All in Columns
When I was in middle school, growing up in tiny Ft. Sumner, New Mexico, one of the relatively few channels we got was The Nashville Network, or TNN — long before we could access MTV or VH1. (It was channel 4.) As I got ready for school each day, I’d watch music videos. Country music videos.
It’s his first new, original song in eight years. During that time, Bob Dylan has been busy recording standards — and there have been a LOT of them.
Times are changing quickly in our community, and those changes are impacting each and every one of us in different ways.
As is clear from this week’s cover, Pulse will no longer be printed after this week’s issue. While this comes as sad news for many of us — myself included — I understand that it is an important step that frees up newsroom resources and enables us to better cover this ongoing public health emergency.
As a result, this will be my final column for Pulse, bringing an end to a 15 1/2-year run — sort of.
Before this global health crisis befell us, the literary world was in a tizzy over Jeanine Cummins’ fourth novel, “American Dirt.” At the heart of the criticism was the idea that it was a bit disingenuous for a non-Mexican author to write a book about the experience of Mexican migrants.
I nearly fell out of my chair last week when I heard that the city of Austin had canceled the South by Southwest music, film and technology conference. The cancellation, prompted by a local disaster declaration by Mayor Steve Adler amid growing concerns over the worldwide COVID-19 outbreak, marks the first time in 34 years the March festival will not take place.
One of the great additions to my ever-growing collection is a subscription service from Powell’s that I’d like to share. It’s called Indiespensable, and I’m a big fan. Every 6 to 8 weeks, subscribers receive a carefully-curated package. Each box contains an exclusive signed edition of a (typically critically-acclaimed) book in a custom slipcase.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a breaking news junkie. This has led me to sign up for more email newsletters – news alerts, roundups, briefs – than I’ll ever be able to read.
There are a few, however, that I nearly always make the time to read.
Around this time each year, I typically reiterate that I’ve never been real big on New Year’s resolutions. And then I set about making some — or at least some sort of non-binding, loose facsimile of a resolution to which I most surely will attempt to adhere for at least three or four weeks.
This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about 1969 — and Woodstock. And Max Yasgur.
There are a lot of reasons for this. This past weekend, of course, marked the 50-year anniversary of Woodstock. And it also would’ve been commemorated by Woodstock 50 — which, at one point, had confirmed as headliners The Killers, Imagine Dragons, Halsey, Miley Cyrus, Robert Plant, The Raconteurs, Cage the Elephant and Janelle Monáe.
During this past Memorial Day, I was reminded that my grandfather, F.B. Willis, landed on Normandy on D+2 or +3. The waters off Omaha Beach were still red with the blood of soldiers. My grandfather and his company helped toe-tag and dig graves — until they captured German soldiers and made them do the digging. (During my lifetime, I only heard him talk about it a few times. He almost NEVER mentioned it, but he maintained close relationships with his “war buddies” until the very end of his life.)
There was something purely magical happening in the hills above Los Angeles in the late sixties.
I have always been eerily drawn to the Laurel Canyon sound. If you don't know what that means, or you can't immediately conjure an example, I understand. But think the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds," or The Byrds or The Mamas & The Papas or Neil Young's early work with Buffalo Springfield.
I was born and raised in Fort Sumner, a small village in Eastern New Mexico. More specifically, I was born at De Baca General Hospital — a 21-bed facility on North Tenth Street in that sleepy town. In fact, I was delivered by the same doctor who delivered my father.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that building this week. Well, to be perfectly honest, it’s not entirely fair to think of it as a “building.” It was an institution; and, in so many ways, it was helping to keep that little village alive.
“Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile” revolves around Bundy’s relationship with Liz Kendall, the single, Seattle mother who was Bundy’s on-again, off-again girlfriend throughout many of the serial killer’s early arrests and incarcerations. It attempts to convey Bundy’s ability to charm and deceive even those closest to him, while exploring Kendall’s own psychological and emotional struggle as she tried to come to terms with the allegations against Bundy.
About 1,300 U.S. communities have completely lost news coverage as more than one in five newspapers have shuttered in the past 15 years. Many of the nation’s remaining 7,100 newspapers have essentially become “ghost papers” — little more than advertising supplements. Half of the 3,143 counties in the United States have only one remaining newspaper, and most of those are small weeklies.
That being said, I feel like it is important to spend a little time celebrating some of the vibrant local reporting that is still taking place across the nation. As an absolute news junkie, there are a number of ways that I keep up with important local reporting, the quality of which never ceases to impress me.
Much has been made of the rapidly-expanding “news deserts” across America — mostly rural areas that are no longer served by a local newspaper or television station. It’s a growing problem, and there is nothing that indicates it will get better anytime soon.
About 1,300 U.S. communities have completely lost news coverage as more than one in five newspapers have shuttered in the past 15 years.
One has to wonder if this is actually going somewhere.
Right around Christmas, Netflix made its first foray into interactive programming with the release of “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” — a sort of choose-your-own-adventure, science fiction film in the popular “Black Mirror” anthology. “Bandersnatch” allows viewers to make decisions for the main character, a young programmer named Stefan Butler who is turning a popular choose-your-own-adventure novel into a video game, at several injection points throughout the film.
How many ways can a story be told?
I’m a true crime junkie, and am particularly fond of long-form, true crime reporting. I first became aware of the story of Dee Dee and Gypsy Rose Blanchard about a year ago, after hearing journalist Michelle Dean discuss her 8,600-word article for Buzzfeed News, “Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter To Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom Murdered,” on the Longform Podcast.
I guess I hadn’t really noticed it, but it seems like musicals are enjoying a moment.
While I was vaguely aware of the enthusiasm surrounding “A Star Is Born,” I hadn’t really connected the dots — or even realized that there were more than one dot to connect. But then I read an article in Billboard about John Janick, the CEO of Interscope Records. The record label, it seems, has certainly been able to cash in on the phenomenon.
New efforts are afoot among some of the world’s leading tech giants to curb the widespread dissemination of misinformation on the Internet. The role that companies like Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter should take in preventing the spreading of inaccurate or misleading information on their platforms has become a hot topic in recent years, but it now looks like some are prepared to take some action.
Last week, I told you about new advances in artificial intelligence by a company called OpenAI — an Elon Musk-backed nonprofit research firm — which has chosen not to release the research behind a new AI fake text generator called GPT2, for fears that it may be too dangerous to release.
This week, in keeping with that theme, I’d like to share with you how artificial intelligence is under consideration to beef up security at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
