That twisted, murky world

When I was young, I never paid much attention to politics.

But then I was thrown into the deep end of the pool.

I was in my 20s, and the ballot for president in 1968 offered three choices: Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace. (The latter was a long shot as an independent.) Nixon was a Republican, and Humphrey was a Democrat.

I was working as news director for American Forces Television in Germany when the station manager called me into his office and told me I would be co-anchoring AFTV Germany's coverage of election night.

O-k-a-y. That would be a fresh adventure for me.

We wouldn't be having any live feeds from the States, so Les Jackson, my co-anchor, and I would broadcast in front of a large blackboard map, on which we'd chalk the results in each state. We knew we'd have audio clips of acceptance and concession speeches, but little else.

Les and I had about a month to prepare. Our first stop was the small base library for books on  Nixon and Humphrey. We also pored over the New York Times, Stars and Stripes (an American daily published overseas that operates from inside the Department of Defense, but is editorially separate from it), and the Associated Press and United Press International newswires.

I mean, we really studied.

By the time election night rolled around, we were ready. And we did a creditable job, which was somewhat easier since no analyzing or opinion was allowed on AFTV. It was "just the facts," but Les and I knew the facts cold and made the broadcast work.

And I discovered I had a real taste for politics.

Fast-forward to December 1969. I had just gotten out of the service and was working as a reporter for WTVR TV in Richmond. During my first week, the news director took me aside and told me I would be covering the Virginia General Assembly.

I was flabbergasted ... and scared. I had never paid much attention to Virginia politics. Plus, I had been out of the country for three years. In addition, a deadline loomed: The General Assembly session would start in about two weeks.

I will forever be grateful to two veteran TV and radio journalists who took me under their big wings. John Gilbert had been covering politics for a Roanoke TV station for decades. He allowed me to follow him around the Capitol. He explained exactly how it worked. Within two weeks I was bringing story ideas to the table independently of what John was covering.

My other mentor had been John's competition in Roanoke, Don Murray. Don was news director and anchor at WDBJ for so long that he became known as the dean of Roanoke newscasters. By the time I came along, he had moved to Richmond and was working for WRVA radio news. His thoughtful explanations of the "why" of Virginia politics were invaluable.

I couldn't have had better guides through that twisted, murky world.

The next year, I covered the death of young Lt. Gov. J. Sargeant Reynolds of a brain tumor. "Howlin'" Henry Howell became the Independent nominee to fill the remaining two years of Reynolds' term. A populist, he vowed to "keep the Big Boys Honest." I covered Howell on the campaign trail. He won the election.

In 1972, George McGovern ran as a Democrat against Republican incumbent Richard Nixon. My assignment was the McGovern campaign in Virginia. It was a nasty battle, and there was never any real thought that McGovern would win. Nixon never finished his second term. In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, he became the first president to resign.

I covered Howell again in 1973, when he ran as an independent for governor. Howell's sole opponent was former Democratic governor Mills Godwin, who had switched allegiance and run this time as a Republican.

It was a tight race. I mean, remarkably tight.

I knew about midway through that wild season that I was really hooked on politics, covering candidates and dissecting positions 24/7, and that I had made a name for myself as a serious political reporter. Two other TV stations, one in Roanoke and another in Norfolk, asked me to do a weekly commentary and analysis of the campaign from Richmond.

I found that I knew enough to do it, to analyze the ebb and flow of that ferocious battle, which Godwin won with just 50.72 percent of the vote.

I stopped following politics quite so intensely when I left broadcasting in 1978. But I never lost interest. Even though I was now working at a fine arts museum, my friends would call me on election day to ask who they should vote for. I'd give them the briefing they wanted, long or short, and they'd head confidently to the polls.

Today, I no longer talk politics in groups or in casual conversation. Sadly, the country is so divided that tempers get out of hand.

There are exceptions. I have one good friend and one relative with whom I can talk about candidates and policies. Sometimes we get loud. Sometimes we disagree utterly. But more often, we find positions to agree upon, despite our broader differences.

Politicians themselves don't seem to be able to do that these days.

More's the pity.

Neil Armstrong, 1930-2012

I've never had much truck with people who are too hastily labeled heroes.

Granted, there are many people who do good things. But very few of them are really heroes.

Their stars shoot across the pop-culture sky for a brief moment. Then they disappear. There's a big difference between fame and heroism, and fame is fleeting.

Neil Armstrong was exceptional. What he did in July 1969 was brave. It took courage. It advanced civilization. As long as history books are written, the first man from Earth to set foot on our moon won't be forgotten.

But here's the difference between Neil Armstrong and so many others upon whom the hero label has been hung for a fleeting moment.

He did his bold and brave, courageous and monumental job, and then he rarely talked about it. And he never capitalized on it.

He didn't write a book.

He didn't start a business.

He didn't endorse a product.

He didn't do talk shows.

And he was very, very reticent about discussing his greatest accomplishment.

He let the act speak for itself.

He retired from the astronaut corps after the Apollo 11 mission, and he became a teacher of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati.

That's not only admirable. In itself, it's also heroic.

So we should do exactly what Armstrong's family has suggested: The next time you're outdoors on a clear night, look up at the moon, and give Neil Armstrong a wink.

And, I might add, think about who your real heroes are.

Hey, kids! What time is it?

Sometimes, on a rainy Saturday morning like we had today, I can get caught up in a search that leads to arcane knowledge. The Internet makes it so much easier: First I click on this, which leads to clicking on that, which takes me clicking much farther afield until I'm into something that bears no relationship whatsoever to what I originally set out to learn.

This morning my journey led me from whether "how do you do" should be hyphenated when it's used to describe a tangled mess, to whether it would be better to use "how-de-do," to what relationship there might be between the phrase and the name of the puppet who was so popular on TV when I was a kid.

That's when I found out that Howdy Doody's original name was Elmer.

Who knew?

I wondered if he was first known as Elmer Doody.

But that's not the case at all.

According to the TVparty website, "The Howdy Doody Show," like many other programs from the early days of television, first started on radio. Bob Smith was host of a program in New York City. He occasionally included (and voiced) a cornpone character named Elmer, who greeted people with the words "Well, howdy doody." Picked to lead a children's program on the NBC Eastern TV network, Smith became Buffalo Bob and brought Elmer with him, turning him into a puppet and renaming him Howdy Doody.

A star was born.

I also  discovered a few more fascinating tidbits of Howdy Doody trivia.

The puppet-makers created three Howdys. Backstage, the one used for close-ups was called Howdy Doody. The one for long shots was called Double Doody. And the one for photo ops (with no strings, as in the photo above) was called Photo Doody.

Those of us who are of a certain age remember that the redheaded puppet had lots of freckles. But I never imagined that somebody would actually count them.

The Funtrivia website says there were 48, representing the 48 states then in the U.S.A.

Who says there's nothing to do on a rainy Saturday morning?

London's finest hours

Okay, so I'm going through Olympics withdrawal. I'm jonesing for more Michael and Usain and Gabby -- and for more England.

I'm not much of a sports fan, but I am an Olympics fan. Given my career in broadcasting, I'm usually watching as much for the production values of the TV coverage as for the results of the competition.

At least that's what I tell myself each time the games roll around. Then I quickly find myself caught up in the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

I mean, how can I not get caught up in the fact that Michael Phelps is amazing, absolutely stunning, the best of the best, the best in the world? Sure, Usain Bolt is somewhat over the top with his poses and posturing, but boy, oh boy, can that man run fast! And watching Gabby Douglas, who hails from right down the road in Tidewater: The wattage of her winning smile could power Phoebus for a day.

The games being in London this summer just added to the pleasure. London is my second favorite city in the world (just behind Richmond). I went there as a kid for the first time in 1967, terribly naive and eyes full of wonder. I stayed in a B&B with a sink in the room and a bathroom down the hall. You had to feed coins into a meter to get hot water for a bath. But all I did there was sleep, so it didn't matter. The breakfast each morning was tasty and plentiful. I even ate broiled kidney. (Actually I had one bite of one broiled kidney and have never taken another bite of broiled kidney since, but let's not go there. Otherwise, I cleaned my plate.)

I have a friend of long standing who lives in London. She wasn't too excited about the Olympics coming to town, and who could blame her? She is definitely not a sports fan, and the influx of tourists for the games complicated her daily life.

She is, however, a big fan of her hometown. Nevertheless, I think she was surprised when I told her how overwhelmingly positive the images of London were as seen here in the U.S. I told her that NBC estimated that the 2012 Olympics was the most-watched event in U.S.A. television history. Some 220 million Americans watched.

NBC is smart enough to know that we're not all sports fans. So they enlivened their coverage with brief travelogue pieces -- the feature story on Stonehenge was one of my favorites -- and even an admirable hour-long documentary by Tom Brokaw on England's "finest hour," the country's survival of the Battle of Britain and then the Blitz. The Brokaw documentary surprised my friend when I told her about it; she lived through it all in Wimbledon and came close to being blown to smithereens when the Germans dropped a bomb on the house across the street.

(She did send me a great picture of a fox she spotted last week in her garden, which we'd call the back yard over here - a cute little red fox, crouched by a lawn chair and looking towards the camera.)

So, the games are now over. But they'll be back in about 18 months when the Winter Olympics start up in February 2014 in Sochi, Russia.

I've never been to Sochi. I don't even know exactly where Sochi is, except that it's somewhere on the Black Sea coast.

But, Lord willing and the creek don't rise, I'll be watching.