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The New York Times has a story about how tastes in books affect relationships and compatibility. Basically, whether there are literary dealbreakers. The article is totally pretentious, but of course it is, and I love this stuff.
I’m not too much of a judger, but I’ll fully admit I judge people by their books. It’s not a great way of doing things. I don’t think I’ve ever actually dated any of the guys I was initially attracted to for literary reasons, and it’s probably better that way.
But, yes, I fully believe in literary dealbreakers and try to convince myself I don’t. Refusing to read novels or saying certain authors are boring are certainly grounds for dismissal in my opinion, though both of those represent cases where I’m glad I didn’t actually follow through.
One day I will stop trying to force books on people and getting the guys I know to stop smoking. Then we will all be adults and our lives will be more boring.
UPDATE: I should explain that whenever I feel inclined to judge, I remember that I have no definable taste in music whatsoever. That balances things out.
Since I’m always pointing out the silly things Victor does, I thought I’d give him credit for how his standard white board concept sketch, left, became the real Evergreen Sports blog, right. And it didn’t take seven months.
And I’m totally kidding about the headline, sort of. I totally appreciate Victor’s work, both the useful kind and the absurd.
As this semester’s Keeper of the Quotes, I transcribe all the ridiculous things we say in the newsroom into a text edit file for posterity and some busy night a few weeks from now when we’ll all sit around laughing at the things we said a month ago rather than working. Then I erase the board so we have room to say more funny things or write down each other’s statements out of context.
As copy chief, I sometimes write on the board errors that make me laugh. These were my favorites recently:
- foreword (instead of forward, weirdest homophone mix-up ever)
- nurtition (like four times in one article)
- general manger
- Provost Bost Babes (instead of Bob Bates)
On a totally nerdy tangent, I think it would be incredibly fascinating to do a content analysis of our quote board archives from the past few years to see how our cultural themes and memes cycle in and out. Of course, the things that really become part of the lexicon here don’t make the board, because by definition they’ve become too normal. Solely from my impressions, I think this year we have more potty humor and fewer death threats compared to last year.
It would have been so easy to not include the photographers. That’s what I thought was neat about these segments (the prison camp liberation above, and this handshaking) from the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C. I know it’s been a while since I was there, but writing up the twined history of photojournalism and war for my thesis reminded me of it.
In case you were wondering, the camera is probably mean to be a Graflex Speed Graphic.
Yesterday I worked on my thesis for most of the day (with a break for the WSUPD chief candidate forum) until about 2 a.m. Today I woke up around 8:30 a.m. and worked on it all day (with a break to write the WSUPD chief candidate story, and a nice dinner) and am now at Zoe Coffeehouse for a change of scenery. The plan is to be done by tomorrow night. Just so you know. Here’s a random quote that I may use:
“Modern air travel made it possible for me to be in Sarajevo taking photographs in a front line trench and city morgue in the morning and by evening be back in London drinking a glass of wine with friends. That is a long way for the mind to travel.”
Every so often the discussion comes up about the best ending to a novel. I’ve long been a supporter of “Brave New World” and “The Sun Also Rises,” and usually if I’m in good company “The Grapes of Wrath” gets mentioned.
I’ve never quite agreed with that one, and this is probably why. The photographer Horace Bristol was inspired by Dorothea Lange photos to create a story for LIFE magazine about the migrant farmworkers of the Great Depression. He wanted John Steinbeck to write the text, and they set off together after Steinbeck initially agreed. Bristol photographed the people (if you have a copy of the book with a man’s photo on the cover, it’s a Bristol shot) and Steinbeck talked to them. Steinbeck was already working on a related novel and decided not to go ahead with the LIFE story, but when the book finally came out Bristol was eager to read it.
“He both admired the novel and recognized it as a masterpiece of American literature, but privately was troubled by several passages that he believed inappropriately sensationalized the lives of the men and women he and Steinbeck had interviewed and photographed. The novel’s final scene … especially troubled Bristol. He had photographed the woman Steinbeck had based the character on, but she was nursing an infant … The literary license taken by the novelist seemed to Bristol to be a deliberate attempt to shock and titillate readers.”
That’s from a book about Bristol I have for my thesis, and I’m not going to guarantee they’re presenting things with 100 percent accuracy, either, because I don’t know. But it’s enough to make me think and question, and maybe feeds into what always made me uncomfortable about the ending.
Still, it’s a good enough ending that I removed the spoilers as well as I could from the excerpt.
A new WSU Police chief candidate did his forum thing today, and everyone seems pretty hopeful. He’s a Pullman native who was around as a PPD officer during the riot, so that came up and he said he couldn’t believe how long it’s been because it feels like yesterday. I could say the same for the beginning of all this WSUPD business, because for as long as it’s taken to find a new chief, it doesn’t seem that long ago that Jacob was sketching out a timeline of events on the small conference room whiteboard while I asked questions from the other side of a table piled with documents.
A year later, I’m still writing about the aftermath.
I think it might be nearing an end. We’ve thought so before, along with the conspiracy guesses, but the administration seems fatigued with the whole thing and the candidate seems competent. The forum today was the highest attended so far, possibly because the candidate worked with both WSUPD and PPD in the past. When everyone around the table introduced themselves at the beginning of the forum, it was like seeing my source list come to life.
But along with this today, it’s been neat to see our work at the Evergreen matter. It’s an honor to be a part of it, though apparently that doesn’t keep me from making stupid mistakes. Keep reading for a confession and an inevitable fact.
Apparently it’s WSU’s birthday today. It was March 28, 1890, that the Washington state Legislature established the land-grant college named Washington Agricultural College and School of Science. I would have known this if I’d thought about it, though it was the Student Alumni Connection’s cake distribution on the mall that tipped me off. I took pictures, and then cake, because it was lunchtime and I think it’s a reasonable bias that I support my university’s longevity. I mean, my degree would not be worth much if WSU keels over before its 119th.
Just because I was curious, there are no people in the world alive today who were around when WSU was born. The oldest person in the world right now is only 114 years old (though almost 115). She’s older than the Evergreen.
I was, however, aware of another reason today is special, and it gives me a certain amount of delight that they fall on the same day because it represents two of my favorite interests. I’ll leave that for the next post.
We had the TV rigged up to project on our white board for the game, but afterward it was a fun way to watch and enhance Cable 8. V
ictor set up the anchors with a lovely spinning bow tie and lapel flower. They had a Kahlo brow at one point and an elaborate mustache as well. The figure on the right is Not Chewbacca, and I’m not sure what purpose he served.
The photos aren’t good, but they give you an idea of how absurd it was.
With a two-point jumper from Chris Henry. It wasn’t supposed to be like that for the WSU men’s basketball team, but if they’d done what everyone expected all along they never would have found themselves playing the No. 1 team in the nation in the Sweet 16. So it’s been good, and I’ve cared a lot, and it’s fitting that Henry, original “foundation” player relegated to cross-training for longer than I was, scored their last two futile points.
The first few minutes of the game were wonderful. The shame was not in losing to North Carolina, but that we’ll never know what could have happened if the team actually played as well as they’re capable. And the shame is also that no one in history will ever remember that the Cougars’ shooting was abysmal, that Tyler Hansbrough only had two points in the first half, that we annihilated Notre Dame five days earlier. It will just be another team set aside as North Carolina marched toward the national title.
It’s a shame for the seniors, because it wasn’t a dignified, fighting end to the legacy they’ll leave at WSU. If they blame themselves for the loss, no one can justifiably say it wasn’t their fault.
But I did care, more than I have since I was out competing myself. And I remember too being a sixth-grader chanting the fight song like a prayer while we watched the Cougars on TV losing the Rose Bowl in 1998. I don’t remember the score, but I remember that wrenched feeling of the point when hope disappears. It doesn’t get easier.
That’s it, I’ll leave the rest of the sportswriting to the sportswriters and get back to my own job.
I generally don’t like playing competitive games without knowing what they entail, because then I might lose. But since Allison was so excited about some trivia game related to a press kit she received today, I agreed to play. I was promised there would be three excellent prizes.
It was all about Indiana Jones movies, which I have never seen all the way through because there are too many skeletons. It was also all multiple choice, so I did what I always do in such situations and picked the most intelligent guess until I ran out of interest, and then guessed randomly. With the exception of two giveaway questions (In which movie does Indiana Jones not fight anyone? In which movie does someone want to kill Indiana Jones? None and all of the above, respectively, obviously), I didn’t know any of the answers.
I got 7 out of 10 right.
It was good enough for a third-place tie with Christina, behind Kevin Quinn (9/10) and Tyler Tjomsland (8/10). Christina did not want the remaining prize after Kevin and Tyler chose theirs, thereby saving us from a brutal, prolonged battle by lightsaber or high-pitched squabbling.
Ha ha. Victory and a prize.
The game has started. Derrick Low needs to start shooting better. Brian set up a projector in the newsroom to show to game on the white board.
But after waiting all day for the game, and really my whole life as a Cougar to have a team play in the Sweet 16, I don’t want it to be over. Until it’s over I can still imagine what it could be like if we won, and hope without expectations is a nice, warm feeling.
The snow from yesterday melted, and then more of it appeared. It’s quite icy and windy. At least it’s sunny. Here’s the view of going back to the newsroom after my ethics exam.
This is what my walk to school looked like today, from the relative shelter of a fir tree so my lens wasn’t assaulted by a flurry of fat, wet flakes.
I chose the word “loyalty” in my thesis question because I liked it when it got brought up in ethics class. It just struck me as right for what I was trying to get at. My adviser Beth pointed me to Josiah Royce, because his philosophy on loyalty forms the base for its discussion in ethics. I just wanted to share his definition, because it is in fact what I meant in relation to journalism.
LOYALTY - The willing and practical and thoroughgoing devotion of a person to a cause. A man is loyal when, first, he has some cause to which he is loyal; when, secondly, he willingly and thoroughly devotes himself to this cause; and when, thirdly, he expresses his devotion in some sustained and practical way, by acting steadily in the service of his cause.
So my thesis is going well, though the deadline is looming. But I work well to deadlines generally, though I’m not as good with deadlines measured in minutes as a lot of journalists are. I like mine measured in days, specifically less than a week. I also work best from about 6 to 11 a.m. generally, though I’ve also had great early-evening productivity and the late-night 2 a.m. kind.
My biggest barrier right now is that I need a good amount of single-mindedness to really be productive, and my mind has been split to a half-dozen places recently. I also work better if I’m sipping something, like tea or water.
Under what conditions to you work best?
I’ve been dealing with a lot of traumatic photographs recently because of my thesis. That is not the kind of horror I am talking about at all here. This is from last week when I was sending photos and quotes to the paper near Winthrop, and attaching them to the e-mail. One of the people I talked to was Monique, since I saw her out near the mall with her Coug gear, and I accidentally turned her picture to CMYK before uploading it to the e-mail. This produced terrifying results that sent me and Brian into fits of horrified giggles. It’s not so bad when I’m looking at it today, but still worth sharing. Look at it.
I’ve never watched a trial from beginning to end before, but today I got my chance. It’s a pretty good one so far, I guess, though it will probably go most of tomorrow, too. It was just one case, so I don’t have a random cache of quotes like Jacob gets. I did get this for Least Necessary Question of a Witness:
Prosecuting attorney: You said it was about 1:56 when this happened, so was it dark that night?
Witness: Yes, it was.
I also had a woman sitting next to me comment that the Taser Cam video looked like a sonogram, and this came up while watching the video:
Prosecuting attorney: Is that your stomache we’re seeing in this scene?
Witness: Yes, unfortunately, it is.
The two people I saw arrested for DUIs Friday night were waiting for their turn in court, but I didn’t make a point to reintroduce myself.
Obviously I had to work today, but my grandparents and aunt and uncle were nice enough to bring me Easter dinner at work, including Easter cake and Peeps that I shared with Victor.
So yes, here it is. No need to be condescending to my blog.
WHAT I LEARNED:
If the police come to your door, do not hide your drugs and paraphenelia in the toilet. Everyone does that.
If you get pulled over and the officer comes back with a clipboard, you aren’t necessarily getting a ticket.
Cops think the whole 400 block of Colorado deserves a search warrant for emanating the odor of marijuana. They jokingly wish they could check the whole place Fallujah-style – “Clear!”
Officer Heroff wrote 125 parking tickets one month last fall just to see if he could.
When a guy who’s “been through the system” says while he’s getting booked for a DUI that an officer is a good cop and tells the police interns they should “learn from this guy,” that’s a meaningful compliment.
The whole night was fun, though tiring. I might do it again, because Officer Bell said we could do a “Cops”-style video.
I’m doing a full day of thesis writing and research. A lot of this involved typing out passages I marked in books months ago. This one is from “Unreasonable Behaviour” by British photojournalist Don McCullin, from the time he was imprisoned in Uganda under the bloody reign of President Idi Amin.
I was taken to a hut in the yard to collect my shaving things. Inside I saw a mountain of shoes and pathetic little cases, some held together with string, others do more than bundles. I saw my own suitcase there, shiny new in this derelict heap.
“Leave it there,” the escort said.
I felt dismayed. I’ve been here before, I though with dread. And I had been there – in those photographs of Auschwitz and the other Nazi death camps. The mountain of shaving brushes and the piles of spectacles, the sort of cases people took from the Warsaw ghetto. I was more stricken by the sight of that room than by people I had seen shot in front of me.
I never posted about going to the Holocaust Museum in D.C., primarily because I went on Thursday and didn’t have a lot of time afterward. I thought about it, though, and what I would have said was that there were two things that almost made me cry. One was the scent in a room full of piled shoes. The other was a display case with a pile of scissors – some clean, some mangled and rusty, all sizes.
I read this part from the book before I went to D.C., but it didn’t cross my mind when I was at the museum.
I wrote this down in my notebook when I was walking through the Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial in Washington, D.C., about a week ago:
“We must be the greatest arsenal of democracy.”
The thing was, I didn’t think of the U.S. when I read the FDR quote on a granite wall, I thought of the press. And I wrote it down wrong. The quote actually goes, “We must be the great arsenal of democracy.” But I guess if America’s going to be the great arsenal, the press better be the greatest. I’ll stick with my wording and interpretation.
Christina Watts won today’s Student Publications election for next fall’s Evergreen editor-in-chief. There was a lot of discussion about Christina and other candidate Andy Jones.
It will be a tough job, partly because it always is and partly because both candidates could use another semester or so to learn. But I know from experience you learn as you go along, and I’m sure it will all be fine. I picked Andy Jones to be Sports editor when he was a sophomore last spring and not ready, and he did very well. I chose Christina to be News editor when she was a sophomore this fall and not yet ready, and she did well. You learn as you go.
It’s strange to think it was me standing there a year ago giving a half-hearted presentation to the board after a week of exhausting conversations with Brian about how we wanted to do this. It’s been a good time, though I feel less attached to this year than last because being a senior combined with my tendency to be future-minded means I’ve been eyeing the door for months.
It’s still hard to let go of the Evergreen. I’ll try to step aside graciously, as I’ve already been trying to do this semester, but I’ve invested too much sweat and tears into this paper to be completely comfortable handing it over. Last year I remember feeling the top editors were not pleased when I was elected, but I think now it might have just been unease with anyone getting elected. No one is ever really ready for the job.
Christina told me I was giving her a harsh glare when she walked back into the conference room for the announcement. I didn’t mean to, but maybe I was. She’ll do very well.
Yesterday when I was talking to students for the Herald, a guy predicted the Cougars would win 67-48. I glanced up from my notebook to give him a skeptical look.
“No, actually 67-55,” he said. “Just watch, it’s gonna happen. We’re due to break out.”
He wasn’t too far off the first time, just not quite optimistic enough. And it was great.
“There is nothing better in sports than watching the Cougars demolish their opponent,” Sports editor Mike Feigen said as we’re finishing up the paper for the night.
It was only too bad Belmont couldn’t finish it out against Duke, because that would have been a great upset.
This is worth reading. Here’s an excerpt I’m keeping as an example for my thesis:
“Whatever war is, it is a deeply personal experience for those who live in it. I am a photographer and have captured thousands of images of Iraq and the war there since that day. But when I stop reading about the war, I guess I get that faraway look I always saw, as I grew up, in the eyes of countless veterans and civilians who lived through war, including my mother. I don’t wonder what they see anymore.
“I see images. Not the images I took. I see the images and feel the sensations I keep mentally when I am without the help of a lens.”
Note: This is the text from the print copy of the newspaper. A phrase is added in the online version; I’m not sure whether it was cut out for space in print or added for clarity online. From an editorial standpoint I actually prefer the print version.
Yesterday I answered a call in the newsroom mid-morning from a guy at The (Rock Hill, S.C.) Herald. They were looking to get a few random students to answer questions about the WSU vs. Winthrop game for a street talk-like feature in their paper. They wanted us to get students to call them and e-mail photos of themselves – you know, within the next few hours.
Yeah, students are really going to do that. So I offered to go talk to people and send their comments and photos. I like that sort of thing.
The first question I was supposed to ask seemed simple: “Winthrop is located in what city and state?”
No one knew. Eric Frampton guessed Connecticut. A girl who declined to give her name enthusiastically thought Oregon. I still couldn’t remember by the end.
There were other questions, too. It would be a more interesting story if I could find the published feature anywhere on their website. I’d like to see what the Winthrop kids said about us. Anyway, the game is soon and I’m nervous.
I glance at the NYT’s March Madness blog every once in a while, and today this post mentioning cumbersome acronyms caught my attention:
“The best acronym of this year’s N.C.AA. tournament — in the absence of the all-time winner I.U.P.U.I — is U.M.B.C. That’s the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. And no, the team doesn’t like hyphens.”
The NYT (pardon, make that N.Y.T.) doesn’t really have license to complain about acronyms because it’s their own dumb fault they insist on adding periods between every letter. That’s style tradition gone wrong: It’s difficult to read, longer than necessary and difficult to type. See, it’s so annoying the writer even forgot the period after the first “A” in NCAA.
It’s like how they capitalize every word in a headline (Are we German?), but I won’t bother with that for now. As much as history interests me, tradition for tradition’s sake has never impressed me very much.
Another day that should have been devoted to my thesis was thwarted by phone calls and deadlines. I feel like I end up writing more than my share of last-minute stories with way too much backstory that the Evergreen somehow ignored for the past three years. It happened with the com school and now it happened with the laid-off WSU firefighters. For being a group of admirable predecessors, you guys apparently missed quite a bit. It makes me wonder what we’re missing now.
This is frustrating because I hate feeling like the whole story isn’t there. It feels like a disservice to the sources and the facts when you can’t include everything. I also hate trying to determine how much to simplify a complicated situation so it’s readable but not inaccurate.
Journalists have to be smart people. We have to learn quickly and absorb complicated information, and turn around and write about it quickly. In these complex stories, I find the only way I can keep things straight is by making a timeline. But it’s also encouraging, because even when my story isn’t perfect or even all that good, I know I do better than your average person and probably a lot of journalists.
Brief pouting: I don’t think Woodward and Bernstein had to listen to crummy office music while when they were put on hold.
Today I went to the Student Advisory Board meeting with student leaders and WSU President Floyd because Brian couldn’t make it. The only really remarkable thing was when President Floyd was talking about how most problems in the Greek system happen with live-outs, only he couldn’t think of the word and called them “outhouses” instead. We all laughed a lot.
He was also 15 minutes late (”I’m never late. Except today,” he said as he walked in) because he was getting a last-minute legal briefing. Tonight at the Evergreen we probably figured out what he was talking about, so that means more thesis-less days of phone calls for me.
Victor and Allison had the make posters that symbolized three things about them for an ads class, or something like that. So last night Victor asked me whether in all the pictures I’ve taken of him there was a decent silhouette from the back or front. It’s true that I have about a million pictures of Victor. He’s fun to photograph because he often puts odd things on his head and, like a good only child, he’s grown comfortable to having a camera pointed his direction. Just because I got done griping about how much else I have to do, I’m taking a few minutes to share my favorites:
The combination of covering cops this semester and reading “All the President’s Men” completely cured me of phone dread. Which is good, because there was only a short window for end-of-break moping before the news locked us all in again.
Yesterday I spent a frustrating amount of time trying to track down information on graffiti around campus during break. In the end I just tried to minimize holes and recommended it go on page 3, and I’m not even going to link it here. Still, it felt like hard news.
Today we finally got the finding letter from Student Conduct regarding a fraternity that lost recognition. It has all kind of great details about the alleged infractions, but it means another day of trying to get busy people on the phone with Christina only to have them tell us they don’t know anything.
Still, it’s kind of fun. The problem is I don’t have time to be a good journalist right now. I have a thesis and graduating to do, among other things like attending meetings for Brian and trying to find a job. There are so many things I want to do, and too many things that must be done whether I want to or not.
I’m not Irish at all or psuedo-Irish enough to mention St. Patrick’s Day just because it’s happening, but I have an insatiable weakness for stories with good ambiguity.
And apparently this year there’s confusion about which day everyone ought to celebrate. It’s supposed to be one of the simple holidays, always on March 17, but a calendar phenomenon that won’t occur again until 2160 means March 17 falls during Holy Week. So the Catholic Church moved it to March 15? We missed it? That’s just silly, and I assume there will be plenty of feigned Irishness and revelry today. Maybe moreso, because this is likely the only un-St. Patrick’s Day of our lives.
Due to the ambiguity, I’ve been wearing green for the past three days. I’ve been wearing a lot of green this year, so it’s only partially intentional, but I wore olive green Saturday, teal green yesterday and my best forest/kelly green today.
The New York Times has a rather scattered story about how major publications are dusting off their archives and getting the historical material online. They are seeing impressive reader interest, which may eventually get advertisers on board. I wonder how you get a job doing this, or maybe it’s what media companies are doing with the librarians and research assistants whose jobs became obsolete when Google appeared.
Anyway, I just wanted to point out that I’m not crazy. Other people - including readers - are interested in this history stuff.
This is what it looks like to watch the sun rise from Terminal A of the Washington-Reagan Airport in Washington, D.C.
I got up at 5 a.m. Eastern time yesterday to shower, pack and catch the Metro to the airport for a flight to Minneapolis. There was a baby in front of me that cried the entire way, but it didn’t really bother me or keep me from sleeping. I used to cry on planes a lot when I was little. It’s nice to know we all grow out of that.
I flew from Minneapolis to Spokane, where I met my cousins at the mall and went up and down the escalator with my cousin’s 2-year-old daughter for a while. Today I am home. The time in between involved hash brown casserole, improvised music about Disney movies, holding snakes, and more small children.
I went by the White House to say hello to George and Laura like my aunt asked me to. They were apparently too busy to return the greeting, but presidential dogs Barney and Miss Beazley came over to say hello. They were actually really close to the fence, like almost petting distance, but they’d already been called away to the lawn when I decided it was maybe picture-worthy after all.
Also I sat in the Senate chamber for a little less than an hour this evening as Jenna was finishing work and the Senate plowed through lots of budget bill amendments. I saw Sens. Obama and Clinton, along with the Washington and Montana senators and obviously a bunch of others. None from Minnesota, though, and McCain wasn’t around when I was. I heard he was present most of the day. Watching the roll-call vote was just like C-SPAN, only right there in front of me. They were easily close enough to throw something and hit them, but somehow I didn’t think Harry Reid would be as nice as Tony Bennett about telling people to stop tossing stuff.
Today the U.S. federal government started distributing the new $5 bills, and I have one in my possession directly from the source. Right now it’s being used as a bookmark, but the photo is when I first got it today at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
My mother suggested touring the mint, and it was worth it. The Intaglio presses they use to print U.S. currency operate pretty much like your standard newspaper printing press (better, but the same process) that I’ve seen a number of times. I’m not sure if this made the tour more or less interesting for me. We saw a guy tinkering with the registration for the black plate that gets printed on the front of all bills.
More money facts from the tour and pamphlets:
18: tons of ink used each day at the facilities in D.C. and Fort Worth, Texas
16: average circulation lifespan, in months, of a $5 bill
2 to 3: years it takes the bureau design team to redesign a bill from start to finish
12: number of Intaglio printing presses in D.C.
$2 million: amount of money we saw a worker “flipping and rolling” to prepare for inspection
1997: year they switched to computer inspection for consistency
$1,466,250: value of a stack as tall as me of $100 bills
Business model least likely to succeed.
Most ridiculous tour bus. (What if they really painted the monuments those colors?)
Most disturbing bridge decor. This was in a little enclave on a bridge built in 1908. But what is it? This man face-manatee hybrid is really bizarre and frightening.
After the Air and Space Museum, I headed over to the National Archives. The place already held a special place in my heart just because of its purpose and name. Think of all the documents!
Anyway, I was really impressed. The Rotunda was really special, of course, and I wonder how many people piling around the Constitution have actually read it. But the rest of the exhibit space was really impressive just because the presentation was superb. I’m not a great judge because I’d be fascinated no matter how it was arranged, but the displays were engaging and organized well.
Designing museum exhibits would be a really interesting job. D.C. has examples of great work and no-so-great work, and it combines the elements of print media design with architecture and planning how it will all work together with the words. I’ve been very sensitive to whether the typography works well with the display. I have no clue how you get a job doing that sort of thing.
Heading briefly back to yesterday, my first stop was the National Air and Space Museum. I decided that based on my affinity for shiny red things (cookware, electronics, accessories, etc.), I would want a Lockheed Vega like Amelia Earhart’s.
My other favorite plane was this sherbet-colored “Jenny.” The space stuff doesn’t have enough personality (i.e. colors!) for me to pick favorites.
It’s a cool museum, but everyone knows that. They had an odd amount of hammer-and-sickle imagery around to commemorate 50 years since Sputnik. The history bits reminded me how much I love those obligatory montages at the beginning of every school flight video ever showing goofy attempts with flying machines as vaudeville music bounces along in the background.
I also liked the display about whether I would be suitable flight attendant in the early ’50s. Being unmarried, 21, 5-foot-4 and white, I’d be a great candidate. I’m a little too heavy to be a perfect candidate, but nothing a month or two and a perky flight attendant attitude couldn’t fix. Being the ’50s, I’ll assume my dimples could boost me to the “just below Hollywood” appearance standard.
But I’d rather be a lady pilot (aviatrix?) in the the 1920s and ’30s, because they had great little pantaloon flying outfits. And I imagine they didn’t have to smile all day.
None of this fit that well in my other posts, so I’m just going to leave it all here without any forced transitions.
The actual “60 Minutes” stopwatch caught my attention in the “National Treasures” exhibit because it mentioned Don Hewitt, our Murrow Symposium guest this year.
I never got a good look at R2D2 or C-3PO because a swarm of adolescent boys was permanently fixated there, but I had plenty of gawking space all to myself at a display of two photographs. The first was “Migrant Mother” by Dorothea Lange, and the other was a D-Day photo by Robert Capa. Probaly most people have either seen these photos plenty of times or don’t understand the significance. I didn’t know they were in the exhibit, so to see them and know they were actual prints from the actual negatives meant a lot to me.
Dorothy’s ruby slippers did not. I saw them in a traveling Smithsonian show in Minneapolis when I was in I think middle school, so that was nothing new.
I took this picture of little Harry Truman in the Archives for Christina, but now I can’t remember whether it’s Truman or Eisenhower she likes so much. Whatever, the picture is still adorable because he looks like a kid dressing up as President Truman for Halloween. He also looks a little like Harry Potter.
There’s a statue outside the Archives that’s all about symbolism and the value of history, but mostly I just like the way the baby looks. The baby’s distressed expression is absolutely realistic to how a baby would feel being held in that awkward position for so long.
“Yeh ain’t in liiiine, Mary, yeh cutted people.”
- a girl infuriated with her sister at the National Archives rotunda. I imagine I would sound just like that if I were 14 and from the South.
Jenna and I passed the new Newseum on the way to the National Portrait Gallery before dinner. It’s like looking at the front pages online, only in real life. We walked by like industry snobs, analyzing design and news judgment.
In the portrait gallery we mostly talked about profound things like whether the artist enhanced FDR’s eyelashes. (”They look pretty hearty,” Jenna said, comparing to a photograph.) Other observations: Millard Fillmore was not only totally useless as president, he was not hot. Not at all. … Thomas Jefferson, already one of my favorites, had attached earlobes.
These probably aren’t the only ones, but I definitely had two misconceptions about D.C. The first was I expected the mall to be a stretch of unbroken golf course grass connecting the Capitol to the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. I estimated the length to be about five or six football fields. In reality, the whole thing is better measured in miles and is broken up with a bunch of cross-streets and paths and concessions vendors. A lot of the grass is in pretty crummy shape and I the first day I felt like it took me 15 minutes just to walk past this bit of grungy field populated by geese that separates the Washington Monument from its reflecting pond.
The second was I expected protests everywhere. Not like big ones, but small groups of passionate/crazy people with signs or something. I saw my first protest today. There was a small group of men near the Capitol’s pond blaring Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up” with huge speakers running off a generator. I asked one of the guys, and he said they were from Cameroon.
“We’re standing up for our rights,” he said.
He asked me what country I’m from, so I said the U.S.
“You’re an American citizen?” he said, and I nodded. He nodded back slowly.
His accent and the music made it difficult to ask much else, so I just asked if I could take a few pictures.
D.C. is a place where I can go from feeling like an unimportant bumpkin to conspicuously privileged in less than one metro stop.
I grabbed a bagel at Grand Central Station around noon after changing into jeans and sensible shoes, and emerged to see the National Postal Museum next door. I figured I may as well go in while I was there, and it was worth the 20 minutes I spent there. A lot of it was about newspapers, since the press and the post have a nice symbiotic relationship.
I had my notebook out, writing down a quote, and a black woman security guard walked by and said, “You takin’ notes?”
It was kind of confrontational, but I couldn’t see how they’d be upset with me taking notes, so I nodded.
“I do the same thing. I got my little book here,” she replied, patting her pocket and walking on.
This made me analyze my paradigms, though I’m still perplexed about how you’d really have that many new notes to take from the exhibit where you work every day. Maybe she rotates museums or something, that would be a pretty neat job.
Speaking of notes:
- “The mail and the press … are the nerves of the body politic.” John Calhoun, 1817
- The first “post offices” were just taverns, further establishing the bond between post, press and pint, I guess.
- Ben Franklin, as deputy postmaster, insisted on impartial, inexpensive delivery for all newspapers. Kind of interesting in the context of today’s threat to net neutrality.
- The first typeset copy of the Declaration of Independence (rather than handwritten) was printed by a woman, Mary Goddard. Her brother was a well-known printer and innovator. Apparently for most of history it was fortunate for women to have smart fathers and/or brothers, because then your chances of doing anything relevant went from zero to 1 in 50,000 or so.
Today I got up earlier than usual to go to breakfast with the Montana senators and then go on a tour of the Capitol. The breakfast was busier than usual, with a bunch of school groups and men wearing cowboy hats. Jenna put her journalism experience to use by accurately writing everyone’s names and hometowns on their nametags. She wrote Pullman, Wash., for me, thereby saving me from another state identity issue.
The tour was neat, though I gave the screw a full turn this morning by choosing to wear heels. Actually, it was good to make my feet hurt in a different way for a change. I went along with a group of eighth-graders from Bozeman, Mont., and a Finance Committee intern from Texas named Ben. Our tour was led by Elise, an intern in Sen. Baucus’ office and erstwhile rodeo queen. She is like 4-foot-10 and has everything in control. Ben and I were recruited to watch the back of the group, and he told me sidenotes through the tour about how he spends hours in the Senate chamber trying to not fall asleep. Apparently we got through the whole tour before he realized I wasn’t a teacher with the class. Someone else thought I was in the class. Neat.
The kids were actually a really good group, and I’m envious because they got to sneak-peak tour the Newseum this afternoon.
I just found a spot at the Smithsonian “Castle” to get wireless, so I have a whole slew of stuff to post from today. Catching up from yesterday will have to wait because I forgot my notebook (that is, the notebook I was using; I still have four with me). But first a quick story, from when I was just sitting here signing in. An older gentleman on an adjacent bench was watching me.
“Excuse me, miss, is that a computer?” he said.
I told him it was, and he asked if he could look at. I said sure, and he came over to very carefully hold my MacBook. He asked me how long it takes to learn how to use something like this, and I told him I wasn’t really sure since I’ve been using this kind for a while. He asked me whether it was difficult to know where the words are going to show up when I type, and I said it’s pretty easy for me since I’ve been doing it since I was a little kid.
“Since you were a little kid? Why, you still are a little kid!” he said.
He asked me if I’ve ever had problems with “losing my programming.” I said I haven’t personally had any problems, but they mostly come with good warranties these days.
Then he asked me if I could use it to “send messages back and forth to companies” and I started trying to explain wireless internet access. He kept looking at the bottom and back of the computer, which must have been frustrating since it’s devoid of any “machinery” indicators. His daughter (?) came by and they left to go look at an exhibit of old stuff that was probably way less interesting to him than my computer.
It was neat to see how all the different papers treated the Gov. Spitzer story today. It’s like Newseum on every street corner.
If you haven’t seen it, The Washington Post has a good series this week about how tenants are getting evicted so landlords can convert buildings to more lucrative condos. It’s good in print, but the package is strong online, too.
I need to end here tonight because I’ve got an early morning, but look tomorrow for my trips to the Air and Space Museum, the National Archives and the war memorials.
I started my day at the Supreme Court of the United States. It had a bunch more of the “Grecian stuff” that I now remember is termed “neoclassical.” I looked around awhile at portraits and busts of mostly wise, mostly dead, mostly white old men. They had another neat scale model. I should mention I’m a big fan of the Supreme Court. The whole thing is fascinating. Still, I didn’t sit in the chamber to listen to a lecture because I figure I’ve already spent enough hours in my 17 years of education listening about the Supreme Court.
I got into the security line to enter the building after a group of high school students. The last guy in line turned around and asked me if I was with Close Up. I said no.
“So you’re just here?” he asked. I said yes. He told me he was here with juniors and seniors from his school in New York for Close Up, a national program for high school students. They were pleased because they get to miss class for a few days. I told him I’m a senior in college here for spring break.
“So you’re a senior in college?” he asked. I said yes. He asked me where, and he was not impressed with the answer. He asked me what I’m majoring in, and was pleased with himself that he knew a good question to ask college people. I told him journalism and political science, and he said I must like writing. I said yes. He said he does not, he’s more a math person, which did not surprise me. I told him he’ll probably make a lot more money than I will. He said that was good to hear, but he’d heard writing wasn’t too bad.
“You could just be an author or something,” he said. I told him we’ll have to see how my luck holds up. Then he shook my hand and introduced himself as Kevin, and turned back around to go through security.
There’s quite a bit going on at the court this week, but nothing to see because it’s all preparation for next week. There’s a highly anticipated case coming up about gun laws in D.C.
(From left to right: Me outside the Supreme Court building, looking up at the neoclassical columns outside, me looking up the five-story spiral staircase that’s only supported by good engineering and gravity)
I was not too taken with the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden until I came across “Typewriter Eraser, Scale X.” In my opinion the most delightful sculptures are ordinary objects made really big, and this typewriter eraser is from the finest artists of this genre, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. The husband-and-wife duo has also made a giant trowel, clothespin and button, among other things. My affinity for all this might come from being greeted by Minneapolis’ Spoonbridge and Cherry every time we drove downtown when I was a kid. Returning from a kindergarten field trip at the sculpture garden is my earliest memory of one of those times when I have so much unchanneled manic energy I can’t even create anything.
Anyway, visiting the (less inspiring) sculpture garden today was a mere pit stop for another long day of walking, looking and learning. I’m working to post all of that soon.
I took the metro to Arlington National Cemetery in the afternoon. I got off a stop too soon on the first try (I couldn’t hear the station announcements and counted the stops wrong), but it worked out. I got there just after 4 p.m. and realized I might have missed the last changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I asked the information man, and he said there was a final one at 5 p.m. He had been chatting with a second information man, and that guy then asked me where I’m from. I’m not sure if I sounded funny, or maybe he was just curious. I said Minnesota, which is not what I usually say anymore, but that’s what came out first. He asked me if it was my first time in Washington, and then he said he hoped I had a good time.
I did. I love military cemeteries. It might seem counterintuitive, but they feel like peace to me. I like the smooth rows and white stones, the way they reach out and pull the landscape into it like long spines. I like looking for the ones who were babies, and I like looking for the fresh stones indicating a wife who died an old woman sometimes five decades after her husband was killed. I like reading the names – I’ve long thought that if I have a child I would go to a military cemetery to figure out its name, not necessarily getting it from a headstone but just to be surrounded by names other parents chose.
I get lost of time in military cemeteries the same as I do in libraries. I was wondering today if they would let you get married there, because it’s the only place I can think of that has the bright solemnity a church is supposed to have. (Don’t worry, I wouldn’t really pursue the idea.) Monuments are fine and emotional and I’m interested to see them, but if I have time to return to one place this week I’d pick Arlington National Cemetery, even if I like the Punchbowl in Hawaii and the one in San Diego more.
I gathered with a large number of other tourists to watch the final changing of the guard open to the public today. Before it began I moved a few feet so I wouldn’t be in the way for a man taking photographs, only then he adjusted his shot to keep me in it. Either I was wearing an intense expression he took for patriotism, or he was just creepy.
Taps was played from a nearby monument when the bells chimed 5 o’clock. The silence of the ceremony was punctured by the whirring, buzzing and clicking of several dozen cameras, everything from the abrasive film wheel of disposable cameras to the artificial shutter sound of cell phones. I thought about whether they were devaluing the memory in their need to preserve it, which is something I think about a lot when I’m taking pictures or notes. I don’t have any photos to post from the ceremony because I didn’t take any.
I love scale models of things. There’s one in particular I remember looking at over and over when I was a little kid, but I can’t remember what it was depicting. Anyway, here’s a model in the Smithsonian “Castle” of buildings on the mall, shot through the side of the glass case. I looked at it for a while. This is one reason it’s nice to be a tourist by yourself.
Other things from today:
- I was on my feet for more than eight hours, and I walked at least 10 miles.
- The Senate investigations of the Titanic sinking and the Watergate scandal were conducted in the same place, the Caucus Room in the Russell Senate Building.
- The Smithsonian sells shot glasses, and there are liquor stores in really weird places in D.C.
- Men who are otherwise dressed well wear hideous ties.
- There are a lot of middle-schoolers running around everywhere. They would be annoying if I didn’t know they are becoming better people by seeing all of this. There are a lot of babies, strollers and dogs.
- I was staring off into space by the Washington Monument reflecting pool when a man asked me to take his picture with the monument in the background. His camera was his iPhone. He was fortunate he asked me, not because I’m a stellar photographer but because I’m at least aware of things like not getting my own shadow in the frame, which was actually somewhat tricky given the position of the sun and the monument.
Jenna works for Senator Max Baucus, D-Mont., who does serious business with the Senate Finance Committee. I was in the reception area when some guests came for a meeting: Secretary of Energy Sam Bodman, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
They all paused when they came into the reception area to watch CNN coverage about New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s involvement with a prostitution ring. Several of them wondered aloud whether he was involved as a participant or owner.
Then they joked about how much they love budget season.
I stopped by a conservatory exhibit. It was almost like 15 minutes of spring break in Hawaii. 
They had this exhibit that mingled orchids with the alphabet.
Being a nerd, I was almost more interested in the typography than the flowers. 
Being an egoist, I only took pictures of my initials. (Except for the big picture, that’s a giant N.)
I walked by two young women deep in conversation near the Capitol and caught this snippet:
“Just because you have the Dewey Decimal System memorized doesn’t mean …”
I couldn’t hear the end of it, forever leaving me unsure what having the Dewey Decimal System memorized doesn’t, in fact, mean. I invite you to theorize, or at least it makes an interesting creativity exercise if you are stuck in traffic.
A: Get a library card.
I took the Metro with Jenna to Capitol Hill where she works in the Hart Senate Building for her Montana senator, and then I navigated around to find all my own senators (Minnesota and Washington). The front desk guy in Sen. Patty Murray’s office gave me passes to sit in the House and Senate galleries, so now I just need to figure out when they’ll be doing a vote.
Then I got coffee and a cherry scone at a little place called Firehook, and then I went to get my Library of Congress card. On the way I wandered around the Jefferson library building, which was neat. I like a library with “liberty” on the ceiling. It had Grecian decor all over the walls and ceilings, along with a bunch of truisms like “The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.” The others were more over-the-top.
The card was really easy to get. They asked you to choose 1-4 research areas from this long list, so I chose journalism, history and political science, in that order. I forgot my SS# and had to call my mom. I don’t actually plan on using the card because it’s kind of a pain and I’m at no shortage of reading material this week, but it’s always good to be prepared.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the Jefferson building bathrooms were – and this isn’t a word you should often use for bathrooms – stunning. I lamented the fact that I couldn’t take a photo without being really creepy.
I’m working up a bunch of photos and typing, but in the meantime here’s a photo I couldn’t resist posting even though it’s all blown out. It’s dedicated to Nick.
Today I made a journey from Pullman to Washington, D.C. I got a ride to Spokane with my grandparents, flew to Minneapolis with my brother, connected to the Washington-Reagan airport and got a ride from Jenna and her roommate to the adorable rowhouse where I’ll be taking up residence for the next five days.
I was hoping I might be able to see monuments or recognizable things from the sky as we landed, but without any orientation it was just a big mess of lights.
On the first flight I sat between two mustachioed gentlemen. The one on the left snored a bit and read a Clive Cussler book. The one on the right was quite well-groomed, almost Daniel Plainview-style regarding the facial hair, and he knew the right amount of conversation to make (friendly, but minimal) after asking me if I was going to D.C. since I was reading the guidebook my mother loaned to me. He was reading a glossy book about horses, about showing them or something. It would be Brian’s nightmare flight. My brother sat across the aisle playing video games and reading “The Things They Carried,” which he requested the other day at Brused Books.
The second flight I sat by the window, but the guy in my row on the aisle again had a mustache. He otherwise looked like a skinny snowboarder, so it was incongruous. The guy in the middle quickly flipped through the SkyMall magazine backward when we first boarded. He had a sandwich from Quiznos that he waited to eat until we were in the air, which showed a great amount of self-restraint since we were delayed on the runway awhile. It reminded me of being a kid and not eating candy at a movie until the feature picture began. He had a D.C. guidebook out the whole time but I never saw him open it.
On both flights I continually ate sugar-free Wint-O-Green Lifesavers, which eventually made my tongue numb. I read “All the President’s Men” and did a few logic puzzles.
Expect far more interesting posts from here on out.
Christina will not appreciate me posting this photo, but it really sums up how exhausted and nervous we were by the time the Cougar men’s basketball team headed into the second overtime against the Huskies this evening. She commented that if someone were just looking at our expressions, they would think she and I were watching a zombie movie. At one point the Huskies’ Ryan Appleby made yet another 3-pointer and Christina yelled, “I hate Appleby!” with so much vitriol that the guy in front of us looked back with alarmed amusement.
The other picture is my brother in between yelling profanities at the court. He caught on with all the cheers quite well and could probably be a future ZZU CRU leader. I have to admit I found all the senior night pageantry kind of touching, and it was neat that so many students did wear ties. I had no clue so many college guys have gray ties.
In other notes, I was pleased to see both Free Throw Mom and Bald Guy up to their usual antics behind the basket. The crowd was pretty wild, and I was impressed by how many students showed up. All those who didn’t stay missed out.
Today my brother, Christina and I went to basketball practice. Nick was there, too, but that’s because it is his job as a Cougar sports reporter. And I was slightly jealous that he is on salary to do what was for me the most leisurely thing I’ve done all week. My brother and I got to talk to Coach Tony Bennett for a bit after practice ended, and he told Mark he ought to consider WSU. I admit I was pretty pleased and impressed.
It has been one of Christina’s lifelong goals (since earlier this season) to stand next to center Aron Baynes to see how tall he is. Today her dream came true, and the results were as comical as we had hoped. Coach Tony told Christina she’s no worse off than Muggsy Bogues.
I just finished my only Friday class, so I’m technically done until after spring break. I don’t really have any homework for the week except my thesis, which is nice. My last class was Logic, and we got a deal to get extra credit if we wrote a valid argument about why we should. Here’s mine:
Good people who go to class on the Friday before break deserve extra credit.
We are good people.