Ach, these winter mornings in central Pennsylvania. A little after 6, the phone rings and my dream evaporates. Let me guess: Julie Miller, State College Area School District, two-hour delay.
Yep.
I experience my habitual glee, though the delay will not alter my morning routine in the slightest. During my zombie descent to the coffee maker and the radio I hear the crows screaming and the geese, on their east-west morning commute, honking, though there’s no traffic.
I peer outside. How do you get to be the lead goose in the formation, I wonder. Is it always the same one, or do they take turns? A quick Web search tells me it’s tiring being at the front of the vee: more wind resistance. So they rotate around, like a volleyball team.
While down on the ground: not a shoveling situation, possibly a deicing situation. The dreaded wintry mix. Everyone’s “least-favorite meteorological snack food,” Washington Post columnist John Kelly calls it.
Why did humans, furless, ever leave the tropics? Why did I, who was there two weeks ago? (Brutally hot in summer, I’m told.)
Next, the news. Who died? (Sargent Shriver, et al.) Who got arrested? (Baby Doc, et al.) Who lost? (the Knicks, et al.)
A Jets fan (I lived a couple of stones’ throws from Shea Stadium, where the Jets use to play, during the Namath-Boozer-Snell-Maynard-Sauer era), I read a profile of Mike Pettine, the team’s defensive coordinator, in the New York Times. He expresses his enthusiasm for his job thus:
“I never want to be in a situation where my alarm clock goes off in the morning, and I don’t have a smile on my face and I’m not saying, ‘I can’t wait to go to work.’”
What’s my own situation? Not smiling. Not saying, “Can’t wait.” But not dreading, either. Mild anxiety mixed with mild pleasant anticipation stemming from the knowledge that I have to write this column by noon and fine-tune my class preps by 2:30.
What I really can’t wait to do, though, is take a long, hot shower. If I had an Erasable Shower Note Tablet I could write and prep and shower at the same time. As it is, I want to remember to talk to my journalism ethics class about the NYT coverage of President Obama’s speech at the memorial service in Tucson last week. The lead story on the Times website included the observation that it was “one of the more powerful addresses that Mr. Obama has delivered as president.” That floored me. When we teach our newswriting students how to cover speeches we specifically instruct them to tell the reader what the speaker said and leave the critiquing to the columnists.
Even odder: The bit about how powerful the speech was did not appear in the Times’ print edition, which raises a question: Is the online version of the paper not being held to the same strict standards of news/opinion separation as the printed version?
I also want my class to notice how desperately the Times tried to blame Jared Loughner’s shooting rampage on the right wing’s “vitriolic rhetoric.” The problem: very little evidence. Loughner apparently got worked up about the gold standard, as some on the far right tends to do. And he apparently said some vaguely disparaging things about government and about U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ intelligence. But so far, nothing about Democrats or President Obama or “Obamacare,” or even about Giffords’ vote for the healthcare bill or her opposition to Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigrants.
This is not to say that Loughner wasn’t influenced by the ravings of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Tea Partiers and their ilk, only that there’s almost no proof that he was. And reporters are in the evidence business, not the speculation business. Tsk-tsk.
Today is also Liar’s Journal day in ethics class: I share some of the lies the students told during the past week as a way of introducing the concept of ethical decision-making. Always a good time.
Having drained the hot water heater, I head out. Two guards are escorting a jump-suited prisoner to an eye appointment. I think of how humiliating it would be to appear in public in a belly chain and ankle chain, then remind myself that public humiliation is the least of this guy’s problems.
A cyclist pedals up Allen Street with both hands in his pockets. Looks dangerous. It’s actually not that slick out, though – or that cold. January’s on the wane already, like the moon. Last night the full moon hung directly over Old Main’s cupola, casting pale, prismatic light on thin clouds.
I almost forgot. If we look up from the headlines, the pavement, the grindstone, there is always some loveliness.
