Category: General interest

Roger Mudd, whose new book The Place to Be will delight even those who don’t remember when the real news came on TV at 6, told about getting questioned by a journalism student on whether there were any future in the business. (Roger is less than optimistic about the future of news as in newspapers, radio or TV. His book is largely about glory days of the news business when indeed Washington — and to a similar extent New York — was the place to be.) The student was responding to Roger’s pretty grim, though accurate, tales of disappearing newspapers and declining TV news viewers. “I want to be a journalist,” the student said; “but if there’s no future in it, I should be looking at another field.” Hoping to encourage what seemed a bright young man and salvage a potential bright hope, Roger answered that the stories are out there, and if he really wants to tell them, there will always be a place.

I hope so. Horrified as I am at the prospect of facing the day without a cup of coffee and the front sections of the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times, I hang onto the hope that there’s light at the end of that newsprint-scented tunnel. The internet I guess? Roger also told of a very bright young woman whom he asked about where she got her news. She said she kept CNN on very low all the time, and if she noticed something that interested her she went to her computer and brought up New York Times online. But if newspapers disappear, their online sites aren’t likely to survive long.

Maybe it’s just that the world keeps right on changing, for better or for worse (you’re invited to read a few more comments on this on my RedRoom blog.) But I continue to hope for the survival of daily news in print and decent news on TV… and I continue to believe in storie.

I recently attended my first, and perhaps last, Webinar. Since encountering the term (and after duly registering and attending) I’ve come to understand that webinars are old hat to the tech savvy, but I remain unconvinced that all of this new techno-wonder is necesssarily wondrous. (Power point presenters, for example, should, in my humble opinion, be confined in a small room with laser beams bashing them on the head until they promise NEVER to put up a list of items and proceed to read the list of items in a deadpan drone as if their audience were illiterate.) This particular webinar addressed the issue of POLST forms: Physician Order for Life-Sustaining Treatment, something new and handy for people very close to dying and I’ll be happy to explore these issues with anyone. But the hours of webinars, in my humble opinion again, don’t accomplish a thing more than what a few good forms (which were indeed furnished in advance by the webinar sponsors) and a Q&A Web page could do.

More to the point, while I’m sitting here being cranky, is the business of new words sneaking into the vocabulary without so much as a nod to decency. No rhythm, no lyricism, not a smidge of beauty or imagination. I’m cool with the verb ‘to google’ and a few others that may be making Mr. Webster squirm in his grave, but webinar for heaven’s sake? The world is full of better words. My husband, who is even, ahem, older than I and maintains a vocabulary about triple that of most of us, subscribes to A.Word.A.Day, a giant storehouse of words old and new and fascinating. Maybe, if someone would ask nicely, the Wordsmith people could come up with something better than webinar.

Here’s something to celebrate: new music. I grew up (that’s me with the pigtails, c.1944 in our Ashland, VA back yard; I was very proud of that Girl Scout belt) to my older sisters’ big band dances, jazz and gospel and symphonies on the Victrola; they grew up to be serious musicians and one very accomplished artist. Recently I’ve gotten to know Carla Kihlstedt and her music. Went to hear the new 2 Foot Yard prepared to enjoy it, absolutely loved it. Then when guitar-percussion-electronics guy Shahzad Ismaily started talking in his gentle, quiet voice about recently lost loved ones and how life is short and death is certain and it is vitally important to enjoy every moment and be kind to those you love…. I was hooked. I was unexpectedly also hooked on Ara Anderson and his Iron & the Albatross group. Ara’s a “multi-instrumentalist” (a whiz on trumpet which I think is his #1.) The “multi” includes a toy piano, and Charlie Brown never sounded better. I’ve heard Carla do extraordinary new music, most recently premiering the last, great piece by the late Jorge Liderman with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players — the kid can do it all (she calls herself musically schizophrenic) — and still remember being introduced to San Francisco with her Charming Hostess group at the Bottom of the Hill. Those gigs are always fun partly in that my husband and I raise the median age of the audience by about 40 years. Still, the celebratory thing is that so much music — Mozart, John Adams, Frank Sinatra, John Denver, Duke Ellington, Carla Kihlstedt — is in the air, getting more joyful all the time. Especially if someone like me can delight in it all.