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Sic Transit

Sic Transit

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Because our new bird, Toby, is a hungry critter and eats more than his cage-mate, Alfie, he also makes more of a mess. Seeds pile up in the bottom of the cage, other stuff, too. I find myself cleaning the bird cage far more frequently than I used to. Which means I’m thinking about the transitoriness of journalism.

The opening of the late, great television show “Lou Grant,” starring the late, great Ed Asner, begins with a bird chirping in a tree, the tree being felled to make paper, presses rolling as the newspaper is printed, then back to a chirping bird again as the day-old newspaper is used to line the bottom of a cage.

Back when I only dreamed of being a journalist, I used to watch this show. I ended up writing for magazines instead of newspapers, but the dream remained, and largely was fulfilled. Watching this show again reminds me of how it felt at the beginning, the irony and the gallows humor and even the nobility of it all.  But always among these feelings was an awareness of how fleeting it all was,. No matter how precious the words and how important the topic, the next day, they would be covered with husks and feathers.

Now more than eight out of ten of Americans obtain their news from digital devices. The daily news cycle has given way to the hourly one. Newspapers may be dying … but the transitoriness remains. Sic transit gloria mundi. Thus passes the glory of the world.
Semester’s End

Semester’s End

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I’ve always been a student at heart, and now I’m one in practice again—reading, writing, researching. Wait, that sounds like what I’ve been doing my entire career. But it was different, of course, When I was a freelance journalist, I read, researched and wrote about the topics I needed to sell an article. When I was an alumni magazine editor, I wrote about what I thought would appeal to my readers. And when I worked at Winrock, I wrote about topics that would explain and showcase the organization.

Now I’m studying and learning about topics purely because they’re interesting to me. These last few weeks, plunging into and through the final paper, I’ve been absorbed in a big topic that I can only scratch the surface of.

But how good it’s felt to scratch that surface. Stacking books around the desk, dipping into one and then another. And then there’s all the online research: I realized weeks into the semester that I didn’t just have to rely on Google Scholar. I had an entire research library with all its subscriptions and databases at my disposal. Which means that, in addition to the books and papers you see above, there are many more bookmarked pages or open tabs on the laptop that is almost buried amidst the clutter.

Our final papers are due today. I sent mine off Tuesday mid-afternoon, then took a long walk on a Reston trail to celebrate. It’s just a start. But it feels good to be a student again.

Coming Home

Coming Home

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When you live somewhere a long time, as we have, you become settled. Even in a place that I originally feared was placeless, you find the firm ground, the sticking places. You join a book group that people leave only when they move out of town — and even then, some of these people return and rejoin.

Yesterday, I became a “re-joiner” too, meeting once again with a writer’s group that welcomed me eight years ago but which full-time job, family responsibilities and logistics (this is a Maryland group and I live in Virginia) made impossible.

Now the full-time job has fallen away and the family responsibilities have lessened, and there I was yesterday entering yet another funky old Italian restaurant a few blocks away from the one where we met years ago. 

Once again, there was the company of writers. It felt like coming home. 

Putting the Lap in Laptop

Putting the Lap in Laptop

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As a walker in the suburbs I write very little about sitting. But sitting has become my bane. It is such a necessary part of modern existence, especially when one is mostly working on a laptop, which, by its very definition requires sitting. But I’ve done far too much of it through the years and my body is letting me know it’s displeased. 

Of course, I can stand up when I write, edit or read — and I try to put my standing desk through its paces as often as I can. But when I really need to pull out all the stops with the gray matter, I need either to be walking or sitting. 

And lately … I’ve been sitting. 

(A good place to sit if you have to!)

A Walk Recorded

A Walk Recorded

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I took a stroll late yesterday through the gloaming, the exquisite though way-too-early gloaming — I was walking between 4 and 5! — then came home and wrote these words:

The late fall light is draining quickly from the sky and a bright near-half moon showing itself. There are the most delicate of evening sounds: a few hardy crickets, the bird that says “Judy” (did I determine that’s a wren?) and various human-caused sounds — a pinging that could have come from a small forge but was likely a kid banging on a pipe — the distant downshift of a passing truck. But none of these sounds disturbed the peacefulness of the landscape. They only enhanced it. 

Some of the shorter shrubs have lost most of their leaves. Those that remain seem to be offering themselves for viewing, like golden coins on a platter. Back on my street, the russets and scarlets of the maples and oaks shimmered in the twilight. 

Night falls fast this time of year, but when it’s warm, as it has been today, that doesn’t seem to matter as much.

Beethoven’s Seventh

Beethoven’s Seventh

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An open door, a world of light — and a piano. Scarcely a day passes that I don’t play it, or wish I had. To touch the keys and realize, I own this thing, I can walk over here and pound out a Brahms Intermezzo or a Bach Prelude whenever I want — well it’s been months since I bought this piano but it still thrills me. 

Writing about the playing is something else entirely, though. That’s because music is the other, the part that can’t be pinned down by precision. It flows where the words won’t go. 

A few nights ago, I found a book of music I’d forgotten I had, transcriptions of orchestral works, including the second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, which I took out and played. 

This was a piece popularized by an impressive scene from “The King’s Speech,” but whenever I hear it I will always remember the University of Kentucky’s Piano Institute the summer before my junior year of high school. There was a young assistant professor there who taught music theory, and for one class he had us sit in a dingy room in basement of the Performing Arts building with big clunky earphones on our ears and our heads down on our arms listening to this music. 

I can’t remember now what lesson we were to take away from that experience. All I know is that in the darkness and with the earphones, the soft dirge of the opening chords built slowly to the crescendo at the piece’s midpoint in a way that made my heart fill near to bursting. And somehow, the other night, I was able to capture a bit of that feeling again … on the new piano. 

In the Can

In the Can

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Not to get too meta here, but writing this blog is largely a seat-of-the-pants enterprise. Most of my life has been tightly scripted until recently, so I’ve wanted to keep this writing loose and open. 

I’ve also resisted the temptation to draft a bunch of posts on the weekend to carry me through the first few busy days of the week. The details of the day are my inspiration, and they usually (kinda sorta) pull me through.

But recently, I’ve found myself writing several posts a day. This may be, probably is, a momentary thing. Inspiration tends to go in cycles, I’ve noticed. And it is undoubtedly made possible by the gift of time. 

Whatever the reason, though, it’s meant that, for the first time in forever, I have a few posts “in the can,” as we liked to call them back in my magazine editor days. 

They will come in handy on the days when the muse of daily inspiration is otherwise occupied. 

Raindrops on Roses

Raindrops on Roses

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Not on roses, actually, but raindrops on the leaves of the elephant ear plant. Raindrops I first spotted a few weeks ago when I was out walking Copper on a moist morning. 

I marveled at the way the liquid pooled on the surface of the giant leaves, thought to myself, you must snap a photo of this.

But I came inside and immediately forgot the impulse. By the time I remembered, it was too late. The sun had warmed the leaves and the moisture had evaporated. 

The artistic imperative strikes when it strikes. It does not linger. Luckily, it rained again.

First Paper

First Paper

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As I plunge further into class readings, further into class itself, I notice a difference in the way I’m thinking. Is it possible … could it be … is a new logical cast creeping into my thought process? 

The class topics are some of the big ones facing society: medical research and ethics, life extension and new methods of reproduction, artificial intelligence and information technologies. 

The philosophers and historians and scientists I’m reading are dealing with these changes in language that is sometimes clear, sometimes obscure but always logical. There is little in the writing that appeals to the emotions; it’s all about appealing to the intellect. 

There is a certain tidiness in this approach. But I haven’t written this way in a long, long time. Fingers crossed that I can. My first paper is due today.

Gray Matter

Gray Matter

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As my old gray matter stirs slowly to life, I look up and find that it’s almost 2 p.m. and I’ve yet to write a post. Instead, I’ve been answering a discussion question for my class and figuring out the topic of my first paper. 

Yes, I write all the time, but not academic papers. I’ve spent most of my adult life penning articles for commercial establishments — magazines, newspapers, nonprofits. Writing for the academy is different, I tell myself. 

But maybe not all that much. Maybe I’m making it too big a deal (I’ve been known to do that). Maybe all I need to do is what I’ve always done: research, analyze and write. Just share what I learn, and in this case, what I believe. 

(Gray stone, gray matter, Georgetown’s Healey Hall)