MMU Times Wins 7 ICMA State Awards

 

The Iowa College Media Association award ceremony was both very familiar and very different this year. It is usually held during the Iowa Newspaper Association Convention, but this pandemic winter, the ICMA convention didn’t take place.

Yet, the Thursday night award ceremony did happen Feb. 18. The ceremony, hosted over zoom, was different due to the remoteness of online meetings, and also familiar, with radio awards, TV awards and then “news media” awards, mostly newspaper categories but some online awards, too.

Mount Mercy University’s “Mount Mercy Times” won seven awards. In particular, student Courtney Hoffman, a senior who graduates this year and is managing editor of the Times, was recognized multiple times. Jada Veasey, a nursing junior who is our senior opinion editor, also won several writing awards.

Courtney Hoffman, MMU Times Managing Editor.

The Times has historically done well in certain categories, and again showed the general strength of its opinion writing. The Times was recognized with a first-place award for staff editorials.

The three submitted were written by Jada Veasey, Courtney Hoffman and Veronica Jons, although the whole editorial board has a hand in setting staff positions and crafting editorials. In my opinion, providing a thoughtful, meaningful voice on policy questions on campus is a key role of a student newspaper, and the Times excellence in this category is evidence that it takes that mission seriously and does well in it.

Veronica Jons, editor-in-chief of MMU Times.

Jada Veasey, who I already mentioned, was honored as the best opinion columnist in the state of Iowa in the past year. Jada’s humorous, thoughtful, quirky voice has been a welcome addition to the Times, and it’s good to see her writing recognized on the state level.

Jada Veasey, senior opinion editor.

The Times links its web site to blogs written by editors and staff writers—and two of those won recognition. The best newspaper blog in the state, according to ICMA, is written by Courtney Hoffman, managing editor of the Times. The second best is by staff writer Annie Barkalow.

Image of Annie from her blog.

Annie is a nontraditional age student, and I’m glad that she was able to view the zoom award ceremony Feb. 18. The next day, she told me that she had informed her family of her second-place win, and said her teenage daughter’s reaction was, “mom, it wasn’t first place.” Ouch. In Roman times, to keep a victorious general from having too much hubris, a slave would stand with him in his chariot and whisper in his ear that he was only a flawed human during the general’s victory parade. As a father, I guess I can see that one’s teen offspring often serve the same purpose.

Well, congratulations to the talented student journalist who serve an important role at Mount Mercy by providing the community with a vibrant student news outlet. MMU would be a poorer place without that.

In addition to the first-place awards, the Times won awards in feature photos, profile story and page one design.

Thanks, ICMA volunteers, who are busy faculty at Iowa colleges, made all the busier by thousands of extra adjustments during this time of COVID-19. The zoom awards ceremony, like many large zoom meetings, had a bit of a séance feel to it as some major award winners were asked to speak and there was the “can you hear us, are you there” moments. We had extra soundtrack running under part of the event until students remembered to mute. But ICMA got the job done, and I’m grateful for all the work the officers of ICMA do, for the INA for helping the contest and this ceremony happen—but mostly for the student journalists from many Iowa colleges who all seem to have a great time (based on chat reactions) Thursday.

Below is a list of the seven awards won by the MMU Times, by category. With each is the name of the student or students from MMU honored in the award, comments on the individual entry from the contest judges (professional Iowa journalists provided by INA) and, in some cases, category comments, which were notes from the category judge on the whole let of entries in that category from all Iowa college newspapers.

Here are the awards the Times won:

Best Feature Photo, Second Place, Mount Mercy University- The Mount Mercy Times
Accident Leads Back to School—Hands; Courtney Hoffman
Judge’s comment: The portrait of hands clutching a cane powerfully reinforces the message of "true grit."

Best Profile Story, Third Place, Mount Mercy University- The Mount Mercy Times
Accident Leads Back to School; Courtney Hoffman
Judge’s comment: A nice story that maybe could have used an additional source or two. I would have liked to have seen the social work get moved up to the front. Feels like it could have been shorter.
Category comment: Everybody has a story. The winners in this category run the gamut from people who have an obvious story to people who maybe aren't so obvious. The key to a good profile is a good interview while multiple sources can help flesh out a story. There were a lot of one-source stories in this category.

Best Opinion Writing, First Place, Mount Mercy University- The Mount Mercy Times
Opinion Columns by Jada Veasey
Judge’s comment: A refreshing and engaging writing style made these columns enjoyable to read. The use of analogy and reasoning made them thought-provoking, as well.

Best Blog, First Place, Mount Mercy University- The Mount Mercy Times
Curious Consultations: unsolicited anecdotal advice by Courtney Hoffman
Judge’s comment: Courtney is a conversational and entertaining writer who brings relatable topics front and center for her college audience.
Best Blog, Second Place, Mount Mercy University- The Mount Mercy Times
Anne with an E by Annie Barkalow
Judge’s comment: Through her lens as a nontraditional student, Anne brings her own brand of challenges to the college scene -- and her blog.

Best Staff Editorial(s), First Place, Mount Mercy University- The Mount Mercy Times
Mount Mercy Times staff editorials-Jada Veasey, Veronica Jons, Courtney Hoffman
Judge’s comment: The strength of these staff editorials addressing timely, relevant social issues lay in the numerous examples used to connect them with the local university culture. The specific recommendations offered move each piece beyond mere words into action.

Best Page 1, Third Place, Mount Mercy University- The Mount Mercy Times
Derecho and President Departs by Veronica Jons
Judge’s comment: Very newsy content. Masthead is too large for the page and slightly stronger writing might have pushed this into second.
Category comment: Two things—really focus on your local community. The winners in this category were newspapers that knew their audience and provided information that audience could only get from them. Look at your mastheads and how they balance against the news portion of your page. Watch the use of reverse type, it's hard to read although it can sometimes be an attractive design option used in serious moderation.

Final thought: Iowa universities are beset by many challenges, including, at the state level, a wrong-headed GOP legislature that seems to want to cure was it perceives as free expression problems on campus by a weird series of laws that, in effect, would muzzle expression.

Sort of like in "I Cladius" when the crazy emperor cured a boy's cough by chopping his head off.

Anyway, the Times, like other student media, stands for free expression. As another faculty member reminded us at the ICMA awards ceremony, nobody in your audience cares what you did yesterday, so the challenge is to go out and do it even better tomorrow. I would add, with courage.

My wish for you (link in case video does not show, it doesn't on my phone but does on computer), MMU student journalists and all Iowa student journalists:

Books: Reading is Fundamental

“The post–Gutenberg world was revolutionized by the advent of the printed book.” Understanding the Media, your optional online text, page 89.

Image is 1940s Paperback from Amazon.com. Paperbacks in the 20th century made books less expensive and less durable. Today, books are also available as electronic e-files. But the most long-lasting book format is the so-called "hardback," or book with a hard cover.

(This post is required reading material for CO 140, a class I am teaching this spring, but y'all are invited to read this text for that class for free. You're welcome.)

Books are the first mass medium we turn our attention to because of their foundational nature. By this, I mean both they are the historic root of all mass media, and they still today remain an important foundation of content in the larger media world. Think of how many movies, online or network TV shows, are based on books.

Literature began orally, with poems and plays, but those literary ideas only became fixed when scribes started to, well, scribe. The first books in our culture date to around 3,000 BC, when Egyptians began writing book-length papyrus scrolls. Printing was invented by the Chinese around 700 AD, and in Europe, really took off after Johannes Gutenberg invented moveable type for use on the press in 1488.

Books had originally been hand-written, and when scribes or monks had to transcribe them, they developed into elaborate works of art as well as texts.

But when books became more common, culture was shifted in multiple ways:

• 

  Johannes Gutenberg
  from Wikimedia Commons.
  

  Both the Renaissance and Reformation, revolutions in in knowledge and religions that fueled dramatic social upheavals, were indirectly caused by the spread of subversive ideas in book form.

• Our modern sense of “childhood” and “education” are largely tied to a culture that valued literacy, partly for economic reasons. A factory mechanic is a more valuable employee if he can read the manual that came with the steam engine (or, these days, the robot).

• While media content comes from many sources, the most recognized media tropes, stereotypes and characters first came to us in book form. Think of “Lord of the Rings” or Harry Potter. These days, nonfiction books still have political influence. As we noted earlier in media history, this country was partly created due to a booklet called “Common Sense.” The Civil War was foreshadowed by the cultural rift exposed in “Uncle Toms Cabin.” Former President Donald Trumps first impeachment was partly the result of the “Mueller Report,” a special counsel government report available in book form.

It is sometimes stated that we live in a “post literate” world—that the educational revolution caused by Gutenberg is being terminated by the likes of Facebook, Twitter, TicToc and YouTube.

That’s bogus, for many reasons. While it’s true that it’s a cultural problem literacy is not as “popular” as it once was—readership of all print media struggle, it’s difficult at Mount Mercy to encourage many people to glance at even brief printed works such as a 6-page edition of “The Mount Mercy Times.” Yet, in my experience, the brightest people I know are all “book” people. Sure, some book readers can be introverted nerds and retreat to books to get away—but think of how book-oriented almost all of your professors are. I grew up in a screen generation too, even if the screen of my youth was the television set. Anybody who has an advanced degree has come to terms with the need to both extract meaning from, and to produce, long text forms.

Even today, several MMU students are “book people,” and mostly they are among the best students I know. To an important degree, anybody seeking a university degree is learning the writing of their chose discipline—and the best and most effective writers are all book readers.

I think many ideas—both fictional and journalistic—are best expressed in book form. Books are a linear text medium that reflects sequential thought. That many people today don’t read means that many people don’t engage in deep thinking, because deep thought is cumulative, orderly, sequential—bookish.

If you want a healthy body, you have to both be lucky—we don’t control our DNA nor our environment—but also exercise and eat right. If you want a healthy brain, you face the same issues. I hope your DNA and the MMU environment foster and improve your thinking ability. But exercising your brain and gaining depth of knowledge still requires that you cultivate that brain by engaging in sustained mental work. In short, read a book.

How to be smart, part 1 of the How to Live series. Be like her. Read. Woman floats in Dead Sea, Wikimedia Commons image by Patrik Neckman.

And books that we enjoyed when we were young often form touchstones of our lives. Just as music we loved as a young adult partly becomes our personal soundtrack, the book you didn't have to read but devoured early in life sticks with you, something I ruminated about in this blog post I wrote in 2015 which is also about "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee.

Over time, I’ve written about books now and then on my blogs. Here is a selection of some past posts:

• February 2019: The Enduring Power of Books (another post for this class).

• August 2019: Memoirs that Make Me Wonder on The Why of XY (about two books, one my a woman, one by a man, that explore what key women mean in the authors lives).

• November 2020: Val Verde: A Fake Reality in a Tale of Fake Reality (a post about Hank Green’s latest novel).

• June 2019: Memoir, Michelle Style (about Michelle Obama’s autobiography).

• December  2018: An Absolutely Remarkable Green Year (about Hank's first book, still my favorite).

• January 2018: Vlog Bro Writes Touching YA Novel (for some equal time, John Green enters this blog, too).
  

And even today, prominent YouTubers sometimes get together. Over a book:

The Witch in the White House

Added to post on Jan. 31: Enjoyed this interview with the new press secretary. It's with an old friend, so it's a very favorable environment, but that intelligent, competent Willow vibe is not reduced by this:

It’s been 10 days since Joe Biden was inaugurated president of the United States.

We need a Washington press corps that will hold him accountable. And we need a president whose administration speaks straight and clearly, answering reasonable questions. Being president means you’re a lightning rod for criticism—and as has been said, if you can’t stand that heat, get out of the kitchen.

Still, one of the many odd aspects of the recent odd administration of Donald Trump was the way in which press briefings at the White House began, and then how they ground to a halt. Apparently, neither Trump nor his minions saw answering questions as a part of what government should do. Overall, the White House held few press briefings, with one Trump press secretary giving exactly zero during her tenure.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki during her first press briefing on Jan. 20, 2021. She has giving a briefing every business day since--a sharp contrast to the previous administration. All images on this post from Wikimedia Commons, both of these are screen shots from White House video.

I just watched the official White House You Tube video of Jen Psaki’s first press briefing, held the evening of Jan. 20. And then I watched samples of the two initial Trump press briefings—the odd crowd size rant at an unscheduled Saturday session on Jan. 21, 2017, and the first official press briefing on Jan. 23. They were both by then White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.

Sean Spicer at a press berating session.

The contrast between the Sean Crazy Show and the Psaki Fact Briefing was clear. Sean didn’t get along well with reporters—but then again, Sean was telling outright and obvious lies. Remember the bizarre, fact-denying narrative of crowd size during those odd first days of the Trump presidency? It was a foreshadowing of many strange days to come, of President Trump urging Americans to ingest bleach or altering a weather map with a Sharpie.

Sean Spicer, what a guy! And he was followed by three female press secretaries, none known for their factual truth telling.

Future governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

There was Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who famously claimed that she had heard from “countless” members of the FBI about how grateful they were when President Trump fired FBI director James Comey. (Maybe zero counts as countless?) And Sarah is now on her way to becoming governor of Arkansas, heaven help us.

Stephanie Grisham

Next in line was Stephanie Grisham, who served for about a year and gave exactly zero press briefings. I think we should demand a refund of her government salary—White House press secretaries are named by the president, but as government employees, they work for us, and a press secretary who spends about a year never speaking publicly with the press in the briefing room is not fulfilling her job.

Kayleigh McEnany--I shall smile and I shall lie and then I shall fade away.

Then there was Kayleigh McEnany. What to say about her? In the middle of a pandemic, she defended the U.S. leaving the WHO because of it’s “clear bias towards China.” McEnany is no ninny—she’s an educated woman, but she seemed to think sniping at the press was her role.

Now, we have Jen Psaki, a veteran of the Obama administration, speaking to reporters in the White House briefing room. She gives a briefing every business day, which seems like a good thing for press secretary to do. She speaks calmly and factually—in listening to her first briefing, held on Jan. 20, I didn’t detect any point where she clearly lied or deliberately mislead the press.

And she didn’t get lost in irrelevancies. There were no wild claims about crowd size, nor berating the press for imagined slights.

What a breath of fresh air. I don’t want the press to go all euphoric—their job is to hold the powers-that-be accountable, and it’s inevitable nice old Joe will have to make hard and controversial decisions that Psaki will have to defend. Reporters need to ask her hard questions, but based on her first 10 days on the job, I think she’ll handle them calmly and competently without resorting to carpet bombing attacks on the media.

She’s off to a good start. Forgive me for this, but to me, she looks and sounds like Willow from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" who grew up and moved to Washington after attending UCS (University of California—Sunnydale). She has more confidence now, but still has the same kind of nerdy, intelligent demeanor.

And after the craziness of the past four years, it’s kind of a comfort to have a calm, smart, powerful and competent witch as White House press secretary.

Alyson Lee Hannigan (left) who played Willow on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," an mage from her Buffy days, and Jen Psaki (right) from when she was a wee lass working in the Obama Administration. Clearly the same person. Witches can be tricky.

 

An Emotional Trip Down Derecho Memory Lane

 

Aug. 10, 2020—a day that will loom large in the memory of Cedar Rapidians.

This week, on Wednesday, I zoomed into a session sponsored by The Gazette, our daily paper. Their four-person photojournalism staff shared many images that they made and discussed memories of the devastating storm.

A tornado can be bad. A big, powerful one may stay on the ground for a hundred miles, leaving a sometimes mile-wide swath of destruction. But such monster twisters are rare even here in Iowa where we are used to tornado safety drills and listen for those warning sirens when the summer skies darken.

But the derecho was a whole level of crazy beyond that. We were expecting a storm Aug. 10, but nobody expected an unusual bow of destruction, a bent wall of straight-line winds that would sweep across much of the state, flattening crops, ripping off roofs and uprooting trees as it blew and blew.

Aug. 10, after the storm, C Avenue traffic slows to a crawl as street is blocked by power lines. (Not a Gazette image, see theirs on their video above, all images in this post are mine).

Hurricane-force winds devastated wide areas of the state. Cedar Rapids, its immediately connected communities such as Marion, Hiawatha and Robins, and the small towns in the county surrounding us were hit with a storm that started as a thunderstorm but quickly escalated and seemed like it would never stop. “Derecho” means both “right” and “straight on” in Spanish, and the Spanish word labels a straight-on storm whose violence is hard to image if you have not lived through one.

And in many ways the derecho hasn’t ended. Many homes were damaged—apartments and houses—and the impact of derecho devastation still reverberates in town. One result is that this city, which just last summer featured a beautiful canopy of mature trees, will take a generation to recover its shade. Me and my family were lucky—even though our houses were damaged, and we just signed a contract this week for one derecho-recovery project with more to come.

Last August! I remember the sense of survival instinct in those dark powerless days following the storm. Much food was spoiled, gasoline was not to be had in town, and we had to get creative. But we were among the fortunate one—our problems were manageable and our house inhabitable even if not fully intact.

In Cedar Rapids, we are blessed to have a local newspaper owned by a local company. In many places, photojournalists are an endangered species. We have four talented photographers who freeze historic moments in time, and The Gazette published a book based on their images.

At the session, moderator Mary Sharp noted that Gazette photographers made more than 10,000 images of the storm and its aftermath, and used 1,000 by printing them or sharing them online.

Then, 195 of them were used to publish a book about that storm. The Gazette is donating a part of the proceeds to replanting trees.

Aug. 11, campus of Mount Mercy University. There was a much beloved grove of huge pines that were in the lawn by Warde Hall. Past tense, they are gone with the wind now. Here, one lies on the building the day after the storm. The campus suffered millions of dollars in damage.

Each photographer took turns describing the story behind the images shown Wednesday. Andy Abeyta shot both the image that become the book cover—it was chosen partly because the image had room for the cover text—and the more famous front-page image of passersby aiding a truck driver caught in an overturned truck.

As Abeyta described it, he was in Iowa City that day to make images of a protest there. He was returning to Cedar Rapids when the once in a century (knock on wood) storm blew through. He saw a truck that had just overturned, parked and ran back to see if he could help—but three other people were already there to aid the driver, so Abeyta took out his cell phone and shot some images.

It is an interesting note that a media photographer with fine digital SLR cameras ended up capturing this key moment with his phone. But I think angle, timing and an eye that can quickly see the possible images—I always tell my students that journalism requires imagination, and I do not mean making stuff up but rather recognizing possibilities in gathering information or making images—are a photojournalist’s most important tools.

It’s not the camera, it’s the photographer. Nothing substitutes for recognizing you’re in the right place at a key moment and using whatever tool you have.

All of the photographers—Liz Martin, the Gazette’s head photographer; Jim Slosiarek, who has recorded the first draft of Cedar Rapids history for many years; Rebecca Miller; and Abeyta told interesting stories of many images.

One lesson driven home again and again is the importance of journalists to get out and about—to report by being there. Again, it’s a key point I try to make with my students, with mixed results. Don’t email all your sources or consult Google to retread information—the best journalism is what you find in the world, and you have to be out there to encounter it. That’s always true of photographers, but is a lesson for the rest of the tribe, too.

And, as Martin noted, news photographers are always looking for “the human impact.” Another journalism 101—don’t just show “the thing.” Show what the thing means to people—and that is very true of photography. I often make images of nature—because I’m a journalism professor, not a journalist—but I have a pretty good reputation as an event image maker at MMU, and I always think what I try to do is capture what something means by capturing the emotions of the people.

Things can be important too, and Martin made the point while showing an image without a person in it, so not every news pictures requires a person in it—but people are usually key.

Later in August, power is finally back on. Butterflies, birds, deer--wildlife had been scarce since the storm, but critters are starting to reappear. Here, an angry squirrel on the felled giant ash tree in front of my house seems to hold me accountable for the disruptions to its life.

One question posed was whether the news photographers were invading people’s privacy at vulnerable moments. They all described asking for consent—and for tying to make images in a respectful way that does not interfere with the moment.

And that gets to anther point. People who suffer through an experience like the derecho can be vulnerable—but what they least want is to be ignored. Journalists—photojournalists like this panel of four but also writers, videographers, radio reporters, TV reporters, web site journalists—are there to prevent that, to tell the stories that otherwise might be ignored.

It was a bit emotional watching the images float by. Photography has power because it does freeze an instant in time, and the best images capture the emotion of that instant. And those of us who lived through the derecho can’t help but recall the intense feelings of that time as we watched the slide show on Martin’s shared desktop.

It was an interesting night. I’m glad that the Gazette gave us this opportunity to learn more about the stories behind the news images.

The Poetry and Peril of Public Speaking

I flew the flag on the porch today. A patriotic day for old Joes.

Ever since the mob attacked the Capitol, I’ve been full of thoughts. I’ve wanted to blog about many things:

• Reforms we need to our election system. No, I don’t buy into the Trump “steal” lie, but there is plenty to think about. How money corrupts the system. How gerrymandering keeps state governments and the U.S. House unrepresentative. How I actually don’t care for mail voting. It’s not that I worry so much about fraud—although even without it, the fact that so many don’t trust it still causes me to pause—but that I want elections decided, by and large, by a vote on election day. I don’t want voting over weeks—I would rather the campaigns play out to the end.

• The need for new ways to think about the marketplace of ideas. I don’t want to curtail free speech, but the interconnected nature of the internet has created all kinds of odd alternative universes. As Hank Green ruminated in a recent post, the need to appeal to eyeballs online drives us to more extremes. Our walled gardens and echo chambers are getting deadly dangerous, and I want to explore ways to break out of that structure—without killing free speech.

• The tragic need to advocate for reality. Big Lies are winning, in some segments. A huge number of Republicans, despite a lack of evidence and the fact that their main source is a known liar, don’t believe Joe Biden won fairly. Which is rich, considering that Trump’s win was a more bitter pill to swallow—at least Biden also won the popular vote. Trump did win, but only because of odd American electoral quirks in which votes are not counted equally. I don’t dispute that those are the rules of our game—but the rules need to be questioned, and, anyway Joe won both ways, in the popular vote and the Electoral College. Wake up and smell the fraud. The “steal” wasn’t trying to bring Trump down after he lost, it was Trump trying to negate a free and fair election. But we don’t all agree on that. Reality is ephemeral, elusive, subjective and without some anchoring in the real world, you have delusional idiots in horns invading the temple of democracy with murder on their feeble minds. In today’s screen age, rationality needs better PR, and that’s a shame.

But the crush of a busy condensed school term, my own mixed emotional reaction at unfathomable events; in the end I have written none of the planned essays.

As was most of America, I was horrified by the events of Jan. 6. A president whips his basket of deplorables into a frenzy, and they attempt to toss sand into the gears of democracy. They even hunt for Mike Pence, only because the vice president decided, in the end, to do his constitutional duty as he saw it. Think about it—they were ready to hang Mike Pence not because he violated a law, but because he was doing his best to follow it.

Yes, violence was predictable. Yes, I think there are a lot of questions about who helped who and why security was so lax.

So, I’ve been on edge during this final fortnight of darkness. “Democracy dies in darkness” and Trump threw way too much shade.

Then today. Trump climbed aboard the chopper and said some final stupid before jetting off to rudely snub the incoming Joe. And I was in my office working and checked the CNN live feed on my computer when it was almost time.

I caught Kamala Harris taking the oath and could not believe the sense of relief that washed over me. And a few minutes early, just before noon in Washington, John Roberts began to feed Joe Biden the words of the oath.

And with that, Old Joe was President. Praise God, I have survived the Trump presidency, something that lately I had not been so sure of.

Then the little Black lady poet approached the microphone. I thought my heart would burst.

Amanda Gorman: “We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be: a country that is bruised, but whole; benevolent, but bold; fierce and free. We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation, because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation. Our blunders become their burdens. But one thing is certain, if we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy, and change our children’s birthright.”

Joe Biden spoke well, too—words that were articulate, in complete sentences. He didn’t try to scare us with the false bogeyman of “American carnage,” but soberly talked about the great challenges we face.

And now, as it ever was despite what tangerine depots may have said, Journalists are again not our enemies. The media you traduce brought you the sounds and images of today.

On the other hand, our bruised and battered country is not healed. And our media, a vital piece of the democracy built over generations, is in a state of flux.

I feel some hope. Change has come.

Still, we have to look back and try to figure out how a reality TV star captivated enough of the nation to capture high office. The Trump legacy must leave us asking: How did it happen? How did we come so close to descending into fascism? How did democracy almost die in delusion?

Today we saw some examples of soaring rhetoric that can lift our nation. But it comes after four years of crude, cruel, churlish language that was too popular and makes us look diminished. Public speaking is one of the keys to our continued public life, and we both live and die by it.

And how can we keep our freedom and yet ensure that this fragile, flawed form of government, imperfect yet better than any alternative, continues to endure?

The ongoing work must continue. The fight is never over; our liberties we prize and our rights we must maintain. But how? I don't yet know, but I am seeking. And taking some solace in voices like Lady Gaga's:

 

Going for Lie of the Year Two Years Running?

Image of President Trump boarding a plane. When he flies our Jan. 20, good riddance. Image from White House Facebook page.

The phone call. From a man with a history of spectacular phone calls. President Trump called the Secretary of State of Georgia to demand that the election, long since certified and over, be called back.

And he spouted a fire hose of  nonsense—but many craven Republicans in the House and Senate still vow to object to Joe Biden’s win. Odd—new GOP members selected in the same election aren't objecting to their shady wins. If an election is bogus, isn't it bogus up and down the ballot? Meanwhile, Trump calls for a rally in the street.

Well, we have an interesting fortnight plus change of crazy before us, and I just hope it ends without riots or war with Iran. Avoiding either is not a sure bet.

Official White House wanted poster.

 

It is very interesting how the nuttiest corners of right-wing media imagine an election conspiracy, then Trump mirrors and amplifies the message, and suddenly the worst of GOP political opportunists (I’m looking at you, Ted Cruz) say a huge investigation is needed because so many millions do not trust the vote. Which the liar-in-chief has falsely told them is fake.

I’m not shocked that Trump has gone off the deep end. Nobody could drive him crazy when it’s more of a putt. No need to move to Crazy Town when you're already the mayor. But the lack of principle and spine among so many other Republicans is as depressing as the fact that, in the midst of this pathetic spectacle, our loser Prez retains the loyalty of the Trumpers.

Last year, Politifact.com, a fact check site run by the Poynter Institute, named COVID-19 denial as their lie of the year. The Denier-in-Chief was voted out of office, I think partly due to the consequences of that lie, but the orange one refuses to admit he lost.

I know it’s early in 2021, but even in January, the spectacularly fact-challenged call by Trump would seem to make election denial a strong contender for this 2021’s lie of the year.

A potential for a twofer! The same master of BS, Donald Jessica Trump (thank you, Randy Rainbow, you’re a national treasure) could win it again! Lie of the year for two years in a row—they’ll have to find a special piece of stone for that Pinocchio nose when they add him to Rushmore. Tired of all the winning yet?

Marking Some Holiday Cheer

Decorations in Greene Square. The colorful flecks in the air are snow falling Dec. 23, 2020, when I made this image.

As I noted in a blog post on another blog, holidays this year are different. That makes me sad on this eve of Christmas Eve, if I think only of loss.

But I read this article posted by “Little Village” magazine about Christmas decorations in downtown Cedar Rapids, and my wife and I decided to brave the windy cold and go see Greene Square.

Others visited Greene Square tonight, making images of each other to spread some holiday cheer on social media, I assume.

Well, it was nice. And as my wife sat in our warm vehicle and I wandered around a windy and cold park, snow began to blow in. It was very Christmassy. And the "Little Village" story is by a student at Mount Mercy University, where I teach.

Angel atop my tree.

We put up lights to shine in the darkest time of year. Our airwaves are full of seasonal tunes, and plenty of old movies get their annual replays. Putting up lights in winter is a deeply human instinct that predates the Christmas story, but in 2020, the pandemic year, I’ll take light and hope wherever I can get it.

So, Merry Christmas, however you celebrate. If, like me, you call yourself Christian, let the story of the Christ child inspire you with light in these dark times. If you have no faith or come from another faith tradition—well, I think the season of goodwill to men should include all genders and people. So Happy Holidays to you, too.

I think Imam Hassan M. Selim, who leads the Islamic Center of Cedar Rapids, summed it up well in a guest column in "The Gazette," which concludes: “For now, let us pause, let us take the time to appreciate our blessings and be grateful for them, let us be inspired and hopeful. For our Jewish neighbors, your Muslim neighbors, friends and family wish you a happy Hanukkah. For our Christian neighbors, family and friends, we wish you a blessed Christmas. We share faith. We share hope. We are grateful for you. May the lights of your menorahs and Christmas trees guide our way forward.”

I'll add a link to his column if I find a public URL for it, but I did not see one on The Gazette's web site today.

I guess I would say faith comes in many flavors, and may or may not require my idea of a deity, but other than that, I agree the Imam. All of the familiar media messages give me some solace, even in 2020. So I hope you enjoy some seasonal sights and sounds, whether your favorite Christmas movie is "Die Hard," "Miracle on 34th Street" or something else.

May our seasonal lights guide our way forward in shared humanity, hope and joy.

A seasonal message on my mantle.