The Northward Contrail

From the dawn of television news

While looking around for something else, I found this, and I can hardly believe it: NBC coverage of the 1948 Presidential Election, as Part I and Part II.  Note, among other things, the partnership with Life Magazine for the coverage, which is basically radio with pictures.  (Reuven Frank writes memorably about 1948's coverage of the election in his wonderful book Out of Thin Air.)  For the television historian, this is nothing short of priceless.

Boeing Boeing 707

Found online, in six parts: a wonderful look back at the Boeing 707's first year.  Start here with Part 1 and work your way forward.  Not to be missed in Part 3: a segment about President Eisenhower's historic trip aboard a certain beloved aircraft.

Enjoy!

On not phoning it in this time

It's coming up on the semester midpoint, and so far, it's gone well.  I never thought I'd hear myself say that, but it's true.

Up until last semester, I often operated by the seat of my pants.  Some classes, I'd have lecture notes, but in others I'd let the class dictate its own flow.  Sometimes, that was a good thing.  Most of the time, it wasn't that wise.  In addition, I'd let myself get crossed up on my own course policies, and sometimes I'd fly by the seat of my pants on those, too.  I'd look the other way sometimes when I should have put my foot down, and then later I'd get mad with myself for being such a soft touch.

I'd been able to get away with it until something happened one day last semester, and a situation with a student and an ambiguous policy (and something I didn't remember saying, too, and probably didn't say) made my whole world blow up in my face.  As painful as that was to endure, I probably had it coming.

After that, out of determination as much as irritation, I started overhauling everything.  And I mean everything.  Syllabi got retouched, reviewed, and retouched again.  New lecture notes got written for courses I'd previously just sort of floated through.  New assignments and exercises were created.  The autopilot I'd been operating on for six years was switched off.  Now, my hands would be on the yoke, my head would be on a swivel and my eyes would be out the window, always looking to head off trouble before it began.  

It all looked great in theory.  But then January came, and with it a new semester.  I wondered if I'd be able to make it happen.  But the first day came, and I laid it out.  New rules, new expectations, new assignments and new opportunities.  And to my surprise, thus far it's worked.  The problems that plagued me last semester have pretty much gone away.  Not every problem is solved -- some, no matter how you try, you won't be able to prevent -- but most of this semester, so far, has been completely different.  Better still, the courses with retouched notes have gone very well, and the students have responded favorably to the new exercises and activities.  

The best part, though, has been that I literally feel different, and for the better.  For the last few years, I've almost behaved as if my career was some sort of accident and I was just playing along the best I could.  Oh, I hit my marks and delivered the material fine, but there wasn't too much fire there.  Now, though, my attitude is different.  Now I feel in command of myself, and of my material.  I do things with more confidence.  I don't walk into the classroom with dread the way I used to.  It's almost like, over the off-season, I told myself, "It's time you really got serious about this."  So I did.

And to think, all this happened because of one of the worst days of my professional life.  Sometimes the most useful education does come from a skinned knee.

Glass houses

I grew up surrounded by trucks.  Not just pickup trucks, but big trucks.  Our dad drove trucks as part of his work, so my brother and I were riding on 18 wheels from the time we were, as they say, knee-high to a grasshopper.  (If I had a dollar for every mile I spent in the cab of an R-600, I'd never have to work again.  Man, those were fun days.  And, yes, there's another Jim Rockford parallel with my life: a dad who drove trucks.) 

It was also the 1970s, the heyday of Smokey and the Bandit and Movin' On and Convoy (the song, and then the movie) and what not, when CB radio was the big thing and "10-4, good buddy!" and "What's your 20?" were commonplace.  It was everywhere: in the music, on television, in the toy stores (care to guess how many of these types of things my brother and I built?) and elsewhere.

So whenever there was something truck-themed on television, we'd watch.  Movin' On was a staple, and we liked it in our home.  (We never did warm up to B.J. and the Bear, I think because it was a bit silly and because it was a bit too pretty-boy for our tastes.  Though I think we did watch Sheriff Lobo when it became its own show.)

Back then, the trucking movie that was most widely seen was when ABC's prime-time movie series would show White Line Fever with Jan-Michael Vincent.  Back then, it seemed ABC would show it two or three times a year.  We'd watch.  But a couple scenes would terrify me as a kid.  One was when Slim Pickens would get killed.  But nothing could match the stark raving terror I'd feel when this scene played.  Now I can watch it and laugh, but back then, it scared me to death, and I'd have to turn my head and close my eyes.  Go figure.

The cornfield

You've probably seen that Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life."  It's the one where the little kid is the ultimate bully: he can read people's minds, and has the power to make horrible things happen.  If he didn't like someone, one of the things he could do was "wish them away to the cornfield." Years later, the actor who played the little kid told an interviewer that, mentally, a little bit of that remains and he thinks about the cornfield when someone makes him mad.

One of the things I'm trying to work on in this life is forgiveness.  I try to be as forgiving as I can, but sometimes someone will just lay into me, and I really have trouble letting go of it.  For instance, a few years ago while serving as a forum moderator, I upset someone who wasn't even a participant in the original discussion, and I got this outrageously offended e-mail from this person who tried to use all this legalistic jargon on me, who tried to impress me with all this about how he'd written outraged letters to politicians and to companies to express his displeasure with things they'd done, and all that sort of stuff.  Basically, it was the kind of spleen-venting I'd worked through by the time I was 25, when I finally realized the world was indeed cruel and owed me nothing, and the best I could do is realize that not every inconvenience or disappointment in life is a Constitutional Law case.  I tried to reason with him, but how can you when someone acts as if "offended" is an ennobled state?  After a while, I realized it was pointless, so it was off to the cornfield with him.

That's one example.  There have been others through the years.  Most recently, I let myself get pulled into a debate with an ideologue, one of these types who's unavoidable, who injects politics into subjects even when they're not political in nature, one of these types who likes the tussle...and one of these types who doesn't exactly go by accepted forensic standards when he wants to make a point, if you catch my drift. I got out of it when I'd said my piece and realized it was serving no further purpose, but I still felt dirty for having let myself get drawn in, especially after having seen countless times over how this person operates. Yes, there had come the moment of "that's all I can stands, I can't stands no more," and I landed my punches, but all this time later, I'm having trouble letting it go.  I can't figure out if I'm madder because this person operates this way, or because I let myself get sucked into a losing proposition to begin with.  To some extent, I'm still fuming about it, and I feel stupid for it. 

The worst part?  When someone offends me -- even if it's not something done directly to me, but even if they rub me the wrong way somehow -- more often than not, I want nothing to do with them, ever again.  I talk a lot about how life is shades of gray, but I'm the first to admit I'm a phony when the rubber meets the road. When somebody does this kind of thing, I want to send them off to the cornfield.  I avoid them in person, and I avoid them online, and when their names come up in conversation or even cross my mind in passing, I start to glower.  In fairness, it takes something big to set me off like this, but once you get on my bad side, it's awful hard to get out.  I have a longer memory than I really need for this kind of thing.  I don't wish anything bad on you when you cross me, and I don't stop respecting you as a human being...but let's just say that, in certain regards, you no longer matter.  And I'm not so sure that's a healthy attitude to carry through life.

Someday soon, I hope, I'll finally get it right and become proficient in sending the experience, and not the person, to the cornfield.