Walter and me

There are those of a certain age who can remember when the nightly network news was only 15 minutes long, and hosted by Douglas Edwards. I am one of those. Even though it would be years before our own family would have our own television, I watched the news and other shows at the homes of friends and relatives. And then Walter Cronkite took over the anchor desk and the news lasted for 30 minutes. Where I lived CBS had the two main stations we watched, WMT in Cedar Rapids and WKBT in LaCrosse, so Walter was THE face of news.

Later, attending conventions of organizations to which I belonged--the Radio Television News Directors Association and the Society of Professional Journalists--I had a chance to see Walter in person. Being in the same room with him was sufficient, I didn't need to meet him or shake his hand.

It's ironic that his passing occurred during the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing because Walter Cronkite was also the voice of NASA in those days, anchoring every exciting space mission that brought the USA one step closer to landing on the moon. Now we live in an internet world; every person and every organization can have their own news channel, even NASA. Ironically, this weekend the Apollo 11 mission is being presented once again online, in real time.

I'm not tuning in to the Apollo 11 newsfeed because I remember the long boring hours we used to spend watching live coverage of the space shots. It was impossible, for me anyway, to keep tuned in. After watching hours and hours, I guess my patience ran out. So I remember watching the coverage of the actual landing, when the Lunar Module with Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon's surface. But I don't remember watching at the time when Armstrong actually walked out the door and uttered his famous phrase. I think I was probably asleep by that time.

Another major event today is the steam train, Seattle Pacific's engine 4449, that's going to chugging through Prairie du Chien. That stirs up memories of the steam trains that used to visit from time to time when I was growing up. Again, we would often stand for hours (it seemed) at the railroad depot (just a block from our house), straining to hear the sound of the steam whistle echoing off the river bluffs, not knowing when the train was scheduled but someone had said a steam train was coming. I'm tempted to go watch the train today, but we've already made plans to see a Base Ball game.

Expirations

I attended a funeral of a friend today. Maybe I should say we were friendly competitors, because we once worked in competing radio newsrooms. But there was never any animosity, even though we were competitors and I got a job he had also applied for.

But the occasion did prompt some reflections on what journalism has become, prompted in part by an online PBS expose. I posted my reflections on my blog at the SPJ website.

Not an abandoned blog

The New York Times reports that a 2008 survey indicated only 7.4 million out of 133 million blogs had been updated in the past 120 days, in other words 95 percent of blogs are basically abandoned. Well this blog is not abandoned, this update is the first one since March 2nd. Let's see, that's only about 90 days.

This was my first blog, but now I have several more, including blogs on journalism and Biblical Archaeology. Plus I have a life. So keeping QV up-to-date is not my highest priority.

But every now and then I have something I'd like to say, an observation or a comment that I don't want to go unexpressed. So I'll say it here. Or on Facebook.

The Land Remembers

I noticed a long time ago that deaths seem to happen in clusters. When someone close dies, it often seems that several more with personal connections depart their mortal existence within a few days.

And so it was that not only did my mother pass away last week but I also note the passing of the well know radio newscaster Paul Harvey (to whom she and dad often listened), as well as Walter Schlaugat, the owner of the radio station where I got my first job, and also Philip Keillor, the brother of radio humorist Garrison Keillor.

A decade or two ago I was at a meeting and met Philip Keillor on a rainy fall afternoon. I gave him a ride back to work after the meeting, we had a nice chat, and I felt like I could call him a friend even though I don't think we ever met again. I had just started writing a newspaper column for The Capital Times and he had been reading it. He complimented me on what I had written. The newspaper obituary noted that he also was quite proud of his brother Garrison's weekly newspaper column, as well he should have been.

I was born in 1951, which is when Paul Harvey started his radio news career and about when Walter Schlaugat got an FCC permit to start a radio station in Prairie du Chien. WPRE was a regular fixture in our home, since it was the only local radio station and was an important source for local news, such as obituaries. I took it for granted, like running water and electricity, until my college years when I started to pay attention to how radio stations differed based on the news they carried and the music they played. When I applied for a job at WPRE as a summer fill-in announcer in 1971 I was surprised to get hired. Walt was more occupied with management and engineering than programming, so I didn't deal with him a lot but I do remember getting a phone call from him one evening when I inappropriately played Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven during a slot that was usually reserved for sedate MOR standards.

We didn't listen to WPRE all of the time, otherwise we never would have heard Paul Harvey, since he was carried by the ABC network and WPRE was not an ABC affiliate. Paul Harvey's genius for succinctly reporting news, with bedrock Midwestern values, made him an icon. I met him once at the EAA Fly-In in Oshkosh (his love for flying and pilots was well known). I also heard him speak at a journalists convention once or twice. My image of Paul Harvey is slightly tarnished, no fault of his, due to run-ins with dim witted radio consultants who didn't understand why everyone couldn't do news like Paul Harvey. But I don't want to tell you how many times I sat in front of a soon-to-be-live microphone, waiting for my newscast to begin, warming up my voice with my best Paul Harvey imitation.

And finally, mom, who would've celebrated her 92nd birthday next June. Her years on earth were about ten fewer than those of her own mother. She spent almost two decades in the nursing home in Lancaster, which is a very long time. But I never heard her complain about living so many days in a little room. She had never gotten a driver's license, and didn't get out a lot even when we were growing up. Maybe that's part of it.

She did emerge from the nursing home from time to time when she could get a ride from one of us. Probably her last time out was her 90th birthday, which we celebrated at a local park. Her birthday always came around Father's Day, so a family picnic in mid-June was a long-held important family tradition.

The funeral at the Lancaster United Methodist Church featured live music by guitar and fiddle, as well as organ. And there were kind words by the pastor about a life lived close to God, which is a comforting thing to hear at a funeral.

A couple of weeks ago I finally began a book that I had wanted to read for many years, The Land Remembers, by Ben Logan. This memoir of a southwestern Wisconsin farm childhood not only has place names with which I'm familiar, but also describes early 20th century farm life that I heard about frequently from my dad as we were growing up. Since we lived on the family farm up until I was almost eight years old there are redolent memories hidden all through the book.

I'm sure my mom was not cut out to be a farm wife. She was raised in the city, the daughter of an accountant and a milliner. But nonetheless she lived on a farm, raising her family, for a dozen years before we finally moved to town. She raised seven boys well, although we tried her patience many times. We will miss her but she is part of us and will always be with us.

3/4/9 Addendum - Thinking further about the events of the last few days, I should correct the last sentence. It implies a permanence belied by the granite markers in the snowy grass behind the Mt. Zion Church. We have been making more and more visits to this country church near the original Govier farmstead north of Lancaster. I tell my children, some day you will visit me here.

Reflecting on the deceptive impermanence of our lives it occurs to me that just as this virtual online world is a fabrication of our day to day existence, our day to day existence is a fabrication of a more permanent creation. C.T. Studd, the great missionary of a century ago, is credited with saying, "Only one life, twill soon be past. Only what's done for Christ will last."

It seems to me those who built this little country church, and could hardly imagine the trappings of the world that now surrounds it, well knew the difference between permanence and impermanence. The apostle Paul wrote, "And now these three remain, faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love."

February 12 Birthdays

Today's recognition of Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday reminds me of a visit to New Salem, Illinois, where Lincoln spent important years of his early manhood. It was noted there that New Salem was a short lived frontier town. It began just a few years before Lincoln arrived, and was abandoned not long after Lincoln left. It was as if it was created providentially to help forge the values of America's 16th president.

Much has been and will be written about Lincoln, that's my memory. This year I hope to visit the Lincoln library in Springfield.

How Sleep Works

As a teenager with an early morning newspaper delivery route I invested in an alarm clock with two snooze bars, one for five minutes and one for ten minutes. I thought the snooze bar would make it easier to get up in the morning. Later I bought a radio with a snooze bar. After the alarm went off I could hit the bar and then, theoretically, be soothed into wakefulness by music. Neither made it any easier to wake up in the morning.

As an adult I ended up in a job for which I awoke at 3:45am. I realized, in waking up daily for that job, that the best way to wake up was to get to bed at a reasonable time, and to get up and get moving as soon as the alarm sounded in the morning. It's a whole lot easier to get out of the clutches of the bed as quickly as possible, kind of like ripping a bandage off of a sore.

I've become more and more protective of my sleep, and less and less enamored with late night attractions that might keep me from getting the sleep I need and enjoy. Even on weekends I'm prone to hit the sack around the usual time, so I can get up at my usual time. Being consistent in my sleep patterns seemed like a good idea. Now, I read that there's evidence to back me up on that.

An Associated Press article the other day said that the best way to prevent the common cold was to get plenty of sleep. "Small sleep disturbances increase the risk of getting sick," the story said.
It brought to mind a bout of bronchitis I had a decade or so ago, the sickest I've probably ever been. I had been out working late three nights straight and very low on sleep, and I paid for that with a hacking cough that lasted for weeks.

The story goes on to warn against getting too much sleep, which is also not healthy, and give a number of other excellent suggestions on sleeping properly and healthily.

My resolution for the past year or so has been to better prepare for sleep by turning off the computer an hour earlier and spend the last hour of the day reading. As much as I enjoy sleep it's been a struggle but I'm gradually getting better at it. I hope to do even better this year.

Election Day 2008

Ever since 1974, 34 years ago, election day has meant late night news coverage. Radio news was all about live coverage from the polls and from the clerks office as the returns came in. Then after radio I worked as an AP stringer for a number of elections. But this year I voted and I'll be able to watch the returns tonight as the results of what appears to be an epoch-creating election are counted.

Whether it's McCain or Obama winning, U.S. Politics will be moving in a new direction. Particularly if Obama wins. A democratic party landslide would be particularly momentous, as some polls are predicting. But lest we get too alarmed, we should remember what Dave Harris was trying to tell voters as they drove to work on the beltline this morning (photo).