The Northward Contrail

"Morning Stretch" won't be seen today

It had been my hope that into the new year I could continue progress on my exercise regimen.  I'm sorry to say things haven't gone well so far.

There's several reasons.  For one, the weather the last two weeks was a bit hostile; it was either raining (or threatening it), or a bit too frigid, or both.  Only lately has the weather been more cooperative.

Then there's the morning part of it.  I had been doing some simple exercises, sort of a version of Pilates, that took about 10 minutes each morning.  But there's a lot I try to get done in the 90 minutes or so between waking up and leaving for work, and the time gets away from me.  Since some things I want to get done are fairly essential to the day, other things get bumped.  Unfortunately, one of them has been exercise.

And, since the new semester has started, time is a factor.  Once again, I'm going in really early, before sun-up, which gives me time to prepare for the day's work and take care of a few errands, too.  And, since the start of the term, I've had to stay late: meetings, a conference course I'm doing with a student, or just waiting around during drop/add.  Customer service functions strike again.

I hope that soon I'm back on it.  I hate exercising, but I feel an awful lot better after I've done it.

When all around you is madness

Over the years, I've had to work on a lot of things.  One of them is my levelheadedness and patience in times of conflict.  Wow, has this been a struggle.

I'm very conflict-averse, by my nature.  I'm much happier when people get along with each other, when they work together, when they respect one another's boundaries and don't force themselves, or their ideas, on anyone else.  I'm very live-and-let-live.  Unfortunately, not everyone's like that.  Some people just have to have it their way, be it because they were raised that way, or because they can only function if they're the ones calling the shots, or for whatever reason.  And when I'm around people like those, I get uncomfortable.  Especially when they want to push my buttons.

A long time ago I was doing some research, and it led me to become familiar with a long-dead newspaper.  Its founder's philosophy included the phrase, "We are against people who push other people around."  That really hit home with me, and when asked to state a personal philosophy I've included some variant of that.  I don't like bullies.  I couldn't stand them when I was in school.  I couldn't stand the people who were so full of themselves that they'd clobber anyone who made them upset for whatever arbitrary reason.  They made my life awful all the way through grade school because I was a square, a nerd before being a nerd became chic.  I remember getting the crap beat out of me on a school bus in fifth grade because the bus started moving before I could grab a seat, so I took the nearest available one...which was partly occupied by one of those full-of-themselves types who wanted the seat all to himself.  And he started whaling away on me because I'd dared sit on his seat.  Nobody did anything to help me, and I couldn't punch back because he was stronger than me and too fast.  (But I didn't give up the seat.)

Over the years I've tried to work on the best way to respond to the bullies in life.  In an ideal world, of course, you'd have the ability to beat them with a shovel when they tried something with you.  But you can't do that, of course, and it wouldn't really be fair to do that in the absence of a physical threat.  Instead, it's where remaining calm and employing wit will save you.  I'm reminded of what was said about doctors: the reason a doctor doesn't immediately start swarming over you and going crazy when you present with a medical condition is because those 30 or 45 seconds the doctor spends quietly asking you questions and assessing your condition allows that doctor time to think through your problem and come up with the right diagnosis and remedy.

And here, I have to say, is where my work in teaching has helped me an awful lot.  By its nature, teaching will expose you to all kinds of people, some of whom will try to push your buttons just for fun.  There are types who like making the lives of young instructors complicated and miserable.  At my first teaching job, they ruined it for me and made class sessions seem like a sentence instead of a job.  But, over time, I learned to deal with it.  I've learned, for instance, that the worst thing you can do when someone's reading you the riot act is to yell back at them; rather, one of the most devastating things you can do is keep calm, look straight back at them with a neutral expression, listen, and then when they've expended their rage, pause for a moment and say something along the lines of, "Is that it?"  Holding my tongue, resisting the urge to yell back, and instead giving myself a moment or two to compose the right response has saved my bacon more than once -- and has the added benefit of denying one's opponent the response from you they want.

(It also helps in the occasional online dustup, too.  For instance, sometimes you'll run afoul of someone without really meaning to start something.  It amuses me no end when one of these online bullies comes after me, I calmly and politely call them on their act, and as the offender's level of fluster ratchets up I say "Look, I know what you're doing, and I'm not rising to your bait.") 

I still have a long way to go.  But I find it very interesting how people react when they yell and scream and get upset with me, only to find that, in response, they'll get at most a quizzical look and a calm follow-up question.  It's something I've learned to do through difficult experience, but it's nevertheless a vital life skill.  I just wish I'd learned it a long time ago.

The pre-eyeball days of the Eyeball Network

The other day I told you about the DVD sets I picked up.  I've had time to start going through some of them a little bit, and thought I'd share a few interesting items from one set.

The Studio One set is very interesting.  You get a pretty good cross-section of the program's life, from its somewhat primitive beginnings to the later years when it seemed relatively polished.  According to the booklet in the box set, many of these episodes were presumed lost.  However, when a Westinghouse facility was being torn down about a decade ago, somebody found a stash of film reels with CBS stickers on them.  They turned out to be kinescoped Studio One episodes.  One thing led to another, and the film reels were saved.  Others were found in odd places ("Twelve Angry Men" was found in the personal papers of a distinguished lawyer).  While I'm glad so much has been found and saved, and while I hope there are many more treasures still awaiting discovery, my heart nevertheless breaks at knowing what was destroyed, either accidentally or intentionally.

At any rate, the earliest episode of Studio One in the set is the December 12, 1948 production of "The Medium," adapted from the opera by Gian-Carlo Menotti.  It's the third episode in the series, and an interesting look at the early, early days of CBS television.



Here's the title card for the episode.  It's up for perhaps two or three minutes with music and a voice-over behind.  The series at this point is billed as CBS Television's Studio One.  It's sustaining, with no commercials, probably because the program was still new and sponsorship hadn't been worked out by that point.  (The next episode in the set, the June 22, 1949 presentation of "June Moon," does have the program's signature Westinghouse sponsorship.) 


 
The title card goes directly to the opening credits.  You see the circle with all the Zodiac symbols, and then the picture dims a bit as a second camera's picture is superimposed.  The opening credits are done on playing cards that are thrown down, one on top of another; at the end of the credits, the cards disappear and the circle is revealed as a tablecloth on the set. 

The opening credits take a long time, too.  But, this was a different time, and part of the fun of watching these episodes is seeing how things were done then.  For instance, you can always tell when there's going to be a superimposed title or image on the screen because the picture turns darker.  (White lettering for titles was done on a black piece of art board and shot with a separate camera, and the two pictures were combined in the control room.  This was long before character generators.)



Since there's no commercials, the program breaks after the first act for station identification.  After the title card, you see this, the logo that CBS Television used before the 1951 advent of William Golden's famous "eye" logo.  It's just three spotlit letters and a dignified "This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System" voice-under by the announcer.

And here's the station identification card.  In this case, it's the CBS owned-and-operated outlet in New York.  The WCBS call was relatively new for channel 2; not long before, it had been WCBW.  "This is WCBS-TV, New York, channel two on your dial."

That's how it looked at the beginning, not only for Studio One but also for CBS Television.  Though I have a handful of episodes of The Ed Wynn Show in my collection, this episode of Studio One is the earliest example of CBS television programming in my collection, and it's the best look I have at how it was done back then.  I'm eager to look through other episodes and to see how things changed as the program, and the network, grew.

And I also hope to do more of these kinds of posts from my video archive, too.  They're very labor-intensive, but I have so much fun doing them.

It tastes a little better this way

One of my weekend tasks is making lunch for the next week.  Ordinarily I do it on Sunday afternoons, but with yesterday's time off I waited until yesterday afternoon (because fresher is better, y'know). 

There's several reasons behind my decision to bring lunch to work.  I know I could go over to the cafeteria and eat.  I've done it before, and the food's pretty good.  But buying lunch each day gets expensive.  Plus, when you generally avoid meat, it's difficult to find enough to fill you up.  (You don't want to get me started on how often a meal for me at some places consists of fries, onion rings and a drink.) 

One more reason: health.  About 20 years ago I started losing weight in earnest, and though I've kept most of it off, I know how much I have to keep temptation at bay.  And some things you can buy are just a little too tasty.  I love pizza, I love big plates of pasta, I love ice cream and cookies...heck, I love all kinds of things just a little too much.  I'm aware of this, and I know part of success lies in keeping the temptation out of my daily life.  (Special occasions are different, of course.)

There's microwavable things you can buy at the store, like those little containers of pasta and sauce or those microwavable Thai meals.  Why not those?  Well, the cost factor, for one.  I love those little pasta entrees (and I'll buy a couple if it's a short week), but they get expensive.  A week's worth would run me $18 or so, and that's just a trifle dear.  Plus the containers stack up when you're done, and it's an awful lot to throw away.  (The pasta containers, in particular, don't lend themselves to re-use since they have drain holes in the top.)  Not to mention, as with all factory foods, there's been a lot of stuff added to it in the process.  Not necessarily bad for you, of course, but not always the best thing you could do.

A few months ago, on the back of a can of black beans, I found a recipe for beans and rice.  It's a very simple dish, basically beans, brown rice, onion, garlic and green peppers with a little seasoning.  (I don't use the cooking wine, but one day I'll have to try it that way.)  It takes probably a half-hour to prepare, and from one batch I can get four days' lunch.  I parcel it out into resealable plastic containers, keep it refrigerated, then take one each day and keep it in the little fridge in the kitchenette until lunchtime.  Three minutes in the microwave and it's ready to eat. 

What's nice about this isn't just the cost -- I figure the cost of ingredients runs to about $1.50 per serving, if that much -- but the simplicity of it.  I chop the vegetables, cook the rice, add as much or as little seasoning as I like, and put it into containers that get washed and reused.  If I want, I can double the recipe and have some to keep at home for nights when I don't feel like cooking.  It's all my own work, and not only is it healthier for me, but it makes me feel better knowing it's something I made from a bunch of ingredients.  Cooking takes time, but when you're able to make something good from it all, it gives you kind of a quiet satisfaction.

Remembering

Reposting what I did this time last year: Dr. King's birthday is officially observed today, and it's well worth your while to read (and view, if you can) the "I Have A Dream" speech in its entirety.  As I said last year, it's like a symphony: yes, there's the famous bit of a movement that gets played as a sound clip or a music cue, but play just the little clip and you lose the majesty of the whole thing as it builds up to its full power.  If you've never seen the whole thing, you've really missed something.

And do something good for somebody else today, too.

Reposting what I did this time last year: Dr. King's birthday is officially observed today, and it's well worth your while to read (and view, if you can) the "I Have A Dream" speech in its entirety.  As I said last year, it's like a symphony: yes, there's the famous bit of a movement that gets played as a sound clip or a music cue, but play just the little clip and you lose the majesty of the whole thing as it builds up to its full power.  If you've never seen the whole thing, you've really missed something.

And do something good for somebody else today, too.