Wyndham Chicago, The Chicago Apple Store, Northwest Indiana Not Cosmopolitan?

Fresh back from Chicago, I have much on my mind.  I learned a lot of things on the trip, even though I cut it short a day to come back to be home with the family.  They Wyndham Chicago on St. Clair is a great hotel.  The room I was in was big.  The bed was comfy.  The food in the restaurant downstairs on the second floor, very good.  The courtesy of the concierge desk was very good, too.  Russell, Anthony and Kaitlin all were very professional, prompt and helpful.  Thanks guys.

I did make it over to The Apple Store on Michigan Avenue.  Way cool.  Glass steps up to the second floor.  A theater upstairs where they hold court for classes.  Dallas has a great Apple Store, Chicago’s is just in a different league.  But of course, it’s on the Magnificent Mile.

There is a Hershey Store across diagonally from Water Tower Place.  What a cool store.  They feature the world’s largest chocolate bar.  Essentially, the one you’d buy in a store, but this one is about 1.5 feet long and about 10 inches across and about .5 inches thick.  It runs $30 but looked like it would have been worth every single bite.

And so, as I sat one morning in the restaurant at The Wyndham Chicago, I could not help but overhear two more senior gents than I talking about the area.  One, like me, was a native of the area to the south east of Chicago.  As you know, I was born in Gary and my grandparents are/were from Hobart.  While downtown Chicago, (and I know I’ve said time and again, if the DISD job had opened up in Chicago, I would be 100 times happier) is quite metropolitan, the man was saying that Northwest Indiana isn’t.  And the more I thought about it, he’s right.  Now is that all bad?

Grandpa Claxton quit school in Northern Alabama in the eighth grade so he could help support his family.  When my dad was seven in 1952, Grandpa loaded up the family and drove up highway 31 to Hobart, IN to take a job working in the steel mills that John Cougar Melencamp so poignantly refers to in Minutes to Memories.  Some of the Claxton clan also went north, some stayed south.

And so, Grandpa worked hard for the next 35-40 years and raised his family.  The house they raised my three aunts and dad in would fit inside the first floor of my house, and there would be room left over on the first floor, let alone the second.  How they managed four kids in two bed rooms and one of themselves is still a mystery to me, but they did it.  Dad joined the air force in 1968 and me, mom and dad left for a 20-year ride on the road and in the air.

Hobart still is in many ways like it was when I was a kid.  The Rocket, a Sonic-style drive in (which I’m told actually had good food as opposed to that stale, pre-packaged blah Cliff ‘Hot Head, Arrogant, Richard Cranium’ Hudson is so proud of) is still there off Route 6 and Wisconsin, though it’s long been something else.

My point here is that the man was right and I’d never really thought about it in that way until he said it.  As I’ve written or certainly thought since I’ve taken my recent position, is that I missed many opportunities being stuck in Montgomery, AL during the early years of my career.  Maybe being there made it easier to become the governor’s press secretary by age 30, but I also missed out on a heap of opportunities for refinement, for seeing and being more on the cutting edge.

And so I wonder, (bringing this home) how to more positively influence what my kids are exposed to here in Dallas.  They certainly will have greater opportunities than I had for cosmopolitan exposure.  I mean, how much of that do you get in Northern Michigan at the former K.I. Sawyer AFB?  That experience afforded me a greater appreciation for the environment.  We spent every day we had the opportunity to do so, playing in the woods, building forts, riding trails, digging as far as we could muster.

And then it frustrates me incredibly to see, particularly my boys, wanting to spend much if not all of their days inside sitting at their computers and game consoles.  I had two of them wash my car last weekend and all I heard was how they normally just sit in the back while mom drives thru a car wash.  They’re 14 and 15.  Heck, when I was that age, I would wash my mom’s station wagon and dad’s Rabbit weekly, dreaming about being able to drive them.  Dreaming of getting an old ‘57 Chevy and fixing it up when I got old enough.  My boys wouldn’t know one if they saw it.

And so maybe the whole answer here isn’t just living in a big city.  It really goes back to spending time with your kids.  Exposing them to the things that will /could change their lives forever.   TVs and games and computers and DSs can be great electronic babysitters, but the rest of the world passes by while they’re tuned in, and they don’t even realize it.

Sunday Morning, Cold In Dallas

I was one of the few people in Chicago wearing shorts yesterday morning as I left my hotel.  One man told me as I was sitting in the lobby waiting for the Airport Express shuttle that he hoped I was “going somewhere South.”  It was 40 degrees in the Windy City.  And as I awoke this morning, at home, well, it’s 44 here now and just as windy as Chicago.   No shorts today.

Kari sent out an email to several family members on Thursday that I’m going to share in this space.  She has a login and I’ve been trying to get her to post things on the blog, but I remain hopeful she will.

Donny is such an amazing artist.  Beautiful paintings of his are hanging up all around the house, and I enjoy every last one of them.  He’s also created some incredible sketches and watercolors.  Over the last year, Donny has started dabbling in woodworking.

The backyard is almost completed.  It still needs paint and some more fence to hide the shed in back, but it won’t be long til I send you pictures of our completed backyard retreat!  Here are some pictures of Donny’s yard art in progress…

Here are the photos she speaks of in the email.  I was hoping I could get out there and do more today, but alas, did I mention it’s 44 degrees?  I can’t get sick again.  Next weekend I’m off to DC.  And I’m still not over the double middle ear, sinus infection.  Argh.   It’s been eight days now.

EWA and Welcome To Chicago

For about the past month and a half, I’ve been using my training on Final Cut Express from The Apple Store to edit the video production to be shown at The Education Writer’s Association meeting in Chicago this weekend. It’s been a great learning experience, all from an idea I got on March 4 at 330 a.m. while in Houston preparing to shoot the 20-plus camp directors for the ExxonMobil Bernard Harris Summer Science Camps. Well, last night as all members arrived at the hotel here in Chicago, they were treated to a copy of the DVD in Windows Media (yawn) format anticipating that most who arrived here would have a PC laptop. I’ve been surprised how many have Macs. And so I’ve been quietly cussing that the DVD was in WM because it’s a loop and it doesn’t start up when you use it on a real computer, i.e. a Mac.

But I certainly have made some good contacts and friendships while here. My good friend Kent Fischer from The Dallas Morning News is been seriously bitten by the blog bug. I met a good friend of his named Alex Russo, and have enjoyed reading his blog, This Week In Education. (http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/) (Sorry, I can’t do links with a Mac in Safari in Word Press).

This has been a good conference and it is has been good to see young guns on the edge of new technologies searching for answers to how to plug into the future in an ever-changing profession such as the news business. Once upon a time, I was a young press secretary to a governor who was showed what a Web browser was and how it worked. I am the one who had the first T1 lines put into the Alabama Capitol in 1995. I am the first one to have secured an email address (on CompuServe) for Alabama Gov. Fob James. And made one of the first campaign Web sites in the state, too.

Kent, Alex and Scott Elliot from The Dayton Daily all are trying to do what I was doing nearly 15 years ago, this time with blogging. It’s an exciting time, and one that will continue to evolve the news industry and how PR people like myself interact with them.

Kent gave Dallas ISD media a good raking over the coals yesterday in one of his presentations. I kept thinking back to my 5.5 years in that job and my long-held philosophy of “Speed Kills.” That could not be any more an accurate term today than it was when Carville was touting it in 1992.

But some will resist change for whatever reason. One very good reporter here today was sitting in the lobby writing out their presentation on paper with a pen because the company laptop never works and well, like I said, some old habits never change.

I am ready to go home though and spend time with my wife and kids. Next weekend I leave for DC for another event. And the pace of the Internet keeps on marching forward. Tomorrow, I go home to be a dad again. I cannot wait.

On A Dream Called The City of New Orleans….

I can hardly believe it’s Thursday, and at the same time, can’t believe it’s just Thursday. What a fast week it’s been. I was not excited about making a trip to NOLA Monday, but it turned out to be a very good experience. The media coverage of our events was good, but I got to see some gems that I didn’t expect to see. There were a couple of men who were helping us from the NOLA area for our events. Nearly every person I’ve talked with when I have been to New Orleans talks about how they’ve got a contractor coming to their house, mostly either that day or in the coming days. In St. Bernard Parish and even in Gentilly, there still are many piles of rotted wood that have been removed from a house sitting at the street awaiting pick up. I did notice that the number of smaller trailers parked in front of houses has dropped significantly since January, which means people are getting back into their houses more and more. But as you stand in front of a school waiting for a live shot, you can’t help but notice the number of full dump trucks going by, the number of concrete trucks passing you by, and semi trucks loaded with 2 x 4s and ply headed for somewhere nearby. And the haunting X spray paint markers still are on many of the houses, even revamped ones, I guess as a symbol of not being fully ready to let go. The number at the bottom of the X is the number of people searchers found dead in the home. It’s always better to see a 0 there, obviously.

Down on Canal Street Monday evening in the un-spring-like chill we recently experienced, things were hopping. Tourists were out walking, locals were out walking or doing what ever it was they do, and the shops were open along the street. As I walked from the La Quinta on Camp toward Canal Street I could not help but be fascinated by the bricked buildings and the patchwork of concrete along the sidewalk and road and imagine all the stories that could be told of events that had happened along those spots throughout the many, many years of the city’s history. There certainly is a special magic to this city from a historical perspective, something I didn’t expect.

And so the guys we talked with told some incredible stories of survival, of rebuilding, of adapting to the curves life tosses you. There was a story of a man whose mother was in her late 80s and he physically had to carry her out of her house before the Storm hit because she’d been there most of her life and didn’t want to leave. They went east toward Mississippi and the rains that came a week or so later after Katrina flooded them from that spot, too, and now they’re in Natchez, on the east side, and safe for now from flooding.

Then there was the discussion of “the Katrina Smell” as they call it in NOLA. A smell of rotted wood, mold, etc. that lingers because of the tens of thousands of homes that have yet to be touched that got water in them from rising water or leaks in the roof and the spores of that disaster still abound. They said they don’t fret so much about mold in New Orleans like we might in other parts of the country. “This New Orleans, we’ve got mold here 24/7.”

Then were photos that were taken of the inside of schools, places where the water levels got as high as 22 feet. And now the schools back open, looking brand new and life goes on.

I wish more was being done to capture the stories of rebuilding that are going on. They are priceless and special and would make a great documentary. I wish I was at a place in my life, too, where I could take a few months to go down there with a camera crew and record some of these incredible stories of survival and rebuilding, and share them with the world. They would inspire new hope in mankind. And while as an outsider up until Monday and Tuesday I would have questioned why anyone would rebuild where they know another storm shall hit again in the future, these fokes I talked with have a special love for their city, one you don’t see in Dallas or Fort Worth. Texans will boast about how glad they are to be from Texas and how everything here is done this way and not that when they’re in other parts of the country, but in New Orleans, these fokes love their city and they want to put their lives back together, whatever shape in which that might be.

Sunday Evening, Marking progress

It’s been a good weekend. We’ve gotten much done on the wood bench/fence/pergola project at the back of the yard. Installed the first of four arches today as the focal point in the back. Very smooth and enjoyable to continue to see this project progress as I make it up. I decided against making a couple of planters in the serpentine seating that wraps around the concrete area of the pool in the deep end. I figured we’d do better with more seating than that sort of decorative appeal. I can always build stand-alone planters later.

Been a good week with the girls, though they’ve been calling their mother repeatedly and not getting much in return. It seems like every couple of hours today and yesterday they asked to call her. All three of them.

Need to pack for trip tomorrow to NOLA. Going to be a wild week.

Reading to your kids at night? BBC says you probably are not.

I admit it up front, I just don’t get to do this activity.  At the end of the day, I’m sacked.  It’s not that I don’t ever do it, but I would be lying if I said I was doing this every night with at least one of the seven kids in my home.  Heck, even Ward Cleaver wasn’t reading to the boys before he put them to bed at night.

Here is the BBC’s story:

Dads ‘don’t read bedtime stories’

Some fathers did not feel confident reading aloud Less than half of fathers regularly read bedtime stories to their children, research has suggested. Some 42% of fathers said they were bedtime story readers, compared with 76% of mothers, a poll of 2,207 adults for the National Year of Reading found. But 60% of fathers blamed long hours and stress. Television was children’s most common pre-sleep activity. Children’s Secretary Ed Balls said reading opened doors to everything. Boys are consistently outperformed by girls when it comes to reading. Last year 87% of girls reached the required standard of reading at the end of primary school, compared with 81% of boys. ‘Long hours’ And campaigners say boys need to see male role models picking up books and enjoying them. Director of the National Year of Reading Honor-Wilson Fletcher said: “Reading has never been more important, but we know boys lag far behind girls when it comes to reading. “Boys need to see their dads enjoying reading if they are to become readers themselves as they grow up. “Football programmes, blogs, newspapers and sports magazines are just as valuable reading as fairy tales.” Six out of 10 fathers said they did not read to their children at bedtime because of long hours and stress. And one in 10 said they lacked confidence and felt mothers were better suited to the role. ‘Improve chances’ Recent research for the National Literacy Trust suggested three-quarters of children were encouraged to read by their mother, but only a half said the same of their father. Nearly a quarter of the pupils surveyed said no-one in their family encouraged them to read. Mr Balls said: “Getting your children - both boys and girls - to be passionate about reading is something all parents can do. “Reading to your children for 10 minutes at bedtime is the best way of improving our kids’ chances when they get to school.”

A Dad’s Moment…. Beautiful piece here.

What a wonderful piece.

Michael O’Rourke:  Thumbs up to all dads who are there, but learning to let go