March 2012
23 posts
1 tag
The view from my cube
MSNBC: “Prosecutors asked a witness if the gentlemen on trial usually sported the glasses. The witness said they did not. One prosecutor compared the glasses to masks, saying, “They’re designed to confuse the witness and influence the jury.”
Defense attorneys scoffed at the notion their clients were putting on a “schoolboy act,” as one prosecutor called it, and said the glasses are merely...
1 tag
Education on 81st Avenue
I spent several hours today at the East Oakland public library for a public education forum hosted by engagement editor Martin G. Reynolds and moderated by Oakland Tribune education reporter Katy Murphy.
Murphy described the forum as ”the Oakland school district’s decision to create an 11-month teaching position on the Fremont, Castlemont and McClymonds high school campuses. Even...
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Grand Avenue
These Oakland streets? I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I’ve bought the T-shirt. And it made me wonder once or twice: how would other thoroughfares fare depicted on similar shirts and gear?
Here, I’ll spot you some. Mandela Parkway, Adeline Street, Market Street, Park Boulevard, Foothill Boulevard, Fruitvale Avenue, High Street, Bancroft Avenue, Seminary Avenue, and San...
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Talking about Trayvon
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Good days come and go, but bad days linger and leach their cores, their half-lives burn behind my eyes like half-life radiation. I don’t whine, I just want the day to go smoothly and disappear behind the pay-attention-wall of peripheral perception. But then there are those days where the story is a bunch of there-but-for-the-grace. No safe distance, none of the usual things one does to...
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Tipsy off that Ma Goose
I must’ve been drinking at some point if I thought I could run two CoverItLive chats on different subjects at the same time off the same computer. I resolved to work more than panic, and both Matt Krupnick (one-on-one with a San Jose State University official) and Matthias Gafni (and an astonishing former rock-guitar deity living for two decades with Lou Gehrig’s...
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Laundromat
All the clothes I didn’t take to get done yesterday, I took today.
I wished I could crawl inside a machine and spin myself clean.
I folded clothes like each item was a minute I could’ve gone credited toward a trip back in time toward poor decision-making and lack of critical thinking.
All apologies are just apologies, neither redress nor recompense. But clean doesn’t work,...
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Street science, street art
I had a brief moment with Karza, my stalwart Honda Civic, while running out to Walnut Creek early today in the rain.
I made it into San Francisco to attend a pal’s monthly dim sum gathering at Canton on Folsom Street. Even passing up the meaty items, there was still plenty of veggie items to snipe off passing trays.
After I’d left the restaurant, I met artb(r)o Patrick Cant...
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Panem in the streets
[<a href=”http://storify.com/allaboutgeorge/the-hunger-games-arrives-in-bay-area” target=”_blank”>View the story “‘The Hunger Games’ hits theaters in Bay Area, beyond” on Storify</a>]
Someone’s got to go see an independently released French movie selected for the...
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When and how to click
I sent this Neiman Journalism Lab story to a friend with three words: “Traffic sex work.”
Then tonight I created a Storify out of Bay Area tweets and Facebook posts on  ”The Hunger Games” movie. So really, I should talk, right?
[<a href=”http://storify.com/allaboutgeorge/the-hunger-games-arrives-in-bay-area” target=”_blank”>View...
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Springtime with James
It’s always a trip to sit down across the table from certain folks like this guy right here. I can remember a time when he wasn’t looking sideways at any Apple hardware. Look at him now. :) Planning trips, plotting concert schedules, putting his business head on when it comes to changes on the work front.
And then there’s the secret when it comes to all of this stuff: I...
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Breaking news
Twitter: great for breaking news? Yes. But what news? It depends. Is that news happening someplace where we throw actual print products that people might be inclined to purchase or browse second-hand? What’s our sourcing: freelance, wire service, live radio, television? Is there an audience for that news at this exact moment? Is it something that we can make more distinctive and...
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Traveling companions
Danny Willis gave me a lift down Interstate 680 from Walnut Creek to Pleasanton in his satellite-radio-enabled roadster. Somewhere between the Bernal Road exit and the Pleasanton city limits, we actually found Thomas Peele threading his way through the sidestreets en route to the Valley Times office on Spring Street.
The minor hitch that was the failure to bring a projector along for the ride...
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Pre-Kansas
She used to be in the choir, but she left long before I joined. She showed up at singer-songwriter house parties where I’ve played, but she didn’t write a song or sing, except for that one time when she and our hostess and a guitarist pal covered a Guns N’ Roses song.
Now she is leaving the city and moving back to her home state. It’s not that big a deal and people...
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Staying with the moment
I got distracted. I’d just gotten coffee and a donut in downtown Walnut Creek this morning, and it was raining. I figured I’d go have a look at the still-new Neiman Marcus building at the corner of South Main Street and Mount Diablo Boulevard.
Across the street, I saw a line of folks waiting to get admitted into the Apple Store to receive their ordered and shipped new iPads. I...
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How we work these days
I don’t know how to figure out this certain thing, this one issue that has a bunch of other issues wrapped up in it, and it’s starting to get on my nerves.
It’s about work, I guess. Or maybe a career. And something to do with who I get to work with. And what I get to handle and take responsibility for, and so on.
I do know that I’ll be paying a lot more attention to...
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How it feels to be hated
You pick up the phone and ask questions of the voice on the other end.
You breathe, you listen, you wait for the right pauses in the rhythm of the conversation.
You accept that the person on the other end does not want to help you. You accept that you may never really know why.
You accept that you’re not being rejected because of who you are, but likely because of what you represent,...
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Ash and bile
I’m doing what I don’t want to have to do. Talking when I don’t want to talk, when I have no guarantee of profit, no promise of balm or accord. Trying to be good, or at least think about it. Trying to answer questions about groups to which I wasn’t invited and would’ve been leery if I had been invited. Expecting to say what I think should happen and expecting to hear...
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To East Contra Costa and back
I wanted to take my mind off of Austin, Texas, and some of the events taking place there, so I rode along with coworkers Danny Willis and Thomas Peele out to the East County Times office in Antioch, California.
I figured it would be good to tag along and see what the two have had to say to reporters about the possibilities of using data to hunt for and display stories, and maybe useful to talk...
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Having folks over for Holi
Ankita had the idea for a themed gathering to mark the spring festival (without any paint or eggs), so she put a lot of worth into making the house ready for guests: food, cleaning up, more food. I got off relatively lightly: come up with a soundtrack. If I had it together, I’d’ve assembled it in Spotify like the cool kids do these days, but I still like pulling local files together...
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Remembering what rain looks like
Yesterday was really busy. Before I even got to see Mad Noise (and later have a drink with Amy and with Suzanne Yada at a nearby restaurant where a live jazz trio was running through some sweet standards), there was a visit to Vik’s Chaat House at its new-to-me Berkeley location.
But even before that? There was that long conversation I got to sit down and have with Eve Batey and Justin...
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Crowding my icebox
I’ve heard other folks, including Amy, sing the praises of the Khalil Sullivan-led Mad Noise after she’d run into them busking around or near Oakland.
But it was nice to make it out to the Hippie Gypsy Cafe in Berkeley tonight and order a hot chocolate and watch the band wind up their set with a Weezer cover.
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Jumping rather than getting pushed
The thing is to have things to jump to, to push toward. Sometimes it’s something you manufacture for yourself: signing up for an online coding class, or pounding through that saved list of weighty, thought-provoking blog posts or long-form articles you’ve been squirreling away for the post-apocalyptic period when nothing is going to work.
The other alternative is the offer to join in...
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Training day
I’ve been sitting with co-workers one-on-one, in person, via e-mail, over instant messaging. I’ve made presentations before about my opinions on journalism, social media and blogging.
But today meant combining both approaches in a rushed, cramped, high-touch approach that meant answering lots of questions, holding folks’ attentions, bouncing back and forth between people with...
