Newsbreak: Every Saturday Night

Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:

Today in Haiti the United States plans to open a police academy to train selected Haitian soldiers and officers in law enforcement. The United States hopes to have three thousand men trained in international police standards by mid-December.

President Clinton winds up a three day campaign swing for the Democratic congressional candidates in Ohio today. Clinton complained that Republicans were blurring the true picture of the economy at rallies in western Ohio.

The search for 12 impartial jurors to weigh the fate of O.J. Simpson continues today in Los Angeles. Judge Lance Ito had demanded that juror prospects keep away from news reports and bookstores. Some prospective jurors reported that there was talk in the jury room of the new book about Nicole Brown Simpson which Ito had instructed the prospects to not discuss.

Highs in the low-80s with partly cloudy skies today; tonight foggy and mild with lows in the 50s. Currently it’s 67 degrees.

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Shortly after the school year began that rainy autumn an article appeared in the Screed about the arrest of a semi-prominent professor. There was a minor uproar about the ordeal, partly because the professor remained on staff and continued to teach and partly because of what the arrest involved. In short, someone had been caught exposing himself where he shouldn’t have been. As if there was a good place for this to happen, anyway.

The story was this: Dr. Devon Henbane was arrested in mid-August for indecent exposure, a Class B misdemeanor, following a five day sting operation at a Highway 242 rest area. Henbane was one of 20 people picked up by the Morra County Sheriff’s Office after there were numerous complaints from travelers about “open acts of homosexuality,” said the sheriff. Because it was only an arrest, and Henbane had no prior records, the university took no action and a plea was expected to be made between the District Attorney and Henbane. The Screed said maximum punishment would be a six-month jail term and a $2000 fine.

Indecent exposure complaints were apparently not new to the rest area, as the sheriff said he’d been with the county for two decades and seen it prior to Henbane’s arrest: “we’ve run them out before.” This was one of the aspects of the story that sort of wowed me: if it has been going on before, why only now was the sheriff’s department making a big deal out of the case? Was it the first “high-profile” arrest associated with rest area sexual activity? I really don’t see how a 20-year career professor is high-profile. You would think that if this was a known lair for such goings-on that Henbane (and the other 19) might have been more careful.

Anyway...what really made for some fun was that Henbane had been a professor in the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice for the last 20 years. The Screed article made mention of the “District Attorney” and possible “plea” and “maximum sentence” and other “law and justice” terms that made it sound like an example in the Introduction to Criminal Justice textbook as to one of the many ways the law and court system works. Instead of quoting examples in the text perhaps Henbane could just “make up on the fly” an example of...oh, say...someone named "Rod" and his encounter with the law. Maybe Henbane could say “Rod” was his cousin.

Right.

This point was not lost on the hosts of the morning shows that freshman year (talk about show prep being handed to you a silver platter...). There were a few jokes cracked about Henbane’s arrest by both Hodge Podge and Mike, varying from about getting caught in public with your pants down, about being able to teach from “fist-hand” experience, and that when all was said and done that the guy was still on the schedule to teach for the upcoming fall semester. As someone in the District Attorney’s office said, “the public embarrassment will be worse” than any sentence that would be filled against him.

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Every Saturday Night
(Silas Hogan/Jerry West)
Maceo Parker
From the album Southern Exposure
1993

Newsbreak: Bird Nest on the Ground

Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:

Israel and Jordon are on the verge of a peace agreement. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordon’s King Hussein met into the early hours today in Amman, Jordan and reportedly reached an agreement on two issues – water rights and the disposition of land seized by Israel in 1948. An Israeli official says no date has been set for the full signing of the treaty.

Haiti’s newly returned president is acting quickly to dismantle the military that forced him into exile. On his first day back in the country, Jean-Bertrand Aristide summoned the new Haitian army chief to the National Palace to discuss scaling back the military to 80-percent.

A flash flood watch remains in effect and motorists should expect numerous delays because of flooding of low water crossings – on campus at Caldwell Boulevard and Fifteenth Avenue, as well as on portions of Highway 242 and south Morra Country. Currently it’s 71 degrees.

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The Communication Building wasn’t just regulated to the broadcast studios of the radio and television stations, but also was the home of the campus newspaper, the Student Screed. I actually came to college thinking of myself as a Journalism major and probably would have continued as such except that to get to second floor newspaper office you had to pass by the first floor radio station. Perhaps the three years of high school newspaper had been enough? Perhaps the gestation period of each issue of the Eyass had convinced me that this medium was too slow? Whatever the case, it didn’t take long during mid-summer orientation to drop the Journalism courses I penciled in and choose “Introduction to Broadcasting” as one of my freshman courses.

Issues of the Screed were naturally all over the Communication Building, specifically at all entrances to the three-story building and in high concentration the closer one was to the newspaper office. You could also find issues in the wooden newspaper display stands that sprung up in most every building on campus. These waist-high “stands” appeared to be nothing more than backwards podiums that looked to have been cheaply produced en mass by the physical plant during the early 1980s. An older logo of the Screed was stenciled on the backboard of the stand; the logo was usually covered after issues were dropped off but usually visible by the end of the day.

Screed offices were on the second floor of the Communication Building in a long, white room full of desks, mockup tables, and file cabinets. One side of the room was floor-to-ceiling windows that would have looked out into the quadrangle had they not been blocked because of the wild overgrowth of the Chinaberry shrubs outside. This then was genesis of a long-running “gag” that had started years before I arrived and seemingly appeared in the paper at least once a semester in the form of an editorial column or cartoon about the Screed staff “tarrying in the chinaberry shade” or some such nonsense.

Because I never got involved with the Screed I never ventured too far into their offices except a few times my freshman year. That was the semester when the writers had the idea to gage their readership into admitting why it was they picked up a copy each Tuesday and Thursday. For some reason I thought I could have some fun contributing the “top 10 reasons you read the Screed” and so I jotted down a few ideas and ran them upstairs one morning after my newscast. I was surprised a week or so later when my name appeared in print alongside the following:

• Makes great papier-mâché in the Art Building.
• To hide behind, like from my roommate in fits of anger.
• Adds color to the pile of papers on my desk.
• Two weeks’ worth of the Screed makes a great doorstop.
• Somewhat cheaper than the Examiner.
• Line the bottom of my bird cage.

Granted my reasons were probably not what the editors had in mind but I was none the less surprised to see some of these in the paper.

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Bird Nest on the Ground
(Maurice Dollison/Monk Higgins)
Lil' Ed Williams & Willie Kent
From the album Who's Been Talking
1998

Newsbreak: Ask a Stupid Question

Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:

Airport officials say the weather didn’t seem to be bad enough to bring down the American Eagle plan that crashed yesterday in Roselawn, Indiana, killing all 68 on board. The National Weather Service says there was severe wind shear at nine-thousand feet near the site of the crash but a pilot says wind shear is more of a problem closer to the ground.

Israel’s army has begun reopening the crossing to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Some eight-thousand permits have been issued to Palestinian workers. A military spokesman says the workers are not expected to get past army checkpoints until tomorrow.

Federal prosecutors say a letter found in Francisco Duran’s pickup truck raises questions about whether he is competent to stand trial. Duran faces four federal charges after allegedly shooting the White House. He is currently undergoing a psychiatric evaluation.

Highs in mid-70s today with partly cloudy skies; tonight fair and cool with lows in the mid-40s. Currently it’s 45 degrees.

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I mentioned the Public Health Building recently, but I didn’t touch upon the ridiculous teacher turnover that occurred the first sessions of the semester.

Back in August I received my official schedule and was told I was to report to the Public Health Building for Mr. Greer’s Kinesiology class. The first meeting of the class would be on Wednesday and I walked into my first-ever college class and sat down. And waited. And then I – along with everyone else in the room – waited some more. About ten minutes passed before an older, distinguished gentleman walked in and thanked us for waiting and, more so, staying. This was not Mr. Greer but rather the head of the department (or so he claimed. I suppose the suit and tie helped convince us that he was not a “coach”). It turned out that Mr. Greer had hurriedly left for Tennessee the night before to attend his parents’ funeral. Mr. Director explained a little about the Fitness for Living courses and answered some questions before dismissing us for the day.

That was easy enough. Onward to other endeavors.

Unlike a majority of courses that met on Monday and Wednesday, this one didn’t meet on Friday so we wouldn’t have the chance to meet Mr. Greer until the following week. There wasn’t much to be impressed with when Monday rolled around. Mr. Greer was late to class but then rattled off departmental policy on the number of times you could be tardy before you failed the course. He expected us to read the assignments but then apologized for not having a better lesson planned for that day. You get the idea.

Two days later, on the following Wednesday and a week since the first class, Mr. Greer is again a no-show. Moments before the class calls mutiny the door opens and in walks our third instructor in as many days. Hey, it’s the New Guy! He says Mr. Greer’s been having family problems and other personal issues and so he’s resigned. We won’t be seeing him, he says, as if we remembered what he looked like. Also, he’s sorry for being late, he just found out he was teaching five minutes ago.

Both Mr. Greer and the New Guy were graduate students – teaching assistants, really – and were teaching other sections of the Fitness for Living courses. The first thing our class did was try to catch up with the other sections, seeing as how we were at least a week behind thanks to Mr. Greer and his inability to coordinate his life and work. We moved quickly – both in the classroom and in our activities. Coursework ranged from a discussion on AIDS and body weight to cardiovascular endurance tests and cholesterol screenings. After every three weeks of desk work, we reported to the indoor track above the gymnasium (in proper attire) for “labs,” or actual activities. That’s when I was surprised to hear FM 89.3 buzzing through the gym speakers. Yeap, Bandito and Hodge Podge were still at it (at least on Mondays).

Grades were dependant on lab participation, occasional quizzes, and three exams, the last of which was the dreaded “final exam.” The Department of Kinesiology was smart in this aspect: since there were at least a dozen different sections of the Fitness for Living course and the students in all these courses were more or less taught the same thing, then it didn’t really matter when the student (i.e. me) showed up to take the final exam. In short, the department didn’t need to follow the university’s schedule and students could come to the PHB at any of the designated times and be assured they could take their final. On the day I chose for my exam, I walked into the regular classroom and was taken back at the number of faces I didn’t recognize. When it came time to start, the instructor (who, technically, was the fourth person I had leading this course) asked that we identify the name of our usual teacher on the Scan-tron form before we turn it in.

Suddenly it dawned on me that I had no idea who my instructor was. Thinking back, I don’t think he ever introduced himself. Mr. Greer’s name was on the syllabus, but then he was long gone, probably in the backwoods of Tennessee wearing a coonskin cap for all we knew. Who was the New Guy? I looked around the room and caught the estranged faces of my fellow classmates from the Monday 8 A.M. section looking just as distraught as I was. Thankfully, a girl near the front raised her hand and asked the question we all had.

“What if we don’t know our instructor’s name?” I suppose the question didn’t exactly warrant sympathy.

“You went all semester without knowing your teacher’s name?”

The poor girl did her best to spit out an abbreviated story of section’s first three days. That seemed to do the trick. “Oh, that class,” the exam proctor muttered, fumbling through papers at the front table. “He’s Mine. Your guy’s name is David Mine.”

A number of heads in my line of sight suddenly dropped. We were all writing. I guess the girl wasn’t the only one in our shared predicament.

It really wasn’t a stupid question.

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Ask a Stupid Question
(Hard Candy)
Hard Candy
From the album Turn Out the Flame
1998

Newsbreak: Information Overload

Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan’s King Hussein ended 46 years of war Wednesday with the signing of the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace. Leaders from both sides along with President Clinton cited the desert as a symbol of the once arid relations between the two nations that now can flourish together.

A judge Wednesday gave the three killers of American student Amy Biehl 18 years in prison instead of the death penalty, saying the three had a chance to become useful citizens despite showing no remorse. Biehl was in South Africa to educate voters and was driving friends home when she was pulled from the vehicle and stabbed to death outside the city of Guguletu.

One of the nation’s first female combat pilots was believed killed when her Navy F-14 fighter jet crashed into the ocean. Lieutenant Kara Hultgreen’s plane went down Tuesday off the southern California coast after taking off from the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on a training exercise.

And all California residents may have to carry tamperproof ID cards to prove they are U.S. citizens if the state’s political leaders have their way. Republican Governor Pete Wilson has built his re-election campaign on a call for a crackdown on illegal immigration. Wilson said the ID cards would also be used to verify eligibility for health and social benefits.

Sunny and mild, a high of 71 today; cool tonight with lows in the mid-40s. Currently it’s 48 degrees.

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Newscasts varied throughout my four years of undergraduate school, both in scope and involvement. They were obviously meant to be informative but you had to wonder about some of the stories that students chose for inclusion.

Troy Meadows, the News Director my freshman year, had spent some of his summer refining the previous newscast schedule to ensure this semester’s programming included a mix of local, national, and international stories. Looking back, this school year was the next-to-last year to put any sort of focus on world news – something that later faculty advisors said was covered by numerous other media outlets that we weren’t competing with.

Troy might not have liked that mentality. His schedule for this school year had seven daily newscasts of varying lengths that each figured in international headlines:

• The newscasts at 9 A.M., 3 P.M., and 6 P.M. were to be three-minutes and lead with the at least two prerecorded international stories that we got from British Information Services. Then we tossed some national stories into the mix, as well as local packages that were voiced by “reporters” who had done stories in and around the Grandville area. Recollections? First, this “British Information Service” was nothing more than pre-packaged stories recorded from an 800-number someone dialed on a daily basis. There was a tape deck in the news room (the more studio-based newsroom) that we used to record the phone call; someone else listened to the cassette and edited out the stories he or she wanted to use. Because Troy was really into radio news, I think he found this “BIS” service an impressive tool that sort of made our tiny station sound like it had world-wide connections. I know he championed the presumably free service on many occasions and went as far to defend our using of it when word got around that it was the “BS” service. Second, the national stories were to be rewrites of the top stories off the Associated Press wire service in the news room (the more classroom-based newsroom). I’ll get into “rewriting” later since it was something most students did extremely well in no way at all. Finally, the pre-packaged local stories would have been interesting to hear, but I only had a hand in creating one of them and my 7 o’clock newscast never featured them. I tend to think that more upperclassmen that did radio news did these newscasts since they had seniority and the programs aired during the time of day when more college-aged students were listening.
• The newscasts at 4 and 5 P.M. were to be sixty seconds and were described as more headline driven. Troy said in his notes that ideally this would be the top international, national, and local story of the day – maybe with a quick 15-second-or-less sound bite. Recollections? None – I don’t think I was listening to our station that late in the day.
• The newscasts at 7 and 8 A.M. and at noon would be ninety-seconds and would be the top international stories of the day and one or two local or national stories. Recollections? There are many, seeing how this was my scheduled time three days a week, but sadly, in looking over my obnoxiously-typed scripts I see three or four international stories and the weather – nothing about anything close to home. It sort of makes me wonder if I misunderstood which type of “newscast” I was supposed to be preparing. There is also some mild curiosity as to how much Troy listened to these newscasts – I don’t remember a lot of feedback. Well, there was some feedback. One morning after one my newscasts the DJ – probably Big Dog – gets on the microphone and says, “that's was the 60 seconds I've ever heard.” What an ass.
  

Anyway, over the next few years the lengths of the newscasts were more or less standardized for all broadcasts and a greater emphasis was put on local news. Any international headlines were all but excised in an effort to make the student do some work. I mean, the student could either go out and learn something about the campus and surrounding community or sit in production room and contact the “BS” service.

And we all know what we students should have been doing, anyway.

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Information Overload
(Rose)
Al Rose
From the album Information Overload
1995

Newsbreak: When Something Stands for Nothing

Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:

Israel’s cabinet is meeting behind closed doors to discuss a crackdown on terrorists. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said he’ll ask for special powers to crack on Hamas, the Islamic Fundamentalist group linked to the three deadly attacks in Israel in the last two weeks. The most recent attack was yesterday when a suicide bomber blew up a rush hour bus in Tel-Aviv, killing 20 people.

Commercial gasoline is expected back on the market in Haiti today, selling at a government-set price of three dollars-seventy-five cents a gallon, ending the prices of the black market. The gas arrived on a tanker yesterday and was the first commercial shipment to arrive in Haiti since the United Nations embargo was lifted last week.

A Food and Drug Administration panel is studying the use of lasers to perform operations that improve vision. The procedure is already used in 40 other countries and supporters say it is safer and more precise than the vision-improvement operations currently used in the United States.

Some areas of southeast Morra County are still threatened by rising floodwaters this morning. Governor Ansel Harding says it’s too early to estimate the damage caused by four days of rain. The floods are blamed for 10 deaths and 5 people are missing.

A high of 83 with scattered thunderstorms today; tonight humid with more showers and lows in the mid-60s. Currently it’s 75 degrees.

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On Monday mornings, immediately following my 7 o’clock newscast, I scurried over to the University Health & Fitness Center for my first class of the day (or week, as it often was) at 8 o’clock. It was a brisk, five-or-six minute walk from the area between the Communication Building and Bowman Hall to the building at the northeast edge of campus. Its real name was the University Public Health Building and it appeared to be another of the university’s creative construction projects. Instead of razing an old National Guard armory that remained on campus, the school gutted it and left the exterior shell for the framework for gymnasiums and an elevated indoor track. A contemporary classroom structure was built around the armory that seamlessly fused the two together. All this had gone on around the same time the Communication Building was built (early-to-mid 1980s, I assume); when completed, the new building housed the School of Public Health and Department of Kinesiology, as well as weight rooms, gymnasiums, locker rooms, and other areas for physical activity.

There was also a swimming pool behind the PHB that students could use for class, though it was often referred to as the Schlera Hall pool, named for a nearby residence hall. The Schlera Hall pool was one of three pools on campus that collectively ranked slightly higher than “cess.” Students could use the pools, as they often did in summery months, but the cement-lined holes had received little maintenance over the years and it didn’t take much to see the cracks and chemical damage.

Monday and Wednesday mornings my first class was Fitness for Living, a Kinesiology course that most students tried to get over with during their freshman year. While I had to be there by 8 o’clock, most days my roommate, Morty, had already been to the PHB and back before I was out of bed. Morty had taken the Fitness course the previous semester but still visited the PHB daily around 5 o’clock to use the weight rooms or jog the indoor track. It was during this workout that he said he listened to campus radio station. I believed him at first until it dawned on me we didn’t sign-on until 6 A.M. So one morning in October I went over with him. I really wanted to hear how the station sounded but I spent my time jogging the track and doing a light circuit of weights. Yes, around 6 o’clock the student attendant on duty tuned the radio dial to the classic rock sounds of our morning shows. I figured everyone welcomed the change from the twangy country music that had been blaring since we arrived (on a station that called itself the Ol’ Boot, of all things...).

I anticipated the Kinesiology course to be no different from what I remembered my high school health class to be like. Sure – this was college and there would be more expected of us and so on. However, while I was more or less right on the money with how the course turned out, my only real memory of Fitness for Living stems from what happened the first three times the class met.

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When Something Stands for Nothing
(Trent Carr/Hugh Dillon/Gibson, Mark)
The Headstones
From the album Picture of Health
1993