All Apologies: On Being a Bad Blogger

Dear Reader, I am sorry that I have not posted here for weeks–weeks! It’s not been for lack of content or interest, but merely lack of time and energy.

I have been trying to sort out the tangled decision about where to go in the next stage of life. I have made a handful of visits to Berkeley and its Graduate School of Journalism. I recently returned from New York City and its Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. I have sought counsel from a long list of luminaries, including Adam Hochschild, Barry Bearak, Bill Drummond, John Lyons-Gould, Rod Mackenzie, Alisa Dichter, Vera Petkova, Gary Lenhart, Andrew Revkin, Tom Valtin, Nanette Asimov, Rebecca Solnit, Cynthia Gorney, my mother, Soon Hyouk Lee, William Pallister, Rob Gunnison, Jeremy Rue, Daniel Porter, David Perlman, Peter Alsop, Brian Chang, Adrian Cotter, Pat Joseph, Joan Hamilton, Ethan Klein, Mike Papciak, Jon Mooallem, and many, many others, and I appreciate very much their thoughts. I had an opportunity to ask Jon Stewart, but then his son began to cry. I think it is foolish to turn too inward when making a decision like this–I’ve been exposed to all kinds of perspectives and angles that did not initially occur to me. I’ve discovered extra information; for example, I scooped the San Francisco Chronicle by about two weeks on Orville Schell’s stepping down as dean at Berkeley, but had nowhere to publish it (except, I suppose, here). But I do risk the Clintonian trap of too much information, with its built-in delays and eventual paralysis by analysis.

It is, apparently, important to point out that these programs both are graduate schools, because they are the only two in the country. Nick Lemann, the New Yorker staff writer and Columbia dean, was careful to emphasize this. (City University of New York will be inaugurating a third graduate school this fall.) The rest are open to, and presumably overwhelmed by, the undergraduate mob.

But as for you, Reader, as a sign of my affection I include this photograph. A friend noted that it “looks like it’s leaning over to give the pole a kiss.” That is just adorable.

By | 27th April 2006 at 11:38 am
Filed under: education, influence, journalism, photography, San Francisco
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  • will

    San Francisco has more of these metal newsprint media boxes, dispensing publications both free and otherwise, than any city I’ve ever seen. The lashing of this particular one, for the free SF Weekly, to a pole, suggests that they are subject to episodes of mobility unintended by their custodians. Which leads me to ask, as this photo prompted me to do, what happened to what was a short while ago the most conspicuous of these dispensers, those for Yank, a publication of presumably prurient interest that I would have liberated from its dispenser for curiosity’s sake, had not it cost $1.00 that I was inexplicably unwilling to hand over. Maybe not so inexplicably, because the most notable feature of Yank vending dispensers, with their distinctive red-stencilled logo on a silver background, was that in virtually every case they had not only been moved from their enchained sidewalk stations, but savagely beaten and vandalized by parties in a manner that suggested the expression of some rather serious grievance the grounds of which I can only speculate. Were the Yank dispensers holding back earnings from management? They were all around town a couple of years ago, typically several huddled desperately together, as if scared to be alone, thrashed within an inch of utter destruction and usually toppled backwards or on their sides. So the thing was, I doubted they would actually work if I did attempt to invest a hard-earned financial district dollar to step inside the world of Yank (besides, they usually contained no product). And what would my dollar have bought me? But the point is, Yank dispensers: what happened to them? They seem to have lived the fast, violent lives commonly associated with the sex industry and subsequently gone, as it were, the way of all flesh. Yet here in Tim’s photo is demure SF Weekly, selfless giver of free entertainment tips, leaning over shyly to impart a kiss — a rueful counterpoint of the life Yank never had, never could have. Goodbye, Yank. Je me souviens.

  • kate

    … and the winner is???
    i’m dying to know.

  • Tim Lesle

    Will’s points on Yank deserve much thought and a measured response. Fortunately, I have thought a lot about Yank. The response is forthcoming soon, I hope.

    Kate, the answer to your question has been posted in its own entry here.