Tasting the weather

There's a whole lot of "little accumulation" on my deck as of 6:47 p.m. on this Sunday, March 24.

Sleet fell for most of the afternoon, but it started snowing later, not long before 5 p.m. This is what accumulated in just a couple of hours.

It's a pretty snow -- fluffy and wet and making lacy sculpture out of the everyday stuff of life outdoors.

This will likely be the last snow of the season for Richmond. We've been lucky so far this winter, although I wouldn't say that if I were 10 years old. The snowfalls we had this winter were light and manageable -- and mostly gone within hours. As this one is forecast to be.

Loving unusual winter weather is for the young. I had Sunday dinner with the family today, and my young great-niece Milagros pestered me mercilessly until I agreed to go outside with her so she could "play in the sleet." She bundled up and ran out into the backyard, dancing with joyful abandon. She delighted in sticking her tongue out as far as she could, trying to catch ice pellets so that she could see what they taste like.

I stayed on the porch, under cover.

Were I still her age, I'd have been right out there tasting the sleet with her.

It seems like only yesterday

I think it must happen when you pass 60 years old.

You'll see a published list of memorable events or movies or whatever, and you think, I lived through that!

One good thing about hanging out with people my own age is that we all remember the same things, even the stuff we'd like to forget. Like pink shirts and black knit ties. Or truly dreadful lyrics, like "Julie, Julie, Julie, do ya love me?"

(For the record, the title of the song was "Julie, Do Ya Love Me." It was by Bobby Sherman, and it made it to No. 5 on the Top Ten list in 1970. You can listen to it by clicking here. Remember, you've been warned.)

But I digress. I'd rather talk about good memories.

I was reminded of how long I've walked the planet this week when the Library of Congress announced that it was adding 25 more songs, albums and other audio recordings to the National Recording Registry for preservation.

I'm familiar with a lot of the new entries -- not all, though, since some predate even me. But two of them stuck out: "The Twist" by Chubby Checker and "The Sounds of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkle.

Both have sticking power. If you're at least a teenager today, you probably know them. One was memorable because it made a dance form de rigueur with young people in the early 1960s, and the other was memorable for the artistry of its music and the poignancy of its lyrics at a time when the 1960s were becoming the Sixties.

It was "The Twist" (1960) that was responsible for the dance craze that bears its name. People danced the twist at fraternity parties, in church basements and at country club soirees for several years. My memories of the twist originated at Phi Delta Theta parties at the University of Richmond. The carefree exuberance with which we threw ourselves into this simple dance was fueled by warm nights, perhaps too much bourbon, and sheer youthful enthusiasm.

On a Saturday evening, you could walk the length of Fraternity Row and see people in every house dancing the twist with wild abandon. It was a young person's dance. Older people just couldn't seem to let go of their inhibitions. "The Twist" deserves to be remembered, if only because of its brief but pervasive influence on party culture.

"The Sounds of Silence" (1966) couldn't provide more of a contrast. It was originally released by Simon and Garfunkle in a purely acoustic version on their first album, which didn't sell so well. A Columbia Records producer, without telling the artists, took another listen to the song and overdubbed the acoustic version with drums, electric guitar and electric bass.

The title of the remixed song was changed to "The Sound of Silence," and it was released as a single. It was a surprise hit. You couldn't listen to radio without hearing it.

The two songs illustrate the dramatic shift that took place in popular music between the early 1960s and the mid-1960s. The bubble-gum sounds and lyrics of those earlier times were replaced by lyrics that spoke to a frustrated generation that was beginning to recognize itself as an instrument of change.

It was the difference between "We're gonna twisty, twisty, twisty, till we tear the house down" and these lyrics written by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkle:

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming ...

Both songs say so much about their times, and they tell us about a generation that was at times dissolute and at times courageous.

By the way, this week also marked the 50th anniversary of the U.K. release of the Beatles' first album, "Please Please Me," in 1963. I remember it well.

Like the hits, the recollections just keep on coming. And they keep reminding me that what seems to me to be current events is really history.

TV news graphics knead a spell chequer

The people responsible for the words you see on screen during local newscasts are not dumb.

They’re just doing too much work in too little time. The evening news starts at 6:00:00 p.m., not at 6:00:30 -- whether you’re ready or not. And when a deadline is seconds away, there’s not always a dictionary at hand.

That said, however …

They do make misteaks … um … mistakes.

Take the full-screen graphic I spotted (see above image) on the WTVR evening news on Feb. 24: “IN THE WEE AHEAD.” That just sounds creepy. What happened to the missing letter? Is there a “k” shortage, and nobody told me? Here are a few, just in case somebody needs them: KKKKKKKKKKKKKK

Then there was the graphic on the 6 o’clock news on WWBT on Feb. 2: “HOSTAGE SITUTATION.”

Or how about another one from WTVR on Feb. 5 in the 6 a.m. newscast: “HISTORICAL SOCIETY WANTS MORE MOMENTOES.” They’re “mementos,” not “momentoes.” The word is from the same Latin root as “remember” and “memory.” Try not to forget.

Sometimes the fingers fly across the keyboard so fast that things just get all jumbled. When the city announced new rules about trash cans being left out in the alley or front walk too long, we got this on WTVR: “RICHMOND TO FINE RESDIENTS $50 PER DAY.” Resdients might have to pay that fine, but will us residents?

The same station recently gave us “PRINE WILLIAM COUNTY.”

There must be something about princes that flummoxes WTVR. Three days later, we got “RINCE GEORGE COUNTY” on the evening news.

Or maybe it’s counties, not royalty, that are tripping up the much-maligned graphic artists. When it snowed last week, Channel 6 brought us a live report from “HERNICO COUNTY.”

The so called “grocer’s apostrophe” is making its way to our TV screens, too. You know what that is. Signs in grocery stores often seem to reflect confusion about how you make a plural out of a singular noun. So we get signs that say “BANANA’S ON SALE.” There ought not be an apostrophe in the plural of “bananas.” Just add an “s” and be done with it. No need to make it complicated. Instead, on the local news one night last month, we got “POLICE FOUND ESCAPEE’S IN HER HOUSE.”

Sometimes, it’s not the graphics but the pronunciation that trips up TV broadcasters. The deadlines are tight, and they just bluff their way through. That’s no doubt what happened recently when Mark Holmberg blew it, big time.

I like Mark Holmberg’s work. He goes places where other reporters are afraid to go -- under bridges at night to talk to the homeless or into the thick of the action on the streets to work a crime scene. He seems fearless. But it’s clear he’s never worn a military uniform.

His heart was in the right place last week when he reported at 11 o’clock on Channel 6 about the line-of-duty shooting death of a Virginia State Trooper. “State Troopers are a different breed...” he told us, “more like the Marine Corpse, really.”

By now I’m sure uncountable Marines have told him that the “p” and the “s” in “Marine Corps” are silent. It’s pronounced “Core.” (His report is preserved for posterity on the Internet. You can see it by clicking here.)

Deadlines: I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

It reminds me of the old saying about work product: “You can have it fast, right, or cheap.”

Pick any two.

Snow days

I was looking out of my dining room window at the snow swirling sideways last Wednesday morning when I remembered what an important job my brother Jimmy Jr. had back in the 1960s and ‘70s.

He was the man who could close Henrico County schools.

Jimmy was by then Director of Construction and Maintenance for Henrico public schools. When snow was falling he’d brave the weather and drive the roads of the county -- which was much more rural then -- to determine whether school buses would be able to make their runs safely.

I talked to Jimmy’s daughter, my niece Terry Dale Cavet, this morning about what it was like to live with such an important personage. Ironically, Jimmy lived in the city, in what is now the near West End, and his decisions didn’t affect Terry, who was a teenager attending Albert Hill Middle School in Richmond.

“In those days, he was much more conservative than they are today. He’d only close the schools if there was an absolutely obvious danger,” she told me.

“Might be,” she said, “was not a good enough reason.” He would, however, keep a close eye also on what other local school jurisdictions were doing.

Those test drives of the Henrico county roads mostly happened when it was snowing late at night, just before Jimmy went to bed, although sometimes snow would begin to fall overnight and he’d have to get up to make his test drives very early in the morning.

Jimmy was well-qualified to make the decision. He had a degree in building construction from VPI and a master’s in education from U.Va.

And he had a driver’s license and a car.

Terry lobbied hard for Henrico students, even though she lived in the city. She pleaded with her father to shut down the schools on those occasions when the decision might go one way or the other. I doubt that he took her requests for a school-free “snow day” in Henrico into account.

Jimmy stayed on the job for Henrico schools, making those hard calls, until the day he died, at age 48.

Terry reminded me that when Jimmy died, the county school system flew its flags at half-staff. That was in late October of 1974. On the day he was buried, the high temperature was 82 degrees, and it did not snow.