My (small) role with cameras in the courtroom

News came out this morning that the Illinois Supreme Court is allowing video and still cameras in the state’s courtrooms. The decision comes after more than 20 years of debate on the subject.

Iowa has allowed still cameras in the courtrooms for 30 years. I’ve always been proud of the, albeit small, part I played when it was first allowed here.

The newspapers around Iowa fought long and hard to earn the right to take photos during trials. I was working at the Oskaloosa Herald, my first job after college, when the Iowa courts finally granted permission.

I reported on the first trial in our judicial district, only the second in the state of Iowa, in which cameras would be present.

The court’s permission to allow cameras came on what was considered a trial basis with strict limits and watchful eyes. The courts were watching to make sure the cameras would not disrupt the judicial process.

All of the newspapers and the state newspaper association were watching to, frankly, make sure that no one screwed it up for everyone else.

Being only the second trial with cameras in the state meant that all of those eyes were on us.

The trial involved three young men who had kidnapped a night manager at the local Pizza Hut, drove her in her vehicle to another part of the town where they dumped her off and then drove away in a second car with the night’s receipts. As it turned out I’d gone to high school with all three defendants, though none of them made it to the graduation ceremonies.

I was not the photographer assigned to the trial but I was charged with making the various arrangements necessary to be granted permission. You couldn’t just show up and start taking photos.

Generally speaking the details involved:

-- The state newspaper association had been charged with coordinating any requests. I had to first contact them and make the case that the trial was worthy of photographic coverage. They, in turn, made the formal request to the courts for permission.

-- Only two photographers were allowed to be in the courtroom so a pool system was used. If more than two newspapers requested permission, two of them would be chosen to take the photos but they had to provide copies to all other newspapers who requested them.

-- The photographers were not assigned to specific areas of the courtroom, but they did have to be in the general audience section and were not allowed to move around once they were seated.

Fortunately for us everything went smoothly and we were able to demonstrate that photos could be successfully taken without disrupting the court.

I’m sure there have been changes in the system in the 30 years since those first photos were taken. Today it has become a fairly common practice and people really don’t think all that much about it.

For those of us in the newspaper business at that time though it was a quite momentous occasion. I’m proud to say that I played a small role in making it happen.

What triggers mind's memories

Mind’s memories are a wonderful thing. They are so easily triggered by a song, a picture, a scent, whisking us back in time to another place and time.

Friday night, as I watched Tron Legacy, I was transported 30 years back in time to the summer I originally moved to this area.

For those of you unfamiliar with Tron Legacy, it’s the sequel to the original Tron movie starring Jeff Bridges. Out 30 years ago Tron was about a man who created a utopian world, gone wrong, inside a video game. He eventually becomes trapped inside the game, unable to return to the real world.

It became a cult classic, especially among its target market – young men who were into video games, computers and/or other technology. Namely, me.

Tron Legacy is the sequel in which the son of the original lead character goes back into the video game world to save his father. At the moment in the movie that the son stepped from the real world into the video game world my mind’s memories triggered and I went back in time to Muskegon, Michigan.

Thirty years ago I spent four weeks in Muskegon at the Brunswick headquarters learning how to be a bowling machine mechanic. My family had bought the bowling alley in Camanche a couple of months prior to that and I was going to be the mechanic.

The classes were in the evening so when I wasn’t studying I had time to kill. (By the way, you really did have to study because in those four weeks you essentially learn how to completely tear that machine apart and reassemble it. And there is a test at the end you must pass to receive your certification.)

There’s a terrific beach in Muskegon but the weather was cool while I was there so the number of days I could go there were limited.

The afternoon matinees at the theatre were pretty cheap so that was a good alternative. I went to four different movies but Tron is the only one I remember, which is why Tron Legacy suddenly triggered all those memories.

Brunswick paired us up with a roommate and we stayed at the Ramada Inn, a few blocks from the headquarters. I’d already been out of college for a couple of years by this time which made me one of the older students. Most were just a couple of years out of high school, including my roommate. A nice guy who had the unfortunate affliction of being about as bright as a box of rocks.

Our first night we made our way to a nearby drinking establishment where we had a couple of beers, and five kamikaze shots. After returning to our room the next thing I heard was a large crash in the bathroom. My new roommate, attempting to do what men do in bathrooms, had lost his balance, fallen to the floor, taking the towel rack with him. I knew at that moment that this was not going to be a good roommate fit.

Fortunately there was another student in the class who was about my age and felt the same way about sharing a room with someone on the lower end of the maturity level. He found another hotel downtown that was actually cheaper per week, for a single room, than what we were paying at the Ramada for a double. We were required to stay at the Ramada for a week, but by the end of the first week I was moving into the new hotel.

The hotel was decent and it was great to have a room to myself. The only thing I didn’t know until after I moved in was that the other student and I were the only Caucasians in the whole place. Everyone else was black.

This really wasn’t an issue. I mention it only for one reason….

Connie and I had begun seeing each other a few weeks prior to my trip. She decided to make the trip up to Muskegon to visit me at the end of my second week there. (Side note, while cleaning out her dresser drawer after she died I found the letter I wrote her from Michigan. She’d kept it all those years.)

A little background, Connie was born, raised, lived her entire life in Camanche, IA, population 4,200. Other than her family’s annual summer trip to northern Wisconsin she had seldom strayed out of the comforts of small town Iowa. Naïve would be a good word for her.

I didn’t say anything about the situation to her at the hotel because I never gave it a second thought. As we returned to the hotel the first night there was a big dance going on in the hotel and we were greeted by several of the people in attendance. The small town girl suddenly realized we were the minority in the big city.

She managed to keep her mouth from falling open, her eyes on the other hand were quite literally as big as saucers. We were back in the room for several minutes before her face went back to normal and words came out of her mouth. I think it was the only time I ever knew her to be speechless.

I don’t think I stopped laughing until sometime the next afternoon.

I can’t recommend Tron Legacy, it’s really not that good of a movie. But I want to thank it for bringing back some wonderful memories.

A plan for the year ahead

I spoke in my last post about using the first of the year as a point in time during which we can assess the past year and look toward the year ahead. I do make a list of things for the coming year but I don’t necessarily look at them as resolutions.

Some might fit the classic definition of a New Year’s resolution, and I’m ok with that, but more are closer to goals and others might simply be considered “to do’s.” Regardless, I think it’s important to spend time thinking about what you would like to do in the coming year and having a plan for how you’re going to make those things happen.

It’s a long list and I know some of them might not happen. Life happens. Things happen that can keep us from accomplishing things we would like to do. That’s understandable.

As I look back on this list a year from now I’m not going to beat myself up if I didn’t get some of the things done… as long as the reason I didn’t get them done was because something happened to keep me from doing them, or in some cases, better opportunities come along. The plan isn’t written in stone. It can and should adapt to my life as the year goes on.

On the other hand, I will beat myself up with the only reason something didn’t happen was simply because I got lazy, procrastinated too much and simply lost focus on what it was I wanted to do.

With that, in no particular order, here are some of the things I’d like to do this year. It’s long, so hang on tight:

-- Finish my diet and then keep the weight off. Yep, your typical New Year’s resolution. The only difference is that I’m not starting the diet now, I’ve been on it for some time and I should be done in a couple more weeks. Believe me, being on a diet during the holidays is hell but it feels good now to know I’m almost done.

-- Finish the bathroom downstairs. When I bought the house, the plumbing had been run into the bathroom and drywall was put up on the walls but that was as far as the previous owners had gotten. I’d planned to finish it last year and put it off. Yes, this is one I’ve been beating myself up about.

-- Complete a couple of other home projects. I’m already part of the way down this path. A new front door was installed a couple of weeks ago. I’ll post about that later. I’d also like to find an old buffet to repurpose and/or build an armoire in my bedroom.

-- I have a large number of old albums I’d like to digitize and I want to transfer all of those old home videos over to dvd’s. I may not get both of these done, but I would like to check one off the list.

-- Read more, watch more movies, go to more plays. I don’t know what happen this past year, especially near the end of the year, but I got into a very bad habit of coming home from work and plopping in front of the television. I’d never done that before in my life and I’m really not happy that I allowed it to happen. I’ve always loved going to plays and watching movies, and I’m equally unhappy that I got out of the habit of going to those during the latter half of last year. (I’ve already watched five movies since the first of the year.) I’m a big magazine reader and have a stack of those sitting in the corner that I’ve also fallen behind in reading, so I have plenty to keep me busy.

-- Write more in my blog. In my defense, after I posted the Aha Moment video I really wanted to take a break from the blog and let that one speak for itself for a while. I just hadn’t planned on the break being quite as long as it’s been.

-- Go to see a Minnesota Vikings game at the Metrodome. I used to get to a game almost every year. It wasn’t always in Minnesota, but I did get to one somewhere. I haven’t been to one since Connie died. This one may not happen simply because the Vikings aren’t even sure right now if they’ll be playing in Minnesota next year. They’ve been fighting with the state to get a new stadium for years and now it’s down to the next couple of months in which something has to happen or they’re gone. If they are back in the Metrodome, I’d like to get back one last time just to relive some old memories.

-- Visit Darling Daughter, at least once, wherever she ends up in the fall. She’s looking at grad schools now and doesn’t know if she’ll be east, west or somewhere in between. Wherever she is, I want to go visit.

-- Take another acting class, a glass blowing class and maybe a drawing class. I’d taken an acting class a couple of years ago and planned on taking another, but allowed various conflicts to get in the way. I’m just going to have to commit to making the time for it. I was signed up for a glass blowing class late last fall but the instructor canceled the class. Too bad he didn’t tell anyone. The students showed up for the first day and he wasn’t there. I’ve found another place that gives lessons about an hour-and-a-half from here and hope to take a class there in the spring, when I don’t have to worry about snow getting in the way of driving there.

-- Continue working on my photography, focusing on learning some of the more technical details like how to use Photoshop.

-- I started getting into video a bit last year and I have an idea for a project I’d like to explore. I don’t know if it will work but I at least want to follow it through to the point where I’m either doing it or decide I can’t pull it off. You’ll have to stay tuned to hear more about that one, if it works.

Nope, that’s not everything. There are three or four more things on the list but, frankly, they’re a little more personal and I don’t care to share them with the world. Sorry.

One more thing, I think it’s all doable. Not only that, I'm hoping for some unexpected surprises. How much fun would it be if we didn't have those?

It’s going to be a great year.

Upon further review, it was a pretty good year

Couple of different thoughts… bear with me as I pull them together.

First thought, many people downplay New Year’s Eve and the whole resolution-making thing. I think they’re mistaken. I agree, making resolutions once every 365 days that you only keep for about 10 of those days is fruitless.

However, the end of the calendar year is an appropriate time for us to assess where we are in our lives. It’s a time during which we can look at the year just passed and determine what we have accomplished, and look forward to the year ahead and what might be accomplished.

Second thought, most of us, especially in American society, all too often fall into the trap of focusing on today, losing sight of the bigger picture. We get so wrapped up with where our lives are and what we are doing now, that we don’t see our place in the broader spectrum of things.

This is particularly true when we are young, when we have lived such a small portion of our lives and so don’t have the many years of experiences we have when we are older. At my age I thought I had become immune to falling into the trap of focusing on today but it snuck up on me and caught me by surprise in the last few weeks of 2011.

There were a variety of reasons for it, the biggest of which was that this was the first Christmas that Darling Daughter and I wouldn’t be together. The only day she had off from her current job was Christmas day, hardly enough time to fly home and back from the east coast.

It wasn’t until New Year’s Eve was within sight on the calendar and I began thinking about where my life was that I realized I had fallen into the trap. I was so focused on today that I thought I hadn’t accomplished anything this past year, that I had wasted 365 days of opportunity.

But as I looked back on the year I realized that wasn’t the case. Some great things happened this past year and I’m thankful for them.

I really got back into my photography, taking a lot of pictures at a wide variety of events throughout this area… one of my goals heading into the year.

I traveled to the northeast part of the country, completing my goal of checking the remaining states off my list that I need to say I’ve seen all 48 of the continental United States. I now just need Alaska and Hawaii to have visited all 50 states.

I drove back to northern Wisconsin, revisiting the area my wife loved so much and reliving some wonderful memories.

I spent quite a bit of time with Darling Daughter in April and May as she graduated from the University of Iowa. I know she’s the one who did all of that classwork but I like to think I had more than a little to do with her success.

I waved goodbye to her in June as she headed off for her internship at the Olney Theatre in Maryland.

I really enjoyed my summer and fall with no end to the day trips throughout the area.

I saw Train and Maroon 5 in concert at the Iowa State Fair. I love the State Fair and was excited to get back there after missing it last year.

I made a Mutual of Omaha Aha Moment video.

It was good year. Now that I look back at it I realize just how much was accomplished, and wonder how I’m going to top that this year.

But I’ll save that for my next post.

My Aha Moment

Eight weeks ago I received an unexpected e-mail from Olivia Lasky who works for the company producing Mutual of Omaha's "Aha Moment" campaign. She had found my blog and wanted to know if I would participate in the campaign.

"We’re taking our 34-foot Airstream mobile film studio to 25 cities to capture inspirational, life-changing aha moments from folks all over the country," she wrote. " As I came across your website, I couldn’t help but think that you might have an aha moment to share."

She explained that the studio would be stopping in Davenport on August 4 and 5 and she was looking for people to participate. The promotion is open to everyone and I'm guessing Olivia's job is to do the advance work of searching for people in the city the studio is going to and making sure the schedule is at least partially filled before it arrives. That way they don't have to rely on people showing up at random to fill their timeslots.

It seemed like a fun thing to do so I agreed.

The whole thing is pretty simple. The mobile studio was parked outside a local museum. I arrived at my designated time, filled out a short release form with the basic name/address information as well as a short synopsis of my aha moment.

From there they usher you into the studio. It's hot in there. It's essentially a small closed box with no windows or air conditioning; the noise from air conditioning would interfere with the audio recording.

They sit you on a stool and you talk to a young lady who stands directly beside the camera. You start by telling your aha moment, twice, and then she asks you questions related to the aha moment you just shared.

All told it takes about 10 minutes. From there they send it back to the main studio offices where it's all edited together into the finished product.

They just completed it and put it online a couple of days ago. It's not exactly the way I would have done it but they did do a good job so I can't complain.

It was fun to do and I can count it as yet another life experience, another one of those things I have done.

And now, here's my Mutual of Omaha Aha Moment....

You can find the other Davenport Aha Moments on the website.