It’s Christmas, so I’m back spreading yuletide cheer at the Edmonton Journal (for a few days at least).
Happy holidays!
Thursday, December 24: Customer makes amends after 24 years.
Wednesday, December 23: Kids fly Santa’s sky.
Tuesday, December 22: 5,000 people coming for dinner.
November, in the words of my Advanced TV prof, is “hell month.”
That might be a tad bit dramatic (let’s call it “somewhat scholastically punitive month”), but it explains my current slothfulness on this site. Advanced TV has been a big part of my miseries.
Apparently, it’s been equally punitive for the powers that be in Advanced TV. Perhaps that’s why it’s taken so long for our new UBC j-skool website to appear: ThunderbirdTV.ca.
Beyond the riveting opening theme and pirated Joy TV set (a studio in Surrey, a current workplace for our Emmy award winning prof, Peter W. Klein) are the pieces constructed by my colleagues and I.
Buried deep (= last) in this inaugural T-birdtv newscast is my piece on the Abbotsford Heat. It’s essentially the same piece I already placed on YouTube, but with some colour correction and different fonts for the “lower thirds” (the names of folks interviewed).
So sit back and enjoy two-month-old news! I dare you! The next installment of scholastic punishment will be coming in a couple of weeks.
Check out my new post at News Seeking. It’s basically part of a profile piece I wanted to write this summer, but never got the chance.
Dave Hubert’s an interesting guy. As I go on to say in the post:
“The former teacher and government employee has helped start many things: the Edmonton chapter of Habitat for Humanity, the Mennonite Centre for Newcomers, the Edmonton recycle program, as well as a variety of education programs at Norquest and Portage colleges, where he spent several years as principal.”
A search through the Edmonton Journal archives revealed a few pieces on the latest thing he was up to through the years, as well as a series of letters to the editor regarding Canadian foreign policy.
You see, Dave likes to take on the belief that unblinking support for the Canadian military is a good thing. When I met with him, he had his latest letter ready to go. He was upset the Canadian army had promoted a former Col., Serge Labbé, to Brigadier General in 2009 (with retroactive pay). Labbé was found exercising poor and inappropriate leadership in the Somalia affair in 1993, where Canadian soldiers tortured and beat a Somali teen to death. While Labbé was not deemed personally responsible, he was excoriated for failing to uphold the rules of engagement.
Hubert’s open letter says the promotion is an attempt to rewrite history, without addressing the causes of the Somali incident:
“The large number of complaints of enlisted personnel indicates that the social pathology that characterized the military at the time of the Somalia debacle persists. Instead of trying to learn from their mistakes and the pathologies that the Somalia Inquiry would have identified had it been permitted to conclude its investigation, the generals stonewalled the Inquiry at every turn. They never learned anything and they never forgot anything. And so the social pathologies persist and the number of complaints of the brave enlisted men and women in uniform multiply.”
Understandably, the archival search for “Dave Hubert” also revealed a series of retorts by Edmontonians perturbed by his unpatriotic words.
But whether you agree with him or not, it’s hard to fault Hubert. His incredible humanitarian achievements are matched by a gentle demeanor and an eagerness to live out his faith with integrity and passion.
I may be out of the country, but check out my first video project for Advanced TV class:
Viennese philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once posed a simple but difficult question: “Why can’t I describe the aroma of coffee?”
I think we’d get along, me and Ludwig. Especially over a cup or two of that undescribable liquid.
I’m enjoying a cup as I write this. It’s a nice, light roast made from fairly traded organic beans from El Salvador, to be precise. I’m drinking it black, foregoing my costly espresso machine for my quick and easy Aeropress machine (made by a frisbee company, I kid you not).
St. Albert home roaster Kim Thornton shows Journal photographer Rick MacWilliam his technique.
I woke up this morning to discover my final Edmonton Journal piece from this summer had finally appeared on the front of the City section. It’s a 24-inch feature on home roasting coffee beans, a hobby I started last year and decided to write about at the prodding of another reporter. I gained a bit of a reputation as a coffee geek this summer, looking scornfully at anyone who asked if I wanted a Tim Horton’s double-double. Instead, I brought the funny looking Aeropress and brewed the coffee right at my desk. Mmmm.
The idea to roast my own beans was seeded long ago, when I heard about someone who roasted his own beans using a popcorn popper. A little extreme, I thought. But the concept stayed with me for at least a year. I eventually came to the realization: I’m a bit extreme!
I began reading about home roasting on web forums like coffeegeek.com, where I discovered a whole world of finicky folk who write impassioned apologies about coffee equipment and techniques to improve your daily brew.
I learned that hot air poppers are actually similar to a type of coffee roasting technique known as “fluid bed roasting.” It uses convection (rather than conduction) to get the temperatures over 400 fahrenheit, necessary for an espresso roast. It’s only one of several techniques you might try, but I’m sticking by it until I achieve coffee nirvana. It’s easy and roasts prettily evenly.
I found descriptions of the ‘holy grail‘ of coffee roasting, The Poppery by West Bend. It’s the very hot air popcorn machine owned by my mother during my childhood. I went to the SPCA thrift shop and found one for $4! After a few electrical modifications, I was able to control the temperature of the hot air (Check out this page to see how people modify the machine). I added my own tin chimney (via creamed corn) and a candy thermometer. It’s not pretty, but it works.
Since last fall, I’ve been steadily improving my home roasting technique. My balcony is covered in coffee chaff, I might smell of burning beans, but the coffee’s never been better.
Wittgenstein would be proud.
That’s what it says on a Whyte Avenue sign I passed nearly every day for three-four years living near Bonnie Doon.
Help ever, Hurt never.
Although I drove by that marquee so often, I never bothered looking into the origin of this pithy little maxim until just now. It’s an expression of Sathya Sai Baba, a south Indian guru whose teachings resemble some vaguely-Hinduish beliefs, with some quasi-Messianic tinges to it. Adherents conduct pooja in front of Baba photos twice a day (though I’m not quite sure what that means).
Regardless of the origin of “Help ever, Hurt never,” I’ve always liked the aphorism since it doesn’t quite make sense in English. Nor is it something you might typically hear from a Whyte Avenue perambulator. It’s unintentional strangeness is what makes it stick out.
All that to say that I have now left the Sathya Sai sign and all of the other Edmonton oddities for other oddities, namely those of the west coast. Now there are some real oddities.
So here with one exception are my final articles of the summer from the Edmonton Journal. I have one last feature on the coffee roasting hobby taking Edmontonian d-i-y coffee freaks by storm, but it hasn’t hit newsstands yet.
Friday, September 4: School buses more than an hour late.
Thursday, September 3: Smile! You’re on Camera.
Wednesday, September 2: Motorcycle theft ring busted.
Tuesday, September 1: Fire victim identified.
Check out my story today on things you might find inside a used book in today’s Edmonton Journal.
Such as the Edmonton Bookstore’s bottle of Cutty Sark pictured below, cut into the pages of a volume on English poetry. Cool and Shawshank-esque. A bit disturbing too.
The idea for this story came to me by chance a few weeks ago when we were asked for some interesting summer reads. I remember talking with a bookstore worker once about antique football (‘soccer’) tickets found inside old books. It popped into my mind — what about all the other bookstores?
Have any of you ever found something interesting in a book? I’d be curious.
My own list includes a nearly century-old religious bookmark, a program from a 1950s cruise, and a few plane tickets. My mom found $300 in a box of books headed to goodwill. My sister had forgotten she stashed the money during a move from Ft. McMurray to Calgary. My brother found some high school photo of a woman in a used book and promptly slapped it on his fridge, where it stayed for years. It always made me laugh to see the smile of a complete stranger as I reached to mooch some food.
Sunday, August 23: Treasures Hidden Between the Covers, A1.
Sunday, August 23: Paralyzed Lawyer Jumps for Charity, A11.
Friday, August 21: Undercover sting snares litterbug, B1.
Thursday, August 20: Two suspects hunted in bank-security scam, B3.
Wednesday, August 19: 2,400 pigs die in Alberta barn fire, A1.
I was talking to my bro-in-law last night about Vancouver and the assorted Islands. He figured there was nowhere like Tofino. You can stand on the beach looking west and contemplate that the next piece of land is Japan.
“Japan?,” I asked. “Wouldn’t it be Russia?”
I went to Google Maps, the source of knowledge for all things geographic, to settle the issue.
Well, due west of Tofino is something in between Russia and Japan.
But check out direction #25!
This week’s articles in the Edmonton Journal:
Saturday, August 15: Jamaican cadets march to new drummer, A15.
Tuesday, August 11: City doctor charged with molesting children, A3.
Monday, August 10: Homeowner suspected of arson; Son comes home to find house ablaze, A5.
Sunday, August 9: Aerosmith Concert Postponed, B5.
I call today’s post that because that’s how I feel.
(Plus it’s the title of a book I’ve never read by an author I find interesting, so it naturally popped into my head.)
I feel truly lucky to be getting paid to write stories this summer at the Edmonton Journal. And not just any stories, but things thousands of people read and scrutinize. And not just in any time and place, but in one of the most difficult economic climates for journalists and in a truly interesting city.
Journal writer Jamie Hall often says we have one of the best jobs in the world.
One of the great pleasures of this summer has been to work with truly amazing people who do very important work. I’m lucky enough to get to bounce stuff off of them and learn from them. I’m also amazed and hopeful when I see how some of my fellow reporters bring scrutiny to their respective fields.
Whether it’s the usual stunts pulled by Alberta Health or just the government in general, the real-life drama and dreariness of the courtroom, the environment beat, or the weird and wonderful world of Edmonton crime, these folks do amazing work.
I was especially impressed by David Staples’ 31-piece serialized work, “Web of Lies,” (here’s part one of 31!) on the Mayerthorpe RCMP tragedy and the subsequent sting to pull down Dennis Cheeseman and Shawn Hennessey. Better than fiction, handled with care, and raises all kinds of questions about what goes into murder.
Perhaps my favourite piece this summer has been Jodie Sinnema’s Father’s Day edition of “In their own words” which tells the story of how she lost her father at sea. It took real courage and vulnerability to write this piece. I’ve been fortunate enough to sit across from Jodie and see how she works hard to tell the crucial stories of the health care beat.
Like I say, I’m a lucky guy.
Check out my religion and news blog, News Seeking, for my latest post, Evangelicals: Abstinence Culture vs. Later Marriage.
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