After a while, you wonder where this is all supposed to go. I mean – why continue to write this thing?
I know. I know. We have set as our course to record the transition of radio from what it is to what it will be. We are doing this for posterity. People in the future may want to know how things were.
I know. I know. We have set as our course to record the transition of radio from what it is to what it will be. We are doing this for posterity. People in the future may want to know how things were.
But that doesn’t answer the question – where is this thing going?
Therein is the trap. As soon as you ask this question, you are at risk. You cease doing it for the sake of doing it. You start doing it to get somewhere. Beauty recedes. It is replaced by task.
With this philosophical directive out of the way, I can go about my task of telling you about my day of radio. It’s a Monday, so there’s always little things that are wrong when we get to the studios a little after five in the morning. There’s enough people who come and go over the weekend that we have to reset things. A microphone is unplugged. Someone changed the settings on the studio lights. Facebook Live won’t start up. The phones aren’t working.
I started doing the show from Indianapolis Boulevard, but truth be told I really didn’t have the magic this morning. I yelled “big truck” at big trucks going by and I thanked people for beeping. But I felt as if I was going through an early morning charade rather that living a moment of real radio. Sometimes you just have to act. There’s no way around it in radio, a marriage, as a teacher, and as a person taking a bite of some new dish you’re daughter just concocted. There are smiles on the outside when you don’t necessarily have them on the inside.
I’ll tell you one thing that brought me a smile. That’s when Jackie and Tom Ruiz came into the studio about 6:15am. Jackie is the principal at St. Stan’s down the street. Tom is the principal at St. Mary’s in Crown Point. They are a couple of Catholic school principals. You gotta believe they’ve thought of crossing overto the secular world for more money. But they stay. And we’re all better off for it. A couple of Catholic school principals.
My mom attended St. Stan’s, by the way. She and her sisters and aunts would walk from the Frogsville section of Hammond along Indianapolis Boulevard to school.. walk back for lunch… and then back for the rest of the day of school. It was a lot of walking. You’d hear stories about the cold and the bad men. I believe the stories.
After the Ruizes, who were there to promo their open houses this weekend, Steve Beekman and a woman named Riley of the Northwest Indiana Food Bank came into the studio, along Ashleigh Marlow and Jeff Strack of Strack and Van Til grocery stores.. Strack and Marlow presented the Northwest Indiana Food Bank with a check for $154,000. No kidding. That’s what they raised from the “Round Up” campaign. It’s when the cashier asks as you are paying – “would you like to round up to the next dollar for the Northwest Indiana Food Bank.”
It’s a lot of money. When I had Strack in the studio a couple months ago, I questioned how they could expect to raise a hundred grand picking up spare change.
“It all adds up,” Jeff said.
Evidently. I won’t doubt the generosity of Region people ever again.
At 11am, I taught Sports Broadcasting in the WJOB studios. There were three groups of three students who put on their first sports talk shows. It was a good start. I could tell that they all learned something. You could watch the video of the class, if you want. I video the live broadcasts so that we can look at them later in the semester to see how we’ve progressed.
I do want to point out one thing that we’re doing in the class. I’ve been looking for a way to keep the students engaged in sports when they’re not in class. More specifically, I’ve been looking for a way for the students to be involved in sports broadcasting when I’m not there. So I have them using the “HeyJED” app. They’re supposed to do four HeyJEDs throughout the week. Some do. Some don’t. The ones who do are building confidence with their opinions about sports, and they’re learning how to use their smartphones as a weapon in sports broadcasting. You develop a product like the HeyJED app and you really don’t know where it’s gonna go.
That’s the key. Try not to control where the thing is gonna go. Try not to control where this blog is gonna go and try not to control how the app is gonna be used. It’s working for us in sports broadcasting and maybe that’s as far as it goes. Or perhaps we find other uses for it in education. Who knows? The important thing is to let it unfold how it wants to.
One of the things that I’ve learned in writing this blog to the three or four of you is to just let it unfold. A lot of times when you’re speaking or writing or singing or whispering, you think about what you’re gonna say next. You make a plan for what you’re gonna say. That works for a presentation in freshman speech class. But not for writing. I don’t know what this means, but I’m learning to just write and let it unfold from word to word without judging it or even slowing down. That way, you and I can get to a couple thousand words in no time.
I was just watching the news about Marilyn Hartman. She’s the old woman who stows away on flights. You’ve probably seen her on the national news. Last week, she stowed away on a flight from Chicago to London. That’s the umpteenth time ole Marilyn’s been able to do that.
The news tonight, however, says that it’s not just a cute hobby for the old woman. She is being held in the Cook County jail because, according to the Cook County sheriff, “because she is a NPTS (no place to stay)”
What a horrifying thing for an old woman. No wonder she sneaks onto planes and goes to foreign cities. She’s broke and lost and old and, according to the sheriff’s office, “in need of intense treatment.” Life sucks and then you die.
I’d like to write a sonnet,
but I had crabs twice in
Berkeley, so I think I’m
disqualified.
Honestly, I don’t know how
I got them. Maybe it was
from the boxing room.
I didn’t have a place to
stay, so after practice
coach would let me hang
out to do my homework
as long as I turned the
lights off and locked up.
Eventually, I wound up
sleeping on the canvas
with boxing gloves as
pillows. I’d shower at
the sink by wetting one
of my tee-shirts, and I’d
dry off with one of the
towels that was always
hanging around.
That process, I believe, led
to crabs. Everyone I told
this story to didn’t believe
me, especially Tiny. He
was my best bud back
then, so he was used to
me making stuff up,
especially in bars
late at night.
“You lied your way into
some hairy-arm-pitted
Granola chick’s pants, and
you wound up with crabs.
You’re not gonna convince
me otherwise.”
It’s true. Every once in a
while I would exaggerate
my accomplishments and
organ size, but there was at
least one really old doctor
who believed me. He worked
at the campus health clinic.
He wore a suit, slicked his
gray hair back and walked on
the inside of his shoes.
“Sounds like you have crabs,”
he said as he pulled back my
whitey tighties.
“And from the looks of things,
you are loaded.”
He allowed my underwear
to snap back into place
before continuing.
“You can attract these critters
from a dirty toilet seat.
It’s much more likely if
you’re simply not keeping
in synch with the general
rules of hygiene.”
That’s it. I had fallen out of
synch. I had travelled
two thousand miles to study
at Berkeley without a place
to live. I picked up crabs
from the boxing room.
Isn’t it ironic that when you
finally do tell the truth, people
like Tiny Naylor, the future
brain doctor, don’t believe
you anyways? Next time,
I’ll just tell him that I banged
some streetperson behind
Moe’s bookstore without a
condom. Maybe then I could
write a sonnet.
It’s supposed to snow a little overnight, so I’ll be standing out on Indianapolis Boulevard in a few hours with white stuff in my hair. I’ll yell at big trucks, get all excited at people beeping, and, if you and I play our cards right, it might even be real.
Therein is the trap. As soon as you ask this question, you are at risk. You cease doing it for the sake of doing it. You start doing it to get somewhere. Beauty recedes. It is replaced by task.
With this philosophical directive out of the way, I can go about my task of telling you about my day of radio. It’s a Monday, so there’s always little things that are wrong when we get to the studios a little after five in the morning. There’s enough people who come and go over the weekend that we have to reset things. A microphone is unplugged. Someone changed the settings on the studio lights. Facebook Live won’t start up. The phones aren’t working.
I started doing the show from Indianapolis Boulevard, but truth be told I really didn’t have the magic this morning. I yelled “big truck” at big trucks going by and I thanked people for beeping. But I felt as if I was going through an early morning charade rather that living a moment of real radio. Sometimes you just have to act. There’s no way around it in radio, a marriage, as a teacher, and as a person taking a bite of some new dish you’re daughter just concocted. There are smiles on the outside when you don’t necessarily have them on the inside.
I’ll tell you one thing that brought me a smile. That’s when Jackie and Tom Ruiz came into the studio about 6:15am. Jackie is the principal at St. Stan’s down the street. Tom is the principal at St. Mary’s in Crown Point. They are a couple of Catholic school principals. You gotta believe they’ve thought of crossing overto the secular world for more money. But they stay. And we’re all better off for it. A couple of Catholic school principals.
My mom attended St. Stan’s, by the way. She and her sisters and aunts would walk from the Frogsville section of Hammond along Indianapolis Boulevard to school.. walk back for lunch… and then back for the rest of the day of school. It was a lot of walking. You’d hear stories about the cold and the bad men. I believe the stories.
After the Ruizes, who were there to promo their open houses this weekend, Steve Beekman and a woman named Riley of the Northwest Indiana Food Bank came into the studio, along Ashleigh Marlow and Jeff Strack of Strack and Van Til grocery stores.. Strack and Marlow presented the Northwest Indiana Food Bank with a check for $154,000. No kidding. That’s what they raised from the “Round Up” campaign. It’s when the cashier asks as you are paying – “would you like to round up to the next dollar for the Northwest Indiana Food Bank.”
It’s a lot of money. When I had Strack in the studio a couple months ago, I questioned how they could expect to raise a hundred grand picking up spare change.
“It all adds up,” Jeff said.
Evidently. I won’t doubt the generosity of Region people ever again.
At 11am, I taught Sports Broadcasting in the WJOB studios. There were three groups of three students who put on their first sports talk shows. It was a good start. I could tell that they all learned something. You could watch the video of the class, if you want. I video the live broadcasts so that we can look at them later in the semester to see how we’ve progressed.
I do want to point out one thing that we’re doing in the class. I’ve been looking for a way to keep the students engaged in sports when they’re not in class. More specifically, I’ve been looking for a way for the students to be involved in sports broadcasting when I’m not there. So I have them using the “HeyJED” app. They’re supposed to do four HeyJEDs throughout the week. Some do. Some don’t. The ones who do are building confidence with their opinions about sports, and they’re learning how to use their smartphones as a weapon in sports broadcasting. You develop a product like the HeyJED app and you really don’t know where it’s gonna go.
That’s the key. Try not to control where the thing is gonna go. Try not to control where this blog is gonna go and try not to control how the app is gonna be used. It’s working for us in sports broadcasting and maybe that’s as far as it goes. Or perhaps we find other uses for it in education. Who knows? The important thing is to let it unfold how it wants to.
One of the things that I’ve learned in writing this blog to the three or four of you is to just let it unfold. A lot of times when you’re speaking or writing or singing or whispering, you think about what you’re gonna say next. You make a plan for what you’re gonna say. That works for a presentation in freshman speech class. But not for writing. I don’t know what this means, but I’m learning to just write and let it unfold from word to word without judging it or even slowing down. That way, you and I can get to a couple thousand words in no time.
I was just watching the news about Marilyn Hartman. She’s the old woman who stows away on flights. You’ve probably seen her on the national news. Last week, she stowed away on a flight from Chicago to London. That’s the umpteenth time ole Marilyn’s been able to do that.
The news tonight, however, says that it’s not just a cute hobby for the old woman. She is being held in the Cook County jail because, according to the Cook County sheriff, “because she is a NPTS (no place to stay)”
What a horrifying thing for an old woman. No wonder she sneaks onto planes and goes to foreign cities. She’s broke and lost and old and, according to the sheriff’s office, “in need of intense treatment.” Life sucks and then you die.
I’d like to write a sonnet,
but I had crabs twice in
Berkeley, so I think I’m
disqualified.
Honestly, I don’t know how
I got them. Maybe it was
from the boxing room.
I didn’t have a place to
stay, so after practice
coach would let me hang
out to do my homework
as long as I turned the
lights off and locked up.
Eventually, I wound up
sleeping on the canvas
with boxing gloves as
pillows. I’d shower at
the sink by wetting one
of my tee-shirts, and I’d
dry off with one of the
towels that was always
hanging around.
That process, I believe, led
to crabs. Everyone I told
this story to didn’t believe
me, especially Tiny. He
was my best bud back
then, so he was used to
me making stuff up,
especially in bars
late at night.
“You lied your way into
some hairy-arm-pitted
Granola chick’s pants, and
you wound up with crabs.
You’re not gonna convince
me otherwise.”
It’s true. Every once in a
while I would exaggerate
my accomplishments and
organ size, but there was at
least one really old doctor
who believed me. He worked
at the campus health clinic.
He wore a suit, slicked his
gray hair back and walked on
the inside of his shoes.
“Sounds like you have crabs,”
he said as he pulled back my
whitey tighties.
“And from the looks of things,
you are loaded.”
He allowed my underwear
to snap back into place
before continuing.
“You can attract these critters
from a dirty toilet seat.
It’s much more likely if
you’re simply not keeping
in synch with the general
rules of hygiene.”
That’s it. I had fallen out of
synch. I had travelled
two thousand miles to study
at Berkeley without a place
to live. I picked up crabs
from the boxing room.
Isn’t it ironic that when you
finally do tell the truth, people
like Tiny Naylor, the future
brain doctor, don’t believe
you anyways? Next time,
I’ll just tell him that I banged
some streetperson behind
Moe’s bookstore without a
condom. Maybe then I could
write a sonnet.
It’s supposed to snow a little overnight, so I’ll be standing out on Indianapolis Boulevard in a few hours with white stuff in my hair. I’ll yell at big trucks, get all excited at people beeping, and, if you and I play our cards right, it might even be real.
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