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.

Shocked? Really?

When there's nothing important to report from a crime scene, you can always expect some local TV news nitwit to interview a neighbor who doesn't know anything about what happened.

Why do they do it?

Lord only knows. Maybe it's to have a soundbite of some sort when the cops aren't talking. Maybe it's just to stretch out the story and give the reporter more facetime.

"He was such a quiet neighbor," one might say. In fact, they all seem to say it when the guy next door is charged with something like an ax murder.

"Things like that just don't happen around here," another might say. Well, if "things like that" were routine in your neighborhood, we'd have a whole 'nother story to report.

"He was a nice guy, but I only saw him when he was taking out the trash. He didn't have much to say." Well, that was pertinent. You only saw him occasionally. He didn't say much to you. Yet the reporter felt it was really important for you to make that point.

And there's this old chestnut: "I was shocked. I was really shocked." That's not news. It would be news if the neighbor said, "I wasn't shocked at all." That's a story that would make me prick up my ears.

And then there's the comment that drives me up a wall. "I just hope his family finds closure soon."

Closure?

The very idea of closure is naive, a piece of unfounded psycho-babble with no evidence to back it up.

Sure, time helps to make awful events more bearable. You might go from thinking about it every waking moment to thinking about it only occasionally. But pain, loss and tragedy never completely go away. Not so long as memories last.

So whenever I see one of these soundbites on TV, I punch the fast-forward button on my TiVo. Closure is what I'm seeking: closure to this story that is devolving into the realm of the mindless.

On the other hand, for me it makes watching local TV news a much shorter process.

There are few geniuses in jail

My nephew Mike, who is a retired police officer, says the reason it's so easy to catch criminals is because most of them are stupid.

He's got a point.

I sat on a jury a few years back that heard evidence in a particularly gruesome double murder that happened not far from where I live. Our decision hinged on a damning series of cell-phone records that left little wiggle room for the defendant.

Yes, he had left his cell phone in the car in which he had shot and killed two people.

Yes, that was a dumb mistake.

I was reminded this week -- again -- of how dim-witted criminals can be. A handful of young people -- men and women -- have been charged in a series of thefts in Chesterfield and Colonial Heights in May and June. A Chesterfield policeman says it's one of the largest crime sprees by such a big group of young people he's ever seen.

They were caught when a cop stopped them because they were driving a stolen car. A friend of one of those arrested said he saw that she was trying to sell some of the stolen items on Facebook.

Unfortunately she has a baby. One can only hope that the baby's father passed on some DNA that counteracts the stupid gene. But don't count on it. The stupid gene is very strong.

Virginia seems to be rife with brain-dead criminals. I Googled "stupid criminals Virginia" and came up with one that takes the cake. Two men in a pickup truck went to a new-home site to steal a refrigerator. They snatched a fridge from one of the houses, creating considerable damage to the house in the process, and loaded it onto the pickup. The pickup got stuck in the mud, so these rocket scientists decided it was because the refrigerator was too heavy. They put their stolen refrigerator back into the house, and then realized that they had locked the keys in the truck -- so they abandoned it.

The pickup was easy to trace when the crime was discovered.

I suppose this just confirms what Albert Einstein once said: "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

Disconnected

It's good to have a working land-line again. It's great to have Internet access once more. Best of all, I now have my TiVo back.

I've been without FIOS service from Verizon since last Monday's thunder and wind storm, which, I mention in passing, was the scariest storm I've seen in Richmond since Hazel back in 1954. (I was 12, schools were closed because of the hurricane, and I watched from our family's front window as lawn chairs and trash cans sailed down the block, 20 feet in the air, at terrifying speed.)

In last Monday afternoon's short but surprisingly powerful storm, the lightning was continuous. The winds were relentless. For 20 long minutes. Then, the sun came out again. The tree you see in the picture above was felled by the wind. It blocked the street I live on for five days before the city got around to removing it.

A cheery Verizon technician restored my TV, Internet and phone service yesterday morning -- on the sixth day after the storm.

At least I didn't have to break out the flashlights and the kerosene lamps last week. I lost power for only about 10 minutes . (There must be something karmic and essentially fair about that. I was in the dark for 10 days after Hurricane Isabel. This time, I was lucky.)

The thing is, when we lose the basics, meaning electricity or connectedness to the world, so much changes. We have to figure out other ways of doing things, old means by which to meet our basic needs as well as our less pressing wants and wishes.

So I spent a lot of time reading. Or outdoors, cleaning up and doing yard upkeep.

And indoors, watching my tiny, portable, wide-screen, color, digital, backup TV, which I hastily purchased after the last big storm. The screen is about the size of a pocket pack of Kleenex tissues, but it'll do in a pinch. Or even for six days.

Not having a phone was merely an inconvenience; I used my cell phone. Not having Internet access meant I had to look up stuff I wanted to know in real books. I missed email.

But not having TiVo grievously disrupted my schedule. I had to watch programs I like when they aired instead of when I wanted to. I had to watch commercials. I had to watch TV on the local and network timetables, not mine.

I also had free time to just think. That was a good thing.

One of the things I thought about was infrastructure, how much I depend on it, and how fragile it is.

I thought back to the day right after Isabel, the costliest and deadliest storm of the 2003 season. Almost nobody had power.

On the morning after Isabel, I called my mother and asked how she was doing. She was then 89 and living alone in the house she and my father had bought in 1956. I asked her if she needed anything. She told me a cup of coffee would be nice. After searching far wider and longer than I thought I'd have to, I found a place that was open, had power, and was selling hot coffee.

My mom was happy to see that coffee, but she told me she wasn't otherwise bothered so much by the lack of power.

"I was a teenager before we ever had electricity," she told me. "Back in those days, we got up when it was light and we went to bed when it was dark.

"So don't worry about me. I'll do just fine."

What she said made me rethink the problem.

I did that again this past week.