The polyurethane on the door frame will have to dry before I can do the next thing.
Except there is always something to clean, like the walls in the hallway where I want to paint. I am resistant today. I’ll do it later. There are weeds. Windows to clean. I just don’t feel like it. Later.
“What’s the hurry?” my mom says. She doesn’t like to see me stressed out.
The cat is circling. She wants me to brush her but for some reason she is being coy. She is hoping for the double brush. If I don’t pick up a brush soon enough, she will try to brush herself, but can’t get the leverage required for satisfaction.
I made some progress on my short story. The pieces don’t quite fit, but I’ve turned over a few more puzzle pieces. I’m still far away from the original idea. I’m stuck in setup. Well, not stuck. It’s just that there’s a lot of work to do before getting to the thing. It’s like my house projects. I don’t really know how that color is going to look on the kitchen wall. I just know that I’m curious and I am anxious for the tah-dah! But there is all of this preparation that is required.
Don’t be in a hurry.
Crystal clear. I can hear my dad telling me this.
Don’t be in a hurry.
There is something really delicious about taking your time in a world full of people who are hell bent on getting there first.
Don’t be in a hurry.
Brian thought we had time to cross the street.
“I’d rather wait.” I said, knowing that he would not like it.
The king of patience thinks I’m a nut, but he concedes and we wait. To be fair, I can’t walk as fast as he can. Shorter stride, right? In the meantime, a woman makes it across with no problem.
“It’s a beautiful night to stand on the corner!” She says before heading for the gas station behind us.
I don’t care. Maybe it’s decision fatigue. Just do what the sign says. I’m fine with that. Sure, there are exceptions. But on one of the busiest corners in the city? This isn’t one of them.
Don’t be in a hurry.
On the one hand, I’m a square following the rules. On the other hand, waiting for the crosswalk sign is a sort of quiet rebellion in a hurry-up world.
I’ll just pretend that I’m Japanese. My friend who has been to Japan told me that they never jaywalk there. A person could be standing at a deserted intersection at three in the morning in a remote town with a population of fifty and wouldn’t cross against the light.
Don’t be in a hurry.
My aunt is moving to hospice care after a traumatic experience at the memory care facility. It has been a while since she would have recognized me. The last time I saw her was at a reunion she hosted several years ago. We rented cabins on a lake in Michigan. She rented tents and roasted meat at the house that used to be my grandmother’s house. Some cousins were doing shots of Jagermeister. I will sip mine.
Don’t be in a hurry.
She cries a lot, something some Alzheimer’s patients apparently do. They give her medicine for this.
We write to remember and for some reason I want to remember this.
I was weeding the flowerbed in the front yard.
Here comes a Somali girl, maybe ten years old, running down the sidewalk to catch the bus. Her mother is yelling only what I can take to be encouragement from behind, near their house. It’s a rental on the corner of a busy street. I wish I can remember everyone who passed through there. A Black family. A little girl who seemed to always be dressed in pink. I big woman with a baby. A teen boy. They often walked by my house. And then they were gone and it was another family. And now this family.
As the girl is running, a school bus is inching behind her. Had it stopped she could have just turned around and got on it. But she is running and it seems like the driver is trying to give her the best chance of making it to the stop at the end of the block on time. So the bus is creeping along side her, encouraging her as her mother was doing. The sound of her shoes hitting the pavement brings to mind a thin sandal. Slap! Slap! Slap! Against the orange-yellow school bus and a pretty blue sky, her pink burka looks like a costume designer picked it out. It’s pretty.
She gets on the bus. I look back at her mother from my crouched position in the yard. She looks relieved.
“She made it!” I yell.
“Yes she did!” the girl’s mother yells back.
My neighbor heads out on his bike. He makes a comment about how I am up early.
“I’m usually up early.” I say.
“Not as early as my wife. Three o’clock.” He says.
Coincidentally, I notice the girl come home that afternoon. A little boy on tricycle and an even smaller girl carrying a doll are rushing down the sidewalk to greet her. They’re excited. Super happy. But once they get to the bus stop at the end the block the crying starts. They’re arguing over who-knows-what – the bike, the doll, who gets to hold whose hand. They’re bugging each other the way siblings do.
The next morning I am in my bedroom where the windows are open.
“Get on the fuck’n bus!” A man down in the street yells.
I imagine that some poor kid is getting in trouble. He doesn’t want to go to school and his asshole father is pissed because he won’t get on the bus. How is he going to have a good day now? I look out the window and see there is a bit of a jam up on the street. I don’t exactly remember the details, but the bus can’t pass to get to the stop and apparently the little girl I saw is boarding the bus mid street. This is not exactly clear to me. What is clear is that there is a guy in a beat up pickup truck with a ladder in the back. He’s headed toward the bus and hanging slightly out the window trying to see what the hold up is. Once things dislodge he roars down the street, clearly mad. Cursing.
We have these peaceful days. Our mother is encouraging us. The bus driver is helping. We look beautiful. The sun is beautiful. The air is fresh. Things are blooming. And then some guy plops down in the middle of it and yells profanity at a child. Who is that guy? Don’t be that guy!
It had been a while since I’ve noted the trips to and from the bus stop. But recently from my room I heard:
Slap! Slap! Slap!
“I love you, mom!”
–
I have my own “missing the school bus story”, but I actually missed the bus. Long story short, I was standing at the stop and the bus whizzed by without picking me up. My dad was not happy about this. We got in the car and chased the bus down the highway for a bit before we caught up to it and I got on it. This would have been between kindergarten and second grade in Michigan.
–
Next up? Coffee. Something to eat. Progress on my projects. Petting the cat. Right now she is pestering Brian who just got out of the shower. When she saw that I was busy, she turned and faced the bathroom door and pounced on him the second he emerged. I’ll have to dust myself off earlier than usual tonight. We’re going to go see Patton Oswalt at the State Theater. Brian and I are now arguing about how many times we’ve seen him. I say two. He says once because the only other time he came here, he came to a casino, not my favorite place to see shows. He is so wrong. Forget my plans for the day. I’m going to spend the rest of the day proving that he is wrong, dammit! We saw him twice! I am certain of it, although I will concede that it definitely was not at a casino. In one show he closed with the Doctor Pepper story, which the audience was clamoring for… the other time… I don’t care! It was twice! I do remember passing on Bill Burr because he was at a casino and maybe the same is true of Oswalt. But still… Twice.
It’s hard to pick out the women and even when you do you’re not sure it’s a woman under the hardhat. I’m pretty sure I saw two. The only Black man I saw was servicing the portable toilets, but that is not to say there aren’t other people of color working on the construction site that spans at least two large blocks and goes deep into the Saint Thomas campus. I just don’t see them. The guys on the periphery are white, like the three guys standing on the sidewalk outside of the morning huddle. With that beard the redhead in the middle looks like he could be a member of ZZ Top, except I can’t picture any of them vaping. If anything they would smoke. A photographer with privileges would be in heaven. Everywhere I look there is a picture.
Of course there is old fashioned smoking too, so much that I wonder if there shouldn’t be a quit smoking campaign directed at construction workers (and bartenders and cosmetologists and rock stars). What is it about operating a backhoe that makes a person crave nicotine? Like a mother hen, I wish they wouldn’t. It doesn’t match their strong young bodies. I wish the old timers would give it up too.
I pass a flag man who has a small cooler sitting next to him and think it’s sweet that he didn’t want to be separated from his lunch. On the lid of the cooler there are four empty cup holders molded into the plastic. On the return there is a bottle of water, half full, in of the the holders. Close by three men are having a smoke on a retaining wall in front of an apartment building. I overhear part of a story… “…and then he pulls out in front of me like this…” I imagine that it is a story like the ones my brother-in-law might tell about the guy you should never take on a hunting trip. He’s an idiot and he might kill you.
I imagine living across from the construction site that wakes up by seven o’clock. It’s fun to see whenever I take a walk in that direction. But it would drive me nutty to live with it for an extended period of time. The rest of the summer for sure and maybe into next year?
I stop to watch a man in a bobcat remove part of a sidewalk, while another man on a big hill of recently excavated dirt oversees the operation. A few other men are on the ground watching too. It’s not clear what their roles are, but I assume they will help, point, assist or signal as needed. Before sliding the bucket under a slab of concrete, the machine scrapes the gravel toward itself as if trying to level the ground a bit. Scratching like an animal might. Then it lifts up a piece of cement and if it is too big or awkward to lift, will drop it several times until it breaks. A smart animal, with problem solving skills. And we thought it was just a machine! To be efficient, slabs are neatly stacked before lifted and placed into a larger front end loader that waits there like a hungry chick begging for a worm. At first I am reminded of Edward Scissorhands trying to eat a pea but then come to appreciate that these birds really have the dexterity of a surgeon. Amazing!
Suddenly all of the machinery seems to be animated and it makes me recall how my bicycle feels like a restless horse underneath me. The backhoe is a cat coughing up a hairball. It scoops up the ground in one spot and empties the bucket in another. Because the dirt sticks – like the way the snow sticks to my shovel – it shakes it off with these quick backward jolts that would be unnatural for a person to mimic and hell on the neck. Bam! Bam! Bam! Just like my cat, Ehgh! Ehgh! Ehgh!
And now…
For the next thing on the list!
More work in the kitchen. A few things in the stairway. When Brian comes home, he’ll help me with the ladder so that I can reach up to wipe down the walls.
Generally, I need to put the thing that must get done first on the list of things to do. It is not this post or making progress on the short story that I am writing or the book in progress that wants to be something other than what I first had in mind. At the moment, it is not even the podcast. The list from yesterday reads:
Caulk (stairway)
Clean up dining room, kitchen
Pick up house
Wash walls (stairway)
Finish prepping woodwork
Take down plastic
Clean kitchen walls
I did not get to all of these things and keeping up with a commitment to post here daily (mostly) wasn’t even on the list. By the end of the day, which ended really late last night, I collapsed.
I’ve let the lettuce go to seed, partly because I don’t have enough time to do everything there is to do and partly because I love the way the grassy pods look. It’s full of red headed birds, finches of some kind? I wanted to show the cat the dove that was walking around the upper deck where there is a floor-to-ceiling screen where she likes to sit, but figured that the bird wouldn’t stick around for it.
Our street gets a ridiculous number of delivery trucks every day. Every Amazon truck that pulls up to a house stirs up a low-level anxiety. It doesn’t seem like we can possibly be serious about addressing global warming if we are going to have toilet paper delivered to every individual household. The cheese stands alone as convenience is vehemently defended. Convenience will be the end of us. Whenever I think of convenience, I see the guy in Idiocracy who never had to get up from his chair to shit. In the meantime, try to find a decent choice of fabric or a belt that will last longer than a week or a sturdy rake at a brick-and-mortar shop.
It feels like it is going to rain.
Okay. If I can get the prep done in the kitchen so that I’m ready to paint, then other things can fall into place – the pan rack that I made, the baskets for onions and potatoes… I want to see how my sheep (a print I bought at the farmers market in Boise) will look above the door. I want to see that color. Hopefully it’s right this time.
I want my dining room back. No sooner did I finish it did it become the staging area for other projects.
It is not a short story or a podcast episode. But refinishing the shelves in the dining room built-in cabinets is a form of expression too. All of this is an expression of something. And just like writing a short story, at least for me, it is not easy. Not one bit.
My mind went to my nephew’s recent wedding in Virginia because it’s the kind of event that forces a woman to consider splurging on a professional pedicure if she isn’t already in the habit of getting them. When did we stop taking care of our own feet?
“I don’t want to write about toenails.”
“How about something from the book I just got for you?”
“Pep Talk for Writers? Okay.”
Before I could finish the first chapter, which was three short pages, I regretted that I never emailed Frances. Frannie? Fran? I think she went by Fran. At the same time, I don’t regret anything. Honestly, I’m not just trying to be above my mistakes and I don’t subscribe to the notion that everything is as always as it should be. I’m just okay with it.
I could email her right now. It has been three years since I saw Fran staring up at a tree. So a message from me would be a surprise and possibly confusing.
“What are you looking at?”
Is there any way to say that without the dangling participle and still sound like a normal person?
“I’m trying to figure out what kind of tree that is. We don’t have those in Vermont.”
And this is how the conversation started. We stood on the sidewalk and talked for at least an hour. It might have been two.
Among other things, Fran told me that your life is a work of art. She said it better than that. I sort of understood and since then I’ve had glimpses of what she meant.
We talked about a number of things. Trees. Art. The Senior Olympics. The 82 year old Fran was a contender. She was a thrower. There was a reason she landed in this sport, but I can’t remember what it was. Shot put, discus, javelin, and the hammer throw. She did them all except for one that wasn’t good for her…back? Something like that.
I told her that I was sorry that I didn’t have my recorder with me. I would have liked to have interviewed her and at the same time can appreciate that a microphone can get in the way.
“You’ll remember what you need to remember.” She said.
Your life is a work of art. I remember that.
I remember how she took an interest in the painting project that I was doing. I was having trouble finding the right trim color for a the basement that I had painted a turquoise. She pointed to different houses on the block as examples of the effects of different color combinations. There is a house on Cleveland Avenue that always makes me think of her:
“See how the trim on that house is a dark brown?”
I remember noticing the contrast between talking to her, a stranger, and the difficulties I was having with some other people who were in my life at the time where I should have expected some level of connection but mostly just felt like an alien in their presence. It’s just nice to be got. To be heard. To be important.
“Do you want so see some old people jump? Come back at 10 o’clock.”
I remember sitting on the bleachers in the sun.
I remember that I was on my way home and she was on her way to find something to eat.
Her name was Francesca. When she was in her sixties she moved back to Vermont from Portland; she wanted to live near her aging mother.
10. Another trip to the hardware store for the rollers that you forgot the first 50 times you were there.
9. Realizing that you picked the wrong color after you’ve finished the job.
8. Caulking the gaps between the wood molding and the wall.
7. Taping the area to be caulked as to get a clean line.
6. Cleaning up the paint spatters left by the previous painter from ten years ago, something you had never noticed until now that you’re looking at the walls up close with a magnifying glass and a headlamp.
5. Painting the thing next to the thing you just painted because it now looks dingy next to a fresh paint job.
4. Preventing a mess by putting down drop cloths, sealing off areas to be sanded…
3. Cleaning up the mess!
2. Painting.
1. Beer!
I’m plugging away at a few projects. Every day I think, today is the day! Time to paint! Nope! This morning I was taping plastic around and area to be sanded. I figured out this trick when I painted the dining room. You’re supposed to do things in the right order and that will save you some headaches. I tried to do that. But inevitably there would be a step backwards either because I just had to learn something the hard way or because I messed up something. There would be some repair I missed. So I would have to fill in a hole… now I have to do a little sanding… now I have to wipe things down… again. So I finally figured out that I could form a bag around the small area on the wall to be sanded. There’s a little more to it than that, but it essentially contains the mess. Anyway, this morning I was taping a bag to the wall for this purpose. Brian gets up. He needs to get passed me, as I am in the middle of the stairway. He tells me that I’ll be glad to know that while I’ve been industrious this morning, Senator Amy Klobuchar is “speaking truth to power.” We both had a laugh. Someone needs to tell her that she is the power. Has she ever been at a rally where people are shouting stuff like that? Those people aren’t going to vote for her. Not now. Not in 2020.
You mention a book I should read. Oh, I’ll remember that!
The name of your dog.
Your name!
A joke.
I always think I will remember.
What will I remember about today?
Without my notes?
I’ll need my notes:
1. I woke up before Brian and this essentially makes every day like Christmas Day where you can’t wait for everyone to wake up. Except instead of opening presents, there is breakfast, or a walk or something I have to tell him the minute he opens his eyes. But I don’t. I want to. But I try to give the man a minute.
2. So at 6 a.m. or so, I put another coat of paint on the radiator in the kitchen and listened to a podcast called 1001 Short Stories. This paint job required a lot of preparation. You can learn a lot about life by working on your house like this. I’ll return to this later.
3. Eventually Brian gets up and we go out for breakfast after the usual routine of feeding the cat, cleaning her box, etc.
4. We go for a ride. The Prius compliments Brian for not using the AC. The breeze feels good. I feel happy.
5. I wait in the car while Brian gets a few grocery items. Doing this same thing a little while ago, I got an idea for a movie that would be filmed from the POV of the passenger seat looking into the side mirror. When I went to Boston with Mary Jane last month, I waited in the valet area while she checked into the Westin Hotel. Again, looking into the side mirror at the action behind me… there is a movie here.
6. Brian notes that the yard needs some attention and wants to do some weeding before it rains. I like to imagine that he enjoys tapping into his inner farmer but he doesn’t admit it. He’s just doing what needs to be done.
7. I need to make a chalk line so that I can eventually install a handrail for the stairs. Brian helps me by holding one end of the line. It takes us a few tries, but eventually, we get it. I drill holes where the brackets will go. I think I found the studs. It seems like it. I hope so. It can be hard to tell with these plaster walls.
8. I continue to prepare the stairway for painting.
9. The back door where I am working upstairs is open. I can smell food cooking on grills around the neighborhood. I am reminded of my first night at the dormitory at the U of M – Morris. My dad who drove me there has left. My roommate – a person I have yet to meet – has not arrived yet. Outside I can hear people laughing, roving around campus is groups.
10. Brian is in and out. It starts to rain. It stops. He weeds in between.
11. Brian comes in from the yard covered in dirt. To the shower!
12. Brian lays on the bed. I sit in the chair by the window. The cat is passed out on her new favorite spot on the floor facing the door. Life is good.
13. Brian starts the grill. I wish that you could be here to join us.
14. I figured I better not fall off the wagon on day two…
15. Brian asks me how much corn on the cob I want to eat. He brings the package upstairs to show me how big they are. One.
Because I Left the House was an idea for a series of blog posts where I would note something that I experienced… well… because I left the house. Whenever I mentioned the idea, people responded positively and so I figured that it must be a good idea. It never went anywhere. In fact, this, my personal blog, has idled for quite some time. Although it remains in my project book, which is my way of tracking… projects. I will tell you more about the project book later.
What inspires me to log into Two People & a Cat now? I need to write. Just write. Indeed I am writing. I’ve been working on a book and a short story. Last night I was reading about how to write a short story and woke up this morning feeling like someone had just told me that Lego’s are only intended to go together in certain ways. Get to the point! Dispense with backstories and descriptions. In other words, everything I’ve written so far (okay, maybe an exaggeration) needs to be cut. Ugh.
So this is… I’m not sure. It’s a place to write some stuff without trying to fit it into any particular form. It’s a place to have some fun. Maybe it will end up being my best writing, although I doubt it. It won’t be so crafted… Not the blog posts. It will be more of a journal. That’s tricky. Because there are things that need to be processed over time. This isn’t a spill your guts kind of thing. And at the same time it does need to be open enough to be human. Honestly, we’ll just have to see. Mainly, it’s just a place to write, especially when I look at my other writing projects and feel stuck.
Okay, so because I left my house today… A moving van takes a turn in front of me. The top of the truck brushes past tree branches and I wonder if they might break. I walked to the end of my block – two blocks actually, over to Cleveland Avenue, and something exploded. Without knowing anything about it, my first thought was that it was a transformer. It was a loud crack that I could feel the vibrations in my chest. It scared me. There is someone sitting in a city truck not too far from me. No response. Another truck pulls up to the stop sign. The driver is texting, unconcerned. No signs of anyone investigating the noise. No curtains pulled. Nobody poking a head out or standing on the porch to see what’s what. It occurs to me that it’s the day before the Fourth of July and that firecrackers might explain the boom. But I quickly dismiss this. I know what I heard. While I am not seriously concerned for my safety, I opt to turn back and take a slightly different route to the coffee shop. This brings me past the moving truck. It appears that my neighbors are moving, but even though I see men loading boxes onto two moving trucks, I don’t quite believe it. The family is something of an institution. The hub of block parties. Organizers of rain garden workshops. They have chickens. They just put up a fence. They’re moving? If I followed the neighborhood email group more closely, I would know the scoop. But I took a break from the alerts and complaints and yes, block party invitations. So now I’m in the dark.
So there you have it. A little bit of a free write. I just need a spot where I can get something on the page without working it too hard. There is the question of why this is a blog versus a notebook stashed away in my closet. This is a good question, but one I’ll have to take up later. Thinking about that too hard right now would just take the fun out of it.
It’s 11:30 a.m. and the neighbor’s lawn service has just kicked in. I wasn’t expecting them today. This summer they’ve been coming on Thursday afternoons. It is quite an ordeal for such a small yard. It’s very noisy and gets on my nerves though I do try to be all zen about it. Suddenly, the noise stops. Is this for real? Will it start again? That was weird. It’s hard to relax when I’m wondering how long the quiet is going to last.
I’ve been working on this blog post on and off for a few months now. Not this post, another one. Something more serious. It has been taking more time than I would have expected. Maybe it’s too serious. What was once just a passing observation about election meddling had become a point I wanted to make, which could have been done in a sentence or two. But it kept demanding more until it went from being almost finished to a pile of Christmas tree lights that needed to be untangled. It’s a jumbled mess and not so fun to face at the moment. But that’s probably less because of its disorderly state and more because of the subject. Current affairs can certainly be a downer. It’s also possible that this piece is never going to be any good and I know it. It could be that too.
In the meantime, Two People and a Cat stagnates as it has done many other times. So I thought I would dive in without too much fuss. I’ve been meaning to share a video that has given us a laugh here at the house. Perhaps all will be lost in the translation and you will not see the humor in it. Funny is a tricky thing.
Here’s some background. A while ago I produced a video for Reach Out and Read Minnesota (ROR – I still think it’s unfortunate that they didn’t go with the obvious ROAR acronym that would have lent itself to the cutest mascot ever!). This is a program where pediatricians promote reading to kids at an early age by distributing free books. It’s a cool deal and it was a fun project to do. However, I never did make the video I wanted to make. I made what I called the “straight” version. Before I tried anything too crazy, I thought it best to at least deliver something that didn’t wildly deviate from the expected. I sensed, perhaps wrongly, that there wasn’t an appetite for anything but the straight version. There definitely wasn’t time to discuss alternatives. In the end, the finished product was received well at an annual fundraiser. The board was appropriately appreciative. As for those other ideas I wanted to try once the real project was done? I never got around to them.
However, I did sketch out some of the ideas. Brian and I also shot part of an idea. This is the video that I am sharing here. I wanted to see how certain things would look. Again, these are test shots. They are rough and incomplete. But of course that’s what makes the video so funny to me.
As for the ideas for additional videos, my memory will have to serve here as those notes are long gone by now. But first, I should explain a couple of things about ROR-MN.
During regular checkups – well child visits – pediatricians give books to the kids and encourage parents to read to their children. Doing this helps with brain development at a critical time in the child’s life.
The barriers to entry are low. All pre-school patients of a participating clinic get books. No one has to qualify, fill out an application or otherwise prove neediness. Everyone is equal.
It’s convenient for families because the program is attached to existing routines.
The pediatrician is not only a trusted authority, but the right one to deliver an important message about reading to your kids starting at an early age.
The videos would be 30 seconds or less, making them ideal to share on social media. Each would illustrate a feature of ROR as mentioned above. Videos would start with a situation and finish with a voiceover and then cut to the logo/website followed by footage from a doctor’s visit then fade to black.
ROR Video Idea #1: Delivering Books like Candy at A Parade
Scene: Nice day. Neighborhood. Kids playing soccer. Sprinkler. Dog. A few doors down a man is mowing the lawn. From the distance we can hear someone yelling something. A man driving a car slowly rolls by as he is yelling over a megaphone, “Read to your kids! Read…” He is throwing books out the car window, as if throwing candy from a parade float. Close-up: Book lands in a puddle. A kid’s feet are in the shot. Pan from feet to face that looks confused. Close-up: A curtain moves from within a house as if an adult is checking to see what the commotion is. Close-up: Dog. Wide: Kids stop playing to face car. They’re confused. Voiceover: There are better ways to distribute free books and encourage parents to read to their kids every day. Cut: ROR logo. Voiceover: Reach Out and Read Minnesota. Medium: Doctor giving book to child in exam room. Voiceover: Pediatrician prescribed books for preschoolers.
So here are some of those test shots:
I love this clip. On the one hand, I have this guy who’s up for anything. What? You want me to drive around the neighborhood screaming like an idiot? Sure. No problem. On the other hand, instead of backing up a few feet so I could do another take, he drives around the block. Every time. Come on, buddy! I love this clip because we had a lot of fun making this. How lucky am I to have somebody who’s that game? At one point a neighbor gave Brian a thumbs-up as if to agree with the message while politely ignoring the tactics of the messenger. For some reason, the fact that Brian is driving a loaner from the repair shop is also funny to us. What I remember about that car is that on the passenger side in the front, it didn’t have a full armrest on the left. It seemed like a weird corner to cut.
ROR Video Idea #2: Signing up for Programs can be a Hassle
Scene: Elementary school playground. Mother with baby strapped to her is running through an obstacle course/playground equipment. Or maybe she has a toddler or both. She has her hands full. Close-Up: Clock to suggest time is running out. Various shots: Woman slides down the slide with child. At the bottom of the slide there is a woman in a suit sitting at an office desk. The desk has a sign on it that says “Register for Reading Program Here”. Timer goes off. The mother is too late to sign up. Voiceover: It shouldn’t be hard to give your child a fair chance to succeed. Cut: ROR logo. Voiceover: Reach Out and Read Minnesota. Medium: Doctor giving book to child in exam room. Voiceover: No signing up required.
ROR Video Idea #3: Parenting Advice from Biker Dude
Scene: Bike path. A father is jogging in the park with a small child in a stroller, one of those big ones people use when jogging. The child is engrossed in an iPad or similar device. A biker dude who passes the two notices that the child is looking at the device. He stops the father and shares some information about the benefits of reading books over using electronic devices. He also warns of the hazards of too much screen time. Father is clearly annoyed. Various Close-ups: park, birds, other kids, dogs, flowers… Child is oblivious as he continues to watch a video. Voiceover: Nobody wants parenting advice from biker dude. Cut: ROR logo. Voiceover: Reach Out and Read Minnesota. Medium: Doctor giving book to child in exam room. Voiceover: Pediatrician prescribed books for preschoolers and real help for their parents.
ROR Video Idea #4: Boot Camp for Parents
This was one of my favorite ones, but I can’t remember exactly how it went. There was a rhythm to it that I’ve lost in my attempt here to get it on the page. But I don’t want to take the time to work it. So as with all of these, it’s just the general idea I’m trying to convey.
Scene: Something that resembles a military boot camp. Parents are lined up. They’re all holding the same children’s book open in front of them. Staring forward. A drill sergeant approaches one of them and screams: “What does a cow say?” Parent replies in boot camp fashion, “Moo!” Sergeant: “What does a cow say?” Parent: “Moo!” Sergeant: “What color is that dog, Smith?” Smith: “Brown!” Sergeant: “What color is the sky?” Smith: “Blue.” Sergeant: “How many birds do you see?” Smith: “Three.” Sergeant: “Count ‘em!” All parents: “One! Two! Three!” Voiceover: There has to be a better way. Cut: ROR logo. Voiceover: Reach Out and Read Minnesota. Medium: Doctor giving book to child in exam room. Voiceover: We help parents get the most out of reading time with their kids.
ROR Video Idea #5: Police Officer Distributing Books
Scene: Cars on interstate. Family in a car is pulled over by a police officer who noticed a “baby on board” sign. Officer questions them about their children’s reading routines: Do you read to your children every day? How about at bedtime? Parents are confused but answer questions. Officers goes back to his squad car as if he is going to write a ticket. Instead he comes back with some books for the kids. The parents are completely confused but relieved they didn’t get a ticket. Voiceover: The best ideas can be poorly executed. Cut: ROR logo. Voiceover: Reach Out and Read Minnesota. Medium: Doctor giving book to child. Voiceover: Doctors providing age-appropriate books to pre-school kids and giving trusted advice to parents.
[Note: The idea here was to highlight one of the strengths of ROR: information is given to parents by a trusted authority, as opposed to the biker dude in the above scenario. However, any authority will not do. This is not intended to be a negative comment about the police. Instead, it’s about the right authority in this situation. As for the authority of the elementary school teacher, ROR is able to reach children before they’re old enough for kindergarten, during a critical time for brain development. A different video could be made to emphasize that point. ]
ROR Video Idea #6: Helping Kids Prepare for Kindergarten
See note above.
ROR Video Idea #7: The grocery store
This is similar to the biker dude above, except it happens in a grocery store. A stranger gives unsolicited advice to parent and the parent is either annoyed or hurt by it. There’s probably a fine line between poking fun at this type of advice and discouraging people/strangers from lending a helpful hand when they can see that it’s needed.
I’m preparing for a talk I’ll be doing at WordCamp – Minneapolis. I’ll be talking about podcasting with WordPress. It’s the old story. When you try to explain something, more questions pop up. In this case I want to take a look at the RSS feed of a post where there is an audio file attached. I’m assuming that it will not have the ENCLOSURE tags required that make a podcast a podcast. But I’m not sure. So let’s see what happens.
Apparently I was wrong. Without doing anything special, the media ENCLOSURE tag is included. I found this in the feed:
So I read more about podcasting with WordPress at the source. Here’s part of what it says:
Podcasting is seamlessly supported as of WordPress 1.5. Add a link to an audio file in a post and WordPress will automatically add the necessary enclosure tag to your RSS2 feed to make it useable as a podcast.
The example RSS feed given did not work for me: http://example.com/wordpress/?feed=rss2. I’m not sure if I am misunderstanding something or if this is outdated information.
The above feed includes the most recent posts of all of them. By making a blog category that only includes posts with podcast media (in my case MP3 files), I can make a separate feed for that. In this example, I used “OurPodcast” as the category. The rest of the URL is generated automatically by WordPress.
What I found especially exciting, again from the WordPress Codex is that I can use the iTunes protocol instead of http://. This will open the feed in iTunes. On my laptop, it was a bit clumsy. But it worked for both the whole site feed and the podcast only feed. In the first case, the non-podcast posts were ignored. I’m not sure what this does if iTunes is not installed.
How will this behave on my iPad that has the iTunes podcast app installed? “Safari cannot open the page because the address is invalid.” Darn!
Did I just accidentally start a podcast?
I think I might have just accidentally started a podcast. I have an episode, a dedicated podcast RSS feed that people can use to subscribe using any RSS reader. Apparently the show is called “Our Podcast – Two People & A Cat”. Had I known what I was doing, I might have given this a little more thought, but I’m willing to let fate take charge and roll with it.
What more is there to do? Do I even need the PowerPress plug-in? I thought the whole point of it was to create a dedicated podcast RSS feed and do stuff like insert those pesky enclosure tags into the feed. WordPress already does this. I mean, when you can accidentally start a podcast like you were falling into a manhole, how much easier can it get?
This is just a guess
In order to submit your RSS URL to podcast directories so that people can find your show, the feed must contain certain information. Here’s part of the feed that PowerPress generated for my show QuOTeD – The Question of the Day Podcast.
To view the whole thing, you can just go to my podcast and click on the RSS link. Or you can download this PDF file to see an abbreviated but more easy to follow version.
So is the idea that even though it’s technically super easy to start a podcast using WordPress alone, plugins such as PowerPress facilitate getting your show into the various podcast directories? Now that I think about it, PowerPress does guide you through the process quite nicely. For example, “This is your feed URL. Submit it to these various podcast directories. To be added to iTunes/Apple Podcasts you will need to have published your first episode, artwork in the following format…” blah, blah blah
In addition the plug-in offers short codes so that you can easily add a player for a single episode, a playlist and podcast subscription options, including a subscription page that can be customized. I also just discovered that you can make an embed link available so that people can embed an episode of your podcast that includes a player on a blog or website. For example here’s an embed link that I got from my podcast site.
How did that painting end up in our living room? A story improvised by dinner guests.
The embed code did not appear to work in a Facebook post. However, I recalled seeing a POST TO SOCIAL link on my Blubrry dashboard, so I gave that a try for the first time by posting something to my podcast Facebook page. The feature creates a video using the podcast artwork and the first two minutes of the episode. I’ll be curious to find out if it will use episode level artwork if it’s available. Up until now, I haven’t tried episode level art, but this might give me a reason do it.
