Assembling Campus Views for Student Use

Fall view of MMU Warde Hall cupola. With blurry birds.

A student of mine in a one-on-one directed study is doing a student media project—he is building a new web site for the campus newspaper, using an online template.

The site he’s posting to uses banners on pages—very cropped, horizontal images. For that use, and for other possible random use on the site he is creating, the student wanted a variety of images of the Mount Mercy campus.

Over the years, I’m sure the student paper’s photographers have shot the campus many times, but mostly those images are narrative—they are part of telling a specific news story. They aren’t background or scenic, so were not the kind of image he wanted.

I, on the other hand, sometimes waste my time by shooting stuff just because I think it’s pretty. And the student wanted lots of campus shots showing pretty views, some MMU icons and the campus in a variety of seasons. So, I did a quick scan of recent (past two years or so) Facebook photo galleries of mine, and came up with these images.

I liked the results. I was surprised I didn’t have more pictures of the Grotto or Chapel of Mercy, and I am sure over the year I have more of those pictures, but again I was sticking only with recent images.

Sit back, relax and enjoy what I hope is pleasing look at some of my recent images of the pretty Mount Mercy University campus:

Another view from fall.

Sister Mary Frances Xavier Warde. Often called Sister Frances Warde.

Wall of Sisters of Mercy University Center.

Oldest image in this set--I think this came from inauguration of current president. The MMU Mace carried at key ceremonies by a senior faculty member.

Sun shines in Chapel of Mercy.

Spring at Warde Hall is announced each year by magnolia bush.

Daffodils in Our Lady of Sorrows Grotto.

Cheers at Plaster Athletic Complex.

Mustang Sally.

Iowa hawk eyes campus from Warde Hall.

Several sky images--MMU is on a hill and is one of the prime places in Cedar Rapids to watch the sunset.

Rohde Family Plaza.

Central campus at twilight.

And, of course, tunnels!

Walking in late afternoon light, Basile Hall in Background.

The woman, the legend, the mother of us all--Sister Catherine McAuley.

Blue winter sky.

Ceremony on plaza.

Cupola.

Green space turns many colors.

Inside the Sisters of Mercy University Center.

School colors held by Sister Catherine McAuley.

Final view--top of cupola of Warde Hall framed by leaves.

The Queen of Movies

I’m not a movie reviewer. But a Facebook friend of mine was recently gushing about “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and to be honest, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, too.

For me, it was possibly nostalgia. I have several Queen albums in vinyl from my teen years—and I horrified a college newspaper crew recently by playing for them a song they had never heard from "Sheer Heart Attack,' still my favorite Queen album.

But one surprise to me is how many younger people with no memory of the heyday of Queen are also into the movie. The Facebook Friend is in her 30s, which means she was born back in the 1980s. The movie is a bit of a family affair for me, with my youngest daughter recently seeing it and saying she liked it, too. My wife and I saw it twice in the theater—a thing we rarely do (repeat a movie), and we took our youngest son the second time. He liked it.

I don’t think it’s a great movie. It’s a little manipulative, setting the stage for the Live Aid appearance of the band and perhaps overselling their impact there. But the story it tells was still well done, and I really enjoyed it.

Locally, the movie is playing at the Collins Road Theater. If you have not yet, you may want to check it out—with its sometimes-lush visuals and its rock and roll soundtrack, I think this is a good movie for the theater experience.



I don’t know much about music, but one aspect of the movie that I especially liked was the montage where the band was working on “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The peek at the creative process was interesting. And it was also interesting too that, for a band that was so into tricks in the studio while recording, Queen was also oriented to live performance.

If you’re like me and you were a Queen fan back in the day, you’ll like this movie because it will make you feel briefly young again. And if you are too young to recall those days, apparently the movie still will rock you.

What Music Lifts My Mood

The mid-term election unleashed the monster Trump, it seems. Banning reporters on trumped-up intern harassment scandals, firing an attorney general, claiming great victory in the face of pretty substantial Democratic gains—Trump seems to have become unhinged.

I shudder to think what he would have been like if the GOP retained the House.

So, I want a break. And here is what I have been listening to when I want to boost my mood. First of all, a couple of songs by the Cranberries, just because they’ve been in my ears a lot recently:





Randomly, on my You Tube recommended list, a video from a youthful LA punk band The Regrettes showed up. They can sure cuss up a storm, but they rock it too, and I confess I’m enjoying their in-your-face teen angst attitude:





I don't think I should post a female-dominated playlist without some Tessa Violet. Her latest has kind of grown on me. I think seeing her do a version of it with Hank Green maybe helped (Vlog bros fans hang in there, Hank shows up about 2 minutes into the second video, the Disneyland one):





Finally, a nice one from Garbage, because who doesn’t need some Garbage now and then? And it sums up my post-election mood:

The Leadership Style of Duck the Media

Official portrait of Spiro Agnew.

In Des Moines Iowa almost 50 years ago (Jesus, I just made myself feel really old), Vice President Spiro Agnew famously decried the news media as the “nattering nabobs of negativism.”

Well, he didn’t call journalists “enemies” of the American people, but we’ve seen a thread of political vitriol from the right spreading over the decades. It turns out rejecting “coast” culture and decrying the media snobs who look down on the “real” America is a winning brand.

Agnew was a crook who worked for a crook, and both he and his boss Richard Nixon left office in disgrace. But Nixon was an evil political genius, and many of the strategies he unleashed during the turbulent late 1960s have become embedded in American political fabric. The GOP as a party of the White South? See Nixon. The “mainstream media” as a distrusted punching bag? See Nixon.

And now we are in the fragile election year of 2018, waiting to see how potent the poison in the well has become. We have an ignorant, misogynist, narcissistic president who is pumped up and rallying the boob troops. True, it’s too easy to underestimate Trump—he does have some entertainment instincts that seem to serve him eerily too well in American politics, where government seems to becoming show biz.

In the run up to the election, Trump is ratcheting up his delusional, politically charged lies. See this PBS interview with a media fact checker.

Image from Wikimedia Commons, by Gage Skidmore. Donald Trump in happier times--2011. He wasn't yet the liar-in-chief.

Trump says crazy stuff: Democrats are a liberal “mob.” A caravan of migrants is full of “bad people” were probably funded by Democrats. This self-described nationalist (the reason, sir, that you’re not supposed to use that word is because in politics it is the philosophy espoused by facists) lies, lies and lies some more. Because it works for him. His base doesn’t care—they just like the message.

And most of all they like to see those enemies in the media squirm.

The tragedy, to me, is not that it’s unfair to accuse the American media of bias. There are all kinds of bias built into our media system that should be recognized. But to term journalists as enemies of the people is breathtakingly ahistorical. We have a First Amendment that protects the press because our founding political philosophers understood that, perfect or not, independent purveyors of information were vital for democracy to maintain itself.

I don’t think Trump cares about democracy. He is way too chummy with authoritarians, and makes too many wild assertions to be taken seriously as a man who wants to lead or convince or persuade. He’s a bully with a bully’s worst instincts—and he loves leading a bully mob.

Anyway, the deterioration of respect for sellers of information has led Republicans down to the local level to shun media. I read a post on Facebook by a local state representative, Ashley Hinson, who was calling on this local newspaper to publish an op/ed written by her leader, the Republican speaker of the House of Iowa. But Representative Hinson herself is part of an awful trend. In 2012, running for the U.S. Senate, then candidate Joni Ernst eschewed meetings with major Iowa newspaper editorial boards.

Hinson herself did the same with the Gazette this year, and she is not alone. I’m sure she has an explanation for her decison, and I’m also sure I don’t want to hear it. Because whatever it is, as a former TV anchor she should know it's BS. Shame on her. Shame on Senator Ernst. Shame on Republicans who shun editorial boards in general. It’s fair to be critical of the media—but to refuse to sit down with working journalists and discuss issues with them is to disrespect the role that the press serves in our democracy.

The Gazette was right to complain about the trend. See their editorial.

Vice President Agnew had a bit of a point, even if he was a crook. In his time, print media were more conservative than today—his main complaints were about network television, which then was way more powerful than now in shaping public discourse. As a media professor, I think the spreading of outlets, the ability of anybody to publish anything (including this blog) can have positive impacts. Voices that were silent can be heard. Diverse points of view are readily available.

But the rallying cry of “fake news” that Agnew’s remarks eventually unleashed have reached a dangerous fever pitch.

And the right has won the war against news, in many ways. Mainstream media is in retreat.

But, what’s left in its place? Fox “News,” Russian trolls, Brietbart? It’s a vapid swamp of delusion and misinformation. Sort of like any political speech theses days by that national embarrassment, the liar-in-chief, Donald Trump.

The Darkness at our Door

Saw this today in a restroom at the university where I teach. It makes me think of what we are without journalism--earless, eyeless, brainless. And we're getting too close to that point.

The Washington Post’s motto is “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Democracy is not dead in the U.S. yet, but I feel the fever is getting serious. Too much has happened recently that points to the rising darkness.

President Trump joked this week at a political rally in Montana about Rep. Greg Gianforte, who pled guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge for attacking a reporter for The Guardian during a previous election campaign. Trump has called journalists enemies, but making a joke of an assault in the same news cycles dominated by the murder of a Washington Post columnist is beyond being obnoxious or thoughtless, Trump’s usual base level of discourse.

It’s dangerous.

Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in Turkey, two weeks ago. President Trump has finally started to admit he is dead, although he has been full of inconsistent conspiracy theories to explain it away in some politically convenient fashion. As is so often the case, our addled president awaits enlightenment from the darkest corners of Fox News before he, standing at the levers of power of the American government, can make nonsense of events.

I was not familiar with Khashoggi’s work, but he was an American journalist. True, not a citizen, but a legal resident of the United States working for The Washington Post. And he was killed for it.

It’s not the only sign of journalism’s decline in what increasingly seems like a noisy Dark Age. This is fall break at the university where I teach, and my wife and I took a couple of days off to travel to central Missouri to ride on the Katy Trail. While there, I stopped in the town where I had been a newspaper editor 30 years ago, and purchased a copy of the paper.

A not-local paper. Sad.

I almost wish I had not. The “local” paper was hardly local at all.

The sorry state of local journalism is a tragedy in this country. We are slowly closing our minds to the role that a town conscious can fulfill. And we are becoming too frighteningly like those countries in other parts of the world where the press is dull, official, and irrelevant.

Jamal Khashoggi had his last column published by The Washington Post. In it, he wrote eloquently of the Arab world’s need for a free press:

“The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events. More important, we need to provide a platform for Arab voices. We suffer from poverty, mismanagement and poor education. Through the creation of an independent international forum, isolated from the influence of nationalist governments spreading hate through propaganda, ordinary people in the Arab world would be able to address the structural problems their societies face.”

Erase the word “Arab.” In this now great again country, we suffer from poverty of mind, mismanagement by our top leader and poor education in small towns where local events are no longer covered by local journalists.

Jamal thought he was writing about Saudi Arabia. His words come too close to describing America today.

President Trump makes jokes about assaulting journalists, who he terms as “enemies.” And his fans, betraying their ignorance, cheer.

The enemy is those who enjoy siloed lives, isolated form the world as it is. I hope darkness is not closing in too much, although I find myself more filled with dread as the mid-term election approaches and the Trump base is fired up for all the wrong reasons.

I hope voters decide to turn the lights on.

Hope to See You at A Sustainability Event

Mount Mercy University has announced its Fall Faculty Series for 2018, and posted its list of events on the MMU web site..

It’s a bit smaller than some past series, with just seven faculty or staff presentations listed. That may be a good thing—an issue in previous series (which I coordinated in 2014, 2015 and 2016) was the tendency for the list of events to grow and grow. Maybe having fewer events will make each stand out a bit more—I hope so, anyway.

The series begins soon, on Aug. 29, with an overview by Dr. Joy Ochs, an English professor who now coordinates the series, and who has been very active in environmental issues. She was important in MMU obtaining a large grant that funds a more robust sustainability effort on campus. For a full list of events in this fall’s series, click here.

“Sustainability” is a key issue—maybe more now then ever. Not only does the Earth continue to heat due to human emitted gasses, but our current political leadership seems determined to exacerbate environmental problems as much as possible.

Anyway, one aspect of the issue is that big environmental controversies are not always covered well by media. Partly that’s because it’s not easy for a non-scientific journalist to understand and translate science. Scientists themselves are not always good at stepping out of the lab and communicating with the public.

As for the news media: Big science involves long-term trends that don’t always translate into daily dramas the way an Omarosa book does. And scientific concepts are sometimes resisted by the public and journalists (the newspaper that the Franklins ran in Boston early in the 18th century, for example, campaigned against smallpox vaccinations—the first health advice given in early American media was totally against science).

I’ll be exploring the interesting and twisted history of media coverage of global warming on Oct. 11 in a presentation called “Hot Story: How the Media Struggles to Cover Climate Change.”

There are many other interesting presentations planned. The fall series is one of my favorite things at MMU—it’s a chance for faculty to engage with students they don’t normally see, as well as to bring in any members of the public who are interested in a topic. Each series leads, I hope, to big conversations on important topics.

And this year’s topic is about as big and important as it can get. I hope to see you at some of these faculty forums!

The Newest Attack on the Fourth Estate

Newsprint—it’s the news media’s Achilles heel.

President Trump has called mainstream news media “enemies of the American people,” a rather startling escalation from “fake news” by an irresponsible national leader. It’s language that echoes sentiments of dictators and totalitarians, rather than a responsible U.S. President.

But I don’t think many intelligent adults would consider Trump to be a “responsible U.S. President.”

Earlier this month, in the wake of another Trump attack on the media, CNN’s Jim Acosta asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders to say the press isn’t the enemy. “It’s ironic Jim, that you attack the President,” she shot back. And she listed a litany complains, noting she is the “first press secretary to require Secret Service protection.”

Well, that’s terrible. But Sanders doesn’t own any of her own part in creating the divisive discourse that tears at the fabric of our democracy and makes it seem impossible these days to have a civil discussion of real issues. And she never acknowledges the bedrock principle that Acosta asked her about: The press is listed as being free in our First Amendment because a free press is a necessary ingredient for a self-governing body politic to function well.

And we, that body politic, are growing less functional, partly due to the current horrible administration that keeps scooping sand into the grease of the gears of our government.

Still, it’s not news that Donald J. Trump, an immature narcissist, only likes sycophantic media attention. And Sanders is a spokesperson for Trump. Her job is to preach his message, no matter how bad or wrongheaded that message is.

And Trump’s message, on this point, is authoritarian. It steps over the line of endangering an already endangered species—the few journalists that remain active in this country, nowadays. Those reporters work with targets on their backs placed there by an unashamedly shameful President Trump.

Yeah, as a journalism professor, former reporter and media writer, I’m bitter about the horribleness of Donald J. Trump and his minions and his alternative media universe. But I think I have rational grounds for that bitterness.

Remember how President Trump as a candidate mocked a New York Times reporter’s physical disability? I’m sorry, Sarah Sanders, that you feel you’ve been personally attacked. But look at the conduct of your boss and tell me he’s not setting a low tone for public discourse.

Image of early press in Oregon from Wikimedia Commons.

And Trump’s war on the press includes an important recent jab. The free press in this country grew historically with loads of indirect government support. Newspapers used to be sidelines of print shops that sprang up in county seats as the country grew, partly to handle government printing. The U.S. Postal Service, the internet of the early Republic, offered very favorable rates that allowed newspapers to circulate and exchange information easily.

Of course, the press-government relationship can be too cozy, and a free press needs to guard its own independence. I recall once on the final day of the legislative session in Missouri, excitedly entering the tiny office of the newspaper Capitol bureau in Jefferson City and telling my editor that “they are offering free hot dogs in the halls.”

My editor fixed me with a dour stare. “I. Do. Not. Eat. With. Those. People,” he informed me.

Well, from his physical appearance, I’m not sure he ate anywhere—he was a wiry old codger who seemed to subsist on caffeine and nicotine (It was the ‘80s, a world that has long passed away). (Note that I'm attacking the physical appearance of a person who I respect and who I agree with—for effect, by the way. Sarah, if you are reading, that's an attack on physical appearance--you burning lies for a perfect smokey eye isn't the same.) But I mostly remember his point. He didn’t say I couldn’t have a hot dog if I wanted (and truth be told I’ve never let my sense of professional ethics stand in the way of free food), but I admired his spirit.

And his idea. Be independent of your sources. Don’t get too chummy. You are you and they are they and you both need to understand your often-adversarial roles. But I didn’t hate the Missouri politicians that I wrote about, and I don’t think they hated me.

I don’t trust politicians, yet I still have respect for them. Their motives aren’t pure and they bear watching (which is what a press is for), but they are also, most of them, motivated by a sense of mission and public service.

Government is messy, sometimes corrupt and often inefficient, but since we try to be governed by “we the people,” we can’t point our finger at “them” without some fingers pointing back at us. Or as Pogo put it: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Anyway, one of President Trumps recent initiatives is to instigate trade wars as a bargaining ploy for better trade deals. I am not an economist, and despite my trepidation at what seems to be a wrong-headed policy, I’ll conceded it’s possible he’s playing some international game of chess that may help equalized past inequities in trade. Frankly, I doubt it, but it’s something that I can strain to imagine.

However, his targets are often odd. Canada? We have an intertwined economy with our friendly frozen neighbors to the north, and we can’t hurt them without hurting us, too. And one product in particular that’s caught up in the this tariff tiff is newsprint, the price of which is expected to rise 30 percent due to Trump’s import tariffs.

This comes at a time when newspapers are already in a steep decline as a part of the overall news media system. Trump didn’t cause that decline, but he’s kicking a part of the historic media system when it’s down.

Making the Trump paper tariffs go away won’t revive the newspaper business. It’s likely the New York Daily News would be letting go of half its news staff anyway. But Trump's trade policies are yet another blow to an ailing free press, another hit on his “enemies.”

And democracy in American is less healthy as a result.

Sarah Sanders, if it were up to me, you would not need the Secret Service to protect you. But don’t blame the “enemy press” for your personal safety issues—you are caught up in a firestorm that your own boss keeps pouring gasoline on. As I’ve said before, the current biggest enemy of the American people isn’t the press that brings them the bad news of the day.

It’s the incompetent president who keeps generating more bad news—and is now making that news more expensive to print.