A Place of my Own

Ryan's Room

There are many rites of passage throughout life. Graduation. Driving a car. Marriage. First paycheck. First kid. First debt. But of all of them, one that sticks out for me the most was getting a place of my own.

It was actually tied to taking my first on-air television gig out of town. I remember looking for apartments in south Alabama, and using a rather different method of choosing between the top two candidates. One was in Enterprise and the other was in Ozark — and no offense to the fine people of Ozark, but I had a sense that getting my second job would be easier with an “Enterprise postmark” on the resume.

I remember the freedom of living alone. I remember those Saturday mornings when I would postpone getting dressed, walking around my apartment however I wanted to, because it was mine, and I could, (and no one had yet done those teevee sweeps stunts where the UV lamp revealed all manner of ugliness, but I digress…)

But what about that moment when I truly did have my own place for the first time? I really don’t remember it — and the question arises because my son has just struck out on his own. [Read more...]

Bending the Truth

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That phrase, “bending the truth,” seems to carry quite a negative connotation. In the modern era of spin sensitivity and greater awareness of persuasion in action, one who “bends the truth” is often considered guilty of some transgression. Usually it involves some type of manipulation of language, taking words at their absolute face value and ignoring the common meaning. Like the teenager who confidently and truthfully tells his parents “I was home before midnight!”, because technically speaking, 12:15 a.m. is a full twenty-three hours and forty-five minutes before midnight.

But what would happen if we could take a different appreciation for “bending?” Let’s stop for just a moment to appreciate all of those philosophers and thinkers whose “bending” of known truths exposed an even greater underlying truth. (And maybe underlying carries the wrong sort of connotation as well…)

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Learning a fruity little laugh

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Travel has downsides (unrelated to being stranded with bronchitis in a motel room in an unfamiliar town…)

My wife has informed me that my two-year-old son is now telling knock-knock jokes. I’m told that I am not missing anything yet, as the jokes do not in fact make sense, but there is a larger issue afoot about the role of syntax and learning abstractions. I’ve discovered that in my country abstract thinking, at its core, is fruity.
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Oklahoma is not OK

At least for me. I’ve been sick the bulk of my time here, and getting some things done from my room. But the coughing is getting worse, and I now have a headache. The nurses are coming to take me to an emergency room.

Update to come…

Update: 2:46 pm
Back in the room, using the coffeemaker to heat up the water to put in my Ramen cup…

As expected, I now have an antibiotic, a decongestant, and a cough medicine strong enough to put me down for a little bit. Thanks to everyone for the calls and well-wishes. Good news coming tomorrow, I promise…

Update #2: 9:59pm
I really need to take a hot bath, but there’s a break in a main up the street and I have no running water.

The Curse of Kelo

A simple thought: Phizer is eliminating 10,000 jobs. Do they still need all those parking spaces in New London, Connecticut?

On the Road

Posting may be a little slow for a while.

I’m currently in Muskogee, Oklahoma, working on a disaster assignment for the American Red Cross.  We’re helping sustain sheltering and meals for a wide swath of Eastern Oklahoma, where winter storms have knocked out power for days now.

The power is nearly back on — but another storm is blowing in as I write this.

I may be slow to post here, but I am still blogging, technically.  We’ve set up a WordPress page (without comments) as a Media Alert center.  We’ll use this venue to push updates, alerts, announcements, and news releases.  (Just in case those aren’t all just flavors of the same thing.)

Check it out.

Rocket Feathers

You can spend ages describing curves, lines, arcs, dips, depressions, and textures with mathematical precision…

…or you can just call something a statue.

One of the greatest gifts a communicator can wield when given an inscrutable scenario to explain is the proper analogy. If a picture is a thousand words, and analogy can be a thousand pictures.

I was in search of just such an analogy, to explain a phenomenon that too often gets over-simplified to a point of rage and envy: the disparity between the rapid acceleration of gas price increases, and the slow leisure of their descent. [Read more...]