds pork loin ($1.79/lb., in the bag at CostCo)
2 green bell peppers
2 red bell peppers
2 fresh Anaheim chiles
2 fresh jalapeno chiles (optional)
2 medium to large onions, chopped
1 T oregano
3/4 cup good chili powder (I like Eagle Brand)
1 T salt
Pepper to taste, about 1 t.
5 or 6 garlic cloves, chopped
1 8-oz. can tomato sauce
2 11-oz. cans diced tomatoes
In a small, dry skillet, toast the cumin seeds until lightly browned and fragrant. Put aside to cool. Crush the cooled seeds with a pestle or rolling pin, or whirl them in an electric coffee grinder.
With a large, sharp knife, remove excess fat and cut the beef and pork into small dice. This is an onerous chore, but so was the mixing of the paints for the Sistine Chapel.
Broil the peppers and chiles in the oven or, even better, over a hot mesquite-charcoal fire on the Weber. When the skins are blackened, close the peppers into a brown paper bag and let steam 5 minutes. Peel off the skins and seed them. On the blender’s lowest speed, reduce them to pulp. (When you are cooking with any hot peppers, such as jalapenos, remember to keep your fingers away from your eyes, or any other sensitive parts, for that matter. When working with quantities of chiles, wear rubber gloves.)
Render the fat trimmings in an 8-quart dutch oven, adding a little olive oil if necessary. Brown the meat a pound at a time over medium-high heat. Set the meat aside, add a little oil to the pot if necessary, and add the onions and seasonings and cook, stirring frequently, over medium-high heat until a brown glaze forms on the bottom of the pot. Add the chopped garlic and cook, stirring, another 30 seconds (don’t burn the garlic). If you have a cup of leftover coffee, add it to the pot and scrape up the bottom glaze (this is called de-glazing). If you don’t have coffee, use water. As I always say, this glaze is flavor gold.
Add the meat, pepper pulp and tomatoes to the pot. Add water, if necessary, to not quite cover the meat.
Simmer over low heat 3 hours, stirring occasionally. Makes 2 ½- 3 quarts. Freezes well.
April 30, 2009
Media Literacy Extra: seeing thru flu coverage
On Wednesday, The New York Times published a story about the public becoming panicked by media coverage of the swine flu pandemic.
“Without the news media,” the story said, “the public would be dangerously unaware of the swine flu outbreak, but perhaps without saturation coverage on cable news networks and the velocity of information on the Internet, the public would not be so hysterical, medical professionals said.”
Protecting the public from saturation coverage may be one way to prevent hysteria. A far better way would be to provide the public with the power of media literacy. If the public knew how the media worked, in providing both essential and saturation coverage, they could rely not on protection, but their own understanding of media, in dealing with the coverage of a huge story. They would be empowered to receive essential information and non-essential information, be able to tell the two apart, and know how to react to it. How powerful an improvement would that be?
Here is a definition, used daily by media professionals, that makes the swine flu story so big. It is the definition of news: News is anything that changes, or threatens to change, the status quo, or the way things are. The epidemic has begun and spread to a global level, which is a terrific change to the status quo. But look at the second part of the definition, the threat to the status quo. In the swine flu story, no one, from global leaders to heads of households, knows what is going to happen. This threat to the status quo – not knowing what is going to happen – truly makes the story as big as it is, both to media professionals and in the public mind.
So that is the way the story is reported: here’s where we are, but what happens next? This is not the media trying to scare people; it is the media reporting how scary things are, because of the threat. People have a total right to be scared, when a virus with original, unknown properties threatens to break free and roam the earth. Movies are made about such circumstances. Speaking of which, this very day, dozens of writers and producers, believe me, are busily collecting swine flu material, with just such a project in mind.
Is this cynical, or unethical? If it is, then why was there such mourning at the loss of Michael Crichton, a master at fictionalizing the threat to the status quo? In fact Americans love the threat to the status quo, which drives almost exclusively two of the leading media businesses, sports and weather. The threat also drives most novels, movies, soap operas and sitcoms consumed by Americans.
The threat is also a strong temptation to cable news producers battling for viewership in a cutthroat-competitive 24/7 television world. So Fox News Channel, to promote its newscast, airs a commercial saying “swine flu plagues the nation.” Of course Fox shouldn’t be doing this, but the only party with any control over such manipulation is the public. Media literacy would empower the public to recognize the line not as a call to alarm, but as a marketing hook, giving people a better chance to make the viewing choice they would feel good about.
As ever, the ultimate irony inherent in this kind of discussion is the origin of the definition of news, and the other values and definitions that media professionals use in their work, whether it’s news, entertainment or advertising. The media didn’t create these values and definitions; the people did. They don’t realize it, and should be made aware of it starting in, say, third grade. You’d be amazed how much media literacy people can acquire in a single semester, if only educators decided to teach it to them.
“Without the news media,” the story said, “the public would be dangerously unaware of the swine flu outbreak, but perhaps without saturation coverage on cable news networks and the velocity of information on the Internet, the public would not be so hysterical, medical professionals said.”
Protecting the public from saturation coverage may be one way to prevent hysteria. A far better way would be to provide the public with the power of media literacy. If the public knew how the media worked, in providing both essential and saturation coverage, they could rely not on protection, but their own understanding of media, in dealing with the coverage of a huge story. They would be empowered to receive essential information and non-essential information, be able to tell the two apart, and know how to react to it. How powerful an improvement would that be?
Here is a definition, used daily by media professionals, that makes the swine flu story so big. It is the definition of news: News is anything that changes, or threatens to change, the status quo, or the way things are. The epidemic has begun and spread to a global level, which is a terrific change to the status quo. But look at the second part of the definition, the threat to the status quo. In the swine flu story, no one, from global leaders to heads of households, knows what is going to happen. This threat to the status quo – not knowing what is going to happen – truly makes the story as big as it is, both to media professionals and in the public mind.
So that is the way the story is reported: here’s where we are, but what happens next? This is not the media trying to scare people; it is the media reporting how scary things are, because of the threat. People have a total right to be scared, when a virus with original, unknown properties threatens to break free and roam the earth. Movies are made about such circumstances. Speaking of which, this very day, dozens of writers and producers, believe me, are busily collecting swine flu material, with just such a project in mind.
Is this cynical, or unethical? If it is, then why was there such mourning at the loss of Michael Crichton, a master at fictionalizing the threat to the status quo? In fact Americans love the threat to the status quo, which drives almost exclusively two of the leading media businesses, sports and weather. The threat also drives most novels, movies, soap operas and sitcoms consumed by Americans.
The threat is also a strong temptation to cable news producers battling for viewership in a cutthroat-competitive 24/7 television world. So Fox News Channel, to promote its newscast, airs a commercial saying “swine flu plagues the nation.” Of course Fox shouldn’t be doing this, but the only party with any control over such manipulation is the public. Media literacy would empower the public to recognize the line not as a call to alarm, but as a marketing hook, giving people a better chance to make the viewing choice they would feel good about.
As ever, the ultimate irony inherent in this kind of discussion is the origin of the definition of news, and the other values and definitions that media professionals use in their work, whether it’s news, entertainment or advertising. The media didn’t create these values and definitions; the people did. They don’t realize it, and should be made aware of it starting in, say, third grade. You’d be amazed how much media literacy people can acquire in a single semester, if only educators decided to teach it to them.
April 28, 2009
Hello 911? A ceiling fan killed my husband
We have a handsome new ceiling fan in the living room. The five blades are thick, dark-reddish wood, extending out 62 inches from a dark bronze hub, and beautifully concave. Mark, our electrician, installed it this morning then turned it on. Compared to the old fan, the blades’ rotation was lazy.
“Turn it up to high,” Karen said. Mark looked at the remote control. “It is on high,” he said. We checked the remote, and, sure enough it was on high. “It’s moving a lot of air,” Mark said. “If it turned any faster than that,” I said, eying the prodigious blades, “the house would take off.”
It is a vast improvement over the old fan, which had 52-inch blades with the wicker-look inserts, but did not hold its proportional weight in the space, which features a vaulted ceiling and a massive ridgepole beam spanning the width of the room. This new fan reminds me of the noxious commercial where the cool couple sits across the desk from the mega-cool designer, who asks, “And what can I do for you?” And the woman, who was either highly paid or had no idea how idiotic this made her look, sets a faucet fixture on the desk and says, “Design a house around this.”
You could have designed our living room around this new ceiling fan. But we didn’t exactly go looking for it. The old fan would still be with us if I hadn’t single-handedly destroyed it last week. That fan had a pull chain that I had used successfully for years to change its speed. It had three speeds: low, medium, high. It was on medium, and Karen, on a warm evening, asked me to change it to high. “Three clicks,” I said. “Low, off, high.” I reached up and pulled the chain.
I don’t exactly know what happened next. I felt the chain knob slip free of my fingers. That has happened before. The chain, freed, arced upward. That has happened before. Then something happened. The motor housing, above the blades, started turning with the blades. The entire unit was rotating. Karen yelled, “It’s unscrewing at the top!” “What?” I yelled, transfixed by the rotating motor housing. “Unscrewing! At the top!” She yelled something about what I should do, but I yelled back, “Shut up!” I shouldn’t have done that, but I needed time to think. I ran to get a dining chair, climbed on it, and tried to stop the fan turning. I looked up at the beam and saw that the drop rod had become completely unscrewed from the beam housing. The fan had dropped about a foot and was hanging suspended only by its wiring.
I stared at the wiring and wondered if my death would come from electrocution, or fan blade blows, or falling off the chair, or telling Karen to shut up. Then the fan stopped. I let it go. I climbed off the chair. Karen spared me. Probably not 60 seconds had passed. It seemed like an eternity.
In the aftermath, I surmised that the chain must have arced just high enough to be caught by the blade hub, around which it wrapped, jamming into the clearance between the hub and the motor housing. And then the motor housing started to turn. There was no way to intervene. Before I was finished thinking about it, I had developed a bit of pride in myself, in the sense of contributing to a highlight reel. It was like the time I almost drowned when my water ski tips got pointed down, just as the towrope handle got trapped between my legs. That was a long time ago. But you remember.
“Turn it up to high,” Karen said. Mark looked at the remote control. “It is on high,” he said. We checked the remote, and, sure enough it was on high. “It’s moving a lot of air,” Mark said. “If it turned any faster than that,” I said, eying the prodigious blades, “the house would take off.”
It is a vast improvement over the old fan, which had 52-inch blades with the wicker-look inserts, but did not hold its proportional weight in the space, which features a vaulted ceiling and a massive ridgepole beam spanning the width of the room. This new fan reminds me of the noxious commercial where the cool couple sits across the desk from the mega-cool designer, who asks, “And what can I do for you?” And the woman, who was either highly paid or had no idea how idiotic this made her look, sets a faucet fixture on the desk and says, “Design a house around this.”
You could have designed our living room around this new ceiling fan. But we didn’t exactly go looking for it. The old fan would still be with us if I hadn’t single-handedly destroyed it last week. That fan had a pull chain that I had used successfully for years to change its speed. It had three speeds: low, medium, high. It was on medium, and Karen, on a warm evening, asked me to change it to high. “Three clicks,” I said. “Low, off, high.” I reached up and pulled the chain.
I don’t exactly know what happened next. I felt the chain knob slip free of my fingers. That has happened before. The chain, freed, arced upward. That has happened before. Then something happened. The motor housing, above the blades, started turning with the blades. The entire unit was rotating. Karen yelled, “It’s unscrewing at the top!” “What?” I yelled, transfixed by the rotating motor housing. “Unscrewing! At the top!” She yelled something about what I should do, but I yelled back, “Shut up!” I shouldn’t have done that, but I needed time to think. I ran to get a dining chair, climbed on it, and tried to stop the fan turning. I looked up at the beam and saw that the drop rod had become completely unscrewed from the beam housing. The fan had dropped about a foot and was hanging suspended only by its wiring.
I stared at the wiring and wondered if my death would come from electrocution, or fan blade blows, or falling off the chair, or telling Karen to shut up. Then the fan stopped. I let it go. I climbed off the chair. Karen spared me. Probably not 60 seconds had passed. It seemed like an eternity.
In the aftermath, I surmised that the chain must have arced just high enough to be caught by the blade hub, around which it wrapped, jamming into the clearance between the hub and the motor housing. And then the motor housing started to turn. There was no way to intervene. Before I was finished thinking about it, I had developed a bit of pride in myself, in the sense of contributing to a highlight reel. It was like the time I almost drowned when my water ski tips got pointed down, just as the towrope handle got trapped between my legs. That was a long time ago. But you remember.
April 27, 2009
Media Literacy: What is News?
What is news? Let's just think about that for a minute.
Every semester, students come into my classroom believing they're going to learn some professional secrets about the media.
They always seem pleased when, on the first day, I ask them: "Who is responsible for deciding what is, and isn't, news?"
The mumbles rise tentatively. "Why . . . the media." The silent ones hear the mumbles, and embrace them, and all the faces acquire a kind of glow, as if they're about to hear an answer to a question they've wondered about all their lives. They think I'm going to tell them how the media does it. And I am. It's not easy, because they've known the answer all along, and an answer in plain sight can be the hardest kind to see, and to understand.
"That's right," I say. "It is the media's job to decide, out of all the things that happen in all the towns and cities and countries in the world, every day, twenty-four hours a day, what is and isn't news. So. How do they decide?"
One answer: "There are big stories, and there are little stories. Anybody can see that."
Anybody can see that. So quickly they get the hint, that they've had the answer all along.
"But what makes one story big, and another story little, and a third story medium-sized?"
"The editors have rules."
"What kind of rules?"
"Rules that tell which stories are big, and which aren't."
"Where do they get these rules?"
"Learn them in journalism school."
"Where did the journalism school get the rules?"
"Somebody made them up. Gutenberg, maybe."
Invariably, it comes around, in classrooms, in cocktail chat, and in letters to the editor, that the rules of news are somehow the arbitrary creation of the media. The subject usually comes up in the context of the rules being irresponsible, and requiring change to bring an arrogant media into line. People accuse the media of slanting the rules toward bad, juicy news, because "sensational stories sell."
In my files is a long letter to the editor from a woman who simply listed all the things she was "tired of," 23 items in all, from crooked politicians to crazy people scaling White House fences, and of course including O.J. Simpson, hate mongers, and biased newspapers.
"I'm tired of so many things, and I don't think I'm alone," she concluded.
Her letter inspired other letters, typified by the following, from a man: "People such as (the woman) are in the vast majority, always have been, always will be . . . she is right, she is not alone. Most people are tired of the same things. Just remember, the things she's tired of are flashed constantly in our faces by lazy TV and print reporters, editors and producers because sensational stories sell. And don't forget: It will never be newsworthy that the vast majority of people get up again each morning and make the day go well."
It will never be newsworthy! He's right, he's looking straight at it, but he doesn't realize it. Just like the student in the classroom.
The letter writer is like a person who is looking for his eyeglasses, and can't find them, because they're pushed back on his head. What he must be suggesting is that a vast, untapped market, weary of the everyday news, is waiting for some enterprising, out-of-work newsman (plenty of those around) to start up a paper: The Good News Times. As a newsman myself, I am trying to imagine the page-one headline:
Vast Majority Rises
Does Little Things; Makes Day Go Well
If our letter writer is right, The Good News Times should ride the back of the vast majority to riches surpassing Murdoch. If he is wrong, and the paper folds (once the novelty wears off) and the local bad-news rag keeps selling 400,000 copies a day, he's going to have to go back to these lazy reporters and editors and ask himself: "What do these guys know, that I don't?"
Simply put, they know where the media values come from. It is true that journalists, both print and broadcast, bring to their task many specialized tools – the inverted pyramid, interviewing skills, the ability to write a grabby first paragraph, called a lede – for which the general public has little use.
But when the issue is the definition of news, the media and the public are joined at the hip by that set of values and definitions called the media code. Always have been, always will be. Remember, the code was there before the media. All the media did, starting with Gutenberg, was turn the code into a business. Imagine the media as a sieve, through which the tide of human experience is poured, all of it, every day. The mesh of the sieve is woven from the media code, which won't let news through. Most of human experience – hard to say exactly how much, but let's say the "vast majority" – will pour right on through. Daily – or many times daily now, with the advent of the Internet and the "24-hour deadline" – the sieve will be emptied onto editors' desks, the raw material of, in newspaper publisher Philip Graham's memorable phrase, the first rough draft of history.
A student holds up a hand.
"But if the news is captured by the media code, why do people have such different opinions of what they think the news is?"
Because no two people are alike. Every human being has the ability to create an instant "values profile" for any media image which is also an exact "reaction profile" of who the human being is. Take three random people, show them the same image, or story, and listen to their responses, how individual they are. People responding to media images is like pulling the handle on a slot machine. Imagine a row of windows in your head, like windows across a slot machine, one window for each value and definition in the media code, 14 in all. Every time you look at a news story, you pull the handle on the slot. In the windows, numbers whir, and then stop, each of them somewhere between zero and 10. The number sequence is your reaction profile to that story and an exact reflection of who you are.
The media's role is to democratize the results, assigning values to the story that represent the majority. Yes, emphatically, many people will disagree with the majority, and disagreement is the essence of the democratic process. Imagine, if you can, a nation whose people could read the paper in complete, voluntary agreement every day. Contrast that image with a free nation whose media is the "news Congress" of the people. And it is a Congress free of electioneering, lobbyists and special interests.
Many even within the profession don't understand the elegant, critical simplicity of that role. An admiral was killed in a plane crash, and the paper ran a front-page color photo of the admiral's widow and young son in their eruption of grief. Reaction to the photo was swift and subsequently the subject of a column by the paper's ombudsman. Readers called the photo "disgusting." "An invasion of privacy." "Exploitation at its worst."
The ombudsman referred to the lengthy editorial debate before the decision was made to run the picture, a decision that made nobody inside the paper comfortable. The ombudsman wrote: "At issue here are basic questions about how the newspaper covers stories and the choices it makes."
And then she stopped! Bumped right into the heart of the matter and didn't see it. Turned the discussion in another direction, when the completed paragraph might have – should have – read:
"At issue here are basic questions about how the newspaper covers stories and the choices it makes. It can be a very tough business, but the newspaper is the public's proxy, obligated to respond to the people's media values and democratize them."
Which is of course what happened. In media code, the photo scores 10s for conflict, prominence, proximity, timeliness, human interest and sensationalism, with proximity (in a Navy town) and human interest reinforcing the others. Once the photo was taken, the paper had no more choice to run it than Barack Obama did to take office when elected. It was simple, democratic mathematics, no matter how distasteful the result to some. (The admiral's widow, incidentally, asked for a copy of the photo to save for her son.)
Those who are discouraged by their media, and by the mathematics that produce media decisions, might want to read the opening paragraphs of "The Moral Sense" (Free Press, 1993), a study of human judgment by the eminent social scientist James Q. Wilson:
"Since daily newspapers were first published, they have been filled with accounts of murder and mayhem, of political terror and human atrocities . . . If people have a common moral sense, there is scarcely any evidence of it in the matters to which journalists – and their readers – pay the greatest attention . . . .But before drawing so bleak a conclusion from his daily newspaper, the reader should ask himself why bloodletting and savagery are news. There are two answers. The first is that they are unusual. If daily life were simply a war of all against all, what would be newsworthy would be the occasional outbreak of compassion and decency, self-restraint and fair dealing . . . Amazed that such things occurred, we would explain them as either rare expressions of a personality quirk or disguised examples of clever self-dealing.
"The second reason that misery is news is because it is shocking. We recoil in horror at pictures of starving children, death camp victims, and greedy looters. Though in the heat of battle or the embrace of ideology many of us will be indifferent to suffering or inured to bloodshed, in our calm and disinterested moments we discover in ourselves an intuitive and powerful aversion to inhumanity."
It is an intuitive and powerful aversion that shows up every day in our national news Congress; the good news that the vast majority craves is always there, glowing between the lines.
Every semester, students come into my classroom believing they're going to learn some professional secrets about the media.
They always seem pleased when, on the first day, I ask them: "Who is responsible for deciding what is, and isn't, news?"
The mumbles rise tentatively. "Why . . . the media." The silent ones hear the mumbles, and embrace them, and all the faces acquire a kind of glow, as if they're about to hear an answer to a question they've wondered about all their lives. They think I'm going to tell them how the media does it. And I am. It's not easy, because they've known the answer all along, and an answer in plain sight can be the hardest kind to see, and to understand.
"That's right," I say. "It is the media's job to decide, out of all the things that happen in all the towns and cities and countries in the world, every day, twenty-four hours a day, what is and isn't news. So. How do they decide?"
One answer: "There are big stories, and there are little stories. Anybody can see that."
Anybody can see that. So quickly they get the hint, that they've had the answer all along.
"But what makes one story big, and another story little, and a third story medium-sized?"
"The editors have rules."
"What kind of rules?"
"Rules that tell which stories are big, and which aren't."
"Where do they get these rules?"
"Learn them in journalism school."
"Where did the journalism school get the rules?"
"Somebody made them up. Gutenberg, maybe."
Invariably, it comes around, in classrooms, in cocktail chat, and in letters to the editor, that the rules of news are somehow the arbitrary creation of the media. The subject usually comes up in the context of the rules being irresponsible, and requiring change to bring an arrogant media into line. People accuse the media of slanting the rules toward bad, juicy news, because "sensational stories sell."
In my files is a long letter to the editor from a woman who simply listed all the things she was "tired of," 23 items in all, from crooked politicians to crazy people scaling White House fences, and of course including O.J. Simpson, hate mongers, and biased newspapers.
"I'm tired of so many things, and I don't think I'm alone," she concluded.
Her letter inspired other letters, typified by the following, from a man: "People such as (the woman) are in the vast majority, always have been, always will be . . . she is right, she is not alone. Most people are tired of the same things. Just remember, the things she's tired of are flashed constantly in our faces by lazy TV and print reporters, editors and producers because sensational stories sell. And don't forget: It will never be newsworthy that the vast majority of people get up again each morning and make the day go well."
It will never be newsworthy! He's right, he's looking straight at it, but he doesn't realize it. Just like the student in the classroom.
The letter writer is like a person who is looking for his eyeglasses, and can't find them, because they're pushed back on his head. What he must be suggesting is that a vast, untapped market, weary of the everyday news, is waiting for some enterprising, out-of-work newsman (plenty of those around) to start up a paper: The Good News Times. As a newsman myself, I am trying to imagine the page-one headline:
Vast Majority Rises
Does Little Things; Makes Day Go Well
If our letter writer is right, The Good News Times should ride the back of the vast majority to riches surpassing Murdoch. If he is wrong, and the paper folds (once the novelty wears off) and the local bad-news rag keeps selling 400,000 copies a day, he's going to have to go back to these lazy reporters and editors and ask himself: "What do these guys know, that I don't?"
Simply put, they know where the media values come from. It is true that journalists, both print and broadcast, bring to their task many specialized tools – the inverted pyramid, interviewing skills, the ability to write a grabby first paragraph, called a lede – for which the general public has little use.
But when the issue is the definition of news, the media and the public are joined at the hip by that set of values and definitions called the media code. Always have been, always will be. Remember, the code was there before the media. All the media did, starting with Gutenberg, was turn the code into a business. Imagine the media as a sieve, through which the tide of human experience is poured, all of it, every day. The mesh of the sieve is woven from the media code, which won't let news through. Most of human experience – hard to say exactly how much, but let's say the "vast majority" – will pour right on through. Daily – or many times daily now, with the advent of the Internet and the "24-hour deadline" – the sieve will be emptied onto editors' desks, the raw material of, in newspaper publisher Philip Graham's memorable phrase, the first rough draft of history.
A student holds up a hand.
"But if the news is captured by the media code, why do people have such different opinions of what they think the news is?"
Because no two people are alike. Every human being has the ability to create an instant "values profile" for any media image which is also an exact "reaction profile" of who the human being is. Take three random people, show them the same image, or story, and listen to their responses, how individual they are. People responding to media images is like pulling the handle on a slot machine. Imagine a row of windows in your head, like windows across a slot machine, one window for each value and definition in the media code, 14 in all. Every time you look at a news story, you pull the handle on the slot. In the windows, numbers whir, and then stop, each of them somewhere between zero and 10. The number sequence is your reaction profile to that story and an exact reflection of who you are.
The media's role is to democratize the results, assigning values to the story that represent the majority. Yes, emphatically, many people will disagree with the majority, and disagreement is the essence of the democratic process. Imagine, if you can, a nation whose people could read the paper in complete, voluntary agreement every day. Contrast that image with a free nation whose media is the "news Congress" of the people. And it is a Congress free of electioneering, lobbyists and special interests.
Many even within the profession don't understand the elegant, critical simplicity of that role. An admiral was killed in a plane crash, and the paper ran a front-page color photo of the admiral's widow and young son in their eruption of grief. Reaction to the photo was swift and subsequently the subject of a column by the paper's ombudsman. Readers called the photo "disgusting." "An invasion of privacy." "Exploitation at its worst."
The ombudsman referred to the lengthy editorial debate before the decision was made to run the picture, a decision that made nobody inside the paper comfortable. The ombudsman wrote: "At issue here are basic questions about how the newspaper covers stories and the choices it makes."
And then she stopped! Bumped right into the heart of the matter and didn't see it. Turned the discussion in another direction, when the completed paragraph might have – should have – read:
"At issue here are basic questions about how the newspaper covers stories and the choices it makes. It can be a very tough business, but the newspaper is the public's proxy, obligated to respond to the people's media values and democratize them."
Which is of course what happened. In media code, the photo scores 10s for conflict, prominence, proximity, timeliness, human interest and sensationalism, with proximity (in a Navy town) and human interest reinforcing the others. Once the photo was taken, the paper had no more choice to run it than Barack Obama did to take office when elected. It was simple, democratic mathematics, no matter how distasteful the result to some. (The admiral's widow, incidentally, asked for a copy of the photo to save for her son.)
Those who are discouraged by their media, and by the mathematics that produce media decisions, might want to read the opening paragraphs of "The Moral Sense" (Free Press, 1993), a study of human judgment by the eminent social scientist James Q. Wilson:
"Since daily newspapers were first published, they have been filled with accounts of murder and mayhem, of political terror and human atrocities . . . If people have a common moral sense, there is scarcely any evidence of it in the matters to which journalists – and their readers – pay the greatest attention . . . .But before drawing so bleak a conclusion from his daily newspaper, the reader should ask himself why bloodletting and savagery are news. There are two answers. The first is that they are unusual. If daily life were simply a war of all against all, what would be newsworthy would be the occasional outbreak of compassion and decency, self-restraint and fair dealing . . . Amazed that such things occurred, we would explain them as either rare expressions of a personality quirk or disguised examples of clever self-dealing.
"The second reason that misery is news is because it is shocking. We recoil in horror at pictures of starving children, death camp victims, and greedy looters. Though in the heat of battle or the embrace of ideology many of us will be indifferent to suffering or inured to bloodshed, in our calm and disinterested moments we discover in ourselves an intuitive and powerful aversion to inhumanity."
It is an intuitive and powerful aversion that shows up every day in our national news Congress; the good news that the vast majority craves is always there, glowing between the lines.
April 24, 2009
Archives: Flying Sideways, January 1991
Until this afternoon in January, 1991, I had been studying the concept of "taking back power" for three years, but still only understood it academically. Then the 727, taking off, put it on the ground for me.
A cold front had just passed through Dallas, bringing the usual winds howling from the north. The overcast was giving way to blue sky as our flight taxied from the Delta terminal over to the west runways.
Ahead of us was a Delta 727, hurrying along, probably late, like we were. Without pause he took the runway and began his takeoff roll. I lost sight of him as we maneuvered on the taxiway, but when we turned to enter the runway, I saw him again.
He had just lifted off, climbing sharply through 200 feet, presenting to us a topmost profile of white fuselage and silver wings.
He was flying sideways; that is, the fuselage was skewed two or three ticks to the right of its direction of travel. It is not unusual for airplanes, particularly small ones, to fly sideways. They call it “crabbing,” when a pilot, to fly straight, has to steer right or left into the wind.
But this was different, this glimpse of a 727, 200 feet off the ground, flying sideways at takeoff. Here was a three-engine aircraft, 100 feet long, weighing 115,000 pounds, driven forward by 45,000 pounds of thrust, and the wind had blown it sideways the instant its wheels left the ground. The pilot had to steer left to fly straight. It showed how strong the wind was, and how effective the countering design, a design that joined flexibility with control. It was a triumph of equilibrium.
Then we turned onto the runway, and the 727 was gone, but its image remained. It occurred to me, at that moment, that the ability to fly sideways is the central theme in human happiness.
Those who live in happiness will tell you that it feels a lot like freedom. Personal freedom, like political freedom, consists of the power to make choices. That is, of course, a great power. People who come to experience happiness are amazed when one of its features turns out to be a feeling of great power.
People without choice-making power live in fear. Personally and politically, the remedy is to take back power. It requires courage, but people make that decision all the time, because otherwise life is miserable. They start to take back power that most of them lost, or gave away, as children. It is a wonderful moment in their lives.
What they are gathering is the power to take off. In aviation, the point on the runway where the airplane reaches takeoff power is called “rotation.” The pilot can lift, or rotate, the nose, and the airplane will fly.
Both airplanes and human spirits are safest on the ground, but on the ground, both are out of their element. People have associated flight with spirit since the first recorded human thought. Daedalus invented wings on which Icarus, his son, soared free of the Labyrinth. Daedalus was a prophet of happiness. Unfortunately, Icarus in his exhilaration flew too near the sun, which melted the wax that held his wings, and he fell to his death in the sea.
People reach rotation at their own speed and usually not without professional guidance. It may take years. One day they realize the power is there, and it is as if there is no alternative but to lift the nose and take off. Some people call it commitment, but it also feels very much like surrender. They surrender safety, surrender the ground. It is a feeling of liberation they have known only in their dreams.
The spirit, entering its element, instantly feels equilibrium take hold, and that is the moment at which people understand how great the power of happiness is. The wind will still blow you sideways sometimes, but steering into it, you can fly straight. It is as exhilarating as life should be, as long as you don’t fly too near the sun.
A cold front had just passed through Dallas, bringing the usual winds howling from the north. The overcast was giving way to blue sky as our flight taxied from the Delta terminal over to the west runways.
Ahead of us was a Delta 727, hurrying along, probably late, like we were. Without pause he took the runway and began his takeoff roll. I lost sight of him as we maneuvered on the taxiway, but when we turned to enter the runway, I saw him again.
He had just lifted off, climbing sharply through 200 feet, presenting to us a topmost profile of white fuselage and silver wings.
He was flying sideways; that is, the fuselage was skewed two or three ticks to the right of its direction of travel. It is not unusual for airplanes, particularly small ones, to fly sideways. They call it “crabbing,” when a pilot, to fly straight, has to steer right or left into the wind.
But this was different, this glimpse of a 727, 200 feet off the ground, flying sideways at takeoff. Here was a three-engine aircraft, 100 feet long, weighing 115,000 pounds, driven forward by 45,000 pounds of thrust, and the wind had blown it sideways the instant its wheels left the ground. The pilot had to steer left to fly straight. It showed how strong the wind was, and how effective the countering design, a design that joined flexibility with control. It was a triumph of equilibrium.
Then we turned onto the runway, and the 727 was gone, but its image remained. It occurred to me, at that moment, that the ability to fly sideways is the central theme in human happiness.
Those who live in happiness will tell you that it feels a lot like freedom. Personal freedom, like political freedom, consists of the power to make choices. That is, of course, a great power. People who come to experience happiness are amazed when one of its features turns out to be a feeling of great power.
People without choice-making power live in fear. Personally and politically, the remedy is to take back power. It requires courage, but people make that decision all the time, because otherwise life is miserable. They start to take back power that most of them lost, or gave away, as children. It is a wonderful moment in their lives.
What they are gathering is the power to take off. In aviation, the point on the runway where the airplane reaches takeoff power is called “rotation.” The pilot can lift, or rotate, the nose, and the airplane will fly.
Both airplanes and human spirits are safest on the ground, but on the ground, both are out of their element. People have associated flight with spirit since the first recorded human thought. Daedalus invented wings on which Icarus, his son, soared free of the Labyrinth. Daedalus was a prophet of happiness. Unfortunately, Icarus in his exhilaration flew too near the sun, which melted the wax that held his wings, and he fell to his death in the sea.
People reach rotation at their own speed and usually not without professional guidance. It may take years. One day they realize the power is there, and it is as if there is no alternative but to lift the nose and take off. Some people call it commitment, but it also feels very much like surrender. They surrender safety, surrender the ground. It is a feeling of liberation they have known only in their dreams.
The spirit, entering its element, instantly feels equilibrium take hold, and that is the moment at which people understand how great the power of happiness is. The wind will still blow you sideways sometimes, but steering into it, you can fly straight. It is as exhilarating as life should be, as long as you don’t fly too near the sun.
April 23, 2009
Stretch Cooking: Smothered Steak
When you take a piece of seasoned round steak, dredge it in flour, brown it nicely on both sides, then simmer it in its own gravy, you wind up with Smothered Steak, a staple in the Stretch Cooking repertoire.
The stretch elements here are the round steak, which is one of the cheaper cuts, and gravy, which makes all kinds of meat dishes go farther, and of course bread, to go with the gravy. The gravy can be made with water, or milk, or half of each. The gravy will have intense flavor, from being simmered with the steak, and the steak, in turn, will be remarkably tender. It is a nice partnership.
A pound and a half of round steak, an inch thick or less, and trimmed of its rim of fat, is fine. You don’t have to pound it, or tenderize it, unless you want to. Cut it into three or four pieces. Slice through any connective film around the edge of the steak, so it won’t curl in the skillet. Season the steak on both sides with salt, pepper and garlic powder. Dredge the steak in flour – a pie pan works nicely for this – and let the steak sit on a rack for five minutes.
Render the steak fat trimmings in a large, heavy skillet – I like cast iron – and add oil as needed to a depth of one-quarter inch. Bring the fat up to a temperature higher than medium, but not medium-high: 6, on a knob scale of 10. Give the steak a good browning on both sides. Place it back on the rack.
Pour off most of the fat, into a used coffee can, until the bottom of the skillet is three-quarters covered with fat – about three tablespoons. Be careful not to lose any of the browned bits in the bottom of the skillet.
Return to medium-high heat. Stir in three level tablespoons of flour, and stir constantly until the flour is browned and loses its raw flour scent. Add two cups in all of liquid – water, or water and milk, and a little cold coffee if you have it – and stir until the gravy starts to thicken. Salt and pepper the gravy. Place the steak in the skillet, turning it to coat both sides with gravy. Cover and simmer on very low heat for an hour and a half. Flip the steak a couple of times during this time.
Traditional with Smothered Steak are rice, turnip greens (or spinach), sliced tomatoes and plain white bread. Or choose your own sides.
The stretch elements here are the round steak, which is one of the cheaper cuts, and gravy, which makes all kinds of meat dishes go farther, and of course bread, to go with the gravy. The gravy can be made with water, or milk, or half of each. The gravy will have intense flavor, from being simmered with the steak, and the steak, in turn, will be remarkably tender. It is a nice partnership.
A pound and a half of round steak, an inch thick or less, and trimmed of its rim of fat, is fine. You don’t have to pound it, or tenderize it, unless you want to. Cut it into three or four pieces. Slice through any connective film around the edge of the steak, so it won’t curl in the skillet. Season the steak on both sides with salt, pepper and garlic powder. Dredge the steak in flour – a pie pan works nicely for this – and let the steak sit on a rack for five minutes.
Render the steak fat trimmings in a large, heavy skillet – I like cast iron – and add oil as needed to a depth of one-quarter inch. Bring the fat up to a temperature higher than medium, but not medium-high: 6, on a knob scale of 10. Give the steak a good browning on both sides. Place it back on the rack.
Pour off most of the fat, into a used coffee can, until the bottom of the skillet is three-quarters covered with fat – about three tablespoons. Be careful not to lose any of the browned bits in the bottom of the skillet.
Return to medium-high heat. Stir in three level tablespoons of flour, and stir constantly until the flour is browned and loses its raw flour scent. Add two cups in all of liquid – water, or water and milk, and a little cold coffee if you have it – and stir until the gravy starts to thicken. Salt and pepper the gravy. Place the steak in the skillet, turning it to coat both sides with gravy. Cover and simmer on very low heat for an hour and a half. Flip the steak a couple of times during this time.
Traditional with Smothered Steak are rice, turnip greens (or spinach), sliced tomatoes and plain white bread. Or choose your own sides.
April 22, 2009
A first-rate mockingbird
Every morning, for the last several mornings, on a telephone pole down the hill from us, sits a mockingbird I wish Atticus Finch could see.
Atticus is, of course, the memorable lead character, memorably played by Gregory Peck, in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” A scene comes where Atticus is explaining to his children, Jem and Scout, his way with guns. He says: “I remember when my daddy gave me that gun. He told me that I should never point it at anything in the house; and that he'd rather I'd shoot at tin cans in the backyard. But he said that sooner or later he supposed the temptation to go after birds would be too much, and that I could shoot all the blue jays I wanted - if I could hit 'em; but to remember it was a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
“Why?” says Jem.
“Well,” Atticus says, “I reckon because mockingbirds don't do anything but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat people's gardens, don't nest in the corncrib, they don't do one thing but just sing their hearts out for us.”
This singer down on the telephone pole, he is pure mockingbird. He chirps, tweets, trills, imitates motors, makes a noise like a cane stick dragged across a washboard. Singing his heart out. When it gets too much for him, which is about once a minute, he leaps into the air, rising several feet on a fluttering of his wings with their distinctive white chevron markings and then settles back to his perch, never missing a beat.
Some Texan from the past had the good sense to claim the mockingbird as the State Bird of Texas. Things have felt very much like Texas around our house the past few days, with the breeze already warm even before sunup, the Texas privet in bloom, and the mockingbird partying down on the telephone pole. He seems to like it there. Lots of bird types perch on that pole – hawks, crows, sparrows, finches. But they come and go. Our mockingbird has occupied the pole exclusively since last weekend. Once a couple of sparrows approached, landing on braces below the beam where the mockingbird was singing away. I got the impression that the sparrows wanted him to shut up, and were going to team up on him. They advanced upward, but the mockingbird turned to meet them, and away they flew, either intimidated or unable to stand the decibel level.
Of course at night, the mockingbird becomes a party animal. Sometimes a mockingbird will take a midnight shine to the bottlebrush tree at the corner of the house and sing the night away. A person trying to sleep can become sparrowish toward such behavior. This has not happened since Karen and I have been married, but she recalls times when she would go outside at 2 a.m. and heave rocks into trees toward the music. I don’t object to this – I don’t think Gregory Peck could kill a mockingbird with a rock in the middle of the night – but it’s not something I would do. I hold a fondness for a bird that would stay up and sing all night. It wouldn’t be a sin, but maybe, for me, a transgression, to diss a mockingbird.
Atticus is, of course, the memorable lead character, memorably played by Gregory Peck, in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” A scene comes where Atticus is explaining to his children, Jem and Scout, his way with guns. He says: “I remember when my daddy gave me that gun. He told me that I should never point it at anything in the house; and that he'd rather I'd shoot at tin cans in the backyard. But he said that sooner or later he supposed the temptation to go after birds would be too much, and that I could shoot all the blue jays I wanted - if I could hit 'em; but to remember it was a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
“Why?” says Jem.
“Well,” Atticus says, “I reckon because mockingbirds don't do anything but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat people's gardens, don't nest in the corncrib, they don't do one thing but just sing their hearts out for us.”
This singer down on the telephone pole, he is pure mockingbird. He chirps, tweets, trills, imitates motors, makes a noise like a cane stick dragged across a washboard. Singing his heart out. When it gets too much for him, which is about once a minute, he leaps into the air, rising several feet on a fluttering of his wings with their distinctive white chevron markings and then settles back to his perch, never missing a beat.
Some Texan from the past had the good sense to claim the mockingbird as the State Bird of Texas. Things have felt very much like Texas around our house the past few days, with the breeze already warm even before sunup, the Texas privet in bloom, and the mockingbird partying down on the telephone pole. He seems to like it there. Lots of bird types perch on that pole – hawks, crows, sparrows, finches. But they come and go. Our mockingbird has occupied the pole exclusively since last weekend. Once a couple of sparrows approached, landing on braces below the beam where the mockingbird was singing away. I got the impression that the sparrows wanted him to shut up, and were going to team up on him. They advanced upward, but the mockingbird turned to meet them, and away they flew, either intimidated or unable to stand the decibel level.
Of course at night, the mockingbird becomes a party animal. Sometimes a mockingbird will take a midnight shine to the bottlebrush tree at the corner of the house and sing the night away. A person trying to sleep can become sparrowish toward such behavior. This has not happened since Karen and I have been married, but she recalls times when she would go outside at 2 a.m. and heave rocks into trees toward the music. I don’t object to this – I don’t think Gregory Peck could kill a mockingbird with a rock in the middle of the night – but it’s not something I would do. I hold a fondness for a bird that would stay up and sing all night. It wouldn’t be a sin, but maybe, for me, a transgression, to diss a mockingbird.
April 21, 2009
Riding the Boylemobile back to the future
If you never heard of Susan Boyle, haven’t heard her story yet, go here and enjoy yourself.
When you come back here, you will know what I mean when I say I am feeling like a 15-year-old sophomore in a Studebaker Lark, sitting at a red light waiting for Simon Cowell to pull alongside in his Corvette.
Somebody – at least two or three people, called “bookers” – knew Susan Boyle could sing like that even as she stood on the stage waiting to start. They must have heard her sing at the local audition, before they invited her to this bigger, televised round of “Britain’s Got Talent.” Of course they kept their mouths shut. On this show, 99 percent of the time, audience and judge reaction is an even bigger appeal to the television audience than the performances themselves. The whole Boyle appearance was geared to the two or three seconds after she started to sing, and the cameras cutting to the judges’ faces.
Not that the rest of us might not feel stunned, and uncomfortable, even if we went to YouTube knowing we were about to see something special. I have been trying to figure out how I feel about myself, grinning so broadly, and patronizingly, at a frumpy spinster putting the media culture in its place. In the end, I find that the world is simply full of these pleasant surprises. A version of the Susan Boyle experience happened to me, and a group of my closest friends, a little over three years ago. On that occasion, it was a beautiful woman taking the stage. She was my wife, at our wedding reception, and, out of the blue, she announced to our guests that she was going to sing to me.
And she did. She faced me, took my hands in hers, and started to sing. “Til There Was You.” Her voice was startlingly clear and beautiful, and a complete surprise. Her beauty and voice shocked me then and instruct me now. Robin Givhan, writing in The Washington Post today, said: “Boyle would not be mesmerizing if she were not an ugly duckling.” Givhan is wrong. My wife was mesmerizing, and she is a knockout. Susan Boyle did not have to be an ugly duckling to create the sensation she did. Most people would be no less shocked – maybe even more shocked – if Paris Hilton had taken the stage and opened her mouth, and we heard Susan Boyle’s voice come out.
The last couple of days, I have watched people coming and going. I have to suppress the urge to go up to each and say, “Can you sing?” I’ll bet some of them really can. I also bet that more than half of them, and more than half of the people I see today and tomorrow and the next day, have something they can really do well, even shockingly well, that I just can’t see. Likewise, as they look at me, they would never see a 15-year-old sophomore sitting in a Studebaker Lark at a stoplight, waiting for Simon Cowell to pull alongside in his Corvette. I am not making this up. I was thinking this when I was 15 years old. Not Simon Cowell, but some cool dude in a big Chevy hardtop would pull alongside at the light, goose his gas a couple of times at my ugly hamster-powered Lark, and get ready for the light to change.
Unbeknownst to him, under my tiny hood I had a dual carb 327, stroked and bored and waiting to blow this guy’s jaw off when the light turned green. That would have been such fun. In my thoughts, I think I’ll name the Lark the Boylemobile, in her honor.
When you come back here, you will know what I mean when I say I am feeling like a 15-year-old sophomore in a Studebaker Lark, sitting at a red light waiting for Simon Cowell to pull alongside in his Corvette.
Somebody – at least two or three people, called “bookers” – knew Susan Boyle could sing like that even as she stood on the stage waiting to start. They must have heard her sing at the local audition, before they invited her to this bigger, televised round of “Britain’s Got Talent.” Of course they kept their mouths shut. On this show, 99 percent of the time, audience and judge reaction is an even bigger appeal to the television audience than the performances themselves. The whole Boyle appearance was geared to the two or three seconds after she started to sing, and the cameras cutting to the judges’ faces.
Not that the rest of us might not feel stunned, and uncomfortable, even if we went to YouTube knowing we were about to see something special. I have been trying to figure out how I feel about myself, grinning so broadly, and patronizingly, at a frumpy spinster putting the media culture in its place. In the end, I find that the world is simply full of these pleasant surprises. A version of the Susan Boyle experience happened to me, and a group of my closest friends, a little over three years ago. On that occasion, it was a beautiful woman taking the stage. She was my wife, at our wedding reception, and, out of the blue, she announced to our guests that she was going to sing to me.
And she did. She faced me, took my hands in hers, and started to sing. “Til There Was You.” Her voice was startlingly clear and beautiful, and a complete surprise. Her beauty and voice shocked me then and instruct me now. Robin Givhan, writing in The Washington Post today, said: “Boyle would not be mesmerizing if she were not an ugly duckling.” Givhan is wrong. My wife was mesmerizing, and she is a knockout. Susan Boyle did not have to be an ugly duckling to create the sensation she did. Most people would be no less shocked – maybe even more shocked – if Paris Hilton had taken the stage and opened her mouth, and we heard Susan Boyle’s voice come out.
The last couple of days, I have watched people coming and going. I have to suppress the urge to go up to each and say, “Can you sing?” I’ll bet some of them really can. I also bet that more than half of them, and more than half of the people I see today and tomorrow and the next day, have something they can really do well, even shockingly well, that I just can’t see. Likewise, as they look at me, they would never see a 15-year-old sophomore sitting in a Studebaker Lark at a stoplight, waiting for Simon Cowell to pull alongside in his Corvette. I am not making this up. I was thinking this when I was 15 years old. Not Simon Cowell, but some cool dude in a big Chevy hardtop would pull alongside at the light, goose his gas a couple of times at my ugly hamster-powered Lark, and get ready for the light to change.
Unbeknownst to him, under my tiny hood I had a dual carb 327, stroked and bored and waiting to blow this guy’s jaw off when the light turned green. That would have been such fun. In my thoughts, I think I’ll name the Lark the Boylemobile, in her honor.
April 20, 2009
Media Literacy: Unmasking the Wizards of Oz
Once upon a time, there was a fabulous movie titled, "The Wizard of Oz." Dorothy is whisked by a Kansas tornado up to the wondrously bizarre kingdom of Oz and embarks on a journey to find her way back home. "We're off to see the Wizard," she and her companions sing, and off they go, down the yellow brick road until, after several adventures, they reach the Wizard's castle in the Emerald City.
The Wizard is one big mysterious dude, a shadowy monster looming above all in his royal chamber, shooting out flames and smoke and roaring noise whether he is pleased or displeased. He, truly, is the fearful Wizard of Oz, whom no one in Oz dares challenge. Except Toto, Dorothy's cute little dog, who trots to a curtained cubicle at the side of the room, and tugs back the curtain, showing Dorothy and the others that the mighty Wizard of Oz is only an old humbug (definition: a trickster; a deceiver) gent, pulling levers and speaking into a microphone.
Media literacy is exactly like that. "The Wizard of Oz" is an allegory for media literacy, as that dilemma so perplexes critics of media and culture in the 21st century. Warnings about the absence of media literacy, and attempts to teach it, take the approach of finding ways to understand the monster, when all that needs to happen is for a curtain to be pulled aside, revealing the instantly recognizable truth. The media monster, which so intimidates citizens and critics alike, is only an ordinary person, using a set of tools that a third-grader could learn to use.
And should, too. No academic subject in America's schools – not language, not reading, not math, not social studies, not science – takes a greater role in the average American's life than media. But media is not a core subject in American schools, never has been. Students are graduated from high school and sent out into a media blizzard they literally don't understand. They have not been taught to "read" media, and so they stare at Oz without a clue.
A few of these graduates go on to become media professionals. In college, they learn the media tools and how to use them, in schools of print and broadcast journalism, entertainment production, marketing, public relations, and advertising. They learn which levers to pull, and when, and how to speak into the microphone for maximum Oz effect. In May 2007, U.S. Dept. of Labor statistics indicated 1.07 million media professionals in an adult population (15 and over) of 240 million. The other 238.93 adult Americans go into other careers and remain essentially media-illiterate, which creates all kinds of problems in a media-saturated world. Americans today accuse the media of bias, irresponsibility, moral decay, Hannah Montana. And many of those accusations are true, because media professionals, the new wizards of Oz, know they can get away with it in a media-illiterate world, at least until someone pulls the curtain back.
The media literacy gap has become a wedge. The result is an American crisis, creating fear and mistrust, even loathing, of a media institution that is the life blood of democracy, vital to our society’s constant and reasonable demand for information and entertainment, and a huge hub of the economy.
Every Monday, we'll be pulling the curtain back and talking about these problems and the media tools with which to solve them. Learn the tools, unmask the wizards. Simple. Speaking of problems, here's one. Terrorists are, of course, not only media literates, but media experts. A quick quiz, with one answer: the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City, and the 9/11 attacks, both occurred at the same time, 9 a.m.; and the summer, 2006, plot to blow up airliners – foiled, happily – involved airliners flying from Europe to the United States. Why? People with media literacy will know the answer immediately.
The Wizard is one big mysterious dude, a shadowy monster looming above all in his royal chamber, shooting out flames and smoke and roaring noise whether he is pleased or displeased. He, truly, is the fearful Wizard of Oz, whom no one in Oz dares challenge. Except Toto, Dorothy's cute little dog, who trots to a curtained cubicle at the side of the room, and tugs back the curtain, showing Dorothy and the others that the mighty Wizard of Oz is only an old humbug (definition: a trickster; a deceiver) gent, pulling levers and speaking into a microphone.
Media literacy is exactly like that. "The Wizard of Oz" is an allegory for media literacy, as that dilemma so perplexes critics of media and culture in the 21st century. Warnings about the absence of media literacy, and attempts to teach it, take the approach of finding ways to understand the monster, when all that needs to happen is for a curtain to be pulled aside, revealing the instantly recognizable truth. The media monster, which so intimidates citizens and critics alike, is only an ordinary person, using a set of tools that a third-grader could learn to use.
And should, too. No academic subject in America's schools – not language, not reading, not math, not social studies, not science – takes a greater role in the average American's life than media. But media is not a core subject in American schools, never has been. Students are graduated from high school and sent out into a media blizzard they literally don't understand. They have not been taught to "read" media, and so they stare at Oz without a clue.
A few of these graduates go on to become media professionals. In college, they learn the media tools and how to use them, in schools of print and broadcast journalism, entertainment production, marketing, public relations, and advertising. They learn which levers to pull, and when, and how to speak into the microphone for maximum Oz effect. In May 2007, U.S. Dept. of Labor statistics indicated 1.07 million media professionals in an adult population (15 and over) of 240 million. The other 238.93 adult Americans go into other careers and remain essentially media-illiterate, which creates all kinds of problems in a media-saturated world. Americans today accuse the media of bias, irresponsibility, moral decay, Hannah Montana. And many of those accusations are true, because media professionals, the new wizards of Oz, know they can get away with it in a media-illiterate world, at least until someone pulls the curtain back.
The media literacy gap has become a wedge. The result is an American crisis, creating fear and mistrust, even loathing, of a media institution that is the life blood of democracy, vital to our society’s constant and reasonable demand for information and entertainment, and a huge hub of the economy.
Every Monday, we'll be pulling the curtain back and talking about these problems and the media tools with which to solve them. Learn the tools, unmask the wizards. Simple. Speaking of problems, here's one. Terrorists are, of course, not only media literates, but media experts. A quick quiz, with one answer: the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City, and the 9/11 attacks, both occurred at the same time, 9 a.m.; and the summer, 2006, plot to blow up airliners – foiled, happily – involved airliners flying from Europe to the United States. Why? People with media literacy will know the answer immediately.
April 19, 2009
A privet space
In my brain exists a neural pathway, created at the instant I got a whiff of Texas privet. Since I was born in March, I would have been two months old. We had privet in the front yard, and its blossoms open in April and May. I imagine I was nestled in somebody's lap on the front porch when it happened. I wonder what I did. I would have hated mashed bananas by then; probably I took the scent of privet as something from the opposite pole of this strange new world, placed there by God as an apology for the banana. So I would have smiled.
I still smile. Every time. Same way. Here is something special about life. When I leaned to sniff these blossoms this morning, I was transported to a specific place in space and time, where it is morning in May, about 10 o'clock, 80 degrees, a hint of breeze. I go to that exact same space, every time. So far we have only two clusters, this and one other, that have bloomed, but the cluster on the left above will pop this week. They only bloom in late April and May, and the rest of the time it's a hedge. So these weeks are dear, and transporting.
I still smile. Every time. Same way. Here is something special about life. When I leaned to sniff these blossoms this morning, I was transported to a specific place in space and time, where it is morning in May, about 10 o'clock, 80 degrees, a hint of breeze. I go to that exact same space, every time. So far we have only two clusters, this and one other, that have bloomed, but the cluster on the left above will pop this week. They only bloom in late April and May, and the rest of the time it's a hedge. So these weeks are dear, and transporting.
April 17, 2009
Archives: Mirror, mirror - Feb. 8, 2005
I have a theory about photos and mirrors. I think people look better to themselves in mirrors than they do in photos.
But then Karen said she couldn’t see any difference. Photo or mirror, she looked the same to herself.
There goes the theory, I thought. Then again, maybe not. Karen is beautiful. She is beautiful in photos, and she is beautiful in the mirror.
I am not beautiful in photos. In fact in photos, with only a few professional exceptions, I think I look drab and jowly.
But in the mirror, I always look pretty darn good, at least after a shower and I have combed my hair. Why is that? I have a theory.
I think what I see in the mirror is the result of a long and selective process. I have been looking at myself in the mirror for almost 60 years. Never once in all that time have I looked in a mirror for any purpose other than making myself look better. I think that is true of practically all people. I have never heard of a person using a mirror to try to make himself or herself look worse. If they hit the street looking like Michael Jackson or Tammy Faye Bakker, that’s their business.
If I hit the street looking like Michael Grant, well, that’s the best I could do. That is why I can get so discouraged when I look at myself in photos.
The difference is, I think, the camera sees me the way the camera sees me, without interpretation. In the mirror, I see me the way I have learned to see me. I have spent almost 60 years looking for good things. At the same time, I have chosen not to see bad things. Your perspective starts to get shaped. I am positive I look better in the mirror than I do on the street. That is because I have saved every little good thing I ever saw about me in the mirror, and eventually a template has emerged. The template has been forced to submit to reality and revisions over time, but the basic geometry still is of a 20-year-old lean-jawed college sophomore looking for something to like. I am looking at a vain portrait of myself, assembled stroke by stroke. A dumb camera can’t do that.
There is something else, and for this I will never have an answer. I am the only human being on earth who knows what I look like in the mirror. No one else can see me that way. When I look at myself in a photo, my left eye is on the right. I am seeing myself as anyone else sees me, with my left on their right.
But when I look at myself in the mirror, my right eye is on the right. When I first discovered that, it was disorienting. I had to devise a test before I could be satisfied. I raised my hand on the side of the eye my right eye was looking at in the mirror. I raised that hand to my face. Then I looked at my hand. It was my right hand. There was the proof: In the mirror, I was looking at myself backward, and I am the only one who can do that.
It reminded me of the funny and interesting results achieved when a person cuts two identical photos of himself down the middle, then puts the right side with the right side, and the left with the left. It’s like looking at two different people.
In the mirror, is the same principle at work? I don’t know, and I have stopped thinking about it for the time being, because a new question arises. Millions of people look at Sean Connery and drool at his good looks. If he is like me, in his mirror he must look even better to himself. But he is the only one who can see it. What would it be like, to be Sean Connery, and be the only one in the world who knows what you really look like? I will ask Karen. She is beautiful, and maybe she will know.
But then Karen said she couldn’t see any difference. Photo or mirror, she looked the same to herself.
There goes the theory, I thought. Then again, maybe not. Karen is beautiful. She is beautiful in photos, and she is beautiful in the mirror.
I am not beautiful in photos. In fact in photos, with only a few professional exceptions, I think I look drab and jowly.
But in the mirror, I always look pretty darn good, at least after a shower and I have combed my hair. Why is that? I have a theory.
I think what I see in the mirror is the result of a long and selective process. I have been looking at myself in the mirror for almost 60 years. Never once in all that time have I looked in a mirror for any purpose other than making myself look better. I think that is true of practically all people. I have never heard of a person using a mirror to try to make himself or herself look worse. If they hit the street looking like Michael Jackson or Tammy Faye Bakker, that’s their business.
If I hit the street looking like Michael Grant, well, that’s the best I could do. That is why I can get so discouraged when I look at myself in photos.
The difference is, I think, the camera sees me the way the camera sees me, without interpretation. In the mirror, I see me the way I have learned to see me. I have spent almost 60 years looking for good things. At the same time, I have chosen not to see bad things. Your perspective starts to get shaped. I am positive I look better in the mirror than I do on the street. That is because I have saved every little good thing I ever saw about me in the mirror, and eventually a template has emerged. The template has been forced to submit to reality and revisions over time, but the basic geometry still is of a 20-year-old lean-jawed college sophomore looking for something to like. I am looking at a vain portrait of myself, assembled stroke by stroke. A dumb camera can’t do that.
There is something else, and for this I will never have an answer. I am the only human being on earth who knows what I look like in the mirror. No one else can see me that way. When I look at myself in a photo, my left eye is on the right. I am seeing myself as anyone else sees me, with my left on their right.
But when I look at myself in the mirror, my right eye is on the right. When I first discovered that, it was disorienting. I had to devise a test before I could be satisfied. I raised my hand on the side of the eye my right eye was looking at in the mirror. I raised that hand to my face. Then I looked at my hand. It was my right hand. There was the proof: In the mirror, I was looking at myself backward, and I am the only one who can do that.
It reminded me of the funny and interesting results achieved when a person cuts two identical photos of himself down the middle, then puts the right side with the right side, and the left with the left. It’s like looking at two different people.
In the mirror, is the same principle at work? I don’t know, and I have stopped thinking about it for the time being, because a new question arises. Millions of people look at Sean Connery and drool at his good looks. If he is like me, in his mirror he must look even better to himself. But he is the only one who can see it. What would it be like, to be Sean Connery, and be the only one in the world who knows what you really look like? I will ask Karen. She is beautiful, and maybe she will know.
April 16, 2009
Stretch Cooking: Beans, Blackeyes, and Bacon - or not
This is Recipe No. 1 in stretch cooking. When you want a little to go a long way, it can’t get more fundamental, filling, or satisfying, than beans. Or blackeyed peas, which is a slightly different recipe but spiritually generic with beans.
The beans are dried pintos. Southerners now in their 50s and 60s – and beyond – will remember that their parents called them “red beans.” Talk about red beans today, and the young people will probably think you are talking about kidney beans, which are about as different from red beans as a tire is from a tornado.
In the really hard times, beans would be the appetizer, the salad, the main course, and dessert. I have never lived or cooked in the really hard times, as my grandmother and stretch cooking champion Susie Grant did, so on my table the beans are a side dish 95 percent of the time. They go with anything, even fish, if the fish is fried. And they freeze well. If you cook two pounds of pinto beans, I guarantee you are going to freeze some.
So let’s cook two pounds of beans. At the supermarket, they come in two- and one-pound bags, so it’s easy to halve the recipe. Pour the beans onto a tabletop a few handfuls at a time and pick through them for rocks, or anything else non-bean, like small dried buds of mud. Sweep the beans into a colander as you work. Then rinse the beans and pour them into a large mixing bowl or pot and soak them in water – about two inches deeper than the beans – overnight. Or you can soak them from early morning into the afternoon.
Chop three-quarters of a pound of leanish bacon, place in a large cooking pot, and barely cover with water. Place over medium-high heat. Chop fine a large onion. When the water has cooked off and the bacon is just starting to sizzle (you don’t want the bacon to get crisp), add the onion to the pot. (If you want vegetarian, skip the bacon and add the onion to a couple of tablespoons of olive or cooking oil in the pot.) Leaving the heat medium-high, add two teaspoons each of pepper and salt, and stir the bacon and onion a minute or two until the onion is soft and a brown glaze is forming on the bottom of the pot. This glaze is flavor gold. Then, if you have some leftover coffee, add a scant cup to the pot, stirring and scraping to “de-glaze” the bottom of the pot. If no coffee, then pour in some water from the soaking beans to de-glaze.
Dump in the beans and add water, if needed, to just reach the surface of the beans. Stir the bacon and onions into the beans, turn the heat to medium-low and cover the pot. After 15 minutes check the pot and adjust the heat so the beans have a nice simmer. Stir them occasionally and with a spoon sample the pot liquor after about 45 minutes and add sprinkles of salt and pepper if necessary. Around 90 minutes, when the beans are starting to look done, get a couple of beans on the spoon and blow on them. If the skin cracks, they are done, or close to it. Chew the beans, and if they are soft, they are ready. If they are a bit firm, check again in 15 minutes.
When the beans are done, you can mash a cup of them in a bowl and add back to the pot to thicken the pot liquor.
Many cooks swear by a meaty hambone in the beans, but that is a different kind of beans, great eating, of course, but not as flexible as a side dish. You wouldn’t serve hambone beans with barbecue, for example. Plus you have to have a hambone, which ordinarily happens only after a holiday. I can’t think of a better stretch-cooking afterlife for leftover ham than in a pot of beans. We’ll talk about that on another day.
Dried blackeyed peas are cooked the exact same way as above, only they don’t take near as long to get done, about 45 minutes. At New Year’s, when the Southern tradition is to eat them for luck, you can find fresh blackeyes even in California. But you don’t lose a thing with the dried, if you ask me. And, if you’re doing a batch for visiting vegetarians, just leave out the bacon. I have to stop now. I am getting weak with hunger. Next Thursday, look for a recipe for Smothered Steak.
The beans are dried pintos. Southerners now in their 50s and 60s – and beyond – will remember that their parents called them “red beans.” Talk about red beans today, and the young people will probably think you are talking about kidney beans, which are about as different from red beans as a tire is from a tornado.
In the really hard times, beans would be the appetizer, the salad, the main course, and dessert. I have never lived or cooked in the really hard times, as my grandmother and stretch cooking champion Susie Grant did, so on my table the beans are a side dish 95 percent of the time. They go with anything, even fish, if the fish is fried. And they freeze well. If you cook two pounds of pinto beans, I guarantee you are going to freeze some.
So let’s cook two pounds of beans. At the supermarket, they come in two- and one-pound bags, so it’s easy to halve the recipe. Pour the beans onto a tabletop a few handfuls at a time and pick through them for rocks, or anything else non-bean, like small dried buds of mud. Sweep the beans into a colander as you work. Then rinse the beans and pour them into a large mixing bowl or pot and soak them in water – about two inches deeper than the beans – overnight. Or you can soak them from early morning into the afternoon.
Chop three-quarters of a pound of leanish bacon, place in a large cooking pot, and barely cover with water. Place over medium-high heat. Chop fine a large onion. When the water has cooked off and the bacon is just starting to sizzle (you don’t want the bacon to get crisp), add the onion to the pot. (If you want vegetarian, skip the bacon and add the onion to a couple of tablespoons of olive or cooking oil in the pot.) Leaving the heat medium-high, add two teaspoons each of pepper and salt, and stir the bacon and onion a minute or two until the onion is soft and a brown glaze is forming on the bottom of the pot. This glaze is flavor gold. Then, if you have some leftover coffee, add a scant cup to the pot, stirring and scraping to “de-glaze” the bottom of the pot. If no coffee, then pour in some water from the soaking beans to de-glaze.
Dump in the beans and add water, if needed, to just reach the surface of the beans. Stir the bacon and onions into the beans, turn the heat to medium-low and cover the pot. After 15 minutes check the pot and adjust the heat so the beans have a nice simmer. Stir them occasionally and with a spoon sample the pot liquor after about 45 minutes and add sprinkles of salt and pepper if necessary. Around 90 minutes, when the beans are starting to look done, get a couple of beans on the spoon and blow on them. If the skin cracks, they are done, or close to it. Chew the beans, and if they are soft, they are ready. If they are a bit firm, check again in 15 minutes.
When the beans are done, you can mash a cup of them in a bowl and add back to the pot to thicken the pot liquor.
Many cooks swear by a meaty hambone in the beans, but that is a different kind of beans, great eating, of course, but not as flexible as a side dish. You wouldn’t serve hambone beans with barbecue, for example. Plus you have to have a hambone, which ordinarily happens only after a holiday. I can’t think of a better stretch-cooking afterlife for leftover ham than in a pot of beans. We’ll talk about that on another day.
Dried blackeyed peas are cooked the exact same way as above, only they don’t take near as long to get done, about 45 minutes. At New Year’s, when the Southern tradition is to eat them for luck, you can find fresh blackeyes even in California. But you don’t lose a thing with the dried, if you ask me. And, if you’re doing a batch for visiting vegetarians, just leave out the bacon. I have to stop now. I am getting weak with hunger. Next Thursday, look for a recipe for Smothered Steak.
April 14, 2009
Stretch Cooking: an introduction
A majority of Americans, in the nation's 235-year history, have known times when it became necessary to eat low off the hog. Americans in the spring of 2009 were entering another such era.
American tables at dinnertime have always reflected the economy realities of the day. In the long run, this is not a bad thing, having to make a little go a long way. I call it "stretch cooking," whose principles I learned from my grandmother, Susie Foote Grant, who learned them the hard way. Her husband Roy dropped dead of a heart attack, at age 44, on July 4, 1929, not quite four months before the financial crash that began the Great Depression. Susie was left with six children, only two yet old enough to work, and she brought them through the worst years on a menu fashioned, on the worst days, from not much more than beans and meal and grit.
The worst days were over, by the time of my birth in 1943, and all the Grant children were old enough to work. But by then we were in the middle of a world war, the Grant sons were overseas, and the Grant girls were secretaries. The Grant table still featured stretch cooking, with certain luxuries. Susie could afford to put something new on the table almost every night. She set up a rotation of one new thing and three leftovers each day, with today's new thing becoming a leftover tomorrow.
I had no reason to complain. I loved that cooking. Still do. And that is the primary reason for this collection of recipes. Yes, you can survive, if you have to, with some dried beans, some cornmeal, some water, and salt and pepper. But the recipes in my collection are not survival recipes. They yield delicious meals for distressed times, or the best of times. Susie possessed survival, but also wondrous, skills. Every time I sit down to Smothered Steak, Pinto Beans, Corn Bread Thangs and sliced tomatoes, I consider myself a beneficiary of those skills.
I love to cook, and stretch cooking was not my starting point in the kitchen. But I have lived and cooked my way through several economic downturns, none as severe as the circumstances of 2009 and beyond, and every time I have returned to Susie's style, learning more and creating versions of my own. The results have been in fact cheap and also very, very satisfying.
In 1978, I began writing a column for The San Diego Union. Naturally I bragged about this kind of cooking. Eventually readers invited me to put up or shut up, and that is when one thing really started to lead to another. I wrote a cookbook, catchily titled "Michael Grant's Cookbook," which was published in 1987. Some of those recipes you will find here in weeks and months to come, and some are new. There will even be some vegetarian recipes, and technique breakthroughs such as scorching an onion. You can find them under the label: "Stretch Cooking."
I think about Susie a lot when I am cooking. I see myself standing by her electric stove in the early 1950s, watching her make beans and greens and Corn Bread Thangs. One afternoon, I looked up at her and said, "You know, Susie, someday I am going to live in San Diego, California, and write a newspaper column and talk a lot about Texas cooking. And then one morning I am going to cook your Corn Bread Thangs on a television talk show."
And she looked down at me and said, "You're crazy as a loon, boy." It turns out that I wasn't. It's the times that go crazy, sometimes. The cooking stays stable, and good.
American tables at dinnertime have always reflected the economy realities of the day. In the long run, this is not a bad thing, having to make a little go a long way. I call it "stretch cooking," whose principles I learned from my grandmother, Susie Foote Grant, who learned them the hard way. Her husband Roy dropped dead of a heart attack, at age 44, on July 4, 1929, not quite four months before the financial crash that began the Great Depression. Susie was left with six children, only two yet old enough to work, and she brought them through the worst years on a menu fashioned, on the worst days, from not much more than beans and meal and grit.
The worst days were over, by the time of my birth in 1943, and all the Grant children were old enough to work. But by then we were in the middle of a world war, the Grant sons were overseas, and the Grant girls were secretaries. The Grant table still featured stretch cooking, with certain luxuries. Susie could afford to put something new on the table almost every night. She set up a rotation of one new thing and three leftovers each day, with today's new thing becoming a leftover tomorrow.
I had no reason to complain. I loved that cooking. Still do. And that is the primary reason for this collection of recipes. Yes, you can survive, if you have to, with some dried beans, some cornmeal, some water, and salt and pepper. But the recipes in my collection are not survival recipes. They yield delicious meals for distressed times, or the best of times. Susie possessed survival, but also wondrous, skills. Every time I sit down to Smothered Steak, Pinto Beans, Corn Bread Thangs and sliced tomatoes, I consider myself a beneficiary of those skills.
I love to cook, and stretch cooking was not my starting point in the kitchen. But I have lived and cooked my way through several economic downturns, none as severe as the circumstances of 2009 and beyond, and every time I have returned to Susie's style, learning more and creating versions of my own. The results have been in fact cheap and also very, very satisfying.
In 1978, I began writing a column for The San Diego Union. Naturally I bragged about this kind of cooking. Eventually readers invited me to put up or shut up, and that is when one thing really started to lead to another. I wrote a cookbook, catchily titled "Michael Grant's Cookbook," which was published in 1987. Some of those recipes you will find here in weeks and months to come, and some are new. There will even be some vegetarian recipes, and technique breakthroughs such as scorching an onion. You can find them under the label: "Stretch Cooking."
I think about Susie a lot when I am cooking. I see myself standing by her electric stove in the early 1950s, watching her make beans and greens and Corn Bread Thangs. One afternoon, I looked up at her and said, "You know, Susie, someday I am going to live in San Diego, California, and write a newspaper column and talk a lot about Texas cooking. And then one morning I am going to cook your Corn Bread Thangs on a television talk show."
And she looked down at me and said, "You're crazy as a loon, boy." It turns out that I wasn't. It's the times that go crazy, sometimes. The cooking stays stable, and good.
April 13, 2009
Tigerized by a nice afternoon of flog
My God, I’ve been Tigerized.
It is true that for several years, the likelihood of my watching a golf tournament on television went way up if Tiger Woods was playing. Ninety percent of the time, if Woods was playing, I could count on something unusual, or outright bizarre, happening.
But I think that was only a natural reaction, one that all, or practically all, humans are born with. It is standard human equipment to react to unusual events. “Novelty,” to a media professional, is one of the 12 basic media values, and I believe it is totally reasonable to suggest that Tiger Woods is a novel golfer. Bobby Jones in 1965 said of the young Jack Nicklaus, “He plays a game with which I am not familiar.” Dave Anderson of The New York Times used that line, after Woods won the 1997 Masters at 18-under, to set up his own line: “Woods . . . played a game with which even Nicklaus was not familiar.”
That was the kind of novelty on my mind that drew me in again yesterday for the Masters final round. Woods was seven strokes behind the leader, but pfsssh. Tiger could wipe out that lead by the fourth hole. He didn’t, ultimately, but anyone, including Woods, who has ever swung club at ball knows that in the long run, the course always wins. (There is a little-known historical fact why “golf” is “flog” spelled backward, but more about that in a minute.) Woods gave it a good run, though, all the way to the 17th hole. And that’s when I got Tigerized.
On the West Coast, the Masters was scheduled to end at 4 p.m. As Woods was walking off the 16th green, my eye caught the clock on the TV cabinet. It was a few minutes before 2. I went into one of those space-time disconnects that always happen when I think about the International Date Line. How could Tiger be walking to the 17th tee with two hours left to play? Adding to the confusion, the picture switched to something that players were doing on the front nine. How did they get back there?
Then I understood. On Sunday afternoons, I tell time by how close Tiger Woods is to the 18th hole. Sociologists spend a lot of time studying, and worrying about, the cultural influences of media. Do people become the events, the content, they consume in the media? I tend to think no, people only imitate media content without any actual change in behavior. Many times have I imitated golfers without actually ever becoming one. I was amused to note, by the way, another circle closed between me and a famous person. Two weeks ago it was Bill Cosby, who won a Mark Twain award, just as I won a Mark Twain award in 1990. During this Masters, Padraig Harrington set a Master’s record – or perhaps a professional golf record – by hitting the same tree twice on the same hole. Pretty good, but well short of my personal best of hitting MYSELF twice, on CONSECUTIVE SHOTS, including the second shot that had to hit a ball-washer post exactly right to come back and nail me in the left thigh.
That was utter simplicity, though, compared to gaining two extra hours on a Sunday afternoon because my cultural geography had shifted into Tiger Time. I didn’t say anything to Karen. No sense making her worry. She doesn’t particularly like golf, but she likes to watch Tiger for the usual novelty value. We were in the mountains over the weekend and left in plenty of time so we could, as she said, be home in time to “watch the flog.” In this case, she was imitating me. I like to call golf flog. But I wasn’t sure she knew the whole story.
“Do you think that ‘flog’ is a typo?” I said. I know that she, like me, likes to speak in typos sometimes. “Yes,” she said. “Actually,” I said, “’flog’ is ‘golf’ spelled backward,” and I told her the history of the early Scots, going out to the heath with a stitched-leather ball and walking sticks with which to hit the ball. They called it “going out for a flog.” Later, as the game caught on, the founders decided that “flog” may not be the most distinguished label for their new sport, so a committee was formed. At a national meeting of the Royal Flog Committee, a member happened to look at his nametag in the mirror in the men’s bathroom. And that’s where golf came from. You see why Karen might worry.
It is true that for several years, the likelihood of my watching a golf tournament on television went way up if Tiger Woods was playing. Ninety percent of the time, if Woods was playing, I could count on something unusual, or outright bizarre, happening.
But I think that was only a natural reaction, one that all, or practically all, humans are born with. It is standard human equipment to react to unusual events. “Novelty,” to a media professional, is one of the 12 basic media values, and I believe it is totally reasonable to suggest that Tiger Woods is a novel golfer. Bobby Jones in 1965 said of the young Jack Nicklaus, “He plays a game with which I am not familiar.” Dave Anderson of The New York Times used that line, after Woods won the 1997 Masters at 18-under, to set up his own line: “Woods . . . played a game with which even Nicklaus was not familiar.”
That was the kind of novelty on my mind that drew me in again yesterday for the Masters final round. Woods was seven strokes behind the leader, but pfsssh. Tiger could wipe out that lead by the fourth hole. He didn’t, ultimately, but anyone, including Woods, who has ever swung club at ball knows that in the long run, the course always wins. (There is a little-known historical fact why “golf” is “flog” spelled backward, but more about that in a minute.) Woods gave it a good run, though, all the way to the 17th hole. And that’s when I got Tigerized.
On the West Coast, the Masters was scheduled to end at 4 p.m. As Woods was walking off the 16th green, my eye caught the clock on the TV cabinet. It was a few minutes before 2. I went into one of those space-time disconnects that always happen when I think about the International Date Line. How could Tiger be walking to the 17th tee with two hours left to play? Adding to the confusion, the picture switched to something that players were doing on the front nine. How did they get back there?
Then I understood. On Sunday afternoons, I tell time by how close Tiger Woods is to the 18th hole. Sociologists spend a lot of time studying, and worrying about, the cultural influences of media. Do people become the events, the content, they consume in the media? I tend to think no, people only imitate media content without any actual change in behavior. Many times have I imitated golfers without actually ever becoming one. I was amused to note, by the way, another circle closed between me and a famous person. Two weeks ago it was Bill Cosby, who won a Mark Twain award, just as I won a Mark Twain award in 1990. During this Masters, Padraig Harrington set a Master’s record – or perhaps a professional golf record – by hitting the same tree twice on the same hole. Pretty good, but well short of my personal best of hitting MYSELF twice, on CONSECUTIVE SHOTS, including the second shot that had to hit a ball-washer post exactly right to come back and nail me in the left thigh.
That was utter simplicity, though, compared to gaining two extra hours on a Sunday afternoon because my cultural geography had shifted into Tiger Time. I didn’t say anything to Karen. No sense making her worry. She doesn’t particularly like golf, but she likes to watch Tiger for the usual novelty value. We were in the mountains over the weekend and left in plenty of time so we could, as she said, be home in time to “watch the flog.” In this case, she was imitating me. I like to call golf flog. But I wasn’t sure she knew the whole story.
“Do you think that ‘flog’ is a typo?” I said. I know that she, like me, likes to speak in typos sometimes. “Yes,” she said. “Actually,” I said, “’flog’ is ‘golf’ spelled backward,” and I told her the history of the early Scots, going out to the heath with a stitched-leather ball and walking sticks with which to hit the ball. They called it “going out for a flog.” Later, as the game caught on, the founders decided that “flog” may not be the most distinguished label for their new sport, so a committee was formed. At a national meeting of the Royal Flog Committee, a member happened to look at his nametag in the mirror in the men’s bathroom. And that’s where golf came from. You see why Karen might worry.
April 09, 2009
Sunset, moonrise
A couple of times a year, the sun sets at Alta Mira, and the moon rises, almost at the same time. But only every two or three years, if we are lucky, does the sun set and the moon rise in a way that forces us to make a choice. Last night was such a night. The sun and moon were both so compelling, in their departure and arrival, that you had to choose your compulsion. As you did, you had to turn your back on the other. No way to have both at the same time. These events represent proof of something my grandmother Susie always said. "You can't have it all." I don't know if she learned that by watching sunsets and moonrises in her native Alabama, or adopted Texas, but I can speak to her from Southern California and tell her what she said was true.Actually, I missed the best shot of all. I was watching events from the glider when I looked at the clouds in the east and thought I saw something huge and white. I wasn't looking for it, so its size shocked me. I realized it was the moon, emerging. I ran for the camera and got the image above, which isn't half as dramatic as what I had seen seconds before. But it wasn't bad. Then I turned my back on the moon and shot the sun. Moon and sun, looming through clouds and trees.
And back to the moon, starting to emerge. The moon plays optical tricks, depending on what it is near. Here, it does not appear nearly so large as when I first saw it. At that moment, it looked as big as a planet.
And up she came.
Another evening like this will be along again in a couple of years. Maybe sooner. The planet, in presenting its grandeur, always likes it to be a surprise.
April 05, 2009
Sonic boom
Tomorrow is a big day in the San Diego area. A Sonic is opening in Santee, which is an eastern suburb of San Diego.
Better an eastern suburb than El Centro, which before tomorrow has been the closest Sonic to us. There's another one in Anaheim, roughly 100 miles north. It reminds me of the days back in Abilene when we had to drive 100 miles for a six-pack of beer. Then 60. Then 40. Then, finally, two, when the famous hamlet of Impact was incorporated inside the city limits of Abilene, for the sole purpose of selling booze.
The Santee Sonic is like the Impact of San Diego, for those who are addicted to Sonic's line of drive-in goodies. It is a true drive-in, too, window service from carhops wearing roller skates, just like in "American Graffiti."
I am not particularly excited by Sonic's arrival, though there were years in the 1970s when I felt that way about Whataburger, which at that time sold the best hamburger on the planet. But it didn't sell them west of Texas, until outlets opened in Phoenix, then Yuma. That was tantalizingly close, but still over a range of low mountains, down to the desert, and then an hour's drive across the desert to Yuma. I never made the trip. I found a reasonable substitute, in a Burger King Whopper, no mayo, no catsup, extra mustard. But Whoppers are flame broiled, you know, instead of off the griddle, like the Whataburger, so my yearning was real.
Sonic is not a bad joint, for a drive-in. They are second- or third-generation, following on the cruiser joints that started it all in the late 1940s and early '50s, when boys, girls, cars, drivers licenses and hamburgers converged to satisfy the various appetites of late summer evenings when gas was 15 cents a gallon. The Abilene original was the Dairy Delight, then came Mack's, and much later a Sonic appeared, after – for me – cars and cruising and girls in bobbysox had dropped off the appetite list, gas was $1.50 a gallon, and the Sonic hamburger standing alone wasn't really worth it.
Steak fingers, though, are another matter. I will cruise this Santee Sonic at some point, and check out the menu, and if I find steak fingers on it, with cream gravy, fries, and Texas Toast, I will pull into a space and press the call button. If they still have call buttons. It won't be the same, if the drive-ins of today use some GPS technology to know you've pulled in. Bad enough imagining hip-hop booming from 400-watt speakers two cars over. I wonder if Whataburger execs will be watching the Santee Sonic experiment. Maybe, baby. Well, that'll be the day.
Better an eastern suburb than El Centro, which before tomorrow has been the closest Sonic to us. There's another one in Anaheim, roughly 100 miles north. It reminds me of the days back in Abilene when we had to drive 100 miles for a six-pack of beer. Then 60. Then 40. Then, finally, two, when the famous hamlet of Impact was incorporated inside the city limits of Abilene, for the sole purpose of selling booze.
The Santee Sonic is like the Impact of San Diego, for those who are addicted to Sonic's line of drive-in goodies. It is a true drive-in, too, window service from carhops wearing roller skates, just like in "American Graffiti."
I am not particularly excited by Sonic's arrival, though there were years in the 1970s when I felt that way about Whataburger, which at that time sold the best hamburger on the planet. But it didn't sell them west of Texas, until outlets opened in Phoenix, then Yuma. That was tantalizingly close, but still over a range of low mountains, down to the desert, and then an hour's drive across the desert to Yuma. I never made the trip. I found a reasonable substitute, in a Burger King Whopper, no mayo, no catsup, extra mustard. But Whoppers are flame broiled, you know, instead of off the griddle, like the Whataburger, so my yearning was real.
Sonic is not a bad joint, for a drive-in. They are second- or third-generation, following on the cruiser joints that started it all in the late 1940s and early '50s, when boys, girls, cars, drivers licenses and hamburgers converged to satisfy the various appetites of late summer evenings when gas was 15 cents a gallon. The Abilene original was the Dairy Delight, then came Mack's, and much later a Sonic appeared, after – for me – cars and cruising and girls in bobbysox had dropped off the appetite list, gas was $1.50 a gallon, and the Sonic hamburger standing alone wasn't really worth it.
Steak fingers, though, are another matter. I will cruise this Santee Sonic at some point, and check out the menu, and if I find steak fingers on it, with cream gravy, fries, and Texas Toast, I will pull into a space and press the call button. If they still have call buttons. It won't be the same, if the drive-ins of today use some GPS technology to know you've pulled in. Bad enough imagining hip-hop booming from 400-watt speakers two cars over. I wonder if Whataburger execs will be watching the Santee Sonic experiment. Maybe, baby. Well, that'll be the day.
April 01, 2009
Bill Cosby and me
I see in today’s paper that a circle has closed, between Bill Cosby and me.
We both now have won Mark Twain awards. His award is a teense bigger than mine. His is presented by the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Mine was presented (in 1990) by the western division of the Associated Press News Executives. But it is a Mark Twain award nevertheless. It weighs a ton, and there is a bust of Mark Twain right there on it.
Bill Cosby won his Mark Twain award for humor, and that is part of the circle closing. I once contributed to his humor, on an evening in 1961 when we both happened to be at the old hungry i, in San Francisco. He was starting his stand-up comedy career, and I was starting at Stanford University. I think my mother and my aunt were there, but I am not sure. I know for a fact that I was wearing slacks and black loafers and white socks.
Cosby spotted the white socks. I was sitting in, like, the second row. For a couple of minutes, he had great fun with those socks, giving the audience some laughs and me something to brag about to this very day. I am almost positive that he asked my mother – which is why I think she was there – if she had knitted me a reindeer sweater, to go with the white socks. But I may be mixing memories, which I am getting better at all the time. I do know that early in his career Cosby was very big on reindeer sweaters.
I got into the humor business myself, eventually. You could even say I was in the humor business at the time. Later, as a newspaper columnist making speeches, I would tell the audiences that I began at Stanford as a pre-med major. Then I flunked freshman chemistry. Then I flunked it again. “I didn’t leave a mark on it, and it didn’t leave a mark on me,” I said. They laughed like crazy.
So as a pre-med major, I made a good student of English, which was the first step toward a newspaper career during which I wrote a humor column for many years. I am trying to write humor right now. I try to write humor all the time. But my Mark Twain award was not for humor. It was for a long feature story I wrote in 1989 about, at age 46, meeting my father for the first time. That was a once-in-a-lifetime event, and I am glad the Associated Press News Executives thought I did it justice.
Bill Cosby, in the newspaper piece today, said Mark Twain inspired him, and he cited several of his favorite Twain pieces, one of which – “How to Cure a Cold” – I would also select. Cosby did not mention my two favorites, which are a special telling of “The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” translated into French and then back into English by Twain, and “A Hundred and Ten Tin Whistles,” an account of an evening spent by Twain at the home of Brigham Young. Mark Twain was one funny writer, and he stayed on top of the events, politicians and highly placed low-lifes of his day. I can’t bring myself to imagine how good he might have been as a blogger in 2008-09.
Cosby will receive his Mark Twain award on Oct. 26, at the Kennedy Center, before a live audience. I should try to wangle a second-row ticket, and wear white socks, and see if he remembers.
We both now have won Mark Twain awards. His award is a teense bigger than mine. His is presented by the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Mine was presented (in 1990) by the western division of the Associated Press News Executives. But it is a Mark Twain award nevertheless. It weighs a ton, and there is a bust of Mark Twain right there on it.
Bill Cosby won his Mark Twain award for humor, and that is part of the circle closing. I once contributed to his humor, on an evening in 1961 when we both happened to be at the old hungry i, in San Francisco. He was starting his stand-up comedy career, and I was starting at Stanford University. I think my mother and my aunt were there, but I am not sure. I know for a fact that I was wearing slacks and black loafers and white socks.
Cosby spotted the white socks. I was sitting in, like, the second row. For a couple of minutes, he had great fun with those socks, giving the audience some laughs and me something to brag about to this very day. I am almost positive that he asked my mother – which is why I think she was there – if she had knitted me a reindeer sweater, to go with the white socks. But I may be mixing memories, which I am getting better at all the time. I do know that early in his career Cosby was very big on reindeer sweaters.
I got into the humor business myself, eventually. You could even say I was in the humor business at the time. Later, as a newspaper columnist making speeches, I would tell the audiences that I began at Stanford as a pre-med major. Then I flunked freshman chemistry. Then I flunked it again. “I didn’t leave a mark on it, and it didn’t leave a mark on me,” I said. They laughed like crazy.
So as a pre-med major, I made a good student of English, which was the first step toward a newspaper career during which I wrote a humor column for many years. I am trying to write humor right now. I try to write humor all the time. But my Mark Twain award was not for humor. It was for a long feature story I wrote in 1989 about, at age 46, meeting my father for the first time. That was a once-in-a-lifetime event, and I am glad the Associated Press News Executives thought I did it justice.
Bill Cosby, in the newspaper piece today, said Mark Twain inspired him, and he cited several of his favorite Twain pieces, one of which – “How to Cure a Cold” – I would also select. Cosby did not mention my two favorites, which are a special telling of “The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” translated into French and then back into English by Twain, and “A Hundred and Ten Tin Whistles,” an account of an evening spent by Twain at the home of Brigham Young. Mark Twain was one funny writer, and he stayed on top of the events, politicians and highly placed low-lifes of his day. I can’t bring myself to imagine how good he might have been as a blogger in 2008-09.
Cosby will receive his Mark Twain award on Oct. 26, at the Kennedy Center, before a live audience. I should try to wangle a second-row ticket, and wear white socks, and see if he remembers.
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