And So It Begins

Cindy Petersen, publisher of the Hiawatha Advocate, at her open house today.

I stopped by the Hiawatha Community Center this evening for a couple of cookies, some cake and a visit with friends.

It was a birthday party. The “Hiawatha Advocate,” published by recent MMU graduate Cindy Petersen, came out today for the first time and Cindy was hosting a party to celebrate.

It was nice to see the paper and Cindy, and Corey Munson, another MMU grad, who edits the Marion Times, was also there.

It was a regular gathering of MMU media figures, because the current editor of the Mount Mercy Times, Ryan Pleggenkuhle, came too.

Two editors confer--Cindy Petersen of the Advocate and Ryan Pleggenkuhle of the MMU Times. And Ryan has his priorities in line, too. He has cake.

The paper looks good. Its first issue is a solid 12 pages. I think Cindy could use the color on the front more by publishing more than one photo there, and particularly by using photos that show Hiawatha faces—but I’ll try to leave aside my “adviser” tendency to critique.

I’m sure it’s a relief for Cindy to finally have an actual paper in hand. I hope citizens and advertisers in Hiawatha take note, and subscribe to and support the paper.

A newspaper can be an important tool to build community. Mount Mercy would be a lesser place without the Times.

Hiawatha is more of a place with the Advocate. And today, it was nice to celebrate that.

Proud paper mama--Cindy Petersen. With camera. Getting some shots for next week's Advocate?

This Little Bell of Mine, Sometimes It Makes Me Whine

MMU handbell choir member rings a bell during practice. It's a treble bell. Nobody knows the trebles I've seen.

Here are a few bell photos from the MMU as yet generically named “handbell choir.”

I am still experimenting with a new camera. A student took it to play practice last night and the results looked pretty good, so a buy is likely.

Anyway, the bell choir practices this week were a mixed bag for me. I’ve not marked all of the music in some newer songs we’ve started, and sometimes I get lost. Still, I’m much better at actually reading music than I used to be.

In “This Little Light of Mine” there is shifting back and forth between ringing and using mallets to strike the bell, and I’m far from smooth with the transitions.

During one song, Matt rings all these chimes. Me, I'm a two-note guy. Got a left hand and a right hand. Just two notes.

Well, at least I get to “sing” my A bell for 40 or so measures in “Amazing Grace,” which means I’m just holding my bell and running a wooden dowel around it. No beat to keep, I can dig that. It sure beats heck out of eighth notes.

My daughter Katy, when I start noting that I think Satan inspired eighth notes, always says something pithy like “good thing you don’t play any 16th notes or your head would explode.”

True, but on the other hand, she was a flute player, so we know she was wild and crazy. Those fluters. They play some fast notes, like a choir director suddenly playing a song on the piano and the pace is twice as fast as it was.

Anyway, we help provide some of the music at the 8:30 p.m. Mass this Sunday at MMU. If you’re looking for a Mass with an interesting ding-dong twist, including a singing A, come on up to the MMU chapel.

You can say a little prayer for me and my eighth notes. I may need it.

Choir director gets ready to ring.

What is Old or New?

Front of new minivan. Seats 7, not 8, and is a Kia, not a Chevy. Has a luggage rack, which we wanted, but other than a few less dings, looks a lot like our previous van. And yes, that's parts of me reflected in the chrome.

So, how do you like buying a car?

Me neither.

We had reached the point this week that we were seriously considering the future of our Chevy minivan. We purchased it new in 2003. Nine years later, with around 140,000 miles on it, we learned it would need some expensive repairs soon.

Well, we could pay to fix it, but we weren’t sure whether other systems would start to fail—and there is the reliability factor. I know it makes economic sense to drive a car until the wheels fall off, but what makes economic sense doesn’t always make sense overall.

At first, I lobbied for a little pickup truck. But Audrey noted that we often drive with groups of grandchildren, and our experience with minivans has been that they provide almost as much “haul” practicality that a truck provides.

So, we settled on a minivan. A little Internet research later, and we had identified the probable make and model—the Kia Sedona. It seemed to pop up on a lot of “best of minivan” lists in recent model years, yet is among the least expensive vehicles of that type.

We drove out to Hiawatha to the local Kia dealership. We drove around, saw two used 2011 cherry red models that looked likely, and parked to walk into the showroom. Where we were greeted with balloons, a beanbag toss area and a table of food.

“You came to our event,” a cheery car man said.

Well, no. We just wanted to test drive a minivan. And we did, and liked it. Now, even though it’s considered a less expensive vehicle, a typical new Sedona runs more than $30,000. By looking at year-old used vans, we cut that price by a third.

We had not planned to buy, but you know how it is. You can’t easily escape from a car dealership once you have walked in and talked with someone. Rather spontaneously, we took the plunge.

As it turned out, the post-buying ordeal turned out to be unusually long. Because they had an “event,” their business office was overwhelmed and overwhelmingly slow. We decided to buy by about 4:30, and Katy was feeding us chili around 7:45.

Well, no reason to string out the process. The “new” van isn’t new, but it’s new to us.

Snowdrop in back garden poised to bloom. Spring is coming although some winter still remains.

Seems appropriate. As I write this, I’m watching the Oscars, hosted by Billy Crystal, a new, old host. Today, as winter seemed old and spring new, I was shooting these pictures with a used camera I’m trying out to see if I want to buy it for the Mount Mercy Times.  See more test photos.

We’ll see. I’m taking more time considering a camera for several hundred dollars than I did a van for thousands. That’s the way it goes.

Some new crocuses planted in our back yard are starting to sprout as winter grows old.

The tip of a small, new spruce tree in my backyard.

The Tribe Has Lost Two Valuable Members

As a journalism professor, I struggle to explain to my students what “journalism” really is and what it means. To me, the highest calling of the profession is to bear witness, to be the kid in the “Emperor’s New Clothes” who points out the obvious, and consequential, delusions that society is living under.

In recent days, two humans, a man and woman who were doing real journalism, have died in the line of duty, along with a third man, a photographer.

I didn’t know them, but one of the bloggers I follow, Broadsideblog, written by freelance journalist and author Caitlin Kelly, had this to say about the death of Anthony Shadid:

“Soldiers expect to see their comrades killed, instantly. They often have a medic or Medevac copter to evacuate a wounded soldier…Journalists and photographers working independently, working with local fixers in dangerous territory, do not.
“The next time you gulp down what Facebook — risibly — calls a ‘news feed’ or scan the headlines of yet another celebrity scandal, perhaps mistaking that for journalism, please say a prayer for Shadid and Hicks and all the men and women, armed only with bravery, street smarts, cameras, microphones and notebooks, committed passionately to bringing us the real stuff.
“This is what news is.
“This is what it can truly cost.”

Well stated, Broadside. Read her full post.

And then read her heartfelt words on the more recent death of Marie Colvin.  A brave  French photojournalist Remi Ochlik also died in the bombardment that took Marie Colvin’s life.

When you’re covering a street paving scandal in some local town, if you care and do the legwork and write with courage, you are performing the work of Colvin and Shadid—you are bearing witness.

Still, it must be noted, they were among a rarer breed, the special members of the journalism tribe who take the greatest risks to get the most consequential news.

They put their lives on the line. That’s courage. That’s journalism.

The Vexation of Bike Taxation

I read a story in the Gazette via the KCRG web site about Tower Terrace Road, and commented on it because it mentioned bike commuting. I even wrote about it on my biker blog.

Then, some guy named Mark made an anti-biker, and, to my eyes, anti-grey-haired man comment. Clearly Mark is not shy about sharing his “wisdom,” since he’s a “top commentator” on the site, which says something a bit depressing.  Click on the picture to enlarge it to read our brief exchange, unless you saw it on the KCRG site already.

Selection of comments on KCRG site. My minor tussle with Mark.

Anyway, I’ll ignore the ageist Social Security reference. I’m not there yet, rude dude. Instead, I wanted to write about his vexation on taxation.

Should bikers pay taxes for the roads they use? As I noted in my response to Mark, I, like most bikers, already do. But then again, let me concede that roads are largely maintained by gasoline tax revenue, and clearly I’ve reduced my “buy in” to local roads through my use of a bike.

Do I feel guilty? No.

Personally, I clearly benefit. I enjoy biking or I would not do it. I also enjoy driving—if I’m going to be in a car, I have a clear preference to be behind the wheel of the car and preferably a fun car. It’s a guy thing. It’s also my only excuse for owning a vehicle as impractical as a manual transmission VW Beetle.

Still, all things considered, I’d rather be on a bike. I’m up higher, I’m enjoying God’s nature, I’m doing myself some good—exercise and all that. It gives me some satisfaction to know my habits might end up in Mark being able to enjoy paying me Social Security for many more years in the future.

It’s true. I’m selfish, therefore, I bike.

But, Mark and all other anti-bike bigots out there, there’s more to the story. While I’ll admit my motivations for being a bike commuter are clearly selfish, and my habits cost society some road-use revenue, I’d argue that everyone else benefits from my biking, too.

From cleaner air. From more gas available for your SUV. From less congested roads.

Now, now, don’t e-mail me that you were on I-90 and some biker was there and he slowed everybody down, etc. etc. As a bike commuter, I’m choosey about where I ride, and based on the quiet streets and sidewalks I use, I personally don’t slow anybody much. I occupy much less road space and take up far fewer parking lot square footage due to my use of two wheels.

So I think it’s a wash, at least, and some karma in my favor, at best.

There is a logic about taxing bikes for road use.  Bikes and streets predate cars. One could argue that, in the historic sense, roads were paved for bikes before any asphalt was laid down with cars in mind. The “safety bike” craze was a 19th century fad, and our friend Ford didn’t foul the air with millions of Model Ts until the 20th century.

If I use the roads, should I not also pay for the roads?

Sort of. Except that you have to balance that logic against the amount of road damage I do on my bike (none at all) and the fact that others (pedestrians, joggers) are sometimes found on the public rights of way, too. By the logic that bikers use the roads and thus should be taxed for them, we would charge a sales tax premium on running shoes, too.

And there are other practical matters that argue against taxation for bikation. If you licensed bikes or required a spoke tax, or some such scheme, it would involve 6-year-old kids and their toys. My daughter Amanda learned to balance on two wheels while she was in kindergarten. Do we want to charge kids who can’t be licensed drivers for their bikes?

Plus, any bike license scheme creates a law enforcement hassle. When I lived in western Iowa, the city of Storm Lake required bikes to be licensed. I actually lived in Early, Iowa and commuted to Storm Lake, and rode on a bike trail there often on an illegal, unlicensed, Schwinn. Clearly, I was a criminal. Clearly the Storm Lake PD didn’t give a damn. Even in quiet Iowa villages, the cops do not have time to case after old grey-haired hippies on bikes to collect small license fees. Besides, in 10 years of flouting the Storm Lake laws, I wasn’t even aware that the law existed until I was about to move away from the area.

Bike licensing would be expensive to administer, hard to enforce, irritating to parents of young bikers and to old men who commute by bike—and in the end, would produce little revenue.  That’s why bike licensing is so rare.

And if the bikers are taxed under the premise that the streets have to be paid for by those for whom they were created, we’re back to having to tax skateboards and running shoes, too.

So, Mark, what are we to do?

Well, for one thing, look at ways to support roads beyond gas taxes. With more fuel-efficient pickup trucks, electric vehicles and hybrid cars, the gas tax alone probably shouldn’t be the only way roads are maintained. Even if I don’t drive on them or pedal on them, I live in a society whose existence and commerce depends on roads, so as a taxpayer, I say, go ahead, make my day, take my pay, use general tax revenue to put some tar in a pothole.

Not that I’m opposed to gas taxes. They not only make sense as a kind of road user fee. They also make sense for the same reason that tobacco taxes make sense. Those who purchase a known carcinogen and burn it in the environment in a way that causes all of us to suffer should pay some premium for their bad behavior.

Four Signs of Spring

Some flowers starting to push through the half-frozen mud near Warde Hall at Mount Mercy University. Daffodils, maybe?

Yes, it’s not even Fat Tuesday or Ash Wednesday yet, but on this penultimate Sunday in February, winter is clearly on the wane. We’ve not had our March Girl’s Basketball Tourney Blizzard, which seems to come around every year, and some of the stuff that will fall from the sky yet this season will probably be white or icy. Nevertheless, the sun is creeping northward and is too powerful to not feel warm in mid afternoon. Here are things that foreshadow spring.

Cozy grandkids, squeezed into a bike trailer. Both Tristan and Nikayla would prefer to be riding on the child seat in front of my bike seat, but there was not time for two rides Saturday, so I towed them both behind Audrey's bike. They accepted that fate, but were a bit squeezed in there.

 

Took the longer, trail route to the office Sunday late morning. Saw a number of other bikers and walkers and runners.

 

One of the Arbor Day Foundation trees is waking up--the Sweetgum tree sprouts.

No Flying Cars or Personal Servant Robots, But We Have Skype

Talking and seeing loved ones in Norwich, England--Juju, Amanda and Lizzie on Skype. Matt was cooking.

It’s interesting to look back on the 20th Century and see what people imagined our lives would be like now.

So much of what was imagined didn’t come true. Robots are indeed a major force in our lives, but not because they perform household chores (although there are robot vacuum cleaners) but because they build our cars.

Which, usually, don’t fly.

The evolution of the computer was different than what as imagined before the 1970s—the coming importance of computers was foretold, but usually they were growing bigger and bigger and smarter and smarter, not smaller and smaller and smarter and smarter.

Another Skype view. Amanda watches the silly sisters, and so do Grandma and Grandpa.

And, then there were video phones. They have come to pass, not as imagined. If you see a cutie in a bar, you can send an image of her to your friends instantly through your cell—not that I have ever done that, but it’s theoretically what could happen. We didn’t imagine the problem of teen “sexting.”

Video phones, when they were foretold, were imagined like household phones of the time. Yet, today, with a daughter in Norwich, England, we most often converse with her while we see her, via Skype.

What a subtle, but important, change. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a room with Lizzie, but she knows me and has come to call me “Grandpa Joey.”

I remember the first time we used Skype it was the semester Jon was studying in Spain. We had an odd headphone thing that we plugged into our computer and used it to talk via the internet.

Now we have webcams and video. The 21st Century video phone call has arrived, not exactly as imagined, but as an important laptop addition.

Still, it will be nice in 6 weeks to see Amanda, Matt, Elizabeth and Juliet in person. Video phone calls are good, but they aren’t quite the same as being there.

Those in the 20th Century could not have imagined how 21st Century man warms his feet.

My Career As A Paperboy

A full cart, staring out to deliver MMU Times at Busse Library.

I turned 11 in 1969, and I think that was the year that I started a brief, disastrous career as a paperboy.

As sexist term, I know, but in the winter of 1969 to 1970, all of the kids I knew (including myself) who were delivering “The Clinton Herald” were boys. I don’t even recall why it occurred to me to become a paperboy, although I’m sure the idea of earning money was my main motivation.

Anyway, I would get home around 3:30 in the afternoon, and there would be a bundle of papers waiting for me by the street in our front lawn. I was to bring the bundle inside, cut it open, fold the papers into my bag and then go for a walk. My route of about 5 blocks, which included around 60 homes that subscribed to the paper, started about a two-block walk away from our home on Seventh Avenue South.

The subscribers I provided the afternoon paper to were strung out along about three blocks of Eighth Avenue and a few side streets.

Stairs in Donnelly Center. Yes, I got to visit all 3 floors.

I don’t think I was too bad at delivering the paper. I did get some complaints on Thanksgiving, when the paper was huge and I had to do delivery in several batches, but most days I would be done well before 5.

But, the job included collecting subscription money, and I was terrible at collecting . I found out that some adults were perfectly happy cheating an 11-year-old kid out of a few coins. I also didn’t clearly understand my role—the paper was charging me for 100 percent of the papers they delivered to me. I was to contact them if a subscriber stopped wanting (or paying for) the paper.

As it turned out, due to my failure to keep the circulation department updated, the more I delivered, the thinner my margin was becoming, until I was earning practically nothing. After a few months, my dismal first foray into the world of free enterprise came to its logical conclusion as I respectfully quit. I recall about a week afterwards that the circulation manager, a nice older gentleman, showed up at my house because my replacement noticed that the route produced no profit for the working boy, and he wanted me to understand why. His appearance merely embarrassed me.

Strange, that years later, I find myself again a paperboy. And again, profiting practically nothing.

Well, more on that later. For now, back to 1969-1970. Although I was only a paperboy for maybe 5 months, it was an eventful time. I had many interesting, and eye-opening experiences. Among the firsts:

• I delivered to the pastor of a Protestant church, an odd experience for little Catholic boy. He was young, and most priests I knew were old (I was also an altar boy, so I had contact with the priest in my parish. I was a terrible altar boy, but that will be a future post). He also had a young , and rather cute, wife. She was the one who was usually home when I delivered. I was only 11, but I on the edge of “the change” and definitely noticed. It was mind blowing that a man of God had such a cutie.

• I was in one of my first traffic accidents. On one winter day, to be nice, my oldest sister took me on my delivery route in the family Ford stationwagon. It was very sloppy snowy, and at the corner of Eighth Avenue South and Seventh Street, she skidded through a stop sign into the intersection. CRUNCH. I’ve since been impressed, through several accident experiences, how slow time seems to go when you can see an accident about to happen, and how freakishly LOUD crunching metal is. It was a fender-bender, it left my sister in tears and I recall running home to get my dad. Excitement, but luckily no injuries.

• I also recall that spring of 1970 that I was on the way home when my dad pulled up beside me . He was driving a new cherry red 1969 VW van. It was the first time I had ridden in a new car, and it seemed very high-tech (the dash, unlike the metal dash of the 1958 VW that had been our family car before the Ford station wagon, was plastic, black plastic, cool and PLASTIC). That microbus even had a radio with both AM and FM. Kids, to me, in the spring of 1970, that was cool. I could set a button and instantly push it and be listening to 89 WLS, the big AM rock and roll station out of Chicago. If my dad let me. Sadly, he was not so fond of rock and roll.

The distribution points, this on in the University Center Commons. Really pro delivery job. Must be an experienced paperboy.

Anyway, despite that poor start, I eventually grew up to a newspaper career. I recall that when we lived in Clinton, we got 3 newspapers a day—the Des Moines Register and Quad City Times in the morning and the Herald in the afternoon. Most Sundays, I’d walk with my dad to a small downtown cigar store, where he would buy the Sunday Chicago Tribune.

Sacred Heart statue at Sacred Heart convent, where I dropped off the final papers to finish my route. When I was a Clinton Herald paperboy, I was a pupill at Sacred Heart School.

Anyway, for what I hope is a brief interlude, I’ve become a paperboy again. The work study student who had been handling the Mount Mercy Times circulation is a sophomore nursing student, and he is too busy to do the chore anymore. So, I’m desperately seeking a student who wants to earn some extra money.

I promise, there is no collections required. And almost all of the delivering is indoors.

Spring Poster

Welcome to Blogtown

Students typing in the MMU lab. I got their permission, had them approve this image, but it wasn't easy. I had no idea students would be so picky about their own hands being published.

Nine new ships set sail today on a new adventure—well, not really.

For one thing, several of the ships are already at sea. I’m forcing students in CO 120, Introduction to Journalism, to launch their new blogs, but some of them had me in previous classes and so have already been to Blogtown before.

Why should student journalists blog? For lots of reasons:

• Journalists today report news instantly. They Tweet events, they post live video and they blog. So this, blogging and posting it NOW,  is a skill students must master.

• Blogging is excellent practice for writing as public performance. It will show, based on the low number of hits at first, how hard it is to draw an audience, but, on the other hand, the world is now open to these students. Will a student blog be “freshly pressed?” It’s not terribly likely, but not impossible, and it will be interesting if it happens.

One of the students, based on a previous assignment in another class, won a statewide journalism blogging award. Congratulations Jenna, and keep writing.

There are, of course, some dangers in having students blog. Blogs can involve libel, like any public writing. It’s not always easy to get students to understand how copyright works, and when and how you can use images will, I’m hoping, be an issue. (I’m hoping because blogs should be visual, too. But you need to use images that can be re-used and credit sources).

Beyond that, there is the saying that Jon’s Microsoft pals oft repeated during RAGBRAI last year. Take it from the pros who run the world, students. “The Internet never forgets.” So don’t do anything on a blog that you don’t want remembered.

On the other hand, the greatest sin in writing is to be dull. And I would rather students be a bit spicy and take some risks and have to be reined in, than simply play it safe.

So have at, brave bloggers. Show the world what you can do—what you can write, what your individual point of view is. Engage in what my blog friend and MMU colleague Jenion calls “emotional nudity.”

Students, share your world with the e-world, and enjoy the experience.

A male student's hands. He didn't complain at all. Hmmmm. Male hand modles seem less picky.

It’s Your Party, Wish You Were Here

Bunch of these birthday butterlfies showed up, but luckily no kangaroos. Yay dollar store.

Jon had a nice birthday party. There were hats, balloons, cake, even singing “happy birthday.”

Only problem was that Jon lives in the Seattle and the party was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

It was a pretty spontaneous affair—a suggestion by Theresa to Audrey that we should have cake on Jon’s birthday. Somehow, that morphed a bit into the balloons, etc.

Nikayla and Tristan got into the spirit too. Nikayla started with one party dress, changed into another, and insisted on wearing a party hat . Tristan was typical Mr. T, a funny little party animal.

And although Jon couldn’t be there in person, he was there in spirit. We had a Jon stand-in, as you can see, and Legolas-Jon even had a small friend, a micro-buddy, maybe a co-worker at Microsoft?

Jon and a micro (soft?) buddy.

Well, Jon, I hope you enjoyed your birthday in Seattle even more than we did in Cedar Rapids. And I hope there was a fun party in both cities.

Cake, round one. The "it's" failed.

Cake after some "it's" surgery.