Andy's Angles: Genius!

 

This flower stuffed VW Beetle was used to promote a recent flower show at Nay Aug Park in Scranton.  Brilliant!  It really captured your attention, and the scene stays in your mind.

It will be tough to top next year.  The bar is set rather high.

Time Passes

 It was one of those happenstance, serendipitous conversations, yet it's stayed with me for a long time.

Several years ago, I was eating a soft pretzel (with mustard) on a mall bench.  An elderly woman sat next to me.  I don't know how we came about to the topic of time, but we both agreed that time passes more quickly as you age.

When you're a kid, it seems like the school year lasts forever, that the years before you get your drivers license crawl.  The same goes before you are old enough to vote and then old enough to drink.

There really is no consistent pattern.  When you you are young, summers fly by.  Now, at least for me, it's the opposite.  Winters don't seem as endless as they once did.  

That predicted active hurricane season has yet to materialize, but there is plenty of time left.  Hurricane season goes until the end of November.

It seems as if the current election cycle is taking four times as long as it normally does.

Every minute waiting for an important phone call or text message seems like an hour.

You spend what seems like an hour on the gym treadmill.  A look down at the readout reveals it's only been ten minutes.

A credit card email arrives in the email.  You say to yourself, "Hey, I just paid this."  And then you realize another month has passed.

Once again, I quote the great George Carlin:  "You don't tell time.   Time tells you."

History

 

It has been said that news is "history caught on the fly."

I'm lucky, even though most days, I don't feel that way.

I'm a long way from Butler, Washington, and Delaware, but because of what I do for a living, I do have a front row seat to some remarkable times.

I get to sit at my newsroom computer keyboard and document the day's events and how they impact you.  Perspective.  What happens next.  What might happen down the road.

There is no corporate overlord to tell me what to write, say and think.  No one looks over my shoulder.  I'm trusted.  It comes with more than 40 years in local newsrooms.    I do call on coworkers and managers to take a look at my stuff    Maybe there is something I can say more clearly.  Maybe there is something that needs to be explained a little more.  A critique never hurts.

And, just when you think you've seen and heard it all, history throws you a curve ball.

I'll be back at the plate tomorrow.

Vacation

 

Sleeping Homer is here and that signals I'm on another vacation week-- only my second of the year.  I've been putting most of my vacation time in the latter months of the year.  I know I should spread it out a little better.

Nothing new on my end-- just getting rested up, maybe playing with the camera for a bit.

Sometimes, doing nothing is fun, too.

There is one new aspect with this vacation.  My good friend and coworker Kerry Kearns has the weekend morning anchor desk, and I know the broadcasts will be in great hands.

I'll call you back later.

Trouble

 

The Thursday night/Friday morning computer crash really didn't have a major impact on me.  I had the day off from work.  Everything at home was working fine.

It was troubling, nonetheless.

If one bad piece of software, from one company, could muck up the country, it's a sign that our infrastructure is extremely vulnerable.  You have to know the people in Russia, China, North Korea, etc. took notice of the failure.

My only hope is that we've learned a valuable lesson.  I still have the nagging feeling that we will go through this again.

In Memoriam: Bob, Lou, and Mike

 

I can't add much to the Bob Newhart tributes that you've already seen or read.  Newhart, his writers, and producers understood comedy.   Bob was in the calm eye of the hurricane.  The comedy on his two most successful sitcoms came from the characters who surrounded him.  Mary Tyler Moore did that, and Andy Griffith perfected it in the sixties.  Andy was the anchor.  Barney and the rest of the Mayberry gang provided the laughs.  Newhart always brilliantly set up the secondary characters.

Lou Dobbs also died last week.  CNN and FOX.  Dobbs was the gold standard for business news reporting during his CNN days.  I thought he took on an unnecessary mean quality during his FOX stay.  I saw Dobbs in person once, walking through Sears in Middletown, NY.  He looked like he didn't want to be there, so I didn't approach.

Mike Cefalo also passed away last week.  While there were other lawyers who had high profile cases, and John Moses comes to mind, Cefalo was perhaps northeastern Pennsylvania's first celebrity lawyer.  He advertised big, and he was on tv and radio almost every day because he was handed the class action lawsuit after the Pennsylvania Gas and Water giardiasis debacle.  Regarding that, I still think people should have gone to jail because of the lies, deceit, and general incompetence.  Cefalo was comfortable with the media and it showed.

Andy's Angles: Still Here

 

This building in Scranton was constructed to make and repair steam locomotives.

It's now a munitions plant.

The photo doesn't do it justice.  The place is enormous.  This is a side view, taken from the South Washington Avenue exposure.

Andy's Angles: Preserving History

 

This is one of the coolest buildings in our area.  It is the Mattes Avenue, Scranton signal tower.  It was built to help control the trains when there was a lot more rail traffic in the area.

It's not the easiest building to find, but it's worth the effort.

Media Friday

 

I intended to finish the week with something light and breezy.  After all, it's been a busy news cycle.  Sadly, I couldn't think of a fun topic, so Media Friday it is.

The blog will be 20 years old in November, and it seems like I do this entry every four years.  There is always at least one reporter at the political conventions who says "_________ is about to give the most important speech of his/her life."  Gee, ya think?  I often wonder how some people achieved the positions they now occupy.

I watched plenty of ABC News coverage of the Trump shooting Saturday night and Sunday morning.  Whit Johnson was impressive, and "This Week" was outstanding.

What I haven't liked, especially lately, is professional speculation.  There are doctors commenting on President Biden who have never met the man.  I always felt that is ethically shoddy.  We see it all the time, any time someone famous has a health issue.  In a similar vein, the security experts came out of the woodwork after the Butler shooting.  Clearly, something went horribly wrong here, but let's wait until all the facts are in.

The still photography from Butler was nothing short of outstanding.

A little inside baseball here...  I didn't take the calls Tuesday morning, but an elderly woman phoned the newsroom just about every hour Tuesday morning, wondering when her electricity would return.  The Monday night storm knocked it out.  Even though I only heard half of the conversation, it still broke my heart.  Losing electricity is tough, but even more so on a hot and humid day.

Gary Berkowitz, who writes for a respected radio industry newsletter alleges radio dropped the ball Saturday night.  I didn't catch any of our local stations, but I did scan some New York City stations via Amazon Echo, and I thought they did fine.  That is to be expected because they have actual bodies on duty.  The same can't be said for hundreds of stations across the country.

What would Gen. David Sarnoff think about the internal fighting at MSNBC?

Several groups have gone to court to get the Federal Communications to loosen its ownership caps.  How is that working out for the industry?

The late Bob Newhart deserves an entry of his own.  Next week.

"ENTER" Carefully

 

What an extraordinary and bizarre news cycle we've endured the past few weeks!  There were so many unexpected and unusual things.

I'm really not talking about the news today.  Today's entry is about the reaction to the news.

We all have opinions,  and we all have the right to express those opinions.

Here is one of my favorite phrases:  JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN DOESN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD.

So many people have jumped head first into extremely hot water because they spoke, or posted to social media, first and thought later.

One of the most dangerous things on the planet these days is the "enter" button on your keyboard.