Don't Be A Tease ...

 

I often say, though at some risk of offending my colleagues, that journalism exists to avoid crowds from gathering. By that I mean, sure, we inform people so that they may act as better citizens and so on, but really that's just the noble icing on the cake. Reports on fires and car crashes and murders don't really make you a better citizen, except maybe in some distant, second-hand way. Those stories just tell you about things that happened that we, as a people, have decided are interesting. If there were no journalists, we would gather at the scene, asking others what's going on. Hence, journalism exists to avoid crowds from gathering.

So, there's this thought that I saw from my corporate web people on how to improve response in posts using pictures on social media: 

Less is often more when it comes to referral on image posts.

It is critical to not give away the entire story in an image post on Facebook. You are already at a disadvantage because you are relying on a text hyperlink over a card to click on, but effective tease language can play a big role in using the expanded reach of the image post to net a higher referral. 

 Which leads one to ask: What is the purpose of being a journalistic (not to be confused with media or internet) outlet? If we're there to tell people what's happening, what's with this game of hide and seek? Aren't we supposed to get the information out there as quickly and efficiently as possible? Isn't every journalist taught the inverted pyramid writing style first thing, where you get the important information at the very top, working your way down into secondary details later?

Okay, so I'm being hypercritical. Journalism is not just a calling, but a business, and one click isn't going to kill the reader to get the news. But this is something to keep in mind. It's by little steps that we make our way to Hell.

 

A Dialog WIth a Bot (Frustration) -- A short poem in prose

 

 

Hi Bruce,

I have a job that I think lines up well with your resume. It's new, so they don't have many candidates yet. Check out the description and hit "1-Click Apply" if you like what you see.

Life Insurance Agent - Driven Insurance Services - Roanoke, VA
$100,000 to $250,000 Annually

During these uncertain times, help families secure their most valuable assets, their LIFE , while earning the BEST COMPENSATION in the Life Insurance Industry!! * You must have or willing to......

 

(Is this job a good match? If not, please let us know so we can improve our results.)

Regards,

Phil - Job Seeker Advocate
ZipRecruiter, Inc. 604 Arizona Ave., Santa Monica, CA 90401, USA  

 

Dear Phil,

This job, in NO WAY, "lines up well with [my] resume." What on earth makes you think that a 30-year career in JOURNALISM makes me an insurance agent?! And this was perhaps the closest to a match of all the utterly useless emails that have been sent to me under your name. TRY HARDER.

Of course, I realize that there is no Phil. Phil is a bot run by the totally inadequate AI in ZipRecruiter. But pointing this all out does make me feel marginally better.

Be assured I will be only occasionally paying attention to your future efforts.

 

 

Hello,

You’ve replied to an inbox that is not actively monitored. If you have a question about your job search, please visit our Candidate Help Center.

“Phil” is simply a representation of the people and technology working hard at ZipRecruiter to help you find your next job. An email or text from Phil is just our way of alerting you about new job opportunities, and keeping you up-to-date on the progress of your search.

 

Sincerely,

The ZipRecruiter Team

 

Hire the Old Guys

 

So I am the least hire-able thing in America right now:  A straight, white, older male. I can't do much about any of that, but I can argue one point: Older.

Y'all should hire the old guys (and I use "guys" generically -- it applies to women too, probably even more so). You should hire us because, well, first of all, we have been doing what we've been doing for a while. We should have it figured out, right? I mean, work smarter not harder? And even if you're hiring us to do something we aren't currently doing, we've gotten good at figuring things out. After all, we weren't born into the internet age, but we just answered your email, so ...

But it's bigger than all that, because this is the larger point: We've already done stupid. The old guys have done all the dumb things younger people do, and discovered it's a bad idea. We know that drinking all night and missing work is a bad idea. We know not reading the instructions and just faking it is a bad idea. We know that ignoring the guy who has done the job for 10 years and thinking we know better is a really bad idea. Because we've been that other guy.

So hire the old guys. You'll thank me later.

What's Wrong with Photojournalism?

Saw this today on Instagram, and it struck at something that has been troubling me for some time.

leica_camera #LOBA 2020 – Shortlist #2

_Cristina de Middel_ (@Lademiddel)
In her on-going project, Journey to the Center, the Spanish photographer (born 1975) makes reference to the surreal atmosphere and symbolism of the similarly titled novel by Jules Verne, as a way to present the current Central American migration route, through Mexico, as a daring and heroic journey. Documentation and fiction blend to create a multi-layered narrative.
Tap the Link in our Bio to see the full series: https://bit.ly/3h5bOge

So, to start with, the Oskar Barnack Award is Leica's to give however they want. Unlike, say, the World Press Awards or POY or the Pulitzer, it doesn't have to do anything to represent the meaning or intent of photojournalism. It is whatever they say it is.

And who am I to say what Photojournalism (with a capital P) should be? Just another smart aleck with an opinion. So, with that out of the way ...

This is a prime example of really good artistic BS. The project "makes reference to the surreal atmosphere and symbolism" of Jules Verne, and "documentation and fiction blend to create a multi-layered narrative." What the F**k does that mean, exactly? Specifically: "Documentary and fiction blend?!" Isn't that when it ceases to be photojournalism?

I'm still looking as I write this, but the site for the Barnack award doesn't seem to have a page that simply states what it is, but they do have a page full of comments from the important people (all for more important that me) who nominate photographers and choose winners. They use words like "engaged photojournalism" and "contemporary reportage photography." These are words that, as an old school news photographer, make me nervous. These are the kind of big words that people use to hide their real meaning.

A Short Aside

It seems that every young journalist, photographer and writer, as well as the industry generally, goes through a phase now and again when they worry that they're not getting at the Truth. You know, the Truth with a capital T, the truth that just saying what happened doesn't seem to fully embrace. It's the Truth of what's really going on, that you, now that you've been on the ground and become the instant expert you're trained to become, now fully understand. Simply saying that this person did this, that person said that, this odd thing happened ... well, it just doesn't capture what it all means. People won't be made to fully understand, we need to do something more.

Often, the solution offered is to do more, like offer personal thoughts and impressions or better, different information, perhaps to blend in some fiction to, you know, make it more True. In other words, manipulate reality, make stuff up, lie. But to get closer to The Truth.

Back to My Point

Until Photoshop, changing up things in photography required a great deal of skill and effort, unless you staged things. (And staging things was fairly common and accepted back in the day; you don't want to know about some of your favorite, famous old LIFE magazine photos.) Staging has in modern times been frowned upon, unless of course you're making a portrait, for example, or maybe organizing something to get at the Truth.

And this brings me back to Cristina de Mideel's really nice photos. What she's done is cool, and interesting, and probably a subject that should be addressed (although it seems to me we have heard a lot about the struggle of immigration to the US, but that's a separate question). However, is it photojournalism? Is it even documentary photography? Is that little bit of fiction a toxic touch?

It reminds me of Alessio Mamo. He made pictures of Indians next to tables of luxurious, though fake, food to demonstrate their hunger. There was outrage when he posted some to the World Press Photo Instagram page. I, for one, was puzzled.

Wasn't this an example of advocacy journalism? Wasn't it an effort at "engaged photojournalism?" Wasn't he trying to dramatically demonstrate the Truth, using a little fiction?

This Is Nothing New, Really ...

I have written publicly on this sort of question before, for News Photographer magazine, covering questions about whether prizes were going to photographers covering the same sort of things over and over. And lately, there has been a bit of a backlash from old school photographers like David Burnett about a number of things from the Pulitzers (he wrote on Facebook about his frustration of the current tendency to award the prize to teams and staffs) to the controversial NPPA Bill of Photographers Rights (which contains criticism of the CIS gender male white gaze and suggests subjects give consent before being photographed, to oversimplify). I think this is a piece of the whole.

And of course, W. Eugene Smith's stories have met their share of criticism, Robert Capa's famous "Death of a Spanish Soldier" has long faced doubts, and as for seeking The Truth, Robert's brother Cornell formed the whole International Center for Photography as a place for the "concerned photographer." The search for the right way to portray The Truth is an old one.

But, honestly, I really wish we would just agree that news photography and photojournalism, though it involves choices as to what to photograph, not to mention a range of technical choices, should be about capturing what happens as it happens. No fiction, no big, fancy artsy words required.

Masque of the Red Death

I have taken to rereading Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities.

It seemed to be the thing to do in a time when we've elected a New York real estate mogul, one who sees himself as a Master of the Universe, as president, a time when we seem to reflexively treat the stock market as the economy (it isn't), a time when politics seem to exist only at the extreme fringes, and so on. In that way, I haven't been disappointed.

As an aside (my real point is upcoming), I wanted to look at Wolfe's writing. For those who don't remember (or weren't alive yet), the novel was written in monthly installments published in Rolling Stone magazine. Wolfe, always able to cause conversation, had decided that the great novels describing society and its times had died in the era since Thackeray, Zola, and Dickens. "Wolfe crashed into a literary scene that had grown timid, self-absorbed and, yes, dull," a Washington Post profile said in 2018. "Our brilliant young writers, he claimed, were afraid to capture the dazzling variety and absurd clashes of real life."

I had read it after it came out in book form and thought it good, with some reservations. I could see where Wolfe the wordsmith would become fascinated with an image or phrase, circling around and repeating it, then dropping it later as he did next month's installment. The same seemed true of characters, like the Ed Koch-like mayor of New York, who opens the book and then fades from view as the protagonist, bond trader Sherman McCoy takes center stage. But I would be a fool not to respect and admire (and occasionally imitate) the immortal talents and style of Wolfe, and I was searching for learning from a master.

Wolfe hits his stride a few chapters in, but I just finished reading one that seemed so to speak to today: Chapter 15, "The Masque of the Red Death," a 30-page description of McCoy's agonizing night at a posh social event among the elite of New York's social and business scene. On the way home, McCoy's socially conscious wife is unusually upbeat and chatty. Wolfe describes her evaluation of the party: "With a pretense of amused detachment, she burbled about the shrewdness with which Inez had chosen her celebrity all-stars: three titles (Baron Hochswald, Lord Gutt, and Lord Buffing), one ranking politician with a cosmopolitan cachet (Jacques Prudhomme), two designers (Ronald Vine and Barbara Cornagglia), three V.I.F.'s -- 'V.I.F.'s?' asked Sherman -- 'Very Important Fags,' said Judy, 'that's what everybody calls them' ..." and so on.

One of those V.I.F.'s, also a title, Lord Buffing, is an English poet who another guest tells McCoy is not just gay, but suffering from AIDs, the plague of the 1980s. In its day, more mysterious than COVID-19 ever was if not as contagious, it held the terror that leprosy carried in its time. No one knew what it was or how it was transmitted.

Buffing interrupts the party with a short speech when he is recognized by the host, and instead of a short, humorous thanks, he digresses into a meditation on Edgar Allen Poe's "Masque of the Red Death," a story about a Prince Prospero hosting a hedonistic two-year party behind locked palace doors to avoid a plague, only to be struck down in the most indulgent room by a mysterious guest dressed as Death.

"So Poe was kind enough to write the ending for us more than a hundred years ago," the ailing poet says to the silenced room. "Knowing that, who can possibly write all the sunnier passages that should come before? Not I, not I. The sickness -- the nausea -- the pitiless pain -- have ceased with the fever that maddened my brain -- with the fever called 'Living' -- those were among the last words he wrote ... No ... I cannot be the epic poet you deserve. I am too old and far too tired, too weary of the fever called 'Living,' and I value your company too much, your company and the whirl, the whirl, the whirl."

The jolly, self-indulgent crowd is brought down with a thump, silent after an evening of being a "noisy hive." "The intruder the [hosting] Bavardages dreaded most, silence, now commanded the room."

Before First World Problems became a hashtag (or there were hashtags), the ailing poet challenged the Prosperos of New York, locked in their penthouse palaces, safely buffered by the income disparities between them and those living in the Bronx. Wolfe is setting up the fall of the mighty McCoy at the hands of those he thinks beneath him, but he's also looking at that lurking monster, AIDs, still dangerously misunderstood before a certain Dr. Fauci led the effort to identify the virus that causes it and bring treatments.

The parallels and echoes to our time are hard to miss.

"Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

--Karl Marx 

I Am Ozymandias, King of Kings

Recently, I've been fascinated by the Shelley poem "Ozymandias."

I mean, most well-educated people can pull out the operative line to make the point of megalomania: "I am Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" But only a few who have survived something resembling a classical education can pull the whole poem from memory, including me.

So while doing a sound check, requiring one to run on and on in order to provide continuous speech to check levels, I regretted that I had never memorized some epic poem for the occasion, and "Ozymandias" came to mind.

I looked it up that evening, and printed the text. It's far from epic in length, just 14 lines, so I set out to make up for lost time and memorize it.

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

 The task proved easier than expected. The first dozen or so lines came quite easily and quickly, though for some reason I am now struggling with the last two. However, that's not what struck me most.

David Roberts, Fragments of the Great Colossi (of Rameses II), 

at the Memnonium (Ramesseum), 1838

First, though I am late to the party, I am so amazed at the quality of the writing. Each word has its place, and each is perfectly chosen. I think that's what made memorization so easy: only that word, that phrase could follow the last. No other one would do.

But then the structure became apparent. From my angle as a TV reporter, I realized it's a perfect television news story, spinning out its information in a catchy way before the big reveal.

Writing news for TV is unlike a lot of other journalism. Usually one is taught the newspaper, inverted pyramid method: Important information up front, secondary data next, fill details following. So a story goes: So-and-so was murdered today in Chicago. (The lede, with the most important facts) He was at a party with friends at a car repair shop when gunmen entered and killed the group. (More data that was not so critical) And so on. Not getting that critical fact up front is know as "Burying the lede."

TV, especially a feature story, is more of a storytelling medium. The information is doled out in easily comprehended pieces, one after the other, so that the viewer doesn't lose his place. In the words of my journalism professor -- not forgotten after 35 years -- the viewer can't go back a page to figure out a reference. You have to write so it makes sense that one time it flies by.

So let's look at Ozymandias as a feature piece for TV.

For one thing, because it's poetry, the line breaks are in different places than they would be for a script. So let's rearrange Shelley (accompanied by the horrified screams of English teachers everywhere).

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—

“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. . . . 

Near them, on the sand, half sunk 

a shattered visage lies, 

whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

tell that its sculptor well those passions read, which yet survive,

stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. 

Round the decay of that colossal Wreck, 

boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Ok. Now try reading it as a narrative voice over with the returns being where one is tempted to pause.

The opening line sets the scene. I love the choice of "antique land," especially as my mind kept jumping to a more cliched "ancient land." Antique is such a better word, carrying so much more baggage. 

But why this open at all? Can't we just jump into the facts? Two reasons:

1. It sets it as a story, not a scene.

2. More to my point (that this is a great TV story): Reporting is almost never contemporaneous (much as we would like it to be). Usually, we're showing up after the fact and trying to put together what happened. Most all of journalism is "who said." 

And then we get the descriptor of facts and scene. TV stories, I think, are told like a good bar story, laying out the facts bit by bit to build a structure, or laying them out like a triumphant display or the cards of a winning poker hand: one at a time building to the finish. So we get it here: two legs, but no body, made of stone, standing in the desert. Next to them a face, broken from the statue. But not just broken, a "shattered visage." How much better? A total image in just two words.

Then both character and a summary of how well sculpted was the image, capturing the subject so well that his passions yet survive in the stone ("stamped on these lifeless things," again, how much packed into five words). 

Finally, the big reveal: "Nothing beside remains."

Boom.

The rest is an easy set down for the listener (viewer), re-enforcing the image gently: boundless and bare, lone and level sands to the horizon.

All that remains is the sig out.

It only runs around 40 to 50 seconds as a straight read, and there is no sound or nat pops, so there's that. But what a simple, tight, perfectly told tale.

Is There Really No Master Plan?

I always jokingly answer conspiracy theories of the Trilateral Commission or DaVinci Code or alien autopsy ilk by saying: "I wish it worked that well." While, from the distant outside one can spin up deep state organization ideas based on an elaborate arrangement of certain facts aided by fantasies, once you go inside and see how it works, you realize that they -- be it government or business or media -- are like the rest of us, just making it up as they go along.

Well, I guess I too have succumbed in a small way to belief in some hidden, greater knowledge and power. In my case, it was Warren Buffet's continuing purchase of small market newspapers. Why, I wondered, would he do it? This, after all, is the Wizard of Omaha, the man who made billions on his savvy business sense. While everyone else was beginning to arrange the funeral for newspapers, why would he invest so heavily in them? Surely he knows something we don't.

Now, Bloomburg has a piece suggesting ... well, that they wish it worked so well. They seem to think he's just emotionally attached to the idea of a local paper. No ambitious scheme, like Jeff Bezos seems to have for The Washington Post, no deep understanding of something the rest of us don't see, just fond memories of being a paperboy.

Now I'll just have to go back to awaiting a miraculous salvation ...

Addendum

Apparently I'm not the only one who has thought of this:

"In the words of the Joker in 'The Dark Knight,' 'Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying.' But what if there is no plan? What if everybody is just bad at everything? What if the adults who run the most important institutions in the country were the children who picked their noses and put the boogers under the desks in school?"

As I Was Saying ...

Some time ago, I posted a comment on CNN having a hissy over the Trump administration making the daily briefing not for camera. They cried that it was a closing off of access for the public, and in a bit of theatrics hired a courtroom artist to come in and draw the briefing. Been there, done that.

Well, the dramatics on both sides have only escalated (though the briefing seems to be open for broadcast again), with now the spat playing out for our collective ... entertainment?

But my point here is Todd Purdum, who was apparently covering the White House right around the time I was, has finally articulated well the concerns I have been forming over the more recent efforts by the press, and CNN's Jim Acosta particularly, in confronting the administration.

Photo by Wilfredo Lee

But as a secondary note, let me add: Where were you guys?

Press aides in the Clinton administration regularly flat out lied to us, and often over ridiculously minor things. It was part of the back and forth, and we took it in stride without making it a challenge to democracy. I'm sure those who covered George W Bush have similar stories, and it takes little effort (even while avoiding alt-right conspiracy sites) to find questionable Obama actions and statements. Yet it lacked the melodrama we see today.

Is the Trump administration a leap beyond? Perhaps. Should journalists rigorously challenge authority and demand their questions be heard? Absolutely. But where were you guys all those years before someone so obvious showed up?

I Think We've Been Ruined by Television

Odd thing for a guy who works in TV to say, especially as I also think we've had some of the best entertainment TV produced lately since the medium began. (And I'm not alone in that.) But that may very well be the problem.

I think the problem is twofold: The "Star Trek" problem and the "House of Cards" problem.

The "Star Trek" Problem

 

In the 1950s and 1960s, everything seemed to be looking up.The reach out of the atmosphere was on everyone's mind, from the 1957 shock of Sputnik to the 1969 landing on the moon. One can place this all in the context of superpower competition, but let's stick with popular interest. Even "Toy Story 2" centered its main plotline on the public's fascination with things space.

The 1960s also brought space drama to TV with shows like "Lost in Space" and "Star Trek." Even comedies like "I Dream of Genie" had a space subtext. Then it faded with the counterculture, Vietnam War protest, and the feeling that reaching to the stars was somehow indulgent with so many problems on Earth. Science Fiction would not regain its popularity for a decade, with the arrival of the space fantasy of "Star Wars" (which had a counterculture element to carry its plot, but let's not get distracted).

"Star Wars" brought, along with a renewed interest in science fiction programming and the accompanying profits, the start of a great leap forward in special effects, leading to a computer graphics revolution making not just space drama but earthly adventures have SFX scenes that were indistinguishable from reality, as well as making a revived "Star Trek" financially practical.

And all this brings me at last to my main point: now that we have all seen on television -- through "Star Trek," "Battlestar Galactica," "Babylon Five," and any number of other shows, reboots, and revivals -- the sights of the universe and a few fantastic versions of it, we are left with the emotional impression that we have all been there and done that.

As Mercury and Gemini entered orbit, we had some early movie visions of what Earth orbit looked like, but we had never really seen it before. And as for landing on the moon, Hollywood gave us "Destination Moon," written by the respectable Robert Heinlein and backed by real science. But it looked like this in 1950:

 By 1969, we knew it looked like this:

And indeed, now the special effects wizards have real images of Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, and so on, not to mention spectacular Hubble telescope imagery of distant stars and nebulae.

So now, our science fiction, even the minimally science-based stuff like "Star Trek" and "Star Wars," looks more real than ever. Thus, I think, somewhere back in our subconscious, back in that part that makes us want to go places and see things, we feel no need to go to space. We feel like we have already been there.

The "House of Cards" Problem

I wish I had a better example for this, but I believe the Netflix version of "House of Cards" is the most applicable. (I much prefer the deliciously malicious British original version, but moving on ...)

Politics now is in chaos, with previously understood standards kicked aside at regular intervals. During the 2016 campaign, Trump campaign aides met with a Russian lawyer offering "dirt" on the Hillary Clinton campaign. What exactly this means legally remains to be established, but let me go on.

As part of the investigation into Russian election meddling, congressional committee chairman Devin Nunes said he had come to the White House to see secret evidence, only to be so embarrassed by the clumsy circumstances and statements around the event that he eventually had to step back from his committee's work.

Having grown up in Washington, watching the Watergate scandal progress as I was in middle and high school as the wily Sam Ervin ("I'm just a simple country lawyer") slowly worked his select committee, watching able parliamentarians like West Virginia's Robert Byrd and petty tyrants like House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills (finally brought down by a drunken escapade with a stripper) and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Tower (served cold karma by his former colleagues when rejected the post of Secretary of Defense), this all seems like the blundering, ham-handed work of amateurs.

And I think it is. The Trump campaign is a prime example.

Organized and mostly run by Trump and his business associates, bringing in politically experienced professionals now and again, but always under their control and often fired arbitrarily, depending on the atmosphere of the moment, the campaign lacked any real foundational feel for politics, either how it is done on the campaign trail or in practice in government. Public revulsion over politics-as-it-is in America made this very appealing, but it also made the campaign then and governance now the amateur hour, reeling from crisis to crisis.

I think the core to understanding this is "House of Cards." The cynical fantasy of "how Washington really works," based on the even more cynical British approach, is like most political drama exaggerated to the point of fantasy. But these people think that's how it really works, and thus thought it unremarkable, if not expected, to take a meeting with representatives of a foreign government offering "dirt" on a political opponent, and then to be disappointed when there was nothing to offer. Not that long ago, a much less egregious dirty trick resulted in the FBI being called in ... by those who would have benefited!

The same could be said of Congressman Nunes, seeing himself as a real-life Frank Underwood, quietly maneuvering his allies and opponents like a spider pulling the threads of his web, headed off to secret meetings revealing dark truths. Real life is both not that interesting and much more complicated.

It's enough to make one wish for the days of Richard Nixon, a man who had spent decades in politics learning the dirty tricks then far more prevalent than now, until he too fell for playing his hand too broadly in changing times. But at least he knew what he was doing.

This Is A Problem

Ever since Dwight Eisenhower warned about the "military-industrial complex," we've worried about how they would take over the government ... and the world. It was the theme of "Rollerball" and any other science fiction stories. In one of its most lethal forms, it becomes Skynet, the AI, self-aware automaton that takes over the world in the Terminator movies.

Well, guess what: you can stop worrying about Skynet being a military operation. We'll just walk into it thanks to corporate fear, according to Axios. The problem is "already, researchers believe that the increasing dominance of big tech companies is partly to blame for wage stagnation in the U.S. and elsewhere, because companies left behind can't afford to pay the higher rates earned at dominant rivals." Those leading with AI, in other words, will come to succeed more and more thanks to a beneficial survival, and so others will rush to catch up.

I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.

Dear Warren Buffett ...

You own a bunch of newspapers -- little, local newspapers, that you bought from Media General just before it disintegrated completely, finally selling its TV holdings to Nexstar. When you made that buy, I wondered: WHY?!

It was ironically the president of Nexstar, Perry Sook, when they bought the TV station I worked for around the same time, who dismissed newspapers as a dying medium as he spoke to us, his new employees. Nexstar, I was to learn, also wasn't so much interested in traditional broadcast TV either. The folks from corporate arrived with their eyes primarily on what our web presence was ... and of course sales and reducing expenses, especially human ones. But that rant is for another day.

It is a truism (and thus nothing particularly novel or wise when Sook said it) that print is dying, eclipsed by free internet content. So why would one of the richest men in America, the Oracle of Omaha, want a dying industry?

Fortune had a theory they posited last February: "In effect, Buffett appears to own newspapers not because he believes they have a future, but because he believes that they can produce cash flow—albeit declining amounts—while they are dying, and that this can be used for other investments. Berkshire Hathaway owns a number of investments of this kind, like Dairy Queen and See’s Candies."

And, when I have asked people, a range of theories have been offered, from classified advertising to selling assets and real estate.

But this is all in contrast to the other big-name newspaper buy: Jeff Bezos' purchase of The Washington Post. That buy seemed obvious to me, and The New York Times quoted him explaining it at a conference in June: "Mr. Bezos said he bought the newspaper because he wanted to make it into a more powerful national — and even global — publication, and that The Post was well situated to be a watchdog over the leaders of the world’s most powerful country. 'If it had been a financially upside-down salty snack food company, I would not have bought it,' he said."

Two thoughts are there, I think, when that quote is translated (from last to first):
1. He bought a media company because he wanted a media company, not because he wanted assets or real estate or whatever.
2. He bought a media company because he wanted media, or rather the product that makes it a media company rather than a salty snack food company. He wants -- he needs content.

(And, by the way, what's with all this hating on snack treats? Dairy Queen is dying? Another of life's little treats evaporating? But that's neither here nor there.)

Bezos has a massive technology operation geared at delivering mostly stuff: books, then CDs, and now just about anything, including digital print, audio, and video. Amazon is producing its own TV shows and  movies, and unashamedly trolling for more. Unlike many other internet-centric information companies, Bezos has started making his own stuff. (And this trend of being a content deliverer without producing content is indeed something that's bothered me for a while.)

 

So Where's It All Going?

As CNN's Brian Stelter reported (in what rates right up there as a lazy, year-end review),  there's been a lot of change just in 2017. And that's just the tail end of this years-long series of changes. Is there a traceable line that we can use to see where it's going?

Apparently, no.  Take, for example, this graphically lively but oh so wrong series of predictions from Nieman Lab. "My prediction is not solely that media leadership will be feminized, but that news itself will take on a new, more feminine, tone," says one. Nice, but irrelevant. How about: "In way too many stories, the idea that tens of millions of people could lose health insurance amounted to a throwaway line. Those are real people, people like my sister, who will literally die if she can’t afford her medicine."  Undoubtedly important, but what exactly does that have to do with the future of journalism? Or the idea that media will go into merchandising, if the haven't already.

Even when they get on subject, they've arrived at the station too late for the train. "Not only is there a lot more investment into video journalism, television’s business models, broadcast or cable, are also dominating: from video ads before or in the middle of a clip, product placement, and monthly subscriptions. This is while digital or analogue ads for text-based media are plummeting," says a predictor. No one's happier than I, a laborer in the field of video, to hear video's the future. But then why are broadcasters seeing audiences shrink while they pay consultants tons of money to find those wandering eyeballs?

So, it's the internet, right? Well, one review after another, time and again, very rationally argues that the current news aggregator models, despite a shift to videos, just aren't working. In the end, as with any business, you have to ask where the money is coming from.
 

So Why Newspapers?

But here's the thing, Mr. Buffett.  Did you really buy newspapers just because they would produce some paltry profits as their orbits slowly decayed and they burned up in the new media star? Is the fact that they are, in their way, creative endeavors produced by people (people, as in real people) making stories and pictures out of ephemeral life and experience not in any way part of the equation? Well, hell, you might as well have bought them for the real estate.

In the internet age, the information economy, I can't believe that this information product has no value. As I said in my old posting: Sooner or later, you have to have a source. You can't just spend your time repackaging other work ... if you don't have that other work.

“Newspapers continue to reign supreme in the delivery of local news,” you said when you bought them, according to Fortune. “If you want to know what’s going on in your town—whether the news is about the mayor or taxes or high school football—there is no substitute for a local newspaper that is doing its job.”

That's the key. Bezos bought the Post and is now actually expanding staff because he was buying the content, not the package. Buying newspapers for the newspaper is like buying Coca-Cola for the two-liter bottle.

Now, the Post is this message writ large. It does have a market, one others -- probably less successfully because they live only in New York and LA -- are trying to tap into. But you, Mr. Buffett, have always had the advantage of the perspective from flyover country. The Post isn't going to tell you about what's going on in Omaha, and you had a sense of that in that quote just above, that thing you said when you first bought the papers. Now you need to take the next step and understand you didn't buy local papers, you bought local news and the reporters and photographers who gather it and turn it into a salable commodity. The newspaper is just what it's wrapped in.

You're Just Not Listening, Are You

You need to get over yourselves. The pseudo-drama of hiring a sketch artist to cover the White House press briefing is silly ... and old news.

This is a picture I drew 21 years ago, in the briefing room during the Clinton administration, of Mike McCurry briefing press not for camera. As a photographer, I had nothing much to do, so I drew the event in a notebook I carried with me at the time.

This was a mundane, daily briefing, and no one found it at all remarkable that it was not for camera. Most of the briefings back then, as I remember it, were not expected to be on camera. They were times for the writers to get all the messy, boring details from the press secretary, like who was where when, what the schedule was, what the party line was on this bill or that initiative. It was considered just day-to-day detail work.

Which is why I find it so amusing that everyone was so up in arms when the Trump White House made the regular briefing not for camera. It's not that big a deal. The briefings were never considered camera worthy until cable TV news came on the scene, and only then because someone thought to actually turn on the briefing room cameras during one of the regular press secretary briefings. It gained a cult, CSPAN-like following, but it generally wasn't recognized as some pillar of democracy.

Frankly, were I press secretary, I would start the administration with the general, daily briefing being off camera. What's the point? It just encourages little acts of performance art on both sides, and that's now exactly what we get instead of anyone learning anything.

You're Still Not a Photographer

Nor are you a web designer, or a journalist, or for that matter a media outlet. You ain't The New York Times or ABC or even Vice media.

I saw this Go Daddy ad the other day, and it set me off ... again. And I apologize in advance, but really this is the very problem with the modern culture.

There have always been things people seem to think anyone could do if given the chance, like politics. And there have been things that people often carry around as a dream that they could do, if they only practiced or tried hard enough, like athletics or music. Whole industries have been built around the latter, involving things like Baseball Camp and "American Idol."

But modern technology now makes us think we actually can do a lot of things -- or anything it seems -- just because this gizmo or that service makes it so simple.

I previously ranted about a Nikon ad like this (among other things) which implies, or rather outright says that a fancy camera can make annoying actor Ashton Kutcher just as good as a professional fashion photographer who has spent his entire life reaching his professional position.

The Go Daddy ad is much the same ... including coincidentally an annoying character: a personification of The Internet. Sure, personifying the internet is a cute idea, but it all ends with the implication that you don't really need to actually know what you're doing or learn anything to make great web sites.

Much as I said about the Nikon ad: sure, the concept makes sense. Give us your money and we'll make you an instant genius. So give us your money. But life just doesn't work that way, children. Wishes very, very rarely come true just by wishing.

Remember all those hilariously embarrassing auditions by the deluded on "American Idol?" Or that moment in so many stories when the guy realizes that, even though he wanted more than anything to be a pro baseball player, he just doesn't have the natural talent ... no matter how hard he works? It's time we understood that about a lot of other stuff.

Go ahead, use the Go Daddy software to build your website. It'll look fine. It'll be good enough. 'Cause that what you want, something that's ... okay.

Or maybe not. I saw a video at a public event not long ago. It looked like the person in charge had dumped a bunch of stills into one of those automatic programs and let 'er rip. It was awful. It went too long, it had no structure or flow, it glitched. Even as parents looked at photos of their beloved children, they began to squirm. But the video's creator thought it would work, because that program said it could help you make a video just like the pros.

However, I do have some hope, and oddly I place it in the hands of the cliche of our decade, the Hipsters.

An aspect of the Hipster fascination with the past -- with things like Steampunk, and crypto-Victorian beards, and hand-crafted food, and so on -- is a fascination with authenticity. Old typewriters and locally sourced food are products of hand work to produce the real thing.  The real thing is, well, real. It requires knowledge, talent, and practice. You can't just decide you want to be a real family farmer, sign on to some software program or buy a gizmo and be it. It takes time, effort, learning, and dedication.

Which finally brings me to the point: Real Life requires work. You just have to work at it. 10,000 hours adds up to 416 (and a little more) days. That's if you do something 24/7. Let's say you do it a more reasonable, if incredibly dedicated, 8 hours a day (that's 1,250 days), five days a week (250 weeks). 250 weeks = a little less than 5 years. Again, if you do it for 8 hours a day, every day, like a job. And that's just to become good at something ... as the story, which might be a myth (like the 10% of the brain thing), goes.

But, as I have said before, let's say you really work at something. You build a career of it. You endure failure and enjoy success as you progress through your work, and you reach a level where you are considered a legitimate professional. Not a star, not a champion, not the top of your field, just a professional. Don't you deserve some respect for that? Respect that indicates that not just anyone can show up one day and be what you are after years of work?

So, you are not a web designer just because you used some free software. You are not a chef because you watched a cooking show and made a tasty dinner. And you are not a photographer because you bought a fancy camera or clever smart phone.

The Eighth Deadly Sin

For various reasons, I've been trying to categorize something that I think is inadequately defined, at least in English. I mean, there are concepts that other languages have words for that English lacks, and this is one of them, but I don't know of another language's word for what I mean either.

What I have come up with is: Resentfulness. This is different from envy or jealousy, which I think both imply a desire to have something one lacks. Resentfulness doesn't mean you want the thing others have, you just are pissed off that they have it.

It's also different from the overused German schadenfreude. That is about being happy when others fail. Resentfulness is exactly the opposite: to be angry that others succeed.

I think it's just as soul-rotting as all these other things. It makes it easy to sit and steam about other people being happy. All it does is produce negativity. It makes you more unhappy, and does nothing to improve your situation. And the obvious solution -- to make those happy people unhappy -- does nothing but make things worse, not better.

So one must learn to confess, address, and come to terms with the fact that, as every parent has said to every teenager in history, life is not fair.

The End of the World as We Know It

It is a truism now that news media are in a time of transition. The internet has changed how people get news. Cable TV has created a 24-hour news cycle, which the internet has only accelerated. Access to blogs and podcasts has "democratized" the process. Print -- physical newsprint -- is generally assumed to be dying as a medium, replaced by electronic access to the same content, which would be unrecognizable to the reader of even 50 years ago, with the addition of video, audio, interactive charts, and so on.

But in our focus on the form, the technology of it all, I'm wondering if we haven't missed a bigger, more "meta" aspect of the change, and it's Donald Trump who makes me wonder about it.

We in the journalism business were taught and continue to believe a certain function for our profession. It's something that you've heard a lot about in pushback to the "fake news" accusations of late, but it also has more to it than that ... at least for us.

Right now, you hear a lot about afflicting the comfortable and speaking the truth, but that's not always our function. Actually, if one is honest, it's not our function very often. Most journalistic time is spent on fires and car wrecks, or on heartwarming feature stories about cute kids and adorable pets. And there's nothing wrong with that. It doesn't take much effort to see that those stories bring readers and viewers, and I frankly believe that most people go into public service with the intent to do good.

So what, you're asking, am I suggesting? That journalism is a glorified version of ambulance chasing and cat videos? No, and here's my point: In a broader sense, we have journalists to go places and see things so you won't have to. As humans, we all want to know. We want to know why there's a massive backup on the highway, and whether anyone was hurt in that wreck. We want to know what happened at that fire, or why police were all over at that store up the street. These things may not really affect us in any direct way, but we still want to know.

And that is the social function of journalism. We are delegated to be nosy and curious, to be pushy and ask impolite questions, to stand around and watch, so that crowds gather less and false rumors don't run amok. Is this important? Look at countries with dysfunctional journalism, like the old Soviet Union or Middle Eastern autocracies: the most insane rumors spread, wild conspiracy theories live vibrantly, nothing is trusted, no matter how supported, because no "fact" is considered factual.

But now, we are told, everyone can be a journalist. The internet has eliminated the huge overhead required to reach out to more than a few friends and acquaintances. Anyone in the world, if they so chose, could read these very words if they found the website. I have the reach or any giant media corporation, if not the readership.

There is an essential error, however, to that phrase: "Everyone can be a journalist." And it's an error that cuts both ways in that, now that anyone can act like a journalist, many have begun to believe that they are just as good at this as a traditional journalist, and there we have our problem.

That overhead expense traditional media used to face meant that, before they handed the keys over to somebody, management wanted to make sure they could drive. Putting out fake news, not properly checking the facts, even sloppy writing or inadequate work meant you were forcibly stopped from being a journalist. Without that testing and seasoning, without management that can feel the pain of losing money (or worse yet, with management that can make money with clicks to fake news), there's no control, no authority. When everybody's a journalist, eventually no one is.

While we in the news industry have been focused on technology and ratings (or circulation), the continents beneath us have been shifting. The public no longer see us as their proxies because they don't think they need proxies anymore. We were worrying about where to find our audience and how the public was reading and watching us. Buzzwords like "three screen viewing" and "hyper local" were presented by consultants as the way to stop the hemorrhage of eyeballs. But we were missing the point. It wasn't their eyeballs we were losing, but their belief in us.

Now journalism is in search of itself, literally. Where people go for the news, and even what they consider the news, has left the place where we always found it and taken on a new identity. It is a period of far more profound transformation than whether the New York Times will stop its print edition or TV will become only on-demand streaming. It is a question of the very meaning of the term "Journalism."

Time

What is it about time? Or rather, I guess, what is it about my time? As in: I don't have any.

That's why this blog has laid (lied? lain?) fallow for so long. It's not like I don't want to do it. Far from it; I really want to exercise my independent writing skills in a way controlled by me, expressing the thoughts and concepts that friends and family have now tired of hearing. (Imagine living with that guy who suddenly comes up, without preface, to talk about how the White House staff should be restructured, or what the future of journalism might be, or how we could get to Mars without being killed by cosmic rays in the process. I realize it's a bit bizarre, and do try to spare them.)

But I digress. I'm trying, but I just never seem to have the time. There are a handful of potential entries in the bin here, helpfully labeled with a little red "Draft." My favorite, the one I really wish I had some real time to craft, consists only of a half-dozen internet links to various long think pieces, all of which I want to string together to express a concept of my own on where journalism and society and, specifically, photojournalism have gone. I call it "I Blame You." Intrigued?  Me too.

But maybe that title is also part of a solution. I need to carve out time for things. However, despite what physics (which says all of time already exists) or philosophy might say, my pie seems of a finite size, and by the time I do work (incredibly time consuming), the stuff in support of work (also time consuming), family and home demands, other various responsibilities ... well, about the only thing I manage to force is about a cumulative hour of sitting still in an effort to not do anything, because that's necessary too.

So: writing. Where do I find, where do I force, where do I carve out the time for writing? And art? And personal projects?

Afterword

Shortly after posting this, I realized I had left one massive question unanswered: So how did I get the time to write this entry?

Put simply: I worked an hour of overtime yesterday, which corporate hates, so the bosses asked me to start my day late today. Unfortunately, I found out about this only after getting up at my usual 5:30 am, which I probably would have had to do anyhow in order to take care of the many tasks required to get my girl off to school, but now there's an extra hour in the interim. Hence: the time to write.

Mary Tyler Moore

Every generation has its markers. One of the markers in mine was Mary Tyler Moore.

In the early 1960s, she was Laura Petrie. In the old Dick Van Dyke Show, she was the clever, pretty, stay-at-home wife and (later) mother. Then she was Mary Richards, journalist, TV producer, working in a newsroom full of clever people doing fun things.

She was my Mom, and I was little Richie. She was my coworker and friend. It's like she was always at the center of my life.

The Gospel of Andy Griffith

The story -- which I have heard often enough from reputable enough people to believe -- is that "The Andy Griffith Show" dominates the ratings at 5:30 on weekday afternoons where I live. As a matter of fact, again as the story goes, a competing station once paid a vast sum to get rights to the Oprah Winfrey show when she was at her nation-dominating height to run against Andy ... and lost. To this day, at 5:30 pm in the Roanoke-Lynchburg television market, you will hear with the certainty of the sun rising and the tide shifting the whistling theme of "The Andy Griffith Show."

It's one of a handful of anecdotes I always tell newly arrived people moving to the area. (Another is that Roanoke once had a Hooters restaurant ... which went out of business. It wasn't put out of business, it just didn't get enough customers.*) I tell these in order to help people understand in a more visceral (and hopefully sympathetic) way the culture of the area. Call it my gentler version of The Hillbilly Elegy.

But what is it about Andy that holds such rock hard appeal? You would think that the viewership would age out. (The station only airs the early black-and-white episodes, with Goober and Gomer Pyle appearing fairly late. I was once told there are only 107** of them, which run in sequence, and then the line up begins again.) How could anyone born in the 1990s or even 1980s find anything in the small town of Mayberry circa 1961: before the Kennedy assassination and the upheaval of the 60s, before rap and the internet. How dull and figuratively as well as literally colorless it must seem to them, wouldn't you think?

The Word of the Lord

In the Catholic Mass (as in most Christian services), there are rituals of gathering and prayers, and then readings from the Bible: the old Testament, some from the later books (eg: letters from Paul), and finally the Gospel.

The priest takes up the usually ornate copy of the New Testament, which has been on display on the altar, and shows it to the congregation, first to one side, then the other, before walking to the ambo and setting it down to read.

I enjoy that, which to me is a very tangible connection to the 2,000-year history of the Church and its rituals, a remnant of the time when most of the congregation couldn't read and that New Testament was probably one of only a handful of actual books in the community. "This," the priest seems to say with his gesture, "is the real deal. See, right here, I have the book with the writings we have all gathered to hear."

The readings are on a regular cycle (three-year for Sundays and two-year for weekday Mass), so if you're a frequent churchgoer, they're aren't going to be a lot of surprises. Then why bother with all the hocus-pocus and recitation? Simple: to re-enforce the common beliefs and values that bring that community together.

As you've probably already realized, I think The Andy Griffith Show serves a similar function here in Southwest Virginia. It's a vision of an idealized middle south (fictional Mayberry is in the mountains just over the NC border; nearby Mount Airy claims to be the town it's based on), a place where an amiable sheriff rarely feels the need to carry his gun, community members settle differences eventually, and even violent crime is more acting out than a real danger. It's a place where everyone has a role which he or she seems to understand and have somehow organically settled into, where assisting one's neighbor is assumed, and even when someone is insufferable (usually Barney Fife), he is politely tolerated and handled in a way to not hurt his feelings.

While Big City types occasionally pass through (sometimes as criminals, sometimes as government officials or state police), the are briefly dealt with and sent on their way or embraced until their more obnoxious characteristics are smothered and they come to appreciate the True Way of Mayberry.

I can, at this moment, imagine a Marxist academic recoiling in his dashiki-covered desk chair as he does a spit take with the organic, free market chai he (although he prefers some other pronoun, no doubt) just put to his lips. What I have described to this person is the very vision of entrapping horror, a gray flannel world dominated by the white patriocracy, an intellectual and in some cases literal prison without bars, more reminiscent of a dystopian nightmare than an ideal town.

"Be seeing you, Andy."

But that is both to see my point and miss it. Unlike you, professor, these people live by the calming rules that smoothed out the rough edges of life. There was crime and dissension and conflict, but it was the crisis of a family, not the signs of a sick society. You knew where the problem was because you all knew the rules of interaction and behavior, and those rules outlined a path to resolution.

In today's world, the world where our professor would enrage himself over the bigoted, misogynistic, stultifying white male privilege of Mayberry, those foundations shift and sink. It's okay, the Andy viewers ask, to dismiss the faith of evangelicals, but not Muslims? The Other must be welcomed, but members of the tribe shunned? And I have to be careful which pronoun I use?!

Better to flee, even if only for thirty minutes, back to a world where stability was sure and seemed infinite and the rules were the ones I was taught by my grandma.

...

* However, a new consortium is working on bringing several new Hooters to the area. Perhaps they need to spend some time, while they're up to that, watching Andy.

** Wikipedia says there are 159 black and white episodes (Seasons 1 through 5)

A Moment of Clarity: Two Thougths on the Media World

While watching TV today, I grew impatient with an extended ad break. With some 250 satellite channels to choose from, I had already mapped out a couple of alternative shows to view, and switched to the next ... also in an ad break. But I stayed there. Why?

One might argue it's a constant search for novelty (the old show was okay, but now I wanted something different), but I also think it was actually the quality of the ad. The old show had a classic, cable-TV, 1-800-number product pitch on it, while the new show had a creative, artful, high-end candy commercial. Simply put: I found the new ad more entertaining.

Is this a trend? Is this something of importance? As technology allows us to time-shift and skip commercials, is the answer to make more commercials more like actual entertainment? We seem to have discovered this with Super Bowl ads, which now are featured in shows of their own as part of the game run up. Is the old truism that an annoying ad which caused you to still remember the product was an effective ad now obsolete?

Frankly, I can find this only a move to the good. It reduces the amount of garbage in the world, and the increase in the amount of "art" of a form, even harnessed in the cause of sales, can only make the world a better place.

And maybe it will provide work for the truly talented, hardworking professionals who make film and television ... which leads to my second thought.

As news media cut back, trying to do more with less, one of the areas frequently cut is in photography. Much of this is due to a misunderstanding of the skill and professionalism good photography and photojournalism require, as well as a failure to appreciate the necessity for good (if not great) photography rather than just adequate pictures.

Now, I continue to search for a clear, relatively simple of explanation of where the money has gone (old media companies were able to make tons of money producing newspapers and television broadcasts using more people and much more expensive equipment; what's the difference now?), but in the meantime it strikes me that we could be on the cusp of an interesting professional moment.

To back up a bit, corporate media thinks they have found a solution by reallocating news collection resources. They assign several tasks to a single journalist (classically, the Multi-Media Journalist -- MMJ -- or one-man-band of local TV, where the reporter also shoots and edits the story), they accept more handouts both from organizations and from non-profit and other non-traditional journalism organizations, they encourage "citizen journalists" to send in pictures and information, and so on. All of it is driven by the fact that these things cost less than paying professionals to collect news.

What to do, if you -- like me -- treasure the image of a journalist (that being a person who is curious and interested in learning an accurate account of what we call news, who then can take that an present it to the rest of us as an enlightening, understandable and maybe even entertaining piece, no matter what the media ... to be over simplistic)? How do we save the profession of people dedicated to its idea and ideals?

Well, this is not really a new question, though it might be a newish variant. And I think an answer might be found in the past.

The legendary photo agency Magnum was founded in 1947 by some of the great photojournalists of the day, men who had tired of a media environment they saw as tyrannical as we might see today's: a place where corporate management calls the tune by way of available jobs and money, and no room for creativity or deeper coverage was allowed. They decided to fund assignments themselves, then have agents sell the stories for the best possible price. Magnum continues today as a key player in the photography world.

So, if the new media corporate world wants to eliminate staff and the expense of continuous coverage, go ahead. Let's answer them by forming our own world of little Magnums: co-ops of photographers and writers with similar visions and interests, covering stories and making them available to the highest bidder. This will mean some business and bargaining acumen on our part, though we wouldn't be the first. Besides the older example of Magnum and other photo agencies, one can find any number of photographers (like John Harrington) and writers who are also clever businessmen as examples. (Sadly, I am not one of them.) We just can't accept their scraps with gratitude as we have in the past, but insist the work has value.

Now this in turn requires the consumer to discriminate between quality work and crap, but if we go to my first thought, where I reflexively turned away from the bad ad to the good, it should shake out. The question is whether management will see that at the start and avoid the difficult culling period ...

Time and Tide

My Mother-in-law is fascinated on occasion by a book, The Rivers Ran East. It's a story about an explorer's adventures searching for a legendary city of gold, and when she gets onto the subject, one is as likely to be entertained by the lengthy and complicated story of how she first encountered the book as a summary of what it is about.

Lately, she rediscovered the book and has been rereading it, stopping daily to urge me to read it and attempting to press her copy on me with the enthusiasm of an evangelist with a brand new edition of the New Testament and a tribe of undiscovered natives to convert. I unfortunately am in the process of trying to finish my own reading project, an old paperback of Joseph Conrad's Nostromo.* It seems the curse of my work and life that I either have a great deal of time to intensely read, and plow through multiple books in short order, or no time at all, meaning I might get through a single page before unintentionally falling asleep, the book slipping from numb fingers as reading glasses droop on the bridge of my nose.

Which gets me, after this overlong prelude, to the point of all this: time.

Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe than time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important how we lived. After all, Number One, we're only mortal.

-Jean Luc Picard

Star Trek: Generations

That's very nice, but I tend to agree with -- or at least feel the same as -- the "someone," actually the movie's villain. He was willing to sacrifice an entire planet and those aboard the USS Enterprise to step into a timeless rift in the universe, freezing himself in any time he chose so as to not be stalked by the predator he feared. Not sure I go that far, but I do have some trouble seeing the grinding passage of time as some sort of amiable companion.

The other day, I heard a book discussion on the BBC with Judith Kerr, the author of When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. It is a novelized version of her own life as a young Jewish girl in Germany during the rise of Hitler. In it, she admitted that the book's title was not where she started, nor even her idea, but it was what struck me very strongly, especially as it was all I knew of her or the book before hearing the rest of the broadcast. It refers to how, in their escape from Germany to Britain by way of Switzerland, the young Judith lost her treasured pink, plush rabbit, left behind in their home. She writes how, as a child, she imagined Hitler keeping the toy himself, as some treasure of his own. But as a parent (and an unreconstructed child) I am tragically struck by the sad loss of a beloved toy.

What Are You Afraid Of?

When I was a child -- or rather a young teen -- the concept of mortality struck me very strongly. It became finally, inevitably clear that there was no escaping death, and there is no clear answer to what exactly death brings. One can choose faith, or perhaps some vague concept of the supernatural, or one can resign oneself to ceasing to exist -- Pop! -- in a terrifying obliteration of self. It frightened me, and there were long periods where, poignantly self-aware, I saw the approaching darkness with dread.

Now older -- more than four times my age then -- the fear has faded, to be replaced by regret and a deep sense of loss. Time, rather being a fearful treadmill driving me to uncertain obliteration, is now a thief, stealing away friends and family, treasured moments and possessions.

I guess this too is a factor of aging. I no longer fear the future (that inevitable knock to come from the Reaper), but a loss of the past. As a teen, there was more future, and I looked forward. But now there's more past, and I guess I cling to the things that give me comfort.


*About the books: This was started ages ago, and I have finally finished Nostromo. I have not finished The Rivers Ran East, a dreary accounting of discomfort, danger, flesh-burrowing bugs, and cannibalistic natives written by a man who intentionally set out with inadequate support, supplies, or money. I have since moved on and read two other books. My mother-in-law has happily also moved on to other books ... though I'm sure my day of reckoning shall came.