All posts by Janet Coburn

Journalism: A New Low

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I recently saw an article online that asked whether readers were using toilet paper correctly.

No, not the ever-popular issue of whether the end of the paper goes under or over, but of the two ways to use toilet paper (scrunched or folded), which was better. No conclusion was reached, and surveys suggested that Americans are pretty evenly divided on the (t)issue.

What a waste of electrons! (Pun not intended, but there anyway. Sometimes my brain just does that.)

Do not tell me that this is merely “infotainment,” or that, well, I read the story after all. I did read it, but what I was afterward was neither informed nor entertained.

No, what I was getting at (Look! There goes the point!) was that while print journalism is probably dying, online journalism is no replacement. Of course, neither was television journalism. (Maybe radio journalism had something, but I wasn’t around for that.)

Television “journalism” suffers from a combination of bias (liberal and conservative), preaching to the choir, and the same variously qualified talking heads. Even the network newscasts devote only a few snappy sound bites that barely ripple the surface of an event or issue; favor good video over good writing or analysis; use thesame words as every other network (snowpocalypsecomes to mind); and ignore important but non-sexy stories. And don’t even get me started on Sweeps Week. Just don’t.

Then we come to what passes for online journalism. Newspaper headlines could be unintentionally funny (Police Shoot Man With Knife), but online news services have recently offered these examples of sheer stupidity:

Miley Cyrus Finally Reveals Why She Sticks Out Her Tongue

Does pee turn to snow in icy cold?

Apparently CIA did not tell truth

Would you buy wine for your cat?

Pumpkin poaching goes unsolved

Will lies hurt witness’s credibility?

Man stole brains sold on eBay

While even stupider headlines can certainly be found with next to no research, many of those headlines came from supposedly reputable news organizations (CNN.com, I’m looking at you).

Every political season I take a break from news, and even parodies of same, because I start screaming when I watch, listen, or read. I may have to extend that policy to non-political season as well, if indeed such a thing exists. I figure if Armageddon arrives (and has been fact-checked on snopes.com), one of my friends will e-mail me about it.

Why I Won’t See the Hobbit Movies

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People who have known me since I was a teenager would be shocked to hear me say that. I was/have been/still am one of the most devoted Tolkien fans ever – since back in the 1970s when the first wave of Hobbit hysteria hit.

I loved the Lord of the Rings movies. I sat in the theater reciting my favorite lines along with the actors. I curled up in my seat in a fetal position and sobbed when the characters left to sail West. These were my friends and they were leaving.

I knew that Peter Jackson had to make some choices in order to film three books. He could not possibly put in everything. Indeed, some fans were upset that favorite scenes didn’t make it in (Tom Bombadil, for example). I was upset by what they put in that wasn’t in the books (the whole Arwen-is-dying nonsense).

Which brings me back to The Hobbit. At first I fully expected to see it. Then I started hearing things that made me doubtful.

It was going to another trilogy. You make a trilogy of films from a trilogy of books; that’s fine. You make a trilogy of films out of a single book and a short one at that, no good can come of it. You will have to add and pad and then Gad! Stuff that Tolkien never wrote – lots of stuff.

It was another dramatic epic struggle between Supreme Good and Primal Evil. The Hobbit was a children’s story, for crying out loud, that Tolkien wrote for his young son. A simple quest story – There and Back Again.  The Lord of the Rings came later, featured more complex and grown-up themes, including sweeping battle scenes with thousands of extras. The Hobbit was not a “prequel.” It was a stand-alone book. But The Lord of the Rings, which was and needed to be a sweeping dramatic epic struggle between powerful, apocalyptic forces, made money and lots of it. So let’s do it again, whether that’s what the first book was about or not.

The characterizations and tone had been changed to make the films more dramatic and serious. My husband was watching it in another room, and I asked him what was up with all the screaming and yelling and battles. He said, “I was watching The Hobbit.” My jaw dropped.

Conflict, sure. Danger, sure. But so much yelling and screaming that I thought it had to be a war film (or Robocop without the guns)? Much of the book was sweetly comic, with just enough threat, suspense, and fighting to keep its intended readers – children – interested. Millions of us as teens and young adults loved the book as it was. We recognized the value of children’s literature, and still do. The Harry Potter books and films had a massive following that included me and my friends in our 40s and 50s and beyond. We don’t need the works revised for “mature audiences.”

The last straw for me, though, was Radagast the Brown, a brother wizard of Gandalf’s. He was mentioned ONE TIME in The Hobbit and had only a tiny role in The Lord of the Rings. He was essential to no plot, subplot, or theme. He was, as they say in opera, a spear-carrier. Or in this case a staff-carrier.

At first I shrugged. More padding. So what? Then I heard what they did with the character.

They PUT A BIRD’S NEST ON HIS HEAD and had him drive a SLEIGH PULLED BY BUNNIES.

There is no excuse for that sort of thing and I am not paying money to see it. I’ll stay home and re-re-re-re-re-re-re-read the book.

Sleigh-bunnies. Feh.

Cats, Etc: Conversation With Louise

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I understand this is Throwback Thursday, which means that bloggers can recycle old posts. I haven’t been blogging long enough to have many old posts, but this is a contribution from Louise, one of my cats, pictured above.

Me: Louise, honey, I’m glad you love your mama, but please don’t sit/stand/lie on my throat.
Louise: Meow (translation: But I’m the Queen of Everything.)

Me: Honeycat, it’s lovely floof, but please don’t eat it. It looks much better outside you than inside.
Louise: Meow (translation: But I’m Her Royal Floofiness.)

Me: Louise, darling, you have cat food breath.
Louise: Meow (translation: Yeah, well, you have human food breath. What’s your point?)

Valentine’s Day. Bleah.

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I have very few happy memories associated with Valentine’s Day. The only one I can think of offhand is the one when my long-distance boyfriend actually sent me flowers. I took a Polaroid picture of them and married him. (Not directly because of that, but it sure helped.)

I would post the picture of the flowers, but scanning a Polaroid from a hundred or so years ago seldom produces anything but a colorful blob. I suppose I could pass it off as a scanned Polaroid of an Impressionist painting.

But I digress. (I do that a lot.)

Valentine’s Day came to my attention, as it does to most of us, in grade school, where it was shown to be a meaningless exercise. I do not think that making “mailboxes” out of brown paper lunch bags had any actual educational value. And, after the teachers figured out that letting the kids decide whom to give valentines to was a way of separating winners from losers, valentines for every classmate became mandatory. The only technique left to express your true feelings was to decide which valentines you thought were the crappiest and give them to the people you liked least. So perhaps it was an exercise in passive-aggressive behavior, which is an important thing to know and recognize.

Then there were homemade valentines, usually reserved for relatives. These did teach me an important lesson. I would make my paper heart, ask my mother how to spell “valentine,” sign my name, seal the envelope, and continue on to the next. (Lather. Rinse. Repeat.) After about the fifth round of this game, my mother suggested that I write all my cards before I sealed them up, thus having a model for the spelling of “valentine.” It seemed to work.

But again, I digress.

The funny thing (to me) about Valentine’s Day, other than the commercials that equate romantic love with nearly anything you can purchase, is that it reverses the usual ways holidays come to be.

For many (or most) holidays, pagan peoples had a series of holidays celebrating natural events – planting, harvest, astronomical events – and important concepts – fertility, remembering ancestors – throughout the year. The Christian churches did not like to encourage pagan celebrations, but they couldn’t actually say, “Don’t celebrate.” Back then that was about the only fun to be had.

So the various churches took the various pagan holidays and grafted Christian meanings onto them, the most notable being Christmas. I’m not knocking Christmas or saying you shouldn’t believe in it or shouldn’t spend gobs of money on presents. But certain related pagan customs have survived. The Christmas tree was a Druid practice, for example.

(Other graftings did not take as well, so now we have fertility symbols including bunnies and eggs somehow associated with the birth of the Savior.)

However, Valentine’s Day is exactly the opposite sort of holiday. It started out religious and has been so altered that the connection is nearly invisible. St. Valentine was a Christian. He never gave flowers or chocolates or diamonds to anyone. This post that’s been floating around the Internet puts it nicely:

Valentine

(Image from Ethika Politika)

No, what Valentine did was send encouraging notes to other Christians and sign them “Your Valentine” while awaiting execution.

Kind of sucks the romance out of the whole thing, doesn’t it?

I do, however, celebrate Feb. 15, Discount Chocolate Day.

P.S. Don’t get me started on what happens when the government tries to mess with holidays.

 

 

A Book Is a Book Is a Book

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One would think that, considering my life-long status as an ardent bibliophile, I would have been one of the first to get my knickers in a twist at the rise of the (shudder) e-book.

But no.

I do admit that books are a wonderful, magical invention and that the solidity and heft of a printed book are a comfort. And the smell of them! When I was a kid I used to haunt Dennis Used Books and the moment I walked in, I was overwhelmed with the scent of paper, dust, ink, spices, pipe smoke, and the warm space heater.

I used to go to the library and come home with glorious stacks of books, each awaiting my avid reading. And rereading. And rereading. My mother would insist that I get at least one book I hadn’t read before.

Even as I write this (on a computer, not with a quill pen and a pot of ink), I am surrounded by shelves of books, stacks of books, piles of books, toppling towers of books, bags of books, autographed books, even a couple of first editions.

I wanted a book within reach everywhere. I had a bedside book, a purse book, a bathroom book, a car book, lest I be stranded somewhere with only a ketchup bottle for company. Hell, I used to buy purses based on how many paperbacks they would hold.  (I would try to make each book a different genre so that I could switch back and forth among them without losing track.)

The thing is, many of my bibliophile friends complain of the insubstantiality of electronic editions. And admittedly, they do not offer the same sensory delights as “dead-tree” editions.

But.

The content of a book is still the same content, no matter how it’s delivered. If each new technology had been rejected for its difference and novelty, I would be sitting here surrounded by scrolls of papyrus and creating these words with a pointed stick and a slab of clay.

Printed books were easier to make and distribute than hand-copied ones. Saint Gutenberg brought inexpensive, widely available reading to the masses. Anyone could own a Bible, a biography, a newspaper, a novel. And bibliophiles were born and said, “It is good.”

E-books have made the written word even more accessible. You don’t even have to go out in the snow. Just press a few buttons and you have a new book – or even a very old one – instantly available.

The e-book functions very much like a printed book. It may not replicate the heft or scent, but it remembers where you stopped reading and goes there promptly. It allows you to look up an unfamiliar word without first hunting down a dictionary. It lets you read in bed without disturbing anyone who is sharing that space.

There are some types of content that are not suited to e-books – picture- or photo-heavy texts, for example. (Though I read National Geographic quite happily on my tablet.) But otherwise, the content of a book is still the content of that book, whether it’s ink on a page or pixels on a screen.

And for me, the e-book holds one overwhelming advantage – the very insubstantiality that others dislike. I now can carry with me, wherever I go, 300+ books. Even 3000, if I want to. To a person with a bad back, this is a godsend.

Those Who Will Not See

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Yesterday I shared a post on Facebook that I thought was awesome. Here it is, so you can contemplate it too: http://momastery.com/blog/2014/01/30/share-schools/

The comments I got on it were things like “Wow! Brilliant!” and “This would have changed my life.”

A friend posted exactly the same essay, and here are some of the responses he got, interspersed with comments I made.

COMMENT: Wow, a math teacher that does not understand how game theory works. That is kind of sad.

COMMENT: It should be noted that the premiss [sic] of revenge is that 1+1=0.

 ME: Why are you debating game theory? This is about the human heart.

COMMENT: If she’s optimizing to prevent a low probability event, she’s making the same mistake add the TSA.

ME: Summarize in no more than three words what this essay is about. Kids. Loneliness. Ostracism. Help the hurting. Pay attention, gang. The point is zooming by somewhere overhead. The TSA is irrelevant to this.

COMMENT: I think that people who think that by mining a lot of data and then look for correlations they can detect who’s being abusive are…naive at best, dangerous at worst.

ME: I’ll take naive over uncaring any day. A teacher that cares is way more important than the TSA, NSA, and all those TLA* people. I’m leaving now before I say something that will get me banned. [The poster blocks or bans anyone who engages in ad hominem or other abusive attacks.]

COMMENT: This is a single teacher data mining, yes. The NSA at least has some experience in doing it correctly…

Of course, there were other people who responded to what the post was really about, but I was appalled at the number who skipped right past the topic in favor of showing off their erudition instead of compassion.

Admittedly, I’m a professional nitpicker, and I have sometimes been guilty of the same thing – ignoring the content of a post to go after incorrect usage of “literally,” for example. But my God, the relentless refusal to address the topic, even when it was pointed out repeatedly, and not just by me, that they were discussing Something Else Entirely. With rants so long they were essays themselves, and links to articles on the NSA and how to avoid being arrested. (The thread included comments on profiling as well.)

I have been a victim of bullying, etc. So have many of the people who commented when I shared the essay, and when they passed it along. So have many people who tried to get my friend’s comment thread back on topic.

And so, too, I suspect, were at least some of the people who nattered on about statistical analysis and all the other extraneous matters. I cannot imagine them going through school without getting taunted, threatened, or beaten up for being a “smarty-pants,” “brainiac,” or “know-it-all,” or some words less polite. And I suspect that those people are in MASSIVE denial, still trying to build themselves a shield of words and facts and statistics and analysis and theories and showy buzzwords.

I would tell them (if they would listen, which they likely wouldn’t) that this strategy Won’t Work. I know. I’ve tried it. Again and again. And yet again.

What is that definition of mental illness? Oh yes. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

So what’s the point? The topic, as it were? I may be crazy. But by that definition, so are they. And I’m getting treatment for it, not reinforcing myself with a feedback loop. Oops. Did I just get pedantic and jargon-y? I’ll stop now and apologize.

*TLA = Three-Letter Acronym

Hillbilly Bashing

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It seems that hillbillies – people from Appalachia or the southern U.S. – are the last remaining group of people that is acceptable for people to poke fun at, insult, and demean.

Every other stereotyped group has been taken off the comedy table. Indeed, most remarks about stereotypes are not permitted in polite company. You can get into trouble for saying black people are lazy. Italians are mobsters. Fat people are disgusting. The Irish are drunks. The Polish are stupid. The French are snobs. Blondes are dumb (and “blondes” is code for “blonde women“). Feminists are lesbians. Scientists and other geeks can’t get laid. Men are hopeless at child-raising and household chores (or if they’re not, there’s something wrong with them). I’m sure you could add your own examples.

But hillbillies are fair game. Whether you call them hillbillies, hicks, rubes, briars, rednecks, jethroes, bubbas, or peckerwoods, you can make jokes about how they marry their sisters, drink moonshine, screw livestock, and eat roadkill. Honestly, you’d think some people believe that Hee-Haw was a documentary.

Jeff Foxworthy made millions with his “You may be a redneck” humor. It was gentle, seldom-vicious, well-intended humor, but it was stereotypical nonetheless. And was it more acceptable or less because Foxworthy himself was a Southerner? I haven’t decided.

If you look at “reality” shows (I try to avoid them), you’ll get a whopping dose of “Let’s all laugh at the stupid hillbillies. We’re way better than they are.” Duck Dynasty. Honey Boo-Boo. Moonshiners. Hunters and fishers and survivalists. And someone is making a lot of money off these shows. I’ll give you a hint: The moneymakers don’t eat roadkill or have outhouses.

But let’s forget comedy and reality shows for a moment. We all know that’s just entertainment, not one culture actually demeaning another. Let’s look at real reality for a moment.

The other day someone posted about the contaminated water scandal in West Virginia. Many people who replied to this post were, well, less than polite. Here are some examples:

People in those communities need their own Martin Luther King, someone who can raise their spirits and challenge them. Someone who can bypass the whole political process (Me: so far, so good. But wait for it.)…. And because the people there are so fearful of minorities, this version of Dr. King will have to be white and one of their kin, while being aware of much bigger things and principles than Appalachia usually considers.

And this, regarding an elected official who ignored the disaster in his own state:

Yep, and $20 says he gets re-elected. Why? Have you LOOKED at the average citizen of West Virginia? 

And my favorite:

Don’t believe in science? Fine. How about being a good steward of the earth like that book you’re constantly jizzing yourself over says, you half-witted, superstitious dumb-fuck!

Admittedly, there were commenters who called out those who made such comments:

There’s a good chance the “average citizen of WVA” may be keeping your lights on and letting you post insulting things about them.

And:

Extremists have a choke-hold on American politics–and this is true in more places than Appalachia.

And (again, my favorite):

Don’t make the mistake of confusing the politicians and the people. It would be a mistake to stereotype the people of Appalachia as ignorant and racist. You can find ignorance and prejudice in every corner of our nation. You can also find brilliance and humanity in every place as well.

Now I admit I have a vested interest. I was born in Kentucky and so were most of my relatives. And my family has produced teachers and coaches and civil servants and businesspeople and college graduates. And me. Someone who uses proper grammar and punctuation, and makes a living doing that. And yes, listens to country music, knows how to shoot a rifle, has milked cows and collected eggs, and has relatives nicknamed Jim-Bob and Spud.

My culture is as worthy of respect as any other. Appalachian people make beautiful art and music. They have become scientists and celebrities, inventors and innovators.

And let’s not forget that the Appalachian land has been exploited for its mineral wealth, with the profit flowing out to other regions. The farmers who try to make a meager living from land not really suitable for agriculture have had to become sharecroppers. If many people there are poor and undereducated, it’s not because they like it that way.

They may be different than you. But you are not better than they are. Show some respect. The ones who jeer and demean are the uncivilized ones.

It’s All Been Done

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The other day my husband came to me, despondent about his photography. “I don’t know what I can shoot that hasn’t already been done by someone else.”

Over the past couple of years, Dan has become a pretty decent nature photographer. He’s developed his eye, learned about S-curves and the two-thirds rule, and considers background and foreground more. When he first started, I would tinker with the contrast and saturation and shadows, but now all I have to do is maybe crop them a little. Sometimes not even that.

Here are a few of his photos. ImageImageImage

I liked them so much that I made them into a slide show for my screen saver. He was surprised and touched.

Then I decided to share them with friends and family. I had 15 calendars manufactured featuring the photos and sent them out as holiday gifts. They were a hit. A stranger saw one at the packing/shipping store and asked if he could buy one.

Then Dan started angsting about having no worlds left to conquer and I had to give him a pep talk. It’s the same with writers, I told him. There are only six plots in the world (around that number, anyway) and literature continues to happen. I told him that yes, every flower has been photographed by someone, but not by him, with his own unique sensibility.

And I suggested that if he was tired of doing flowers, he could start capturing other things that interest him, like textures and patterns. I showed him a few examples of similar photos that a friend had taken and reminded him that an artist friend liked to experiment with patterns of light and shadow.

(I did all this instead of snapping at him that if he really wanted something to worry about, he should look at our bank balance.)

So here’s what he came up with.Image

and

Image

and even this.

Image

 

I think there are many more worlds for him to explore and conquer. If he can get past the Photo Performance Anxiety.

Whither Weather?

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No, I am not going to leap into the current “conversation” about climate change, global, warming, and extreme weather phenomena. So if you’re thinking of commenting on that, just don’t. It generates too much heat and too little light.

No, what I want to do is shed a little light on heat. (See what I did there?) In my part of the country, we’ve been experiencing below-zero temperatures, inches to feet of snow, and wild panic-buying of household staples.

(I’m not sure why bread, milk, and toilet paper are the most popular choices after shovels, salt, gloves, and the like. I get nervous if we run low on chicken broth, diced tomatoes, and cat food. But that’s just me.)

My reaction to this dire predicament is a profound shrug. I used to live in upstate New York. On the top of a bald hill (no windbreaks). In a log cabin. Heated primarily by wood. During the winter of 1978-79.

During the recent cold snap I have rediscovered why I both like and dislike heating with wood.

The pluses: A lovely roaring fire in a wood stove is a good thing. It heats the house. You can put a pot of water on top and have an instant humidifier or a pot of tea. The cats like to lie impossibly near it. (Don’t ask me why.) The wood stove is a wonderful supplement to another method of heating and a godsend in an emergency power outage.

The minuses: Stoves require frequent tending – loading and poking and stirring and ash disposal and adjusting the damper, etc. They tend to stop giving off heat between bedtime and morning, and to get them started again you have to get out from under the nice warm blankets.

Most of all, you have to acquire wood and transport it from place to place.

You can buy wood, of course, but that’s really practical only for the occasionally used fireplace or the wealthy. All that I will say about that aspect of wood gathering is that I should never be permitted anywhere near a chainsaw.

Carrying wood from the basement to the second floor of that cabin (it was a big cabin) is what injured my back the first time. The doctor told me I should rest it by not carrying things. This was not an option for me. There are only so many sweaters a person can wear before becoming immobilized.

The upshot is that, while I can appreciate a wood stove, I can no longer operate one by myself. Several bulging disks, pinched nerves, and surgeries later, about the most I can do is advise my husband on how that next log should be positioned. (I do remember the theory; I’m just unable to practice.)

So what I like most about wood stoves is having something other than a wood stove to provide most of the heat and having a husband who can handle the wood transport and assorted bending over that’s required. That and the lower electric bills, of course.

Welcome to my blog!

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I will be adding content as time allows. Right now I have to get some work done.