On the path of privacy

It’s a new day. Or at least a new blog.

Funny that the path to privacy should lead to a very public website. Of course, “public” doesn’t mean anybody is going to read it, which is a privacy all its own.

But the idea may not be privacy. Maybe those guys (Zuckerberg? Others?) are right when they say there is no such thing as privacy. So I if I can’t have privacy, at least I want a measure of control. By starting a blog, a very “This is me, warts and all” statement, perhaps I can take that control back from the FaceBooks, Twitters and LinkedIns of the world.

I’ll save the Googles for later, but that’s part of why this new blog is on WordPress instead of BlogSpot.

Inspiration comes from a lot of places. First and foremost is Julia Angwin, author of “Dragnet Nation.” Oooh! Did you see that? Not only a link, but it is NOT to Amazon! No, I don’t try to make a half-cent if someone buys through my page. At least not yet. But her book is coming out in paperback soon. If you’re concerned about government or corporate snoopers, in addition to genuine criminals, it’s worth a read. Ms. Angwin’s website has some content from the book, plus some links to her work at the Wall Street Journal.

Another bit of inspiration came from a Kiplinger MoneyPower column. I’ve already done some of the steps. This is another one, especially if I get a personal domain. For now, I’m not willing to shell out the money.

There may be other topics as well. Politics, privacy, photography, gardening, family. Who knows where this path goes. But to some degree, my path to privacy is a public one, a path that I invite you to share.

Stories about disasters are always the same; stories about people are always different

In reading the coverage of the homecoming parade crash in Stillwater, I have learned one thing new, about myself.

With each new disaster story, I typically complain to co-workers that disaster stories all sound the same, that only the details change with the type of story: shooting, earthquake, car crash, election.

Pick a disaster, I say, and I’ll give you 35 inches of made-up accounts and quotes that will seem authentic; it’s all been said before.

To my shame, it’s really rather cynical, and silly.

I pray that I will never say it again.

Disaster stories do come across as quite similar, partly because individuals react to horrible events in ways that are shared by ALL people: shock, horror, loss, sadness, death.

In Sunday’s Tulsa World there were two photos, taken on opposite sides of the world and two generations apart, but they are the same photo, showing very human responses to tragedy.

On the front page is a photo from Saturday’s crash at the OSU homecoming parade in Stillwater by David Bitton of the Stillwater News Press (f8 and be there; that’s the key).

It appears that two injured persons are on the ground, being attended by passers-by. All around are others who are reacting with various degrees of shock, horror, dismay, sadness. Every one is reacting in a different way, while still reacting in the same, very human way.

On the back of the first section is a Vietnam War photo from June 8, 1972. That was when AP photographer Nick Ut took a photo that would win him the Pulitzer Prize, a photo of a 9-year-old girl running naked down a road after being burned by napalm and white phosphorous munitions in an air raid.

The photo printed, however, was one that I don’t remember ever seeing. The girl is standing still, facing away from the camera, still naked except for the patch of either melted cloth or melted skin on her back and left arm. The thing that catches my eye is not her horror, but the dismay shown on the faces of the photographers and soldiers who are facing her. A South Vietnamese soldier appears to be signaling her to stand still. An American medic appears to be starting first aid. Behind them all are the photographers and sound crews, men who have covered the horrors of the Vietnam War but who are still taken aback by suffering different from what they’ve ever seen before.

Every person has a story. Every story, every disaster, every shock gets filtered through that individual’s experiences.

But those individual responses are in turn shaped by our shared humanity. That makes reporting   about disaster a bit repetitive. There is a discernible pattern.

So what? Every sonnet follows a pattern. And every story has already been told, somewhere, by someone. “Romeo and Juliet” and “West Side Story” are really the same story, except with music. And a few other changes.

When we write about disasters and about things that actually rise to the level of “tragedy,” we write a familiar story. But we must pay respect to the unique nature of each individual’s response. Juliet is not Maria, but each character’s story echoes in our hearts, shaping who WE are. Each story is worth telling, and telling well.

I believe that is what the Tulsa World reporters accomplished Saturday and in the days since, telling the stories of this horrible event and the people involved.

It brings to mind my favorite quote by Ernest Hemingway, in his memoir “A Moveable Feast” about being a struggling writer in Paris.

“The writer’s job is to tell the truth,” he said. “I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.’ So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.”

As long as reporters and writers can keep starting with one true sentence, I must keep looking at their stories with fresh eyes. I owe it to them, I owe it to the readers, and I owe it to the real people involved in those stories who have unique experiences to share.

You can’t make this stuff up. But you can stay on top of the story.

There’s a saying in newsrooms when a story takes a daffy turn.

“You can’t make this stuff up.”

Or something like that.

Sources say things that make your jaw drop.

Governments take actions that make no sense at all.

Worst of all, people do things so wrong, so hurtful, so damaging that they break your heart.

There’s a corollary to that newsroom axiom, rarely spoken but always understood.

“You *don’t* make this stuff up.”
Not if you have any standards at all. Not if you want to be credible. Not if you want to be respected. Not if you want to be trusted.

(And not if you want to keep your job.)

Less than 48 hours after a car plowed into a crowd of people at the Oklahoma State University’s homecoming parade, a Facebook friend of a Facebook friend said the media needed to catch up. She noted speculation that the driver of the car was “distraught.” (This cited a story from the New York Daily News, which, last time I checked, is still a media outlet.)

Many second-day stories quoted a lawyer who said his client, Adacia Chambers, the woman accused in the crash, was not inebriated and may have had some sort of mental issues.

On the first day of an incident like this, reporters try to get the full story, but that is no easy task.

A car crashes into a crowd at a parade. Fact.

Three people die. Fact.

A fourth person, a 2-year-old child, dies later. Fact

A woman is arrested on suspicion of DUI. Fact.

So for the first-day story you’ve got the Who, the What, the When, the Where and the How.

But you may only have hints at the Why.

There’s that DUI arrest. That might be the why, but an arrest complaint is not a charge, which is not a conviction.

Once the facts are nailed down, the Why is what everyone wants to know.

Reporters ask more questions, talk to employers, family, witnesses, cops, lawyers.

Good journalists try to stay on top of a developing story, seeking to understand what happened without trying to shape the narrative. (Seriously, you *don’t* have to make this stuff up; sufficient unto the day is the tragedy thereof. And, yeah, this story qualifies as a tragedy, at least in my book.)

People want the Why, but the process of figuring that out will take months or years. Reporters will keep asking questions. So will the cops, and the lawyers and the prosecutors and the judges.

There will likely be some sort of resolution of the Why. A woman may be convicted, or not. She may be sent for medical treatment, or not.

Readers might be satisfied with the resolution and move on to the next tragedy.

Even editors will eventually be satisfied, strange as that may seem.

For the families of those killed or hurt, however, they may never reach a satisfactory understanding of the Why.

Then there’s Adacia Chambers, the woman who was arrested. She may never be able to find her own answer Why.

Scrim Shadow, memory of a dream

Any dream in which you share the stage with David Tenant ought to be remembered, at least as best as one can. That was the case tonight.

I was on stage with Tenant himself, and even if I was just his shadow, I was brilliant! If only there were a way to get a transcription of a dream. I’m left with memories only, and incomplete, fading ones at that.

He was finishing a stage play, and I was behind the scrim, that shadowy fabric that can be translucent, obscuring but revealing the action of the people on stage behind the scrim.

In the dream, I was more of a reverse shadow, projected on the back of the scrim, and as he finished his performance, I spoke up, becoming visible to the audience, if there really was an audience.What can a shadow on a scrim know of the audience?

If only I could remember my dialogue. I know that I spoke of being there, unnoticed, during all his great performances. Which is of course as it should be. I had some great word play on some of his lines, offering insights into drama, the art of stagecraft, the greatness of Shakespeare, the ephemeral nature of art and, by extension, of life itself.

And then I woke up. Lying in bed, the real me was fully aware of the dream version of myself slipping away as those those chemicals in the brain that erase the memory of dreams began to work.

As my waking brain tried to steal away some of those scenes, I realized how the dream must have ended.

The actor, after interacting with his shadow for a time, and possibly gaining some insight into the nature of his art, raised the scrim so he could meet his alter ego.

And in keeping with Twilight Zone classification of dream, the shadow disappeared in the glare of the stage lights.

Because, of course, it was never really there.

It was nothing but a shadow.

Nothing but a dream.

(c) 2015 by Phillip W. Lamb

time to play

It isn’t all privacy all the time. Although I did have a tussle with spokeo today in which they failed to remove some personal information from their site, but that’s for another day.

Red Nose Day, aka Comic Relief, is a fundraiser that brings out all the media stars in Britain for comedy bits. Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death is one such. Here’s a mashup of “Call the Midwife” and “Doctor Who” that got good laughs from both Vicki and from me.

We’ll see if the embed code works.

Success, apparently.

One more step to a very public iteration of privacy. In other words, you see what *I* want to tell you, not what Facebook or some other program has gleaned from my data.

(And yes, this is a YouTube video, a product of evil Google, but I still have to learn whether they put their evil tentacles on my wordpress page. Still a work in progress and all that.