 Between lovely banjo, guitar and mandolin Christmas carols on WDVX
and e-mail from a friend in Sweden describing Santa's safe departure on
his world tour, I celebrated Christmas Eve by finally putting up the
tree... both in the window and
on my home page ... and while I was at it, I engaged in a little family nostalgia.
That's actually relevant to the "journalism" topic of this blog, since
the picture at the other end of that link shows just how early the
seeds of "news media" were planted in my life -- from my grandmother's
newspaper to my Dad's photography, both that snapshot and the one of my
mother next to (more media!) a portable radio about as old as the
version of "Blue Christmas" playing in the background.
Incidentally, that song was written by a radio news veteran named Jay
Johnson, who also could edit news tape with a razor blade and eat a
cold can of beans for lunch at the same time -- which he did in the
closet-size newsroom at WILI, two doors from the old Hartford Courant Willimantic bureau, where my reporting career started.
Speaking of radio -- and Christmas, while searching the Web for a fiddle tune called "Breaking Up Christmas," I found an archived news story
by an old friend in North Carolina, complete with audio file and
transcript, a good-for-class example of the Web keeping a Radio
report available, since it was apparently broadcast four years ago!
It's still news to me -- I hadn't realized the tune's title referred to
a whole old-time way of celebrating the holiday. Thanks, Leda and
ClassBrain.com!
Back to my home page... I'll keep that family picture around, but the tree should come down for
New Year's Day. Last year I went to Somerville's commemoration of the first American flag-raising, wrote a story about it, then kept the flag picture on my home page all year.
This time I'll do something Knoxvillian. (preview)
Meanwhile, to wrap up this rambling holiday hypertext, God Yul, as
Barbara says from Sweden. Merry Christmas and a happy
end-of-the-old-year... In fact, my tree and string of lights in the
window remind me of a note from her about walking
past lights in her neighbors' windows, so here it is:
"The
window candles are not for the folks in the house, they are for those
passing by, to brighten the long night for others. Swedish core
philosophy: if you are nice to just one person, you benefit the whole
community, because it spreads. And it works. People actually try to be
nice."
8:11:05 PM 
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