New Year's Resolutions

Ok, I don't make New Year's resolutions. Sure, every year I intend to eat a little better -- not that I eat bad -- very little red meat, virtually nothing fried, no baked goods to speak of (I really only eat bread where there are fresh tomatoes for sandwiches -- but a little better. And I intend to get to aerobics more than twice a week. But, inevitably, when I decide to get to aerobics an extra time a week, the car blows up or something. You think I'm kidding? I've had things break in my cars that I would have sworn don't really exist. And, I intend to call random family members more often. Which lasts for a couple of weeks. And, I only call the random family members I really like. Which doesn't count, does it? But, the point is, I don't write down resolutions. Making that list sets you up for failure. I don't believe in being set up for failure. We can fail enough without assuring it ahead of time. Happy New Year. And New Decade.

To Sir With Love

Father Frank is what we called him. Not to his face, of course. In class we called him Mr. Militano, because that's what you called teachers, especially back then. But he was so much more to his students than any other teacher. He was that teacher whose classroom was always the meeting place for kids after school or before school, or whenever we could be there. And there are times, even today, more than 40 years after the junior year American Literature class at Jefferson Township High School, when I am still that high school girl with hair nearly to my waist and paisley dresses that just barely met the dress code, writing probably very bad poetry, deep inside. Sometimes I just don't feel any older and I remember those days so well. I always loved to read, but Frank Militano taught me to love literature. He taught us the standard curriculum of junior English: American Nobel laureates, Harper Lee, Thorton Wilder, Robert Frost -- not the cutesy Frost of "Stopping by Woods," the surprisingly deep and cutting Frost of "Home Burial" and "Fire and Ice." But in his hands, the standard curriculum was far from mundane. Our class discussion were intense. No one's contribution was unimportant. No student was unimportant. Macbeth is the Shakespeare play juniors all read in those days and he had us perform scenes for each other and really understand that Lady Macbeth was really just a teenager, too. So much of what I learned about putting words on paper, I learned in that classroom from that wonderful teacher. And so much more. We could talk to him about anything. Many of us returned on college vacations, to thank him and to tell him how he prepared us not just for college English classes, but also for the new life we were discovering. We always knew we could talk to him. The essence of a great teacher, the reason great teachers should be paid as much or more than great doctors or scientists, is the ability to connect with every student, every day. And those students never forget. Which is why, when my mother called me yesterday to tell me Frank Militano had died, I was once again that 16-year-old in that classroom and I felt such a deep pain in my heart. He was a religious man and I know he is still that great teacher, watching over all his former students. Goodbye, Father Frank. This is my way of writing a thank you across the sky.

Death Comes for the Curmudgeon

Martin O'Shea died this week. A self-proclaimed curmudgeon, Martin dedicated the last years of his life to keep government honest and open. He attended municipal meetings like some people attend hockey games, but refused to be called a "gadfly." His only agenda was to make sure local government obeyed its own laws. The Sunshine Law, known formally as the Open Public Meetings Act, and the Open Public Records Act, were so important to Martin that he spent hours and hours of his time and much of his own money to keep municipal governing bodies following them. Martin filed lawsuits when necessary. He wrote letters, spoke at meetings and occasionally chased council persons toward their back rooms demanding they continue to meet in public. Many people paid attention to what he did, but many others did not. Some of those who did not benefited greatly from his actions. Sometimes they realized that and sometimes they didn't. It didn't matter to Martin. He was working for the people whether they knew it or not and whether they liked it or not. Martin didn't play well with others, but those of us who called or emailed him frequently have lost a true friend.

The Age of Ignorance

Just how stupid are we these days? It's bad enough some idiots think the point is not to do something worthwhile and possibly become well-known as a side effect. They think the point of life is to be on TV regardless of what they do or how dumb they look while they're doing it. The worst thing is that people actually keep reading about it and watching the "news." Those two gate crashers at the White House were just the most well-dressed of the recent folks who haven't a clue what fame is all about. I thought the sari was a nice touch, didn't you? As for that American Idol loser who has no sense of decorum and could use make-up tips from Alice Cooper, the sooner his 15 minutes of fame are over the better. He's proof you can have talent and still ruin it by acting like a fool.

Confessions of a Geek

Ok, I admit it. I'm such a geek. It was brought home to me on a visit to the Liberty Science Center. I must have said "cool" about 80,000 times. First, we got to see part of a real-time kidney transplant -- sure it was a little icky, but it was amazing. Then, we went to the Imax theater to watch natural disasters. I said to my companion volcanoes are my favorite natural disasters. She said "I wan't aware you had one." Yeah, some people don't have a favorite natural disaster. I find that odd. The film was about the volcano on Monserrat -- major pyroclastic flows. Then an earthquake and tornado. We also toured the microbe lab where kids can extract DNA and little ones can learn about germs. And the "eat or be eaten" exhibit, including the world's most poisonous snake. The Science Center turns normally sophisticated adults into little kids. And geeks like me. . .well, we're already little kids.

Tweety birds

It's gone too far. I, reluctantly, joined Facebook as well as Care2, a community for Environmental Bolsheviks. But I have resisted LinkedIn and certainly Twitter. 140 characters. Good grief. Anyone who has had to edit a decent news story down to so few words it no longer says anything is repulsed by the idea of condensing life's little moments down to a few probably not so well-chosen words. I've said before I don't care what Wolf Blitzer does in the few seconds a day he's not on the air. But now, Twitter has reached it's lowest possible moment. A woman Tweeted her circle that she was having a miscarriage and she was glad because she would have had to go out of state for an abortion. Any normal woman who has ever had a miscarriage, even if she didn't particularly want the pregnancy, knows that it means she has lost a baby. Even if she doesn't believe that life begins at conception, she knows she lost a baby. To trivialize that to a tweet is somewhere beyond disgusting. And to treat abortion as a minor inconvenience is disgusting beyond words. We can only hope the Twitter universe has hit bottom and there is nothing worse -- if you can imagine it -- on the way.

Twinkle, twinkle

Saw Bright Star the other night. Not out here in the boonies, of course. Only movies based on comic books or featuring fountains of blood spraying across the screen. In New York City. Ok, the thing about an English major going to see a movie about John Keats is that you kinda know how sad it's going to end. And, I'm not saying this was a great build up to the whole dead in Florence thing. But the actress who played Fanny's little sister was incredible. Naturally, I didn't take notes on the credits -- I watched them all because I was with a film editor, so we had to read all the credits -- so I don't know her name, but she was the best little actress I've ever seen. I know, you're supposed to say "actor" for male and female now, but isn't that a little silly? I don't even have an objection to calling ships "she," but that's fodder for another blog. The cat was also wonderful. I didn't even know cats could act. I'm not saying the above is worth the price of admission, but, if you can get a cut rate price, go see it.

Good Night Suite Prints

The Lexicographic Irregulars are mourning today. The Language Mavin is no more. William Safire, political pundit, Republican raconteur, wizardly writer and all-time lover of the all things alliterative. Even those of us far to the left of Safire politically appreciate his brilliance, wisdom, workplay and that adorable crush he had on Susan Molinari. The beauty, the perfection of the English language and the hearts of all who love it are broken tonight. Good night Bill.

Gun Play

So, there's this retro-50s-type theme park in northern New Jersey called Wild West City. A large part of its appeal is its unselfconscious lack of political correctness. There are "shootouts" in the street, saloon fights (the liquid in the whiskey bottles is tea), Virgil Earp smokes a cigar during the Gunfight at the OKCorral skit. It's wonderdul. But some uptight-types object to it as a class trip destination for urban youngsters who are already obsessed with firearms -- like suburban and rural kids aren't? I asked one of these chaperones how many class trips teach kids about the historical contribution of people who look like them -- people of color. WWC has a black marshal. And black and Hispanic cowboys. She admitted it was the only one.

Deny-Ability

There is no shortage of groups of people I don't understand: people who think they are the only ones with God's ear. people who keep ferrets as pets, people who eat sushi. But, the people who really confound me are people who deny the Holocaust. I mean, there are PICTURES. This didn't happen during an era when the only way to disseminate information was Alan-a-Dale and his mandolin, or lute, or whatever it was. How can people deny all the evidence? And how can they explain all the people with missing relatives? Don't they know people with no grandparents or aunts and uncles? Talk about living in denial. And, what is even more scarey is that people in Iran actually voted for somebody who thinks that way. Note to Iranians voters: he's wrong and if he's wrong about something that big, think about what else he's wrong about.

Don't mess with this stuff

The new version of Casino Royale was on TV the other night. They should have stuck with the David Niven parody. This one was a parody, too, but not conscious (apparently) and not very successful. Ian Fleming is doing some serious haunting right now. Daniel Craig is a good actor, but he is not Bond on so many levels. For one thing, he's blond and doesn't have enough hair on his chest, but that's just superficial. The writers did both Craig and the public a disservice by turning Bond into a thug and asking Craig to play him that way. My son says today is the age of the anti-hero. Ok, so stop making James Bond movies until the times are ready for a hero again. Don't desecrate Fleming's A+ grade B-novel writing. Actually, I don't believe we are no longer in need of heros. I believe that suave, sophisticated Bond would still bring people in to the movies -- a lot of people just watch them for the gadgets anyway. And women watch them for the guys who play Bond. And guys watch them for the latest Bond girl. So why change the image so drastically? It was a dumb move. It may have netted some serious change. But, it was a dumb move.

Gloom and Doom

I am getting very tired of all the doomsayers. Newspapers are dying. Life as we know it is going to end. Good grief. Can they be any more annoying?
Instead of insisting that kids don't read anything, maybe they should stop by a library or a bookstore and see what kids are reading. Instead of lamenting that all information will be electronically transmitted, why don't they check out a real book? Or buy one?
If these folks who see the end of the printed world spent more time reading printed material and less time kvetching about it, maybe the printed word would last longer.
So, I'll cut this short and let the kvetchers get on with real reading.

Happiness is a warm gun

One of the reasons John Lennon's "Happiness is a Warm Gun" works is the juxtaposition against Charles Schultz's "Happiness is a warm puppy." The other reasons is that we are a gun-crazy culture, but I'll deal with that in a later blog. Puppies are soft and cuddly and always warm. Guns are only warm when they have recently been fired. Sort of like the difference between a book and a Kindle. Amazon recently introduced a new, updated version of the kindle, but it's still solid and hard and you can't cuddle up to it. Even if reading from a screen doesn't give you an Excedrin headache, it seems awkward. You can hold a book in a wing chair, curled up on a corner of a couch, on the beach. Books are made to be comfortable with. I can't see someone comfortable with a kindle. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I think it will be a long time before books printed on dead trees are totally replaced by books on a kindle. Because happiness is warm and cuddly.

Typhoid Perry

So here at the Daily Planet, Editor Perry White (picture the late Lane Smith in the Lois and Clark TV series) assigns the medical desk to research the possible impending pandemic.
Of course, we don't know how serious this swine flu is going to be. So far, it looks like the precautions are a little over-the-top, but I'm not sure I want to get on an airplane right now.
That's the thing, really, when it comes down to our own safety and that of the people we love, we are willing to look a little silly in the name of safety. When we see other people doing it on the television news, we snicker. Human nature.
Is the press exaggerating the epidemic? Quite possibly. There is a certain adreniline rush that comes with a story like this. Does that sound maudlin? Of course it does. Nobody is surprised when the press is callous and unfeeling, cares more about the story than the people injured. But there is a difference between getting a jolt about a story and making the story bigger than it is. Today, there are too many news outlets tripping over each other to tell the story.

If it's Tuesday, we must be in. . . .

In much of the world, publishers need a license to publish.
Think about that.
A license.
One of the laws the Framers discarded when they wrote our amazing Constitution was the one that licensed publishers. They understood the necessity for free speech and a free press, which means, they appreciated dissent.
Of course, it was a little easier for them to appreciate dissent, since they were professional dissenters themselves.
A country formed from a revolution may belikely to be a little more free, but that doesn't give us the right to be complacent about it.
Free speech is the right from which all other rights are derived.
If that matters as much as it should and, especially, if you teach others for whom it should matter, read Charles Glasser Jr.'s International Media Law. The book describes the variations of law in many countries of the world, but the bottom line is, this is the best place to be a member of the press.
Even now.

A Modest Proposal

Newspapers are folding in random cities around the country. While this may or may not signal the death of American newspapers, there is something newspapers can do to help themselves. Of course, it would require working together, which is not something newspapers do well. Since only large sites like Google and the Huffington Post actually sell ads to support the editorial content, why don't newspapers pull their copy from the Web and just continue to publish on dead trees with advertising to pay for it. Many papers would still be in trouble, but they wouldn't be competing against themselves. I don't know anybody who has actually clicked on an ad on the Internet. I'm not naive enough to expect to make money from this blog. Newspaper publishers should stop fantasizing about making money from Internet advertising and tell their readers, "party is over, if you want to read it, buy it, just like in the old days."

The Seattle Post-Intellegencer is no longer a physical newspaper. It exists only in cyberspace. Sort of like this blog. Hearst is on the verge of doing in other papers in the chain, too.
Papers have been dying for many years. New York City once had 14 major dailies. Not all of these papers were great, or even good, but they provided competition for each other. Every good size city used to have at least two daily newspapers. Two opinion pages. Often two political viewpoints.The fewer newspapers, the fewer viewpoints.
It could be argued that a paper on line can offer viewpoints, too, but it's less likely. On line advertising is yet to prove profitable, so publishers are likely to be beholden to the few advertisers they get. There are plenty of cowardly publishers around anyway. Until and unelss online advertising proves profitable, the limited number of businesses who do advertise will have disproportionate power.

Mark Twain's Obituary

When a premature announcement of his demise was published, author Mark Twain remarked, "rumors of my death are premature."
The same could be said today about the death of print. The New Yorker said the last daily newspaper will smack the last sidewalk in May of 2043. They may be correct and if they are, it will be that flagship of the Newhouse chain, the Staten Island Advance. Since the "major" New York dailies ignore the "forgotten borough," (the News and the Post only report when body parts -- not an entire body -- are found at Fresh Kills and the venerable Grey Lady never mentions Richmond County unless it has the chance to make fun of Wagner College) the Advance has become, by default, the best newspaper in America, if you define that as a newspaper you HAVE to read.
But dailies are not the only print medium. Weeklies are strong, at least some of them, even in this recession. And they will continue to be strong if they don't forget the simple truth that made them strong in the first place: they provide context.
If weeklies forget this and imitate their daily brethren with ultra-short stories; if they start to care more about the glitz than the words, they will go the way of the weeklies. But, if they provide their readers with the information they need to be informed voters and citizens, they will survive.
People still read stories of length and substance. Look at Time and Newsweek. And if they will read and digest those stories, they will do the same with stories that impact their lives on a local level.
Readers of weeklies should rise up against the implied insult that they are too shallow to take time to learn about their community.

18% Grey

My brother is old enough to remember series radio. Shows like "Our Miss Brooks" and "Green Lantern." He says he liked the pictures better.
I know what he means. Sometimes the pictures in our minds are much clearer than those handed to us.
Likewise, sometimes black and white is more colorful than color.
One of the disadvantages of digital photography is that photos are always in color. They aren't always printed in color, but the black and white images reproduced on paper from digital color are not the same as black and white images from a negative.
Black and white photography is about light and shadow. It's subtle in tone. Greys are measured in percentages, scientifically, but artistically, they are measured by the eye.The aesthetics are deeper. Ansel Adams' landscapes. Richard Avedon's portraits. Nothing in color can come close.
Digital can't come close to the tactile sensation of working with film. Developing the films itself is mundane, but it's also intensely private. The joy comes when playing the the enlarger. Burning, dodging -- the physical acts are so much more rewarding than "photoshopping." Even more important, you can hold two prints side by side and compare them in various lights.
I'm not digital-bashing here. Digital is quick and convenient and can be economical. But no one should claim to be a photographer without spending hours in a darkroom, alone, creating.

In Like a Hyena

So, it's March 1 and it's snowing, horizontally. Kids are delighted to have a snow day. Teachers are even more delighted to have a snow day.
The weather-folk spent two days predicting the storm of the century. Every storm to them is the potential storm of the century. They are so happy when they get a chance to predict a catacysm. Isn't it nice to see people so easily satisfied with their jobs? The lightest, fluffyest snowflake is for them the harbinger of a cataclysm. And nothing makes a meteorologist happier than an impending cataclysm.
When did it come to this? Once upon a time, the weather-person just gave a weather report. No flash, no flags and certainly no warning of impending disaster. It's winter, it's the Northeast. A snowstorm is not a big deal.
You wouldn't know it by the supermarkets, though. The day before a potential storm the stores are packed with people stocking up on milk and bread. Are all these people originally from the South? They think they are going to be snowed in for days? I blame the corporations that transfer people all over the country. Too many people from warmer climes have descended upon Jersey and are clogging up the supermarket parking lots several times a winter.
Get a grip, people. If you are snowed in for any length of time, it's the perfect opportunity to use the food in the back of the freezer. Real Jerseyans cherish being snowed in, they don't panic.

Wa-a-ay too much

Everyone doesn't have a blog, it just looks that way.
Which brings to mind two questions: Why? And are there really a lot of people out there who care?
The answer to the second question is probably not, but we shouldn't disillusion all those blogmasters who truly believe their every word is enthralling. The answer to the first question is probably arrogance.
So, why am I, a humble child of a simpler age, writing a blog?
I'm told it's the new century's way of networking.
In my day, networking meant attending conferences that included interminable cocktail parties featuring watered-down drinks in overheated rooms, standing for hours in stilettos juggling the drink, a clutch bag and a portfolio full of resumes. Imagine, networking in comfortable shoes without breathing shrimp-gin-garlic breath from a bald, rotund man in a tweed suit and sweater-vest. Who knew?
As for why news anchor-folks choose to blog, I have no idea. Their faces are already too visible. I mean, does Wolf Blitzer sleep?
Familiarity may breed, but it also breeds boredom. Does David Gregory really think we care what he was doing at 8:43 last Sunday? I certainly hope not.
Let me know if I ever get that boring.

20/40 Hindsight

For years I wrote a column for a newspaper in Hackettstown.
While it had a certain political base, Miscellany, as the name implies, covered a wide range of topics that reflected notable issues of the day -- ok, I often wrote about my wonderful veterinarian, the challenges of buying a house and, eventually, my kids. I had eight real fans, well, seven when one of them went to jail. . .
Later, I wrote a humor column which was, at least on occasion, actually funny. Not Dave Barry funny, but cute and quirky. Ok, sometimes Dave Barry funny. Sometimes even Molly Ivins funny.
So, what did I do? Took a job with a company that discouraged first person writing. I should have known. There are lots of things I should have known but probably don't, hence the title of this blog.
Now, I'm in a position to write a column again. The only downside is there is no one to pay for it. Hence the blog.
Once I got past the fact that the word "blog" sounds like the lowest note played on a bagpipe, I decided to try my hand. After all, besides job hunting, cleaning my house and letting the dogs in and out (and in and out and in and out) what can you do all day while unemployed? Watch reruns of TV shows you wouldn't watch in prime time? It's a bit of a downer to hear the cast make fun of Mark Harmon's age when he's the same age I am! (Barely middle aged, barely.)
I haven't set a schedule for the blog. I decided to call it Raking Muck in the Third Millennium to give myself plenty of room to exercise my investigative skills, not to mention my sarcasm.
Stay tuned.