I Have Seen the Future and It is Young

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Taking a break now as I watch my intro reporting class finish its final exam. I was a feature writer back in the day, and I hated writing bloodless summary lead stories -- straight-ahead old-fashioned news writing, you might call it. Having never had a journalism course and having instead a PhD in English lit, I had neither the aptitude nor the inclination to do that kind of work. I avoided it with a passion, a devious one. It was said of me more than once that in a typical Robertson story you don't get the nut graf till after the jump, and sometimes not even then.

Sometimes never a nut graf -- but such writing, such intonation, such elaboration, such insemination, such .... That's who I was. I did it well, to my own taste anyway.

But over the years in my introductory reporting class I have increasingly emphasized the 250-word news story with a summary lead. Dare I say it? I teach what some might call the inverted pyramid. And why is that? It's not a style I liked doing, nor one I much enjoy teaching.

Well, first it emphasizes the necessity of recognizing what's news -- an arbitrary judgment sure, but necessary because inevitable, and there's nothing gained by assuming we all have the same criteria for what we need to know. Judge not that you be not judged? No. *Judge*. There is gambling in the back room. Always.

I'm saying that in a basic reporting class I want to focus on reporting, on going out and getting it, on not trying to write around your ignorance with flash and charm.

Second, the internet has not produced a wealth of 10,000 word masterpieces of literary journalism -- deep pools into which we sink, we die, we live again -- but a sheen of oily droplets covering the ground and drawing our eye by which I mean the typical web news site is cluttered with one- or two-sentence summaries designed to get us to click through to the longer story. I'm saying the art of the summary lead has become more important in this internet age. It is a useful skill. Who knew?

So know I preach the sermon which was not my own salvation. If I had been required to write quick dry news hits after I fell into magazine writing, I do not think I would have done that good a job, and I would not have had the chance to showcase my own flashy talents and would not have gotten the Chronicle job and would not have been talked about by a local writing friend to that friend's teaching friend and that teaching friend would not have known my name (and the fact I was a working journalist with a PhD) when the job at USF which I now possess came open, and that friend of my friend might not have dredged my name out of his memory as part of his deep desire to stick it to one of the deans here back in the day because that dean was much hated and had his own candidate.

And he would not have recruited me to a job I did not know existed.

What a chain of events. And the prime mover was the fact I didn't know how to write a summary lead, an incompetence that led to the most lovely compensation. Maybe? As I said, deciding what "the truth" is can be pretty arbitrary sometimes.

Anyway, I emphasize the summary lead and the 250-500 word news story, and I threaten the littles with the "100 word line of demarcation" above which I want most of the key facts (though they may reserve one for the kicker). Come to me in feature writing or arts reviewing, I tell them.

There we will feed on honeydew and drink the milk of paradise and wallow in words like a great fat pig.

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Nate Silver Makes Me Feel Better about a 'Compromised' Health Care Bill

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Why Progressives Are Batshit Crazy to Oppose the Senate Bill

Could he be right? He invites critique in his "comments," so I'll keep an eye on that. If gravity can bend light, certainly my hatred for Joe Lieberman can distort my understanding of so complicated an endeavor as health care reform. We are a self-declared right-of-center country.

The kids may change it, but today we have to live with it.

We Buy See's Candy, Which Makes Us People Worth Knowing

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We bought $800 worth of candy yesterday, which is stunning except that my wife is retiring and wants to say Thank You to all those who helped her during her selfless and soul-wearing years at Oakland, and a nice present like a box of See's is a nice gesture and also noticeable enough to be a Not Thank You to those who do not receive them.

The five-pound boxes are good for certain distant family members who would just give away the remaindered coffee table books, which I am too much of a gentleman to look about for when we visit.

I send one such nuclear box to the friend without whom I would never had been tenured: advice, an article idea, the chance to share the authorship of an article. You stood up, my man, and I will thank you until I have rotted every tooth in your family's head.

There are several people at the U who are boxworthy, a noble two pounds worth. Truth is that a one-pound box is just a gesture, and you have to upgrade for it to truly qualify as a gift. It really is good candy, and bad for my math since we always seem to get a box or two too much, and have to humanely dispose of it, a very green thing to do even if it's chocolate.

My Prescription for Health Care Reform

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Prescription? I can't even mount a description of the process or of the possibility of useful change.

What I do of a morning -- now that the semester is winding down and my shirttail is no longer caught in the buzz saw of academic politics, dragging my butt toward pain and suffering -- is tour the liberal blogs. Some of them say that whatever health care reform gets through Congress will be a betrayal of principle and a practical disaster.

And some say just the opposite, that even if it's not "all good," that you'd be surprised how incremental change is good enough, at least in a fallen world. And, of course, some play with the notion that a failed bill would be better than a bad bill, and that "failure" won't be, not in the long term, midterm elections be damned. (Cue the ironic quotation marks.)

Sigh.

I understand it doesn't matter exactly what I think because even though my $500 contribution or my hand-written letter to Nancy Pelosi has some weight, I know just how much weight that is. But I would like to have an informed opinion, if only so I can say, "I understand" and don't have to sit quiet at the table during holiday reunions.

I understand that as in so many things my thoughts on the topic are probably just a manifestation of my disposition. I probably believe in incremental improvement in health care finance and delivery because I tend to believe in incremental improvement as the answer to any big problem. I probably do not despair at the prospect of a flawed bill rather than no bill at all because I expect to find flaws in every useful thing and really don't want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

In short, my views on the topic seem to be a kind of pre-existing condition. I seem to have arrived at a conclusion before actually working my way through the arguments (though I have *toured* the arguments, if you get what I mean). That's one of my goals over holiday break: to fill in the blanks and maybe just maybe decide what I think, not what I feel.

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E. Gets Witty

I have posted less the last two weeks than in time period since I launched this noble blog with a sprightly tune and cracking a magnum of champagne across my head.

Metaphorically.

I've missed it. It really is a public journal, a useful reminder: 1) that no one gives a damn; 2) that still it's nice to be reminded what I was thinking about at the time as the time recedes; 3) that one reason no one gives a damn is that I'm pretty careful to keep it in my pants, "it" meaning anything really personal and "pants" meaning the world of discourse outside this blog.

So I've missed this exercise in compound-complex sentences. It almost seemed as if I was having an argument with myself, and that we had quit talking.

Talk to me, I was saying to myself.

Not till you apologize, I said back.

So I said: Did I say you look fat in that? That's not what I meant. I don't know what I meant.

And I fell into my own arms, and all was forgiven.

You see? Where other than one's own blog can one goof like that!?

I could, of course, write some interesting shit. This is my second and last year as chair. In a work of fiction, that statement would be a bit of nuance -- if followed by, "Chairs usually serve a term of three years."

Nuance (like ripeness) is all.

Oh I'll write more about this in a code that years from now only I can break.

But wait. The post title is "E. Gets Witty." We were talking about Tiger Woods and his bimbo eruption (a phrase students of the Clinton presidency will recall). E. said two funny things. One was that she was waiting patiently for the announcement that Tiger was going into treatment for sex addiction. Which made me laugh, and which prophecy I do not discount, not yet.

The second was more convoluted. I was saying that I was disappointed in Tiger in a very special and personal way. Let us concede that his desire to wander was overwhelming, irresistible right up to the point of inevitable and predetermined. One is still disappointed in what seems to be an inclination for kind of trashy women.

Look, I told E. He could have had quality women, brainy, accomplished women with exciting careers and hectic schedules, mature women of substance where post-coital pillow talk would have approached the level of a graduate-school seminar.

Look E., I said. He could have had women like you (though not specifically you, I said, you being loyal unto death, like a Roman matron).

Oh, E. said. You mean we would now be talking about Tiger and the Cougars.

At which point I laughed and laughed.

Okay, the code talker says one more thing about "things." Imagine coming into a close game as a relief pitcher. And you get bombed. You take some licks. Really, now the game is lost. But your "manager" wants to save arms, to write this one off, to get ready for the next one. So he asks you to stay out there in the service of a hopeless cause, to take the blows, get slapped around, eat up some innings.

And you do.

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A Classic Post from the Past: the Death of Bill Walsh

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Bill Walsh: The Anecdote

One good thing about Bill Walsh's death -- possibly the only good thing when you get down to it -- is that it will reinvigorate certain aspects of my basic reporting class this fall. As Walsh's legend receded in recent years, at least among non-sports fans, the pungency of some of my recollections from my Chronicle days also receded.

Walsh, you see, provided several of my better stories about the pitfalls and the attractions of being a reporter. It was a quarter century ago, sometime in the run up to Walsh's second Super Bowl that I was chosen from among the Chronicle's feature writers to do a "personal" profile of the Great Coach, his life outside of football or before football or above and beyond football.

All this while Walsh prepared for the Super Bowl. I had a deadline. I had no expectation of doing anything in-depth and remarkable given my brief, so I did what you do: I called the Niners PR department and asked them to help me set it up and to point me toward some sources.

They said I could have 15 minutes -- 15 minutes! -- with Walsh, but that as far as pointing me towards friends and family, well no. Walsh was a very private man, the PR person said, and did not like friends and family bothered. Okay, I said, not caring much one way or the other that I did not have his permission to bother family and friends. I was no Woodward, much less a Bernstein, but I knew how to do reporting without some PR person holding my hand. I made some phone calls, talked to some people, got some refusals, got some referrals....

The PR guy called me. You're calling up Walsh's friends, he said. Walsh's friends are calling him because they don't have permission to talk to you, and they know he doesn't like to be talked about. Now back then we did not say Duh! Had we, I could have. Yeah, I did say. I'm doing you know my job. I'm, you know, reporting. At this point, the PR guy started to cooperate, gave me a list of Official Friends, who had been prepped for my call.

The unprepped friends were better interviews. Lesson One, young people.

Second lesson: Not everybody is scared of their daddy. Without the help of the Niners PR department, I tracked down one of Walsh's kids. He shared several stories of a distant father whose interests lay outside the family. I must admit that I was surprised. Lacking a journalism education, I learned the reporter's job in the school of soft knocks at a city magazine, and I had never come across someone so willing to diss a famous daddy who was apparently a nice guy or at least a much nicer guy than most successful coaches, so many of whom give the impression they are on loan from Hitler Youth.

I put some of the son's angst in the final story, but I could have got more of it, I'm guessing.

Had I wanted to write that kind of story.

Lesson Two: I wish I had pressed the kid harder. But having gotten more from him, I don't know how much more of it I would have used. Bill Walsh was no Daddy Dearest (a reference that implies the mold that covers most of my references and war stories), just a father who sometimes put career before family, at least in the eyes of his son. The older I get, the more I realize how much friction we create as we move through life and the more I realize that such details aren't exactly a revelation. So maybe I put just enough about father and son in the piece.

Lesson Three: But the more you know the better. As I tell my students, fill up your notebook and then decide. (And be careful what you tell your editor because then you lose control. Some editors are real bastards.) Having it doesn't mean you have to use it. But go get it. The PR guy still declined to put me in touch with Walsh family members -- that lust for "privacy," remember. I not only tracked down the son, I tracked down Walsh's dad somewhere in Southern California. This took some work. I got the old man on the line, made my pitch -- I think I said something like "... doing a story and would like to talk to you..." -- and the old man said, voice quavery, "He's a wonderful boy" and hung up. I did that thing the textbooks say to do. I called back and said that we had been cut off.

Well, he hung up again.

Lesson Four: Obsession is fun. Everybody was telling me that Walsh was a very private man, but no one could tell me why. He just was. I began to wonder if .... I will tell you all, friends of the blog. I have come to tell you all. I decided Walsh was either adopted or illegitimate or born a little "too soon," if you know what I mean. I obtained his birth certificate. I forget what I had to do to get it. I've long since forgotten my methods, but quite legally I got a copy, and it showed nothing unusual. He was born when he said he was and to the people his official bio said he had been born to. If they had been married for less than the requisite period before his birth, that I could not find out. I wouldn't have used that fact if I had been able to determine it. I'm almost absolutely certain I wouldn't. I don't think I would have used anything I found out of an embarrassing nature concerning Walsh's origins.

Anyway, the editors would have killed it.

But I wanted to know.

Lesson Five: A majority of American males are failed jocks. Male newspaper reporters reflect the general population in that particular. That means when you drop a general assignment reporter into a sports story the danger exists the reporter will want to seem more knowledgeable than he actually is, to buddy up, to show some cred. So it was with me during my 15 minutes with the great coach himself. I wasted valuable time asking football-related questions that the regular sportswriters had asked earlier and better.

What I should have done is say: I played high school football and am a fan of football at all levels. That means from your point of view I know *Fuck All* about football so we are not going there. I should have pressed him and pressed him more about what really did seem a privacy fetish -- and what about your son? -- and if he threw me out, all to the better.

Lesson Five and a Half, Young People: You'll become friends with a famous subject about once in a million years. And when it happens you should ashamed. Once every two million years is about right. Story short: I wasted his time. I got nothing.

Lesson Six: Oh there was perhaps one more little reason why my 15 minutes of infamy proved so useless and my good questions somehow didn't get asked. I almost never taped. Never have. Too much trouble. Made me lazy. Note taking makes clear the degree to which you are asking good questions because you are either doodling or racing to keep up. But with the Great Walsh I decided to tape, figuring everything was going to be gold. (I've said before that nothing was. A waste of his time and -- much worse -- a waste of mine.)

Maybe half way through the interview I notice the tape recorder has stopped. My face goes full spectrum, a real rainbow coalition. I open the record, pull on the cassette and out comes a veritable skein of tape. It looked like a taffy pull. Yeah, maybe so here's another reason for a failed interview.

You should have seen the look on Walsh's face. I should have said: You have a reputation for not suffering fools gladly. I see that is true. And so on and so on.... What a recovery I should have made, could have made, didn't actually make.

Thus, a nightmare interview lives on in dreams. It wasn't exactly a dropped pass in the end zone, but so it felt at the time. Today? An anecdote, a story to be told over drinks, a reminder that 90 percent of life is showing up. But only 90 percent.

4 comments:

Greg Pabst said...

My trail crossed Walsh's in 1992 when he returned to Stanford and I was Marketing Director at KFRC radio - and we had Stanford football and basketball on the air.
The coach had just come through a bad patch, working "color" on NFL games for NBC (I believe). He got poor reviews - justifiably - and wanted little else to do with the "media," which, it turns out, kind-of included us.
Naturally, we wanted to use his voice on promo spots for the games.
We asked. He dodged.
KFRC had a mobile studio, a complete recording and broadcast facilty built into a recreational vehicle. I suggested to the boss we take the mountain to Mohammed.
I called my contact in the Stanford Athletic Director's office and scheduled a live promotional broadcast for Morning Drive and, oh by the way, we'll be there when morning practice finishes and could we get Bill for a few minutes and, sure, I'll Fax you the "drops" (lines) we'd like him to read.
So Tim Jordan, our dazzlingly talented production manager and I get the keys and the morning team and head south on 101 early on a beautiful fall day in Palo Alto.
A pretty good show. Interviewed some kids from the band (on suspension at the time for some kind of hi-jinx which I don't remember) some other Stanford people that I don't recall either and the cheer leaders.
My intern, a good looking kid - son of a friend of mine - and a student at Davis allows cheer-leader-wise that "they really aren't that cute." I have to explain that they get to Stanford by being the smartest cheer leaders in America. I don't think he got it.
Show finishes, the morning team disappears like the morning fog and we drive the Sturgeon (as the white RV was known in the engineering department) across campus to the practise field and Bill Walsh.
I snag him as the post-practisce team heads for the locker room. "Hey, Coach, we gotta record a few comments from you for the radio. Take about ten minutes."
Deer in the headlights eyes. Lips mumbling "I got a lot of things to do."
Me, too.
I steer him into the mobile, tape's already loaded, he and Jordan sit down, I'm punching the buttons.
I've been in uncomfortable positions myself and witnessed the same for others many times. But this is one of the worst ones I've ever seen. Poor guy was blowing the read, sweating (it was pretty warm in there and we'd closed the windows against ambient noise) and visibly in somw kind of pain.
We got what we needed, but this was clearly a man who was out of his zone.
Let me suggest that Bill Walsh was only comfortable when he was the "The Genius." And the few minutes I spent with him - while he was reading copy I wrote - was not a Genius moment.
Possibly, he wasn't a genius father. Certainly, he wasn't a genius behind a microphone.
Some of his former players talked on the news last night about being Bill's "men." Joe Montana said Walsh was the most significant person in his life.
I wonder how Joe's Dad felt about that?
Joe also moved his family from Woodside to Napa so that his son could conveniently go the famous-for-having-a-great-football "program" DeLaSalle High School. Sounds as if the virus is passing down the generations.
Bill Walsh was a great coach, everybody agrees. And the choices he made were apparently to be the best at his chosen vocation, above anything and everything else in his life.
Some of us do that. Some of us don't. Some of us can't.
Read the life of Alexander the Great (and anyone else called The Great), Napolean Bonaparte, Teresa of Avila, Ignatius of Loyola, Joe DiMaggio - and I suspect, William Shakespeare.
Add Bill Walsh to the list.
Every one of them made a difference in the world at large by becoming the best of their own narrowed world. And we seem to have needed them all.
I'm sure not one of them would have tolerated a tape jam in the middle of an interview.
And I'm also sure none of them would have been good company at dinner.
So it goes...
Greg Pabst

2:09 PM

david silver said...

wow - excellent post and excellent list of lessons.

i like this one: "Having it doesn't mean you have to use it. But go get it."

and nice comment pabst.

3:38 PM

....J.Michael Robertson said...

Pabst knows everyone. Pabst had tea and scones with Stalin where they swapped "bad date" stories about Madame Curie.

4:37 PM

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Kitten Countdown is Underway

Less than a year after we were married, E. brought home our first cat conveniently packaged in kitten form . I had told her I wanted a cat, and one of her junior high students was redistributing the family wealth, their cat having gone all supply side: Birth 'em and hope someone will come.

And for 40 years after we had cats or you could say cats had us because we are fiercely loyal cat owners, willing to spend money to keep them alive. But after Oliver died almost a year ago -- died in bed with me, pressed agains my side -- we have been catless.

We concluded E.'s mom might not be with us much longer, and her final illness would mean weeks in Florida and 60-hour weeks at work to enable E. to go to Florida as needed. That wouldn't leave much time for kitten nuturing and kitten bonding, and I wanted E. to be at the center of what will probably be our last great Gathering of the Cats.

And so it was, and so E.'s mom died in September. And now E. is about to retire. It's kitten time, two of them, I think, and their momcat, too, because I have a sentimental bourgeois aversion to kittens saved while mom is euthanized.

January, probably, after the holidays. We preview the moment.

Why I Keep It in the Fairway (And Never Out of Bounds)

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E. thinks that Tiger Woods probably has been slipping around, and after a couple of belts (alcoholic) his wife gave him a couple of belts (clubwise), and the drama spilled out into the yard, which is a phenomenon shared by mansion and trailer park.

E. figures Woods' wife used a nine iron. E. is no golfer, but she understands a driver might have killed him. The point was to punish, maybe a little light maiming, not homicide.

If I go bad, I assume E. will pelt me with doughnuts, an act more contemptuous than injurious unless the missiles are really stale. But I'm not complacent. E. still has a strong arm and a keen eye, and all these years with no reason to exercise them.

A Classic Post from Yesteryear: Hitching Home for Thanksgiving

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Thumb Riders

This is the day before Thanksgiving, and I remember certain days before Thanksgiving more vividly than most iterations of the actual holiday. All of those recollections come from college days when I was a student at Whooping Jesus Bible College in the Indiana barrens, location as metaphor but also literally far away from my home in Old Virginny.

God, I was a homeboy. The notion of not going home for Thanksgiving was painful. Thus, I cut afternoon classes those long-ago Wednesdays and started hitchhiking.

The goal was Cincinnati, Ohio. At Cincinnati I picked up the midnight train that would take me across West Virginia and on into western Virginia -- between which wonderful place and the feuds and intermarriages of West Virginia we felt a great gulf existed -- where nestled my hometown, Roanoke, "the Star City of the South."

So they called it, and so I believed it.

The midnight train, you see, was free. My dad was a yard engineer for the Norfolk and Western Railway, and I had a pass. But the train rides are not the story, not today. It was the hitchhiking.

Do kids hitchhike today, what with murderers and perverts everywhere? I was much impressed and a little dismayed that my parents were so little concerned about my falling victim to murderers and perverts -- but if they weren't, who was I to worry?

Thinking back, I don't recall making a destination sign, you know, the ones on cardboard held chest high, garnished with a smile. I'm not saying I didn't, but I can't remember doing so.

What I do remember is that I always wore my three-piece corduroy suit. It seemed to me that suit made me look wholesome, benign, even conversational, that is, with something interesting to say. (I did not. But I was a good listener.)

I also carried a huge old brown striped suitcase that was either a gift from my Aunt Odell (who was a Depression pack rat) or something inherited from my Uncle Dumps (who whacked his head when he ran his car off the road and spent the next 20 years shuffling around the VA in Salem, Virginia).

I filled the suitcase with dirty laundry to take home to mama, convinced she would be glad to see it. I still remember that when someone stopped to give me a ride I felt it incumbent to run toward the car, thus showing gratitude and forestalling second thoughts on the part of the driver. How that clunky suitcase dragged through and bounced across the gravel.

All this was before the Interstate system was as widespread as it is now. One grabbed one's rides on the two-lanes that bridged the gaps in the interstates. Lots and lots of gravel.

I always got to Cincinnati in plenty of time, sometimes before dark even, and had one or two mild adventures, but none involved gorgeous widows twice my age -- the gold standard of hitchhiking fantasy for a good Christian boy back in the day -- and I will not talk of those mild adventures because the writerly energy has started to wane, and I have not yet expressed the point of undertaking this long and wandering furrow in the thin soil of this blog.

I am writing this because I canceled my Advanced Reporting class today and am still at home in my bathrobe with our crippled cat on my lap. I canceled my class because at WJBC afternoon classes on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving were never canceled and, indeed, I think my chemistry teacher may well have carried out his threat to dock the grade of anyone cutting his class.

Such penalties were school policy.

Which reminds me of the semester the school said that all the top honor roll students did not have to go to class if they didn't want to, since the school figured that all the top honor roll students would go to class anyway. But we didn't. And the school reversed itself.

Well there you go.

Anyway, that's why I cancel afternoon classes on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. There it is, kids. Sometimes I really am looking at you. But a lot of the time I'm looking in the rear view mirror at my own past, holding onto it, refusing to give it up, refusing to let it go dim, reliving it, savoring it, all the pleasures and all the pains that -- it turned out -- were just the tip of the iceberg.

House with Curly Columns (One Step Closer to a New Paint Job)

If you click it, it gets big.

E. Says Something Smart about the Portrayal of Conrad Hilton on Mad Men

I was saying I really liked the way the actor who portrayed the hotel magnate during the show's most recent season portrayed him, and E. said that his work was both exaggerated and nuanced, which quality is not a contradiction in terms.

She said he was plausible -- dangerous, crude but seductive, willful, spoiled by his own success, certainly manipulative and finally unreliable if by reliable you mean enduring emotional commitment. In some ways, Hilton is like Betty Draper, E. said.

Foxy lady. (E., not Betty Draper.)

Footnote: The actor who plays Hilton is named Chelcie Ross. I've seen him a lot -- forgive me Father for I have wasted time on trifles -- but I remember him as the "hard" Notre Dame coach in "Rudy." I never cared for him before, but he is charismatic/repulsive in Mad Men, and that's an ice cream flavor I like.

At the Football Game with Pat, Brad and Peter: We Love Our Redwoods (Who Should Really Be Named the Mute Inglorious Miltons)

which is a reference to Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard for those of you playing at home

Suspect? Suspect, My A**!

Image by Okinawa Soba via Flickr

What I emailed my reporting students:

I'm sorry. The 'suspect' didn't do it. If the suspect did it, then the suspect isn't a suspect. They don't even *have* a suspect!!!! See, the problem is one of sourcing. The cops don't want to keep saying, "The person who said he was robbed said...." They also don't want to say "the robber," which would suggest they believe the person who reported the robbery. So "suspect" becomes shorthand for "the person who did the robbery if in fact what the person who reported the alleged crime told us is actually true." It's shorthand. But *it's still a stupid use of language*

-----Original Message-----
From: USFconnect Message [mailto:pleasedonotreply@usfca.edu]
Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2009 8:40 AM

To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: Public Safety Bulletin

On Monday, 11/16/09, at approximately 1 pm, a USF student was walking westbound on the north side of Turk St., near the School of Education, when she was approached from behind by an unknown suspect. The suspect pressed an object into her back and demanded the student's money. The student gave him a $20 bill and the suspect fled. The suspect told the victim not to turn around so there is no description of the suspect.

The incident has been reported to the SFPD. USF Public Safety will increase patrol in the area of this incident.

Individuals are reminded to always be aware of their surroundings. Wearing headphones to listen to music and texting or talking on cell phones in public places can be a major distraction. These activities limit a person's ability to remain alert.

What the Cat Promises, the Cat Delivers. Now, in its Network Premiere....

Image by *CQ* via Flickr

Bob Wieder's 'The Little Kenyan Boy'

Said the pros to me, "Barak Obama,
It's sheer insanity, Barak Obama,
To seek the presidency, Barak Obama,
So young, so ebony Barak Obama,
Barak Obama, Barak Obama...

When I won, some said, "Barak Obama,
Glenn Beck swears you're a Red, Barak Obama.
Your health care hopes seem dead Barak Obama.
You should have stayed in bed Barak Obama,
Barak Obama, Barak Obama..."

Salonistas say, "Barak Obama,
Long live your White House stay, Barak Obama.
We’re with you come what may, Barak Obama,
Let’s kill Glenn Beck, okay? Barak Obama,
Barak Obama, Barak Obama...

Peace on Earth to those who smile when they say,
Barak Obama

Last Sunday's Poetry Salon

Image via Wikipedia

If your prime criterion for a prime poetry salon is remembering such with pleasure, and revisiting that memory more than once, last Sunday's evening in the homespace of Gayle and Richard was indeed primo.

The theme was music. Yours truly -- shyly; urged on by a loving crowd -- read Browning's "A Toccata of Galuppi's." (I am a modest man, but I have to admit I fell in love with myself all over again.) Then Gayle read a poem by some Southern poet, one "Bo" De Lare -- never heard of himself but the rest of the gang nodded knowingly.

Our guestess of honor Tashery flipped the deal. Instead of reading something of her own, she played a recording of a piece of hers that won a Pushcart prize some time ago, the piece read by Edi Gathegi of "Twilight" fame at a Pushcart Press benefit in June. (A very vigorous *sexy* reading -- in the spirit of my Browning.)

First half finished with Paula and Kate, to the background of some jazz licks, doing a contrapuntal improvisatorial reading of Leonard Feather (jazz legend writer) interviewing Dr. Yusuf Lateef (jazz legend jazzer) in which Doc Lateef came off as nutty but fun: Don't call it jazz, he said. Call it Autophysiopsychic music, he said.

Which we did. Several times.

Now all this was wondrous, indeed, but then the Lady E. upped the ante right up to the empyrean. Inspired by worry that we weren't actually going to sing anything during an evening devoted to music she prevailed upon our host to print out some copies of "Amazing Grace." To lead off the second half of the night, she shared some stories, and some tears, about growing up in Africa and hearing the locals sing "Amazing Grace" a Capella in the missionary chapel her father built, and of her mother's recent death and of the part that wonderful old hymn played in her funeral.

There wasn't a dry eye in the house, or in my face anyway. And then we sang it all together.

Hostess Gayle than read an excerpt from her current novel in which the principals attend a macabre musical performance in the catacombs of Paris, a beautifully written bit that left me more than a little uneasy about her heroine's future romantic entanglements.

(Just occurred to me! That was the point! Oh the emotional sinuosity of powerful prose.)

Troubadour Mort stroked his mighty guitar and sang us a Dylan song -- sang it wonderfully -- and then led us in singing "As I Went Down in the River to Pray."

Damn, people. We were *good*.

To preserve the delicate mood, Bobby W. led us in singing scandalous blasphemous parodies of hitherto unsoiled Christmas carols.

Well, of course, once more I was in *tears* but this time not the good kind.

But I have to admit that his parody of "The Little Drummer Boy" with rum-pum-pum-pum replaced by Barack Obama (Barack Obama) has redeemed, nay elevated, the original. And if Bob W. sends me a copy, it will receive its Net debut right here.

All good things must end. Brother Jon read two Dylan poems -- Dylan, the One, not Dylan the Zimmerman -- "Fern Hill" and .... The second was an old man's poem, or Thomas's young-man vision of being an old man, quite an inconvenient state, and *being* an old man, my memory washes it off. (There. All gone.)

Jon read them beautifully, though. It was really quite a special salon, which makes two in a row. I think we shall crank one up here come early February. Needs a theme, though. Suggestions?

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Masters of Foreplay...

... is the motto of Team Viagra.

Now let's see if the Google search worm takes notice.

Yesterday in Journalism Ethics We Discussed Lou Grant, Season One, Episode Five

Image via Wikipedia

Reporter friend whose name I reserve:

Pretty good discussion yesterday! Nothing earthshaking, but the kids did note many of the “dated” elements – Billie’s flirting; the “patriarchal” newsroom – and their possible “ethical” significance -- and we had quite a good time talking about how the presentation of the text – the casting; the direction – pushed us toward taking Billie’s side. We talked about how different out reaction might be if the Nazi had been played by Jonah Hill, whom I assume you enjoyed in Superbad…

Dig the opinions of my other experts. I said you were the only one of the four who was not pretty much constantly drunk during the workday.

Ehe Education Reporter

I think the issue here is less about the ethics of the case than in how reckless they were in ignoring the Jewish Nazi's threats to kill her and maybe take others down ("I have nothing to lose," he said in the newspaper office.) They should have gotten the police or FBI involved to watch this guy, if not the entire terrorist organization.

But I guess that's a 21st century perspective. (Also, Billy's coy 'li'l ol' me' behavior at the beginning would never wash today.)

Strictly on the run/don't run question, sure they had to run the story. Not only was it a great tale -- which your crazy Jewish Nazi always will be-- but it's kind of like ol' Lou said at the end: It's a valuable lesson in how hateful behavior comes about. (Or words to that effect.) That's important for people to understand before terrorism gets out of control. So my view is that it would have been more irresponsible to sit on it than to run it, despite the suicide.

But getting back to my earlier point, they got off easy. He could have taken them all down. Btw, there was a real-life example of this, sorta. Tanya Schevitz was covering the hell out of UC in about 2006 or 7 when the UC chancellor (a woman...can't remember her name) hurled herself off a building in SF. Poor Tanya actually heard the words "you killed her."

The Columnist

Watched the Lou Grant episode, pleasantly surprised to see the reporter and boss meet in a bar. Ah, good times. As to ethics, I didn’t see an ethical question. The reporter played it by the book mostly. She asked if it was all right to use her tape recorder to a friendly interviewer, didn’t mention it to the Nazi, used the old, “accurate quotes” explanation when he brought it up. A minor sin and how business is done. The episode showed the work involved in a story, while avoiding the boredom, fear and discomfort of talking to strangers. A minor sin. The Jewish-Nazi guy is a legitimate news story, what people do with it is up to them. Nobody knows the future.

So, I don’t see an ethical dilemma. It’s more of a made-up TV ethical dilemma.

The Prize Winner

Enjoyed the opportunity to view the old Lou Grant episode and maybe contribute a “true blue” journalist’s opinion of the ethical question(s) raised in the TV production. No question that the newspaper was justified, and duty bound, to run the Striker story. Young Striker’s fatal destiny began the day he rejected his Jewish birthright for the ideological hatred of Adolph Hitler, a vile, deluded murderer sworn to eradicate the Jewish race--- his people, his family, his heritage. From my perspective the paper’s profile on Striker and his gang of crazies did not drive him to self destruction. The man’s horrific guilt of inflicting pain on his family, and the Jewish community worldwide, took him over the edge. After all, here was a man who was a, “clear thinker”, intelligent, grounded, according to a former teacher. Exposure by the media, highlighted by Striker being a Jew, prompted the man, I believe, to grasp the realization of a series of unforgivable choices. Hitler did not have the right idea. Neither did Striker in aligning with the architect of the Holocaust. Good reporters should not get weepy if a misguided, guilt-driven young man ends his life because the beacon of truth found him in a dark lonely crowd idolizing violence against selective humanity.

The Executive Editor

I parse the dilemma in two steps:

1. Before you decide to publish, you weigh how public the person is and what his danger to society is. If the guy has been the public face of the American Nazi party and an out-there KKK member, then he has made himself public and his politics and background are relevant and fair game. If he is a closeted Nazi and KKK member, and otherwise a nice guy, his politics and background and personal beliefs are none of your business. But if the guy is a private person, and you have clear evidence that he is a serial killer, child molester or otherwise presents a clear and present danger, then you must take action (perhaps going to the cops rather than publishing a story, but that's another discussion).

2. Assuming you decide there is a story and it is worthy of publication, you ask yourself: What is the worst that could happen? If you can live with that worst, then publish. If you can't, then consider your alternatives. Among those might be: Should you be in the reporting/editing business? Another alternative is to make the information public is a less threatening way: Slip the item to your gossip columnist so he/she can print a "blind item" that won't identify you or, directly, the Nazi/KKK fellow. Or, these days, post anonymously on the Web...

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• David Lloyd, 75, Dies; Wrote 'Chuckles' Episode (nytimes.com)

Oh. Last Night We Had Our Baseball Banquet.

I had grappa and absinthe the way one is supposed to. Didn't get it on video, though.

There's a Poetry Salon Today, At an Undisclosed Location

Consider it speakeasy art. I can obtain entrance for selected friends. The theme is music.

Say Groucho sent you.

Bullet Points

My word. I calculate it's been months -- nay, years -- since I went six days without posting. Certainly many a week I've filled the air with many a "faux" post -- a link, a jape, a picture of a cat -- but like the shark I *have* kept moving, and thus the blog kept breathing. (It's alive. It's alive.) So I have let you down, Friends of the Blog.

I rather think my lack of posts means the world has been too much with me, so my silence is symptom. (Say that three times fast.) Let's reverse engineer this puppy: I'll post as if all were well, and the semblance may become the thing.

A bulleted week:

* Big doin's at the U. The administration has announced that our habitual Monday-Wednesday/Tuesday-Thursday teaching sked will now become TR/MWF. The idea is eliminating underuse of classrooms on Friday. I don't think the new scheduling works for a lot of reasons, and we don't like it for a lot of reasons -- though the two sets of reasons are not necessarily the same. More to come, dear reader.

* I have a cold. Like Frank Sinatra.

* E. misses her mom.

* I went biking by the bay (try to say that... oh never mind) with Big Pat Daugherty on a brisk fine day, weather crisp enough to fool you into thinking the next day would be crisper still and the next crisper still, until: winter cold. But that's not what happens here. Just a whisper of winter but, like Godot, it never comes.

* I had a nice visit with Eric Mar's legislative analyst Cassandra Costello (a former student) and Daniel Homsey, who works for SF getting neighborhoods tanned, fit and ready to solve their own problems. He had some great ideas about getting USF journalism students out in the neighborhoods around us. A light bulb flashes in my head: hyperlocal news.

* And why don't you welcome me back as a potent poster by watching the episode of Lou Grant I've linked to below. I've asked the journalism ethics class to watch it as prep for Monday discussion of Ethical Dilemmas!!

Richard Has Started Up the Leaf Lottery for This Year

The Commissioner's Letter

The Leaf Lottery is back. A review of the rules

* Email back the date you think the last leaf will fall from the crab apple tree in our front yard

* Costs US$1 to enter. Winner takes all.

* Must send your date by 11-16-2009

* Last possible date is Valentine's Day, 2/14/2010

* If someone else has your date already, you can pick another Commissioner Impressions Many leaves have fallen and lots are yellow, but the green ones look strong.

Leaf History


2003 first blossom not recorded last leaf fell on 11/16/2003 no lottery

2004 first blossom not recorded last leaf fell on 11/19/2004 no lottery

2005 first blossom not recorded last leaf fell 2/13/2006
lottery winner Reah jackpot $8 Reah had last date allowed some leaves still on tree on Valentine's Day

2006 first blossom 4/1/2006 last leaf fell 12/26/2006 lottery winner Reah jackpot $9 Leaf Dominatrix wins second in a row winning pick made from Malawi donates 2 years winnings to 2007 pot

2007 first blossom 3/16/2007 last leaf fell 2/7/2008 lottery winner Jennifer winning pick made from Dubai jackpot $13 Dubai champ donates winnings (including prior years) to Oakland Children's Hospital

2008 first blossom 3/11/2008 last leaf fell 12/25/2008 no lottery

2009 first blossom 3/7/2009

I'm Teaching Arts Reviewing in the Spring: A Nice Exercise from the Last Time I Taught It

Just Feeling Very Quiet, Very Peaceful

Image via Wikipedia

Quite a lot has gone on this week, events and explorations of one kind or another, but every time I've sat down to write, I've concluded:

Oh that's nobody's business. Interesting. From whence comes this sudden desire for privacy? Blogger ego tells blogger that what blogger thinks is everybody's business, or should be, since blogger's life is illustrative, microcosmic, fascinating in its particularity and its generality, for are there not lessons in both varieties of experience?

But there's obviously plenty of ego in the sudden notion I should not be sharing since it assumes someone is paying attention!! (Two exclamation points. How many things deserve two exclamation points? The U.S. Constitution? The Ten Commandments?)

I graded my ethics midterm. That's between me and the students. I took reporting class to San Francisco City Hall. The things I could tell you about Supervisor Eric Mar (but won't). Pat and I took our weekly bike ride. (The proverbial fly on the wall would have been left far behind.)

I'm suddenly hoarding my trivia. I don't deserve the name of blogger.

Augmented Reality

Football Memories

Someone just called this to my attention. If I knew then what I know now: more time in the weight room.

One-Word Wit

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

nihilarian

PRONUNCIATION:

(nih-i-LAR-ee-uhn)

MEANING:

noun: One who does useless work.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin nihil (nothing).

USAGE:

"You may find yourself worrying that you're turning into a nihilarian."
Sian Prior; Ineffable; The Age (Melbourne, Australia); Dec 16, 2002.

A Remarkable Picture of Chimpanzees Grieving (Perhaps)

I include the link because the photo was pointed out to me by my sister, who learned of it from her daughter-in-law who is curator of mammals at the Knoxville zoo.

Odd how sometimes the pointing out -- I personally want *you* to see *this* -- frames the experience and makes it resonate. But the photo does make you wonder about the degree to which animals (the ones who aren't us) feel and think.

Lake Merritt Boathouse Restaurant is a Work in Progress

Image by marymactavish via Flickr

Last month we had a meal at Oakland's own brand new Lake Merritt Boathouse restaurant, which they call the Lake Chalet, a nomenclature a little too Alpine for me, but what do I know from marketing?

Wonderful view. Tasty food. Very slow service.

(But they're learning, we thought.)

Today E. and I walked around the beautiful lake itself. Full of pleasure in ourselves, the city, the beauty of the day, the heterogeneity of those who walked with us -- it ain't Alaska, Sis Palin, where the true darkness is your own heart -- we felt we deserved a treat and thus descended on the restaurant's outdoor dining area.Which was packed. Every table filled save one, which we grabbed.

Our vaguely hipster waiter did not inspire confidence:

And also a pork sandwich.

Drinkin' what with that?

Lemonade.

And what to eat?

Pork sandwich.

Potato or pasta salad?

Pasta.

And what kind of sandwich was that?

Pork. Pork sandwich. Sandwich made with pork.

That was E.'s order. I wanted the shrimp poor boy, which the waiter did get his mind around, so tightly around it that he brought us two of them. Us being us we kept it without complaint. It was pretty good.

But when we went to get the bill -- in no hurry to arrive, but I blame the mindlessness of paper -- E. did point out the mistake to the waiter since the poor boys were cheaper than the elusive pork sandwich. Ineptitude is one thing, but chicanery is another.

Our harried hipster removed the second poor boy from our bill: Hurrah! And then he charged us for four drinks rather than two. Which we pointed out and which he corrected.

I tipped him nicely anyway, but E. demanded I tip him grandly, which (bless me) I did, since I suppose sometimes I am a little tight-fisted, and I am sensitive to her opinion of me. But this time I hadn't been tight-fisted in the first place, so the new tip was nonsensically large, as if we were apologizing for complaining.

Oh well. It's a lovely restaurant. And they really are learning, or trying to.

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Arnie's Anti-Paparazzi Law in Toto

CA Anti-Paparazzi Law