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Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.14.14

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Good morning.

We’ll have snow today in Whitewater, amounting to between one and three inches by evening.

Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board is scheduled to meet at 5:30 PM today.

On this day in 1784, the Second Continental Congress makes it official:

….the Continental Congress ratifies the Second Treaty of Paris, ending the War for Independence.

In the document, which was known as the Second Treaty of Paris because the Treaty of Paris was also the name of the agreement that had ended the Seven Years’ War in 1763, Britain officially agreed to recognize the independence of its 13 former colonies as the new United States of America.

In addition, the treaty settled the boundaries between the United States and what remained of British North America. U.S. fishermen won the right to fish in the Grand Banks, off the Newfoundland coast, and in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Both sides agreed to ensure payment to creditors in the other nation of debts incurred during the war and to release all prisoners of war. The United States promised to return land confiscated during the war to its British owners, to stop any further confiscation of British property and to honor the property left by the British army on U.S. shores, including Negroes or slaves. Both countries assumed perpetual rights to access the Mississippi River….

Here’s Puzzability‘s Tuesday game:

This Week’s Game — January 13-17
String Theory
Are you a master of science? For each day this week, we’ll give you a series of clues, each of which leads to a word. You must drop one letter out of each of these answer words and put them together (in order), adding spaces as needed, to get a science-related phrase that starts with a possessive name.
Example:
Sentry’s “stop!” / impose, as a tax / barge-like boat / turn from solid to liquid
Answer:
Halley’s comet (halt / levy / scow / melt)
What to Submit:
Submit the phrase and the smaller words (as “Halley’s comet (halt / levy / scow / melt)” in the example) for your answer.
Tuesday, January 14
Albee or Stoppard production / collar locale / biscuit-like treats for teatime / bully verbally

New Media, Press

Early Front-Runner: Worst Blog Post of 2014

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The year’s just started, but we’ve an early, strong candidate for the worst blog post of 2014.  

Over at the Gazette, while working a white-collar job as editorialist and blogger in blue-collar Janesville, Greg Peck has a 1.7.14 entry entitled, My job is “stressful”? Well no kidding.  

Blogger Peck writes that a study listing news reporting as a stressful job doesn’t surprise him, since he’s a blogger, editorialist, and sometime reporter.  I don’t doubt that Peck considers these tasks stressful, and that reporters consider their lives difficult.  

There’s just one problem: no matter what Peck or a few others might believe, there’s simply no catalog of hardships that reasonably includes blogging, writing editorials, or spending a ‘part of each day reporting.’

Peck contends that “[i]it’s not surprising that this is a stress-filled job. (That beard you see in the accompanying picture once was black, and the bald spot on the back of my head is growing).”

Oh, dearie me.  

You see, Mr. Peck tells us that his days are

….perpetual races against the clock. I get up at 5 a.m. As I write this from home before many of you have eaten breakfast, I have to hurry even more this morning because I have a 9:30 dental appointment. If I’m writing an editorial for the next day’s paper, I’m supposed to have it ready for editing and posting on our website by 11 a.m. so it catches the eye of lunchtime web readers. It’s not always possible….

I try to exercise at the athletic club three times a week. That, too, is not always possible. If some other commitment comes up on one of my three usual evenings, that workout gets scrapped. Even getting there is a stressful race—particularly on Thursdays when I play racquetball and sometimes arrive for our 6:30 p.m. court time still dressed in my workday attire, not even finding time to swing home and toss on a sweat shirt and jeans….

Contra Peck, actual stress is having no breakfast, having no job, having a job where one is exposed to the elements, or being unable to leave work for routine medical appointments. Stress has no credible claim on those who have club memberships, and whine about not playing racquetball thrice weekly.

I’ve been blogging for years, and yet there has never been a day when I’ve counted blogging among the hardships of life, in Whitewater or any community.  There are sometimes disappointing or absurd moments of politics and policy about which to write, but there’s never been a day when blogging or similar pursuits have been – or could be – legitimately stressful.  

To think otherwise – especially in places that have suffered genuine misfortunes – isn’t simply to be wrong, but to be wildly, laughably wrong.  

Peck’s post may be a poor attempt at a joke; if he’s serious, one may confidently conclude that he’s actually anything but serious.   

Either way, a list of the worst blog posts of 2014 now has at least one solid candidate.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.13.14

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Good morning.

Whitewater’s week begins with a partly sunny day and a high of thirty-seven.

The city’s Planning Commission meets this evening at 6 PM.

If you’d like to begin your week with something thoughtful – and in that way truly inspirational – then Lizzie Velasquez’s talk at TEDxAustin is just the thing.  Velasquez has a rare condition that prevents her from gaining weight, no matter how many small meals a day she eats.  The condition has left her very thin, blind in her right eye, and the subject of taunts about her appearance.

Embedded below is her TED presentation, entitled, How Do YOU Define Yourself? More information about her presentations and books is available at her website, AboutLizzie.com

On this day in 1922, it’s the birth of the ‘oldest station in the nation’:

1922 – WHA Radio Station Founded
On this date the call letters of experimental station 9XM in Madison were replaced by WHA. This station dates back to 1917, making it “The oldest station in the nation.” [Source: History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers, edited by Sarah Davis McBride]

Puzzability‘s new series, one that’s science-themed, begins today:

This Week’s Game — January 13-17
String Theory
Are you a master of science? For each day this week, we’ll give you a series of clues, each of which leads to a word. You must drop one letter out of each of these answer words and put them together (in order), adding spaces as needed, to get a science-related phrase that starts with a possessive name.
Example:
Sentry’s “stop!” / impose, as a tax / barge-like boat / turn from solid to liquid
Answer:
Halley’s comet (halt / levy / scow / melt)
What to Submit:
Submit the phrase and the smaller words (as “Halley’s comet (halt / levy / scow / melt)” in the example) for your answer.
Monday, January 13
Declare openly / pleased / violinist’s goo / output of a sawmill

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.12.14

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny, with a high of thirty-eight, and occasional gusts of wind as high as 25 mph.

Friday’s FW poll is now closed, and readers collectively picked these four teams as the most likely to win the weekend NFL games: Seattle, Denver, San Francisco, and New England. With the divisional playoffs half over, that’s a 2-0 record (both the Seahawks and Patriots having won on Saturday). In my case, it’s a 1-1 record (I went with Seattle, but also Indianapolis; it’s an understatement to say that Indianapolis fell short.)

Toronto may have a world-class miscreant for its mayor, but she also has a zoo with a polar bear cub. Cuteness doesn’t trump misconduct, but this cub’s doing his best to improve his city’s image:

We may fret (excessively, I think) about the cold, but conditions have been far deadlier in our past:

On this day [January 12th] in 1888 the so-called “Schoolchildren’s Blizzard” kills 235 people, many of whom were children on their way home from school, across the Northwest Plains region of the United States. The storm came with no warning, and some accounts say that the temperature fell nearly 100 degrees in just 24 hours.

It was a Thursday afternoon and there had been unseasonably warm weather the previous day from Montana east to the Dakotas and south to Texas. Suddenly, within a matter of hours, Arctic air from Canada rapidly pushed south. Temperatures plunged to 40 below zero in much of North Dakota. Along with the cool air, the storm brought high winds and heavy snows. The combination created blinding conditions.

Most victims of the blizzard were children making their way home from school in rural areas and adults working on large farms. Both had difficulty reaching their destinations in the awful conditions. In some places, though, caution prevailed. Schoolteacher Seymour Dopp in Pawnee City, Nebraska, kept his 17 students at school when the storm began at 2 p.m. They stayed overnight, burning stockpiled wood to keep warm. The next day, parents made their way over five-foot snow drifts to rescue their children. In Great Plains, South Dakota, two men rescued the children in a schoolhouse by tying a rope from the school to the nearest shelter to lead them to safety. Minnie Freeman, a teacher in Nebraska, successfully led her children to shelter after the storm tore the roof off of her one-room schoolhouse. In other cases, though, people were less lucky. Teacher Loie Royce tried to lead three children to the safety of her home, less than 90 yards from their school in Plainfield, Nebraska. They became lost, and the children died of hypothermia. Royce lost her feet to frostbite.

In total, an estimated 235 people across the plains died on January 12. The storm is still considered one of the worst blizzards in the history of the area.

 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.11.14

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will b e cloudy with a high of thirty-four. Sunrise on January 11th is 7:25 AM, and sunset 4:42 PM. The moon is in a waxing gibbous phase with 83% of its visible disk illuminated.

800px-Cedar_Ridge,_Grand_Canyon
 

View of O’Neil Butte and surrounding areas from Cedar Ridge on the the South Kaibab Trail in Grand Canyon National Park. Arizona, USA. Danny Santiago via Wikipedia.

On this day in 1908, Pres. Roosevelt dedicates the Grand Canyon as a national monument:

…Theodore Roosevelt places the Grand Canyon under public protection, declaring it a national monument. In a statement made during a visit to the Grand Canyon in 1903, Roosevelt indicated his intention to preserve one of America’s most unique natural sites. He urged Americans to “let this great wonder of nature remain as it now is. Do nothing to mar its grandeur, sublimity and loveliness. You cannot improve on it. But what you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children, and all who come after you, as the one great sight which every American should see.”

On January 11, 1887, a conservationist is born:

1887 – Aldo Leopold Born
On this date Aldo Leopold, a major player in the modern environmental movement,  was born. A conservationist, professor, and author, Leopold graduated from Yale University and worked for the U.S. Forest Service in the Southwest. He rose to the rank of chief of operations. In 1924 he became associate director of the Forest Products Laboratory at Madison.

In 1933 he was appointed chair of game management at the University of Wisconsin. In 1943, Leopold was instrumental in establishing the first U.S. soil conservation demonstration area, in Coon Valley in 1934. As a member of the state Conservation Commission, he was influential in the acquisition of natural areas by the state. His reflections on nature and conservation appear in A Sand County Almanac (1949). [Source:Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography, p.227]

City, Freedom of Speech, Liberty, New Media

An Anecdote About an Appeal to (but not of) Authority

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Years ago, around when I first started writing, someone told me about a conversation that person heard about blogging.  I’ll share it with you, and explain why it was, initially, hard for me to understand.  The person telling me about the conversation was reputed to be especially clever, and that reputation actually made it harder for me to understand what was being said.

Clever Person: There was a conversation about your blog, between Official X and Official Y, when they first learned about it.  Official X thinks it’s terrible, one of the worst things that could happen to the town.  Official Y thinks it’s just wrong and unimaginable that anyone would read a blog with a pseudonymous author.

Adams: No one has to read what he or she doesn’t want to read.  People are free to choose.  Still, our country has a proud tradition of anonymous commentary, even before the Revolution.  What people read is their choice, not mine.

Clever Person (in a slightly stronger voice):  Official Y thinks it’s just wrong and unimaginable that anyone would read a blog with a pseudonymous author.

Adams:  Yes, no one has to read what he or she doesn’t want to read.

(It’s at this point that I became confused.  Clever Person had just repeated part of the prior observation, with emphasis.  I’d heard it the first time, replied briefly, and so I didn’t understand the need for repetition.  But Clever Person was said to be, well, a clever person, so I assumed there was some worthy justification for the repetition.)

Clever Person (stronger still, with particular emphasis):  Official Y thinks it’s just wrong and unimaginable that anyone would read a blog with a pseudonymous author.

It was then, but not before, that I understood Clever Person’s concern: it wasn’t that someone disagreed with pseudonymous authorship, it was that Official Y disagreed with that authorship.

The reputed cleverness of my interlocutor contributed to my confusion – my mistaken assumption was that a sharp person would only care about someone else’s substantive objection, not someone else’s status.  The truth of criticism, after all, should hold regardless of someone else’s role or authority.

Instead, in that moment, I saw that Clever Person may have been clever, but not so much so that someone else’s title, role, status, whatever, didn’t exert a powerful sway.  In Clever Person’s mind, the criticism wouldn’t have mattered so much, I suppose, it it had come from a vagrant; it mattered because it came from supposed town notable.

There are, however, no notables, no dignitaries, no very important people, no higher or lower, no above or below.  It’s a small American town, meant always to live in conditions of liberty and equality.

To see our community otherwise is to see through cloudy eyes, imagining things that do not exist.

And that, I’d say, isn’t so clever at all.

New Media, New Whitewater, Politics, Press

What the ‘Shock of Inclusion’ Means Locally

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I posted yesterday on Clay Shirky’s  Shock of Inclusion and New Roles for News in the Fabric of Society, published in 2010 and just as relevant today.  

His essay isn’t about local media especially, but his observations are useful to assess both local news and politics.

Shirky writes about the collapse of a pipeline model of news, where professional organizations wrote and broadcast stories sent those stories downstream to be read (passively, with only limited, press-controlled opportunities for published replies) by readers or viewers.

That model’s finished – many thousands of people in each of thousands of communities have the means to publish easily and inexpensively their own views, through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, blogs, etc.  These means are a great opportunity for America, and for places like Whitewater, Wisconsin.  See, along these lines, New Whitewater’s Inevitability.

The most important thing to know is that, almost without exception, those who are writing on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, blogs, etc. don’t want to become part of the old order – they don’t want a place at yesterday’s rickety table, and they’ve no taste for yesterday’s ill-prepared fare.  

It’s not to become part of a fading, old-line news business, but to become part of a vastly larger and more important marketplace of ideas that these new media publishers aspire.

New media are not merely new formats; they represent a new outlook, one that produces higher standards through a vast exchange of ideas from among many different, independent publishers.

I truly like newspapers, but I have never wanted to be a reporter, wouldn’t imagine myself as one, and wouldn’t be any good at the trade in any event.  I and others neither want nor need to become part of the news business – we are already citizens, for goodness’ sake, and want new arrangements, not a share in old ones.  

Broadly, what does this mean for our area?

Newspapers.  For happy-news, no-analysis print newspapers, new media simply mean a slow decline, and a readership increasingly old, complacent, and down-market.  They’ll keep going this way until that readership fades away, with too few replacement readers.

For newspapers that aspire to be more (and in our area that’s only the Gazette), it’s sure to be a hard road.  They’ve some truly smart people at the Gazette, but others who aren’t that sharp, and far too many who really don’t understand how new media have altered the landscape.  

The Gazette will have the toughest time of it, because its estimation of its own role is so much greater than happy-news publications that have long since given up being more than press agents to local notables.  

Their problem is made harder by being a conservative paper in a blue, working-class town.  Ideological differences between the paper and many residents require an especially sharp analysis – years of a downstream, pipeline approach have left the paper too often befuddled about what its readers want, and too often taking its readers for granted.

Worse, a government-business-press coalition – a de facto editorial stance that’s just a polite description for crony-capitalist flacking – has neither popular appeal nor likelihood of practical results.   

Tough times may have pushed the Gazette to feel that it needs to be supportive of major politicians and major businesses in town, but that’s the worst position to take, both ideologically and practically.  In good times or bad, a city needs scrutiny of politicians and corporations, to assure high standards and respected rights for all residents.

Reading that paper and its blogs, one can guess that they’d like to sail these new waters, but don’t know how. (Ironically, newsman Scott Angus shows a markedly stronger understanding than editorialist and blogger Greg Peck.) Reading many other papers nearby, one can see that they’re not even trying.

Politicians.  New media push politicians into one of three camps: (1) those who will never adapt to new media, (2) those who will pay lip service to them, and (3) those who understand new media and will profit from their understanding.  

The first group includes the least-capable leaders in a city, people of limited ability who benefited from conditions of closed government. They’re incapable of improvement in their work or outlook.  Mostly, this group will rely on the lowest-quality, old-style reporters to repeat unthinkingly anything that those in the group say.  Since low-quality publications are waning, this group has an ever-smaller audience for their laughable lies, excuses, and shoddy work.  They’ll huddle among other mediocrities, as that’s the only audience who’ll be hospitable to them. 

The second group understands new media, at least in part, but having come of age in a lazier, old-media era, they’d rather pay lip-service to a more demanding critique than actually do better work.  Some will retire before the pressure of a new media critique grows too much for them, others will find to their consternation that better work, not lip-service, is necessary.

The third group, one that’s destined over time to comprise most politicians and business people, both understands and will use new media effectively. They’ll be the foundation of a New Whitewater, and better communities across America.