Brick

The Room in the Elephant

Thursday, September 1, 2011

This column first was published as the “President’s Message” in the September 2011 newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

The board of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists has been cleaning up after the party in Detroit. While washing glasses and emptying the trash, we share the usual mix of gleeful recollection of anecdotes and recriminations about disasters that could’ve been worse, just like any reunion or New Year’s shindig.

This conversation has continued longer than usual, out of necessity. Yet for feeling like the NSNC world is crashing in a bit, our data are looking pretty good. What color is the elephant in the room?

See over there, by the filing cabinet? That’s the national recession; if it’s a double-dip, where was the boomlet in the middle? Look here, on my desk, the print media are imploding (as are video media). Journalism will continue in some form, as will our leg of the profession — commentary and reflection — but individually we may not be able to wait for the toner to dry on what forms it will take.

Our numbers are stored in a trunk that we open in our bimonthly online board meetings. Also, our executive director hauls it to every conference: Each conferee gets the financial reports stapled to the agenda of the annual general membership meeting.

Those who studied them — especially our new officers (Vice President Larry Cohen, Treasurer Jim Casto and Membership Chair Rose Valenta in two-year posts and Social Media Chair Tracy Beckerman as a one-year member) — were struck by the numbers for the conference, membership, contest and financial.

We are asking if the conference is an endangered species. Can we afford to hold one in 2012? What aspects would have to change to avoid canceling our annual education and advocacy party?

If we lost money (Continued)

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Spread It

Monday, August 8, 2011

Facebook often is positive, and rightfully so. A Brick from 11 months ago supported that: The Future Just Showed Up: Like. Facebook is not all feel-good happy talk but controversy and deliberate negativity get moved down and out quickly — posts get “hidden” and friends become “unfriended.”

My last weekend post fell in between. Sunday afternoon I wrote a message on my Facebook wall for discussion:

Ever wonder about those fancy coffees and other products that promise to donate 5% of the price to some worthwhile charity?
Here’s how to donate at least 6% to education, law enforcement etc. in Arkansas: Buy school supplies anytime but today. (9.25% in Fayetteville)
2011 Sales Tax Holiday http://www.dfa.arkansas.gov/offices/exciseTax/salesanduse/Pages/taxHoliday.aspx

It got one “like” from a friend. Another friend reposted this to her wall, where it got no comments or “likes.”

First point is this seems normal for me, with 341 Facebook friends. Over three-fourths of my postings — I’ll send something up about 10 times a week — get no visible response. Responding to everyone all the time is not how Facebook works.

Second thought is I might have overshot. I was subtly, maybe too subtly, commenting on the national debt crisis. The Washington compromise promised spending cuts but no revenue changes at all, not even closing loopholes. Taxes pay for things we all expect. They’re not voluntary so they have to be fair. Waste must be kept to a minimum, which requires continuing oversight. That’s here, and nationally. I want the ambulance here in five minutes, and if there’s a nationwide pension, defense and now health care, I’ll pay but it better be done well.

So I didn’t buy sunglasses, shoes or even a ream of paper on School Tax Holiday Weekend, which were exempt from sales tax. I’m heading to Wal-Mart today (buying very few if any “school” supplies, incidentally). And pay my rightful share back into the community.

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3 Cheers for Saturday

Saturday, August 6, 2011

What, not four? Others are punditing U.S. economy very well.

Why there’ll always be real estate agents and contractors

In the HomeStyle section of the Saturday regional/state paper is the weekly Personal Space brief. Most weeks the subject, who is asked about her or his home and some biographical information, maneuvers to plug their business or charity. Tacky.

Today, though, the homeowner of the week praises the property.

My favorite space: There’s a road that leads up to our subdivision. It’s this great windy road that goes in between two wooded areas. … You come out of the city, and it’s almost like you’re in the country.
“… If I could do one thing to improve this space I would: Make it a little more accessible.”

That’s the American dream, in short metaphor.

Easy profit weekend

A tax-free weekend for school supplies runs today and Sunday.

In a somewhat restricted inventory, items that can be used for school, from office supplies (although, interestingly, nothing higher tech than calculators) to clothing (including “wedding apparel” (Continued)

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Blog On, Blog Off

Monday, August 1, 2011

This column first was published in the August 2011 newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

Instead of polishing this column, I should be sewing nametags into my clothes, shaking out my sleeping bag for WordCamp.

If I showed up with that stuff, even the geeks there would laugh. We’re all geeks at WordCamp. The one in Fayetteville, Ark., was a 9-to-5 workshop July 30. There’s an after-party at an Italian restaurant. We’re invited to talk websites over brunch Sunday, hosted by an ad agency. (Schedule conflicts kept me from the party and brunch.)

More than 100 WordCamps are held worldwide every year. They’re cheap (mine’s $30 including food, drink and a good-size gift bag). There’s local speakers, at that price sure, but experts from Texas and California are coming in. They help WordPress users at all levels in a spirit of sharing and community (“open source” is the term).

WordPress is free (open source) hosting software for blogs. But it’s grown to where full websites of major companies and nonprofits — not just blogs — use it (New York Observer, Le Monde, Anderson Cooper 360, even Martha Stewart’s blog). Our www.columnists.com is built on a WordPress platform.

This will be my second WordCamp. Earlier this month while being a smart-alec I realized — too late — I could’ve been a presenter, on content and use of tools.

I was at an area bloggers meet-up. An audience member asked how to make a caption appear when the cursor “rolls over” the image, and the speakers were stumped. Although I am neither a programmer or a coder, I blurted out the answer from my seat: “After uploading your picture, paste the same brief caption in both “title” and “alternate text” fields.”

Now, to fill the remaining 59:55 of my speech, that doesn’t (Continued)

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Walk It Off

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Book Report

Bad Dad by Dave Lieber

175 pages, cloth, Yankee Cowboy Publishing, 2011

What an unusual little book. Fort Worth Star-Telegram metro columnist Dave Lieber includes newspaper columns here, but it’s not a collection. (Dave’s is a watchdog, or consumer activist, column emphasizing solving suburban hassles.)

By the title, it might sound like long-form journalism exploring child abuse. Sort-of, but it’s shy of universal discussions of law, social tolerances, and psychology.

Dave reveals details of his family, his own childhood and even his nascent criminal record, yet it’s not quite a memoir.

Why “Dave” and not the author, or “Lieber”? Because Dave is a friend of perhaps a dozen years. I’ve met Karen and their son Austin (the hero of the book) any number of times. The three separately and as a family (Karen has other children, as well) are remarkable.

So I was prepared to read the book and like it, as I’ve read about all of Dave’s other books. But Bad Dad has a surprising bite to it, like a salsa whose heat you think you taste but then it hits you later.

The book is effective for the directions the author doesn’t go. I still don’t know if it was a mistake for Dave not to summarize the law and the current state of psychological and sociological research. Actually, he does hit this cultural background but very brief. Summarizing for a book project gives a journalist license to bleed words into page after page.

This book asks, when does modern American middle-class child-rearing turn into abuse?

Here’s Dave and Austin’s base story: A few years ago, when Austin was 11, he grew stubborn while the two were at a McDonald’s just a few blocks from their home. Dave managed his temper, then managed it a bit more by telling the preteen to walk home. He drove off. So both could cool down.

Some police officers
(Continued)

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Our Raveenia Museum

Friday, July 22, 2011

I. Crossing the Line

DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY — Should her museum-progress trek be now or wait till it’s further along? My client Crystal Britches calls Fayetteville and Washington County home. For her, Bentonville and the rest of Benton County are places to visit. Unlike, say, Springdale, which she sees as merely one town up.

Fayettevillians know exactly what she means. Vice versa surely applies as well.

At Miss Britches’ bidding, I went to inspect the progress of the world-class museum that’s being built up there. Fayetteville is a classic college town but offers little art. We have a few galleries, artists open their studios sometimes and the university has some exhibit space, but no public or private art museums.

Bentonville has none at the moment, but that will change this year.

While I drive beyond the Benton County line a few times a month, I hadn’t taken time for the museum project of Alice Walton and her family. It’s been under construction a few years, with many opening date revisions. To keep onlookers away, its eventual roads either are blocked or unfinished at the points they join existing streets.

Trail from downtown Bentonville to museum. Photo from city, www.bentonvillear.com.

City of Bentonville photo

Instead, the art lover has to walk the one footpath to approach the proverbial knothole in the construction fence.

Now that the opening date 11/11/2011 has been set in concrete and mortar — unless it’s changed — the connected buildings are taking final form. The news media report that progress can be seen through that knothole.

Crystal Britches travels to Benton County far less than me. Mainly it’s to drive through and north to Kansas City for ballroom dance competitions, of which she is fond and why she wears over her clothes heat-retaining rain pants, an old-fashioned and perhaps wrongheaded way to keep her legs looking good.

Yet she has great love and pride for the entire area. Miss Britches not only gives money, but time and labor. With her personal plastic, she is a walking drop cloth. Yet her efforts are strictly behind the scenes. She hires me for public relations work precisely to avoid relating to others publicly.

Crystal Britches and Alice Walton have some things in common. They’re brilliant, personally and in business. They’re both wealthy enough for their personalities to not only be tolerated in their respective communities but celebrated. Still, Ms. Walton is a billionaire, Miss Britches but a millionaire, so the former’s quirks (Continued)

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Budget Hawk Takes Bath

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

There really was a hawk in our yard, I told My Beloved. She was out of town so this was on the phone. She believed me enough. After all, she’s the one who spotted the high nest this past spring, in an old oak in the back yard of the home next door. We occasionally saw a pair of hawks, and eventually we almost could see a couple of chicks poking their heads above the edge of the nest.

Across the our 1960s residential lane, we learned, a family of owls also had taken residence. We’ve heard their hoots but haven’t seen them. We also can hear hawk screeches.

Part of me thought this was a good thing. Predators would scare away the rabbits and opossums that eat my chard, sunflowers and bush beans to the ground. The latest folk remedy — a tablespoon of Tabasco in a quart of water, sprayed daily — wasn’t working. Critters around here probably love hot stuff.

Two weeks ago, a doe appeared in our front yard one afternoon. Another deer was a couple of houses up. MB suspects, and she’s likely right, that new construction in formerly undeveloped areas to the west might be driving a variety of animals out.

One time a couple of weeks ago, I swore I might have seen a hawk perched on one of our two iron birdbaths. It was just as quickly gone, and I thought, that can’t be. But if it was, was it one of the hawk parents next door, or one of its young, grown rather large?

The sighting made me realize that when people swear by gardening fixes, other forces may be at play. My second planting of vegetables was doing OK — but this showed it might not be my garden pepper spray being effective.

Then Saturday, I was walking to the kitchen and through the enclosed sunporch I definitely saw a hawk. On the near birdbath’s rim. I backed up quietly then ran downstairs for the camera.

I shot a few frames through the glass. I had proof and could post here to Brick. Yet maybe I might get lucky and tiptoe through the back door and good one clear shot before it flew away.

The hawk didn’t seem to care. I sat on a lawn chair for 20 minutes, watching and taking a number of shaky photos. These three were clear, though. At one point he flew to the birdbath closer to the back wall and fence. He calmly hung out there for a while, preening? Without better equipment, I had taken the best shots I could. When I stood, he looked around a moment then calmly flew away.

Did the hawk take a bath, like a robin or cardinal? Not that I saw. At one point his (or her) lower torso was fluffed out, but that was all. He may have leaned over for a quick sip of water twice.

I was out there long enough to worry. This guy is easily as big as either of our cats. Science says such sized birds go for very small animals, field mice, lizards and songbirds. But still. We let one cat out, on a harness, every few weeks for about an hour and under our supervision. Except when we go inside for a refill of tea. Now we won’t dare leave Tiki outside alone, even for a minute, tied up.

This hawk was not bathing, apparently, and he was not hunting. They do that from high in the air where the prey can’t see them. Unless the dude was admiring his reflection. War hawks, budget hawks, red-tailed hawks, at base they’re all feathers and fluff. And beaks and talons.

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Forward Slash and Burn

Monday, July 18, 2011

This is a reversal. Brick is all about the new. Live in the present, look toward the future. Dwell just a little on what’s past.

But the URL from which it sprang, benpollock.com, has been neglected. Oh, I tell myself, it’s an archive. It works well enough. Fast-loading, a reference for me when I am writing far from my files at home. Perhaps occasional readers of Brick head back there to see earlier work.

Usually I think these old essays get opened because of obscure search keywords people type into Google. As for me when I have reviewed its contents, it looks like a pile of junk. This past spring, however, I dived in, to ensure I wasn’t repeating myself in a new Brick, and saw lots of good writing, good organization and even wit. Amid only a few clunkers.

Logical enough. “Leave well enough alone,” my late Uncle Al Pollock was fond of saying. The website that appears before the forward slash, benpollock.com, is an archive of some five dozen columns I wrote for newspapers, real newspapers.

The website looks like it was built in 2002, because it was. Pure html code, not a lick of CSS, which was not widespread yet (if not in common use, it wouldn’t work for most people’s computers). No frames or other bells and whistles, though. I always liked a clean look. The yellow legal-pad image indicated my preference for writing longhand. Almost 10 years later, though, and you can almost see the edges curling from rot and smell the mildew.

Facts belie the logic. Analytics indicate all sorts of people go there and open the supposedly greatest hits of my late ’80s-early ’90s newspaper columns, collectively called Mirthology, and my 1/1999-9/2001 newspaper columns collectively called Loose Leaves. Plus a few guest columns. These two standing heds indicate my goals, humor in the first and mixed topics for the latter.

Forget all the muckety-mucks I’ve had to deal with and work under for decades:

My copy doesn’t suck.

Maybe if the parlor in which the columns are displayed was spruced up — paint the walls, wash the windows — my morale would improve and I’d write more (Continued)

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I’m Your Vehicle, Detroit

Saturday, July 2, 2011

DETROIT — Six days after returning home, two of the June 23-26 columnist conference’s field trips burn in me, tours of the Motown Historical Museum and the new heart-of-downtown home office of Quicken Loans.

Hitsville U.S.A.

The museum, informally called “Hitsville,” is in the two original houses in which Berry Gordy created the Motown recording label. Poverty, youth and convenience apparently led Gordy to set up in a residential block, eventually buying most houses there, each with a different business function. This also was a Malcolm Gladwell Outliers sort of monument: Its original stars (and writers and producers) were born within a few years of one another and many grew up in this neighborhood.

The one negative is this museum is it’s like a presidential library. You get only the good stuff about Gordy. He was no monster but neither was he a saint. The exuberance of the exhibits and most of all, the staff, overwhelm that predictable flaw. Museum visitors are organized into groups, guided to see a mini-documentary film then led through the rooms by guides who, besides lecture, sing and dance. By the end of the 30-40 minutes all visitors will have been persuaded to sing and dance a bit.

How else besides participating can one understand the genius of the analog sound effects Gordy used? (No one was recorded.) The most interesting is a 4×4-foot square hole in an upstairs ceiling exposing an unfinished attic. Singing or clapping under it created an echo — scratch that, created reverb, which would be recorded and used as a track. “Hey, young lady,” the tour guide said to a columnist, and he got her to sing the chorus of “My Girl” in the well. Little had we known that Tracy Beckerman could not only fill the room but sing on pitch. In the studio itself, he led the men in a Temptations-style clap and kick, and the women in a Supremes-like clap and shimmy.

Unlike most museums, we were not herded at the end to the gift shop, which I resent. But this is one time I might have bought a souvenir if I had had the time.The private museum allows no photography; there’s few photos online. But here is an AP picture of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee doing the guys’ step in the studio.

Quicken Loans

Quicken Loans hosted a lunch of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists in its new headquarters, the top floors of the CompuServe building in downtown Detroit. Its executives want a lively urban atmosphere to enliven their young staff. They want to do right by Detroit and help revitalize its center, hit so hard this past decade. And the real estate there, plus government incentives, on this scale, is very affordable. Click here for a Detroit News report and a Detroit Free Press article. Quicken Loans had been in a suburb, overlooking a parking lot and a Costco, we were told. Now, staff had a view of the city skyline, the Detroit River and beyond.

It’s reminiscent of the high-tech campuses of Silicon Valley and Austin, but instead of sprawling horizontally, it’s vertical, several stories (20th through 23rd floors?). “We” are supposed to want to work in such environments. They’re said to be designed for creative people like us. My Beloved loved her Alltel Financial Services in west Little Rock and in other years IBM Global Services offices around the country.

When I am downsized from newspapers, this is what I am supposed to covet.

Door off hallway at Quicken Loans headquarters, downtown Detroit -- Rick Horowitz photo

I was creeped out.

Give me dirty carpets and crumbs (Continued)

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Paneling for the Benchley Den

Friday, July 1, 2011

This column also was published in the July 2011 newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

Once again, an NSNC columnist conference astounded its audience with information and fun. The June 23-26 session in Detroit catered to would-be and published book writers, gave fresh tips to free-lancers (and in “custom content” not just columns), took on humor and twisted its elbow, and even looked ahead to political coverage next spring.

Here are the overall lessons learned from “Rebound in Motown.”

Branding is real, and it works. We’re writers so find a synonym — style, specialty, etc. — if you don’t like the artifice of brand.
Straight columns need research, even humor and personal columns are enriched by research as well.
Humor columns require jokes. Many nice people on the panels danced around the popularity of anecdotal columns to write, mention they don’t read well and rarely sell well. Jokes require punch lines, and punch lines require meticulous crafting.

Mirror: How did you find Detroit, Mr. Pollock?

Myself: The city of Detroit was about as I expected, yet better. It had its decline later than other Rust Belt cities and so its renaissance began later. It’s not quite fair to compare it to a place like Pittsburgh — yet. Businesses and residents are returning to the heart of Detroit, and we saw that.

The “better” part was how solid the street planning and old buildings are. The architecture of the high-rises is from many of the best decades of American design, built by people with the money to not blame budget overruns for any short-cuts. The streets are wide. There’s a lot of outdoor sculpture. Grand statues of great leaders. It’s like Kansas City, another Midwestern city famous for its public art.

Mirror: But what about its reputation?

Myself: I lived in Little Rock for many years. Just last May, Arkansas’ capital continued its surprising reputation by continuing to stay apace with Detroit (Continued)

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The Room in the Elephant

Spread It

3 Cheers for Saturday