If we were doing this right, free journalism training would be available to anyone who wants it. An investment in our way of life. The same way Covid vaccinations are free. #
Insulting Trump does no good for anyone. Right now is time to take him seriously. There's going to be another insurrection in August. They're doing some very loud dog whistling now.#
I started watching the HBO series In Treatment. At first it's boring, but it develops as it goes along. Some of the most despicable characters become sympathetic, and vice versa. You see real love between some of the pairs, also a lot of fear. 90 percent is conversations in a therapist's office. I found it hard to imagine how that could work, but it does. #
A segment this morning on NPR, a discussion between two alumni of Robert E Lee High School in Jacksonville, FL. It's in northeast Florida, an area I'm fairly familiar with, my uncle used to live in the area. It's more like rural Georgia than most of Florida. The thing that hasn't gotten through to the whites there is that slavery is still ongoing in the US. They can't yet relate to the blacks as fellow Americans. If they could, they could understand the history they cherish was slavery to the blacks. They were considered property, animals, they could be killed with impunity. Asked how he would feel if it were Adolf Hitler High School, he said it was nothing like that, but it is exactly like that, only the Third Reich lasted only 13 years. American slavery lasted 250 years. Renaming a high school is a very small step. When we are fully reconciled, all of us will see the slaves of America as our ancestors. In the South they resist even beginning going down that path. #My thinking was influenced by parents and grandparents who barely escaped Germany in WWII spending the rest of their lives trying to figure out WTF happened. If we live through something like that we'll learn a lot. But if their experience means anything, probably far more questions than answers.#
There's a great scene in Bull Durham where the veteran teaches the rookie how to talk to reporters. It's all cliches. "Of course it's boring," says the pro, "that's the point." #- It's a ridiculous ritual. Esp with a star as young as Naomi Osaka. She has incredible talent, but when you're so young, in her case 23, most of it is intuitive, not well-understood. #
- I've seen that recently in interviews with Knicks star Derrick Rose. The questions reporters ask are still insipid, but at 32, having been a huge star at 22, youngest MVP ever, then having his body break over and over, he had to learn how it works, and now his play still has a lot of the spark he had when he was young, and even better, now he can tell you how he manages it, something he probably could not have done at 22. #
- I find at my advanced age, in a "sport" where you body's age doesn't matter (up to a point, see this blog in the summer of 2002), I have a much better understanding of how I do what I do than when I was an ambitious star in my 20s. I can tell you a lot more how this works than I could then, when I just had an intuitive sense of how it worked. Enough of that intuition was right so that I could make it to the next stage, and the one after that, and so on.#
- In software, very few people stick with it through their whole career as I have. Companies still have no idea how age and tech work co-relate. But we know a lot about tennis, and basketball. #
- Naomi Osaka is brilliant, wonderful, a joy to behold. You can see it, read it, in everything she does and says. Her intuition says she should be allowed to be introspective while she tries to win in her sport. Her intuition is incredibly compelling. I feel of her as I do of a great movie star or maker, or software developer. In 10 or 20 years ask her how she does it, she'll have some answers. Right now it's probably not possible. #
- My opinion only. #