Tag Archives: social media

media news

‘Texting’ becomes second nature … more or less!

I am going to brag just a little.

I’ve been quite dismissive and downright derisive of many aspects of “social media” over the years. Texting is one of those aspects that has drawn my most serious level of scorn. Some members of my family have heard me declare that I cannot say the word “text” in its verb form without adding a certain level of derision in my voice.

Indeed, I pepper this blog with such references when I use the term in that form.

Why the boast? Well, it’s that I am getting fairly proficient these days at texting. I once imposed a six-word limit on messages sent via this medium. I must confess here and now that I routinely go beyond that limit, but not by much.

I do, though, find that I’ve achieved a certain comfort level in communicating in that fashion when I have something of importance I want to say to someone. For instance, I sent a message to a gentleman informing him that my wife and I will be taking our fifth wheel RV on an extended trip soon. This fellow pulls it out of its parking slot in the garage where we store our RV. I needed 12 whole words to convey the message.

Also, I want to stipulate that I will never, not ever, converse with someone using this medium. At my advancing age, I find myself still relying on more conventional methods of conversation, such as picking up the telephone and calling someone. I also have been known to go to someone’s place of employment or even their home to converse with them, face to face. I do know individuals who like to “chat” with someone using their texting device.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2013/09/no-conversational-texting-will-be-done-promise/

I suppose this is my way of acknowledging that I am advancing farther into the 21st century, along with my sons, my daughter-in-law and my grandkids. I hear jokes all the time about how smart others’ pre-school grandkids know more about modern technology than their elders do. My wife and I are rapidly approaching the realm of those who have such technological wunderkinds in their family; little Emma — our 4-year-old granddaughter — is showing the faint first signs of being able to solve technology problems for us when they occur.

As long as I stay within my comfort zone, though, I’ll be all right. I plan to cling tightly to it as I text friends and family members.

Here’s the deal, though: That comfort zone seems to be expanding.

Who knew?

national news

Trump continues to show his lack of humanity

What in the name of human decency is Donald John Trump trying to accomplish with this latest Twitter tirade?

San Juan, P.R., Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz is desperate. She is imploring the federal government to expedite aid to her stricken city, which was pummeled by Hurricane Maria. Yes, she’s been critical of the federal response.

So, what does the president do? He fires off tweets that accuse the mayor of wanting the feds to “do everything.” He praises the federal response, while criticizing the mayor’s leadership. He wrote, according to The Hill: “The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump,” Trump tweeted. “Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help.”

Put the Twitter device away

Why cannot this individual, the president, simply do the job to which he was elected? He took an oath to protect Americans. He pledged to care for us and to be there during good times and bad. I get that it’s all an unwritten pledge, but that’s what presidents traditionally have done.

They have avoided being openly critical of fellow Americans during times of peril and strife. Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands have been ravaged and savaged by Mother Nature’s immense power. The citizens — all of whom are just as American as the president — want their leader to concentrate fully on their well-being. The president is failing that test.

His attack on the embattled mayor is unbecoming — once again — of the high office this man occupies.

media news, national news

Stick to matters of state, Mr. President

I won’t spend a lot of blog space commenting on this, so here goes.

Mr. President, stop tweeting about the National Football League, its ratings, the players who are protesting peacefully about what they perceive to be problems with policing in African-American communities.

You’ve spent far too much time commenting on these matters and far too little time concentrating on issues of much more vital importance.

Focus, for once, Mr. President.

There’s North Korea. You’ve got tax reform. Oh, and there’s hurricane relief for our fellow Americans in Puerto Rico.

You’ve instead decided to devote many of your waking hours via Twitter blasting those so-called “SOBs” who have decided to “take a knee” while listening to the “Star Spangled Banner” before pro football games.

Get off it, Mr. President. You’ve got much, much more important matters to occupy your time, not to mention your Twitter finger.

media news, national news

Trump shows more juvenile petulance

The nation’s juvenile delinquent in chief just keeps demonstrating his unfitness for a job that requires a huge measure of dignity.

Donald John Trump Sr. fired up his Twitter finger to retweet an animated image of the president hitting Hillary Rodham Clinton with a golf ball.

Pretty funny, huh? Oh, not at all!

But that’s the president of the United States of America for you. He just cannot stop insulting his political foes and critics. He just cannot resist the temptation to illustrate why so many of his fellow Americans detest the notion of his occupying the White House.

It goes without saying that heads of state need to conduct themselves with dignity and decorum. Trump doesn’t understand the tradition that accompanies the office he won in 2016, defeating Clinton in one of the most raucous and divisive elections in our nation’s history.

Trump’s Twitter tirades need to stop. They won’t, of course. The president will continue to denigrate others through this social medium for as long as his base of supporters keep cheering him on.

What the heck. He’s pandering to his base on many levels, forsaking the rest of the country that didn’t support his election in the first place.

Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, calls it “distressing that we have a president who will tweet and retweet things as juvenile as that.”

I’ll add another word: disgraceful.

However, the president is going to “make America great again.”

Aren’t you proud of him? Neither am I.

local news, media news

Happy Trails, Part 36

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I’m staring a big anniversary — if you want to call it such — in the face. It’s two days away, but I thought I would share a thought or two today and then call it good.

First, I wish to make this declaration: Separation anxiety from a professional career is vastly overrated. I am living, breathing proof of that reality. It’s true and I’ll tell you why.

I won’t belabor you with many details of my sudden departure from daily journalism, which occurred on Aug. 30, 2012. Two days short of five years ago, I was told — in the midst of a “company reorganization” — that I no longer would be doing my job at the Amarillo Globe-News, which was to edit the paper’s opinion pages. Someone else — a colleague who formerly worked under my supervision — would do that job. We competed for my job and my employer decided to go with him.

Thus, a career that produced untold joy and satisfaction for yours truly for nearly 37 years came to screeching halt. I worked at the Globe-News for nearly 18 years and I thought I was doing a pretty good job. Silly me.

I walked out of my office, went home, came back the next day, cleared out my office — and was gone. I decided to quit immediately.

But I moved on. I stayed in the game, more or less, over the next few years. I was able to land part-time freelance gigs: writing a blog for Panhandle PBS; writing news features for KFDA NewsChannel 10’s website; helping edit a weekly newspaper in Tucumcari, N.M. I worked for six months as a juvenile supervision officer at the Randall County Youth Center of the High Plains. I worked as a customer service greeter at Street Toyota for about three years.

One by one those jobs went away. The Street Toyota job was the last one. Then in March, I decided to walk away from that.

I’ve been a full-time retiree ever since.

I also have spent little time looking back on the career that in many ways defined me. I have many more pleasant memories of those many years than negative ones. I got to travel around the world. I was honored to meet and interact with the most fascinating characters imaginable. I helped chronicle the stories that make communities tick. I got to help shape public opinion on pressing issues of the day.

I used to joke that I had the “best job in town, because I am allowed to foist my opinion on thousands of people every day.”

That was then. My final years as a journalist became a lot less fun than the earlier times. The Globe-News fell victim to the changing pressures being put on print publications. The top management didn’t do nearly enough to salvage employees’ morale as the paper struggled to build a new business model in this changing climate.

I’ve discovered this truth, too. It is that full-time retirement is all that it’s cracked up to be. My wife and I have been able to continue traveling. We’ll do much more of it in our fifth wheel RV — while we prepare to relocate to another community so we can live closer to our adorable granddaughter.

The Globe-News has been purchased by another corporate media company. Morris Communications, which owned the paper for more than four decades has decided to get out of newspaper publishing. They’re saying all the correct things publicly about how sad they are, and how GateHouse Media will continue its commitment to “community journalism.”

We’ll see about that.

I’m left, then, to offer a word of backhanded thanks to the company that told me five years ago that its plans to enact — in Globe-News publisher Lester Simpson’s words — “radical change” wouldn’t include me. It dawned on me some time ago that he spared me from the misery many of my former colleagues have endured.

I appreciate the freedom — and the time — to write this blog. I’m unfettered, unchained, unrestricted, unleashed, unencumbered … you name it. I can speak my mind.

Separation anxiety from daily journalism? Pfftt!

Life is great, man!

environmental news, State news

Hating the feeling of utter helplessness

You know the feeling, I’m sure.

Mother Nature levels her immense power onto a region of this great country and you are left only to wish the very best for those who are being affected.

I won’t suggest that “All I can do is pray.” A clergy friend of mine has reminded us many times over the years that “Prayer isn’t the least we can do; it’s the most we can do.”

So we are left to pray and hope for the very best for those being devastated by Hurricane Harvey’s unthinkable rage.

Social media have offered a pretty good device for those in harm’s way to tell the rest of us that they’re safe and sound. My Facebook news feed is full of such assurances and for that I am grateful on behalf of our many friends throughout the Houston and Golden Triangle areas of Southeast Texas.

Here we sit, though, a good distance away from the havoc. We’re perched way up yonder on the Caprock, high and dry and enjoying the sunshine at nearly 3,700 feet above sea level. The Texas Department of Transportation is advising motorists to avoid travel to the Gulf Coast. If only we could transport ourselves into the storm to lend a hand to the friends we have retained many years after leaving Beaumont for a new life in Amarillo.

And, no, I don’t intend to ignore the misery that has befallen all the good folks who are coping with the storm’s wrath.

So … what is there to do? Except pray.

I can do that. However, it does nothing to assuage my feeling of helplessness.

media news, national news

Trump tweets his way into twubble

Donald John Trump clearly has a Twitter fetish that exposes him to occasional snickering around the world.

One must expect, therefore, that the president of the United States of America — a self-proclaimed “really smart person” — can spell rudimentary words.

Trump unholstered his tweeting device and launched this little message into cyberspace: “Our great country has been divided for decade, but it will come together again.Sometimes protest is needed in order to heel,and heel we will!” 

Aaaack!!

Then he “corrected” it, sending out this follow-up message: “Our great country has been divided for decades. Somtimes you need protest in order to heel, & we will heel, & be stronger than ever before!”

Aaaack … again!

The president did correct the “heel” typo with a subsequent treat that spelled the word correctly.

The giggles and chuckles have commenced.

I’ve long wondered whether the president is as rich as he kept telling us he is. A look at those mysterious tax returns would answer that one. I’m now convinced that the president isn’t quite the “really smart person” he bragged about being.

But the overarching issue isn’t really whether the president can spell. The issue — as I see it — is his utter lack of self-awareness in the face of obvious ridicule.

I can think of one individual who isn’t laughing. That would be White House chief of staff (and retired Marine general) John Kelly.

national news

Lawmaker needs to be taught a lesson

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There’s a truth to be told about social media, which is that no matter how quickly you take back something you say, it remains on the record.

Listen up, Missouri state Sen. Maria Chappell-Nadal. I’m talking about you.

The Democratic lawmaker posted a tasteless remark on Facebook in which she said she hopes Donald Trump gets assassinated. It came down quickly. But, d’oh! A lot of folks saw it.

She might face removal from the Missouri Senate, according to that state’s Republican governor, Eric Greitens, and GOP lieutenant governor, Mark Parson. Both men said the Senate has the authority to do so. I want to join them in saying Chappell-Nadal’s colleagues should remove her as soon as possible.

I get that emotions are running high these days as they concern the president. Indeed, the president does little to calm them himself, as he fires out barrages routinely via Twitter attacking his critics. And, yes, he has a big mouth that he engages in public venues without giving much thought to the consequences of his words and the messages he sends.

None of that, however, should empower anyone to suggest that the president of the United States face the kind of threat Chappell-Nadal suggested in that heinous social media posting.

We cannot control what human beings think. We certain can deter them from saying certain things out loud, or posting them on social media.

As Lt. Gov. Parson said of Chappell-Nadal: “She is no longer fit to serve our state.”

national news

We aren’t born to hate

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion…”

— Former President Barack Obama

The 44th president of the United States fired this brief message out via Twitter over the weekend.

And what a weekend it was.

A riot broke out in Charlottesville, Va. Three people died as a result of the violence that erupted when white nationalists protested the taking down of a Confederate statue.

Obama’s presidential successor, Donald John Trump, had a chance to lead in the moment. He whiffed. He blew it. He choked.

Then came this tweet from Trump’s immediate predecessor. It has become the second-most “liked” tweet in Twitter history. I’ve been hooked up to Twitter for about five years, so I don’t have deep knowledge of the history of this social medium.

But the former president is so very correct. We aren’t born to hate. It is — if you’ll pardon this expression — a “learned” behavior.

Children who instinctively play with anyone are “taught” by their elders — be they parents, extended family or other so-called “adults” — to mistrust others. It’s a disgraceful, disgusting and so very dishonorable thing to teach our children.

As I look at the above quote from the former president, I am torn by conflicting emotions.

* One is to wish he could return to the post he had to surrender under the rules set for by the U.S. Constitution. I am longing for some semblance of dignity and decorum from our head of state. We aren’t getting anything of the sort from the man who now occupies the presidency.

* The other is to be glad for the president and his family to be away from the spotlight. They stood under the glare of the nation’s highest office for eight years. I am quite certain that historians will judge Barack Obama eventually as one of our nation’s most consequential and successful presidents — despite the partisan battles he fought virtually every step of the way.

Yes, these emotions are fighting with each other. I am afraid the first one — wishing for presidential dignity — is winning the fight.

media news, national news

End of cyber bullying? Yes, it starts at ‘home’

Mr. President: Your bullying hasn’t worked before and it won’t work now. No one is above the law.

— U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, responding via Twitter to social media attacks from the president of the United States

There you have it. The president is using Twitter to “bully” a member of the U.S. Senate.

Donald Trump tweeted some intensely personal criticism of Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, over the senator’s remarks this past weekend regarding the special counsel’s investigation of Russia’s efforts to influence our 2016 election.

Trump responded by calling Blumenthal a Vietnam War con man, referring to when Blumenthal was caught in 2010 fabricating stories about how he served “in Vietnam” during the war. He didn’t and apologized for the misleading statements he made saying that he had served “in country.”

Cyber bullying anyone? There it is.

Which brings me back to another point I’ve made already. First lady Melania Trump wants to make cyber bullying her signature effort as long as she and her husband occupy their respective titles. It’s a noble cause and I’ve applauded the first lady for bringing attention to the issue of cyber bullying, particularly among children.

However, Melania, you do need to start the campaign right at home, in the “dump” where you live part time with your husband, the White House.

Seriously, Mme. First Lady. Take your husband aside, reprimand him sternly and get him to stop using social media as a weapon with which he insults and bullies his political opponents.