Tired of the Presidential Race Process? Me, too! So here is a thought. Why don't we get a "grass roots" effort going to stage a debate between "The Obama Girl" and "Tina Fey?" And then be done with it!
KISS:
Keep It Simple Stupid....and I'm not talking about any of you!
I suspect I should start this off with, "REMEMBER ME?" I know I haven't been around for a while. So Why?
Tomorrow will be the three week anniversary of some MINOR surgery? And today is the first day in that period of time I can't remember the PAIN of the day before. I don't like whining and unwarranted mystery, but there has been nothing deceitful about my reticence to be more forthcoming about this event.
However, enough of you have been healthily and persistently curious, I feel obligated to at least "tap dance" around the issue.
First of all if you look at my self portrait up there you might be able to imagine the PAIN! (We'll talk more about the portrait later.)
Second, and most important, the surgery involved a region of the anatomy we are seldom comfortable including in polite conversation. (Just let me EMPHASIZE how IMPORTANT it is, AS YOU AGE, to EAT PLENTY OF FRUIT AND VEGETABLES, and if your doctor suggests you take METAMUCIL twice a day? DO IT!)
I trust that is enough information to help you accurately speculate your way to answering the mystery. I will only add that there are not enough pills on the planet to make me believe this three week long bucket of pain is worth all those years of self neglect.
Now there is one other reason I've not been forthcoming.
I believe one of the great sins of electronic journalism is the casual anchor phrase, "As you'll remember from our story about bats last week."
COME ON! Nobody but other news room employees and family members recall any week old "bat" stories.
So I didn't want to tie this event to a couple of previous postings in which I rambled on about pain. And I'm not going to rehash the detail for you here, and now!
BUT WAIT! And I share this curiosity with you. Talking about my pain in those postings? All of a sudden I became an expert on the subject of pain with a GOOGLE search.
(It will be interesting to see if this story has the same end.)
Oh yeah, the portrait. As you'll recall from my posting in January, 2008, (joke) I'm building up a mass of angst over the unsolicited arrival of mailing stickers to my home. They are coming from non-profits across political, religious, and special cause spectrums.
All of them work in their little guilt messages about you sitting there with these wonderful sticker gifts, while their cash coffers are suffering certain demise.
Well, I didn't bite. All those little stickers? That's a whole bunch of them up there making up that self portrait.
(I blurred the portrait a bit so you won't be tempted to steal my identity.)
So anyway, I'm back. Let's talk about something else next time.
I'm going in for some minor surgery tomorrow, and will likely be out of commission for a few days. AND....I feel obligated to get this second blog entry on the web today...since I might forget it when the drugs wear off.
One of "Paul's Proverbs" I arrogantly profess in class is: THE REAL NEWS IS ALWAYS A BLOCK AWAY.
Anyone can see what's going on inside the convention hall. You don't even need a ticket. Just watch it on just about everyone's TV.
The real stories, with more than 200 thousand extra people in town, is at least a block away from the Pepsi Center.
If it were me? And I'd been assigned to come up with something good?
"BISHOP TO C 7."
Peggy and I went to the basement Sunday.
In my 35 years as a journalist I think I've covered well over two hundred wind stories. I may have chased that many storms in the helicopter and news car.
In Kansas I saw a 300 foot high microwave tower designed to withstand a small nuclear blast, twisted into a pretzel by wind.
In that same town I saw the impact of a one hundred mile an hour gust of wind on a construction site at Seward County Community college. That northbound gust wiped out the fly area of a new theatre building. I watched it be rebuilt? It took six months? And irony again? (This is the truth.) As the last few bricks were set in place to refinish the project? A south bound wind gust of 110 miles per hour blew it back the other way.
Here in Colorado I was once the first reporter on the scene of a town wiped out by a tornado.
I've profiled numerous people whose lives have been upended by tornadoes.
I've been to church services in small prairie towns where everyone is gathered looking for hope following major wind events.
I did a story in my own neighborhood where a small tornado yanked two hundred 80 foot high pine trees out of the ground like a turnip harvest.
I've seen and reported on two fantastic water spouts.
I once saw incredible devastation where literally millions of trees were downed by a super wind that came from a direction it had never come from before.
I spent two days in a New Mexico mountain town heavily damaged by a tornado. (Tornados don't generally show up in mountain towns.)
So what's my point?
Well after all those years of paying attention to the wind, THIS
SO WHAT WERE DOING IN THE BASEMENT? Just went down there to clean up an old mess. The SECOND we heard the TV warnings...we grabbed our cameras and headed for high ground.
OH, YEAH. THAT'S THE INSTRUCTION FOR FLOODING, RIGHT?
POST SCRIPT: My memory lied. I just remembered. I did see that tornado that yanked the trees up, but just for about five seconds before it lifted up.
....in my beautiful balloon."
I think I've talked about the young people in the media support group we've got going. We call it the "MetNet," mostly graduates of Metropolitan State College. Let me introduce you to a few of them.
That's Vanessa Grinestaff up there...supposedly working a story on her summer internship at KUSA TV. She is a Concert Nut...travels all over the country to see and hear Bon Jovi.
She has been working a lot with an old photographer friend of mine, Scott Wright. I wonder if she knows Scott plays a mean "bluegrass" banjo?
Vanessa is a talented self taught photographer and editor. And she is open to just about any adventure you throw at her. Let me get back to Vanessa shortly.
That's my fat hand playing a middle C chord.
This is a more impressive B flat in the key of F major.
If I'd listened to my 6th grade music teacher "Miss Freeze", who told me boldly, "don't EVER think of doing ANYTHING musical. For one thing, you have no ear for it?"
Clearly you'd have never seen these snapshots.
So at age 64, I take up the piano. That's all after singing at weddings, in church choirs, in musicals, art songs and arias at an Italian restaurant and a ton of in the shower solos.
"TAKE THAT MISS FREEZE!"
But it can come out as arrogance setting myself up as the role model for a point of view. So it's nice to have young people, just getting started in the World role models, to take my place........people like Vanessa and.....
Jonathon Snyder. Jonathon has just graduated and is out testing the water. He has a rock band getting a lot of work in town. He also has been doing public relations for some non-profit groups. He is managing a small theatre that specializes in documentaries. He also books live acts at the theatre, and does a little "standup" himself on "open mic" night.
One of my persistent messages I pass on to students in every class?
"DO NOT EVER GIVE UP YOUR DREAMS. Yes, let them evolve. BUT DON'T GIVE THEM UP."
Vanessa and Jonathon can waive that lesson. They were cases in point long before they heard me mutter anything.
Still there are times when you need a backboard to bounce those ideas off. So.....
Jonathon and I have a random get together to explore yet more nuances of his dreams. I'll update you on them after he gets his feet wet.
That's the role model I want to be. If young people come to me for career advice? I WILL NOT BE MISS FREEZE. I will NOT say, "follow the money! And for @$%#^& sake don't get into music!"
I cannot tell you how exhilarating it is to hear an F flat coming from these 65 year old fat fingers. That is what MetNet is all about.
"GO VANESSA. GO JONATHON."
That is Karlyn Tilley up there, fellow Norwegian, and reporter/anchor at the CBS Owned and Operated TV station in town. Or at least this is my watercolor vision of Karlyn.
We used to work in the same newsroom.
Any of us who've spent any time in broadcast media have some pretty wonderful stories to share with almost any audience.
My favorite Karlyn story is her brief stint doing weather in Boise, Idaho. These are the kinds of things you can only get away with in small markets.
Karlyn convinced her superiors it would be okay if she did her weathercast sky diving. She would jump out of the plane and wing it, so to speak.
It turned out to be one of those wonderful TV moments where everything went like clock work...with her landing on terra ferma just as she is wrapping up the local five day forecast.
She tells me that tape got her her next job at a little bigger market. But she also had to sign an agreement that she would NEVER do that again.
That's Gary Barkley up there. He's a photojournalist. When I retired in 2002 Gary was the only person left in the newsroom older than me, and he is still there cranking out pretty pictures and stories.
Of course he wouldn't like me referring to his work as PRETTY.
Gary is the most beloved cynic on the planet. You never have to wonder what Gary is thinking. He'll tell you. But he'll tell you while he is getting not only his job done, but a few other people's jobs as well.
Small world? I think we'd probably worked together for a decade before we realized my sister's mother-in-law in California, was Gary's private art teacher.
But while we're talking about small world.
This is photographer Jim Weis. Jim got assigned to me a lot when I first started reporting. And then over the years we worked together so much we'd get teased about being married (to each other).
And I have to tell you there were days...when the parallels were eerie. We would spend these horribly long complicated days covering the building of Denver International Airport.
We'd both get a little cranky. And then at the end of the day we'd stop off at the Tower Bar and Grill, order two Long Neck Buds a piece at happy hour. And then JUST like a happily married couple, we'd just sit there and stare at the wall without saying a word to each other.
Small world? Jim is a decade younger than I am, but it turns out he was born 2 miles from where I was born just Southeast of downtown LA.
When he is about ten, Jim's family moves to Seal Beach, which is where I moved right out of college. So we were probably both there at the same time...just hanging out with different gangs.
Turned out at the time this was all revealed, Jim's brother was living in a Seal Beach apartment less than two blocks away from where I lived for four years.
Jim was a wildlife photographer before getting into TV. I can't tell you how many times he'd stop in the middle of a field, put all of his gear down, so he could run down a snake. I don't know if he still does that kind of thing.
So I was just noticing that I've got over 12 thousand images stored here since going digital.
I figure if I'm going to share them all with you I need to start now!
And pay attention 'cause there'll be a test.
Hey you! It's me Peggy! HOW MANY?
12,432 to be exact!
YOU GOTTA be KIDDIN'? Nope.
Oh, I probably won't show them all, and hey, they won't all be on the test?
Know these women up here? Really? You don't?
Well let me get back to that in a minute.
I'd say most people cherish those pictorial moments when they've been captured with a star athlete, a President, a movie star. Not Me.
Here's the picture going up on my mantle. I'd rather be captured as friend of those behind the scenes, the ones that MAKE IT HAPPEN. In this case, THE PRODUCERS.
Wasn't it General Douglas Mac Arthur, who said to congress as he was being booted out of military, " Old producers never die, they just produce something else?"
Okay, it wasn't producers, (rather soldiers) but it also wasn't Mac Arthur who coined the sentence. And I don't see him out there "fessin' up." I think my artful editing is less of a crime than his lack of attribution.
But, ah, I'm getting off message.
I heard Harry Smith on the CBS morning show proclaim this to be the 40th anniversary of the work cubicle. Ironic, since that's where I found the two women you see up there. They were hard at work in their cubicles at High Noon Productions.
The woman on my left? Glenna Stacer-Sayles. On my right? Muffy Steinhoff. They are both PRODUCERS in case my foreshadowing fell short of the target.
I worked with both of them in news back in the 80's and 90's. I knew Glenna when she was just Stacer, and Muffy Steinhoff was nee Shumway. (I'm not kiddin when I say they haven't aged a bit, certainly not in my perception.)
This picture is a second TAKE. Just like a producer, Muffy demands a reTAKE because she blinked.
So what are they producing now? That's why I think it's interesting for YOU to see them.
I'll bet a huge percentage of you reading this have seen their work. Food channel freaks? Ever watched "Unwrapped"? Well that's Glenna's nut to crack. Cool Tools on HGTV? That's Muffy's fault.
We had a wonderful time picking our way through the past. Isn't it amazing how much hyperbole accompanies reminiscence? We jammed a lot of stories into an hour together.
That's kind of it for now. I just wanted to let you see what a producer looks like. You'll never see their faces on billboards or cabs. That's even though they are a lot better looking than Zero Mostel.
Oh, wait. I'll bet you'd like to see that first take where Muffy blinks.
She is going to slay me. It is ...kind of like when a reporter wants another ten seconds for his or her story?
Oh, some day let me show you the picture of me with my arm around "Flo Jo," and then there's that shot of me by Air Force One where I'm shouting at Nancy Reagan, "Why do you always wear Red?"
OKAY, that's it.
