The surreal life and the lunar eclipse

Just as the last sliver of what we call moonlight and what is actually reflected sunlight flashed silver in the deep black background of space, Carson asked me a philosophical question.

I told him that moon watching makes me philosophical too.

Carson is a scientist in a 9-year-old’s body. And as a journalist, I have a curiosity streak like nothing else. Whenever you find an odd or rare occurrence in the cosmos, it's likely the little man and I are outside with our eyes gazing up at the heavens.

When the moon was in a full eclipse, we danced a little pagan dance, whatever that is, and we reveled in the shadowy darkness completely enthralled by this element of space and time.

“Dad, it must be really difficult being God.” he said.

“Really, why do you think that?”

“Because He has to answer all these prayers and help people and take care of things like this,” he said, pointing to the orangy moon hiding in earth’s shadow.

We talked a little about how people perceive God as a person with the same limitations that we understand and the possibility that God doesn’t exist in the same time and space that we occupy.

Carson is a big idea kid, and when he hits on something that brings understanding, he is quick to move beyond whatever was hanging him up.

We stared at the moon for another 10 minutes and called it a night.

And then it hit me again as it has several times over the last few weeks, this surreal life.

I’m watching a lunar eclipse in the backyard of my home in Anchorage, Alaska.

What about this makes sense?

What if we hit the rewind button?

Four hours earlier, my wife pulled into our driveway where a rather large moose was eating God-knows-what off the trees in our front yard.

Three-days ago I was dancing salsa at a company Christmas party.

One-and-half-months-ago I took a job as digital director at a broadcast station in Anchorage, Alaska.

Two-months-ago we moved out of the first home we purchased in Missoula, Montana.

Three-months-ago I got laid off from my job at a small newspaper in Missoula, Montana.

This has been a surreal year.

There are these moments in your life where you try to pull it all together to create a framework for your life. But the corners don’t come together neatly.

There are times when you look out on some astrological entity like a lunar eclipse and think, where am I?

It’s the philosophical question, but in my case, it has physical implications. Where am I standing?

In ankle-deep crystalline snow in the backyard of a house I just moved into with a chunk of fence missing where a big, bull moose jumped over and broke a couple boards with his massive belly last week.

Where am I standing now?

In the backyard of our house in ankle-deep crystalline snow on a crisp December night in Anchorage, Alaska.

It doesn’t make sense, no matter how many times I say it out loud to myself.

But it’s real. As real as the cold air that chokes me up like the first puff of a cigarette when you don’t smoke. As real as the way your breath curls up into the still, frozen air like smoke with no wind.

And I think to myself, “It must be really difficult being God…”

Talking Story

This whole journalism thing started out with a desire to be a storyteller. My dad is one of the best auditory storytellers anywhere, and I wanted to be just like him.

I remember writing poetry and short stories many years ago. I have numerous journals filled with my notes and stories from childhood. I never made a big deal about it, because it was a compulsion I didn't really understand at the time.

But I remember my brother wrote a story about fighter planes and dog fights that really captured the interest of my parents. They lavished praise on him, and rightly so. He wrote an exciting story that had a beginning, middle and end with an exciting climax and lots of action.

I remember feeling really jealous of the attention he got for that story. I felt that I was the writer in the family and that he was good at so many other things.

Eventually I realized that he wrote that story from an interest in planes and dog fights rather than any interest in being a writer. My brother has a very scientific mind that relates to complex ideas in a way that breaks them down into usable chunks.

His story fascinated me because of the way he used his own words to relate what he understood about airplanes.

I wanted to tell stories like that.

Print journalism seemed a natural fit for me with its adherence to form and style. But early on I realized that print could only tell part of the story based on the audience.

I knew that many people glance at the newspaper and maybe read the headlines or view the photos. A smaller percentage actually read the front page of the newspaper from top to bottom, and an even smaller minority read beyond the front page.

And yet news still is disseminated. Some of it is word of mouth or water-cooler conversation. Sometimes articles are clipped out or forwarded via E-mail. Little bits of information get out into the wider population in spite of newspaper reading habits.

One of the reasons I gravitated toward online journalism is because of a desire to tell stories and reach people where they are at. I always felt a little useless writing stories about the county that were read by county workers and subscribers over 65 who still had the habit of reading every story in the paper.

Videos and podcasts and multimedia Web stories fascinated me in their ability to reach a wider audience, and I quickly realized that online storytelling could erase the boundaries and stretch the canvas of storytelling to infinity.

People often ask me about why I chose online journalism instead of sticking to writing stories.

Stories are pieces of life that when put together artistically form our collective history. More than that, good stories become part of the fabric of society upon which we build our empires.

Stories are pieces too, and most storytelling today puts the pieces together quickly and tries to distribute that story to as wide and audience as possible. But so many pieces are missing still.

A good story teller uses many tools. If an elder telling stories wants to capture his audience, he uses the inflection of his voice and hand movements. He makes himself small at times to emphasize the vastness of his tale. The visuals of his storytelling are as important as the words he uses to tell the story.

That has remained the same since the beginning of time. The printing press changed that somewhat as text dominated illustration.

Today a good storyteller has options well beyond a text-based story. In fact good storytelling includes many elements beyond text.

I think of how many stories were written during the recent election about the impossibility of winning a write-in campaign. Text-based stories sought to explain that certain sections of Alaska's interior were united in their support for one candidate, while other enclaves in larger cities supported another candidate.

It was all very confusing to try and read between the lines to see where the state of Alaska actually cast its vote.

Good storytelling finds the best tools to tell each story.

So in yesterday's news meeting, someone suggested making a visualization of how each part of the state of Alaska voted for the contentious U.S. Senate seat held by Lisa Murkowski.

I came back to the Web team and asked the designer, Jeff Rivet, if he could cannibalize another flash map he'd made of the state and show us how each section of the state voted in what could be a historical win for a write-in candidate.

It's not the whole story, but it's a piece that contains elements of the whole story, and it's both visual and text based with moving parts.

I love thoughtful storytelling. I love when a visual can replace a bunch of text in explaining a complex idea.

Journalism is far from dead. And as storytelling has evolved from the beginning of time with small changes and history changing movements, we are in a transitional phase where the art and craft of story are moving beyond older technology on the shoulders of new technology.

Tim

Be careful not to break your legs when you hit the ground running

There is a real sense of being in a foreign country once you touch down here in Anchorage. Sure you have the familiar fast-food chains and huge oil company buildings. The roads are familiar and everyone drives on the right side of the road. But the feel of the place is different than the interconnected towns and cities in the Lower 48.

I woke up this morning at 5:30 a.m. to the sounds of apartment dwellers bustling about in the dark getting ready for work. I fell asleep again and woke up to just a faint hint of dawn. I yawned and stretched and rolled over to find my phone charging on the ground next to the bed. 

9:01 a.m. What? 

I scrambled for the shower and dressed in a few minutes and dragged my wife our of bed to drive me to work. 

The dark mornings are a blessing and a curse. I like the quiet pre dawn darkness. It's one of the best times of day to really focus. But curled up in bed with sweet darkness all around, it's tempting to just close your eyes and drift off again, especially after getting home at 2:00 a.m.

Election day is a sacred day for journalists. The excitement is palpable in the frenzied way newsrooms get started as counting begins in earnest. Broadcast stations are dead in comparison. Mostly because our entire operation moved off site and into the Egan Convention Center, otherwise known as Election Central. 

Anchors worked a live set while producers and reporters wrangled candidates for first interviews after initial results. The Wall Street Journal, L.A. Times and other national media outfits made an L-shaped army with computer shields around the back wall of the center.

I haven't really worked an election since Obama was elected president, and the sights and sounds got my journalistic juices flowing. I followed Kortnie, one of our web team members, around to some of the different candidate parties, and all I wanted to do was pull out a notepad and start collecting quotes and color for the big election story. 

My small contribution to the overall newscast on election night was staying in touch with our web team members manning the station at KTUU and checking to see when our updates were coming through on our mobile sites. And I just can't wait until the next election. I want to be right back in that journalistic mess that is election night. Because on the other side is a beautiful thing.

As usually happens, the day after election day is a big come down. The journalistic adrenaline that surged the night before starts to leave your system, and you feel the tiredness of having stayed up until 2 a.m.

The gloom of the north doesn't help either. The sun just doesn't have the strength it has at lower latitudes. 

When the sun does shine, it reflects off the Chugach range like a giant mirror. The saw-toothed tops remind you of what beckons beyond. Alaska. 

I am happy these first few days in Alaska. Now it's time to get the family settled, back in school and on with life. 

Tim