Videoconferencing, the wave of the future.

I couldn't resist this shoutout to my friend Chris who works at Polycom. He was very excited that this new technology made it onto CNN.com's hallowed pages.

In other news, I spent the weekend in Austin with my beloved nieces who are now eight and five years old. Where does the time go? I swear they were just born yesterday! Anyway, Annika's birthday was Sunday, so we took her to Dave and Busters (her choice) where she won a giant Spongebob Squarepants doll. My brother should be sending me some pictures soon which you all can coo at when you see how darn adorable my nieces are.

The rest of my time "off" has been spent entertaining relatives or working at CNN. It's been nice to see some of my friends back at the Mother Ship, and I found out that our department won Peabody and DuPont Columbia awards for the tsunami and Katrina coverage last year.

Stephanie, satellites business manager extrordinaire, gave me my certificates yesterday. When I left for work today, I left them on my bed because I was in a hurry and didn't want them to get wrinkled in my work bag, and this afternoon my parents saw them and freaked out. They called me at CNN to share their excitement (and to scold me for not telling them about it.) I didn't realize my parents would know what a Peabody was, so I didn't rush to share the news last night. Oh well.

And now I should probably talk about something that might actually interest someone out there in Internet-land... I finally saw Psycho. The Hitchcock version. Everyone knows that I absolutely love Hitchcock movies. (North by Northwest is one of my favorite movies of all time.) His ability to use music and understatement as psychological tools was simply brilliant. No one else did what he did, but everyone still tries to mimic his methods. Film scholars have been saying these things (much more eloquently) for years, so I'll move on to my point.

Backtracking somewhat, when I was growing up, my mother always talked about how scary that film was when she saw it in the 60's. She said she couldn't sleep for weeks afterwards. She still thinks it's the scariest thing she's ever seen. So naturally, I'd always had an aversion to it as well. (In fact, I have never been a huge horror movie fan, although I love a good mystery/suspense/thriller. I just don't like zombies and people jumping out from behind corners with knives and that sort of thing.)

Being in the Arts Journalism program, I decided that I needed to face my fears and see the Hitchcock classic that set the tone for many modern horror films. So I set out to watch it in my brother's fabulous media room, with surround sound and a beautifully projected image on a big screen. Of course, I sat down to watch it alone, but during the day, just in case.

At first, I was confident that it wasn't going to get to me. This silly black and white movie couldn't possibly be as scary as my mother had deemed it to be. There are much scarier things on television these days. (O'Reilly Factor, anyone?) It simply reminded me of the genius that is Hitchcock. I already knew all about the famous "shower scene", so that didn't really scare me. I noticed the startling music in the intense scenes, and the creepy camera angles that were used whenever Norman Bates was in a scene. And oh, the black and white added such a classy touch. I felt very elite and erudite, looking at the piece from a critical perspective.

And then Hitchcock got the better of me. When the investigator was stabbed and thrown down the stairs. I admit, I yelped a little out loud. But when the skeleton in the basement grinned back at me in it's 10-foot-wide toothy glory, I literally freaked out. I turned the lights on and watched the rest of the movie with the media room door wide open, just in case.

Luckily, I was able to forget my fright quickly when I walked downstairs and joined the kids, who were watching harmless Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Terrorist plot no. 653: No hydration or hygene for Westerners!

I have flown twice since last week. The security in Rochester was a breeze, except that I had to take my trusty tube of Chapstick and bottle of hand lotion in my checked suitcase. It wouldn't have been so annoying if the closed air on planes wasn't so dehydrating. Is anyone else having this problem?

Since I can no longer bring a bottle of water on board with me, hydration is my foremost concern. I hate flying without lotion and lip gloss. It sounds stupid, especially since I don't consider myself a particularly high-maintenance woman, but my lips crave that moisturizing, cherry goo from time to time. And airplane soap is not particularly easy on skin either. Coupled with the dry air, I could scratch the word "dry" on my hands without much effort.

The two-hour trips that I've been taking this month haven't been so hard on me. However, my sister-in-law just left for China and she had to do away with her creams and balms when she checked-in. So she has to fly for 36 hours without being able to touch up her make-up or put cream on her hands until she clears customs and gets to her hotel. That seems a little harsh.

Some lunatics in London make an explosive paste, and the entire western world has to suffer. No lotions, liquids, creams, deodorant, toothpaste or lip gloss on board! I guess that's the terrorists' end game: to make westerners do without basic hygene, so we all offend each other with our dry skin and smelly underarms. Perhaps I am overreacting, but it's mildly annoying that this morning, I had to check-in a small suitcase for a weekend trip because I wanted to have deodorant, make-up and moisturizer on hand when I arrived in Austin. Last week, I would've been able to carry it on and walk off the plane to meet my family, without wasting time at the baggage carousel.

(That area is aptly named, because it does resemble a circus most of the time... that gives me a good idea: the airlines should spend those extra taxes and fee money on clowns and tightrope walkers in the baggage claim area to entertain us while we wait and hope that our luggage made the same journey that we did. The elephant shit might put people off, but we're all going to smell bad anyway since we can't travel with deodorant anymore!)

I began to wonder about those people who travel every week, weekend or even every day. It's just an added inconvenience for an ailing airline industry which is already talking about raising fares to accomodate the latest edict from Homeland Security. Gas prices are super high, air travel is a hassle and the Bill of Rights is breached more with each passing day. It seems like it's time for a change - the terrorists are almost winning here. They have succeeded in making westerners live in fear, and they have increased the prosperity and ease of American life which used to be so dear to each of us. Don't get me wrong. I am happy to accomodate rules that ensure my safety, but I really am having a hard time understanding how lip gloss and deodorant got on the list of dangerous weaponry.

By the way, after my layover in Houston today, the gate agent let me bring my Starbucks mocha on board. I don't think she noticed it, but the flight attendant made a point, at least twice, to tell me how "special" I was. I am failing to understand why an item purchased inside the "secure" zone would cause such a commotion, because shouldn't that merchandise or food or whatever be "safe"? Ok I'm done with this rant now...

The fat lady finally sang.

Topic #1: Newswriting.
Let me start by saying that this class was one of the most demanding classes that I have ever taken. But I survived it, and on Thursday, "Dump Truck" Smitty informed me that I actually got an A in the class. Ok, it was an A minus, but it’s still on the A side of the spectrum. It’s not a B. Phew.
(I'm supposed to be an overachieving injun, remember? There's no room for B's, unless they are spelling bees. All Indians are good at those, are they not?)

Topic #2: More school stuff.
We had two projects due on Wednesday this week: the last newswriting piece, and the only project for Arts Journalism for this semester. The AJ one will be published in a special supplement in the Post-Standard on September 17. We are having a fancy launch party on the 15th, and it’s pretty exciting to have such buzz surrounding our work.

Sometime in the blur of the past weeks, I volunteered for the editorial board of the Mix (our supplement), and I have been appointed as the “Style Queen.” For those of you who have met me and have seen how I dress, you can stop laughing already. It’s got nothing to do with fashion. I get to memorize the AP stylebook and make sure that each of our 16 pieces has perfect style. (Checking grammar, punctuation, correct spelling of words, etc.) I blurted out that I am good with rules, so there you have it. The rest of the team are stuck editing the pieces this weekend, so I think I got off kind of easily. (Johanna, please forget that you saw that comment, if you read this blog. Thanks!)

Topic #3: The opera and Cooperstown.
And last, but not least, we ended the AJ class with a field trip to Cooperstown yesterday. Most people will recognize the town because the Baseball Hall of Fame is there. We found out that it is also home to one of the world’s premier opera houses, Glimmerglass.

Glimmerglass is beautifully constructed, with “almost-perfect acoustics” as we were told, next to a shimmering finger lake. I couldn’t figure out what the imperfections in the sound could be, because we all thought it was divine. The opera is quite a production, as we saw. There are so many people behind-the-scenes making it all work.

Every year, Glimmerglass has four shows running simultaneously during their summer season. So they have to rehearse, load-in, perform and load-out for every show. That’s a lot of work and coordination, but they manage it seamlessly. The idea is that opera fans who come out to Cooperstown for the weekend can see all four shows in two days. If you’re going to have a tourist business, that’s a good way to run it. Make it worthwhile if people come to upstate NY, and drive 1.5 hours from the nearest major airport to go there and make a weekend out of it.

We met Lola Goldring and Dean David Rubin for breakfast in the morning. Mrs. Goldring is the benefactor that gave life to our AJ program. She’s a lovely, spunky woman who talked about her grandchildren (who are the same ages as most of my classmates) and at the same time discussed the latest movies, fads and culture with us. It was quite amazing to meet her, and I think that we were all very impressed with how down-to-earth and delightful she is.

So we went out to Glimmerglass, toured the opera house and then broke off into separate groups to explore Cooperstown. It’s actually a village, which I found amusing. The Clark and Busch (yes, the beer people) families spent a lot of money preserving the ambience of the area. There are no chain stores – McDonalds, Starbucks, etc. It’s all local businesses, with baseball-themed store names. Doubleday Field is tucked away in the middle of the high street. Although, there was too much Yankee paraphernalia everywhere for my tastes.

During breakfast, the dean mentioned a hotel that had a scenic veranda, where we could sit and enjoy the view of Lake Otswego. After taking a stroll up and down the main street in Cooperstown, we went to the hotel, where most of our classmates were also enjoying the pleasant, but chilly, weather.

We ended the night watching Jenufa, which is a Czech opera that isn’t widely performed. We had learned about it earlier in the week, so it was much more meaningful listening for specific things in the music, and watching for certain things in the plot. The singers were absolutely amazing, and the music was really interesting. There were many aspects that reminded me of modern movie music, which was fascinating since Janacek wrote the opera at the end of the 1800s.

So that is the denouement of semester number one. I’m heading to Atlanta this weekend – hopefully will manage a visit to Charleston and Austin in the next two weeks, and I’ll be at CNN for a couple of days too. It’ll be nice to relax for a change.

A civilized newsroom?

Yesterday, my arts journalism class went to visit the local newspaper, the Post-Standard, where many of us will be doing internships during the next year. Kathleen took this picture of the newspapers on a reel, waiting to be distributed.

We sat in on a budget meeting, which is when the editors of each section get together to decide which stories will make the front page. The thing that struck me most about the place is that it was so quiet. Everyone was very polite and accomodating towards each other.

I can't remember a single day in the CNN newsroom that was like that. So during the entire visit, I was questioning whether I was at an actual media outlet or not. It didn't seem normal, but it got me to remember my buddies at CNN.com in London. They are all newspaper guys who got hired to do online work, and they are pretty civilized too. They always look moderately annoyed when some lunatic TV person freaks out in the newsroom. Although I have to say that London's newsroom was much calmer than the Atlanta one.

It's going to be weird to start an internship at an office where people are actually respectful of each other, and there's no shouting or other extraneous noise going on all the time. I have never seen a work environment like that. Every TV station that I have worked at has been over-the-top with noise, at the very least. Screaming and antagonizing people were usually present too. When I start my newspaper internship in the fall, I wonder if I'll be able to concentrate...

Picking blueberries

One of my friends from AJ, Jaque, mentioned that she and her roommate, Nancy, were going to a blueberry farm over the weekend to pick berries. Growing up in Atlanta doesn't give a girl many opportunities to pick anything but what to put on her pizza, so I jumped at the chance. Despite the heat, Jaque and Nancy and I had a pretty good time. Those girls racked up in blueberry goodness, filling grocery bags and plastic containers. I only filled about half of a plastic container, but I still have a feeling I'm going to be eating blueberry scones, muffins and pancakes for quite some time. Today I learned that they freeze well and have a ridiculous dosage of anti-oxidants which are wrinkle-fighters, so it's a win-win situation. Upstate NY farmland is beautiful, by the way.