| On the up side: The toy that the four-year-old says he wants most for Christmas? Just found it at Target. On sale. Last one in stock. November 2.
On the flip side: This four-year-old has 53 days, or about 4% of his life, to change his mind about Christmas.
| That November moment when you get in the car, turn on your station, briefly panic because the next hour’s show is already airing, then realize you’re looking at the last clock you needed to turn back. #publicradiolife
| Just now at Kroger I bumped into one of my students, who introduced me to his squeeze by saying, “This is my Tab professor.”
#ShapingYoungMinds
#IntoPinkCylinders
| To listen to a late-night syndicated all-request oldies show is to hear the voices of those for whom the Internet is a rumor. Or who are skilled at calling collect from prison.
| Looking over the to-do list for tonight’s class —
1) Teach them well
2) Let them lead the way
3) Show them all the beauty they possess inside
4) Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
5) Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be
I’m wondering how I’m going to fit it all into an hour fifteen.
| Sometimes you spend an hour in a meeting that could have been a quick email. And sometimes you spend an hour inside an email thread that could have been a quick meeting.
| We’re in the car, listening to “Revolver.”
Four-year-old: “Daddy, how many Beatles are there?”
Daddy: “There are four.”
Four-year-old: “What instruments do they play?”
Daddy: “Well, usually, two of them play guitar, one of them plays bass, and the fourth one plays drums.”
Four-year-old: “But one of them HAS to play the microphone.”
| In a day, today, my colleagues and I opened the mics and raised about $50,000, which is unprecedented in 40 pledge drives in the places I’ve been. Sometimes you wake up bone tired, you never come to feel you’re inhabiting your own body, and you make your share of mistakes as thousands bear witness, but it falls together. And upon cool reflection you realize you’ve just been through, by one measure, the best workday of your life.
| The lore of this station holds that a gentleman who used to be on our air a great deal suffered a sudden health setback during a pledge drive, and shortly thereafter made a minor life change: he entered a monastery in Louisville. And, months after he left, when we wanted him to record something, we tried to place a call, but were told, “I’m sorry, but Brother Robert cannot come to the phone. He has taken a yearlong vow of silence.”
I can measure the depth I’ve waded into any pledge drive by how ironic I find that story to be.
| In the car after another 12-hour day at the station, what do I do? I scan the AM dial and home in on faraway signals: WSM/Nashville, WSB/Atlanta, WCBS/New York, an all-’80s show on CFZM/Toronto.
I imagine myself, perhaps in an alternate universe, in shirtsleeves and skinny tie, slurping coffee before cueing up a disc, then running into the next room to rip the copy for the 9 o’clock news. For a moment it seems foreign, romantic, alluring.
Then I recall an ’80s song Paul Simon sang. Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance. Everybody thinks it’s true.
Being John B 