The homeless of tomorrow are being created on the battlefields of today.
October 2010
The man of a dozen voices
Like many kids who grew up watching cartoons, I was amazed by the vocal gymnastics performed by Mel Blanc: “the man of 1000 voices.” Blanc was the voice behind so many cartoon characters, possessing such a range that he could voice the majority of characters in a show without any two voices sounding alike.
As I went about my weekend it occurred to me that I could try to be more like Blanc in my voiceover work. I spoke in my announcer’s voice when I was in my voiceover “class” but that’s certainly not all I can do. While listening to the N.C. State game on the radio, for instance, I easily slipped into a good ol’ boy Southern accent as I repeated one of the commercials.
“Duh!” I thought. This is the kind of stuff I do all the time without thinking about it. I can make my voice sound just about any way I want to.
For the rest of the weekend, I spent the break time between the stuff I was doing just recording little clips of voices I had come up with: creating a vocal library. All of those little voices I use off and on during the day can be easily forgotten if I don’t capture them.
The voices themselves might not be marketable but the exercise itself helps me expand my vocal variety. And it’s fun, too!
Tardy Tavern
I had planned to post an update on my Isaac Hunter’s Tavern trek. Instead I found a bunch of more resources (actual books!) that I would like to consult before I post again. I don’t want to go off half-cocked, so look for a more complete update in a week or so.
Waiting for Superman
I was invited by a friend to see a prescreening of Waiting for Superman: a documentary about the failures of America’s educational system. The movie was compelling: it was hard not to root for the five families the film followed through their trials with their respective school systems. By the end of the film, though, I wondered what it all meant.
The film describes in detail some of the problems with our schooling but offers few solutions. All I seemed to have learned was that our schools are failing, its all the fault of the teachers’ unions, and the successful teachers are the ones who can teach their students to rap. I felt a bit short-changed as there was really no epiphany in the film. Going into the movie, I was led to believe that it would show what approaches worked but there was disappointingly little of this.
Education remains a very emotional issue and there are no easy answers. Waiting for Superman gives a good effort but doesn’t delve deep enough to really do this topic justice. If you have questions about how we should be teaching our children, however, you’ll likely still have questions once you’ve seen it. I’m still waiting for Superman, myself.
See Salon for another review I agreed with.
Update: The N&O’s Craig Lindsey says the movie shows how to fix our broken schools. Maybe he saw a different film than I did.
The sad story of Kenny Cross
I was searching the Internets today when I ran across this excellent article by freelance writer Emily Badger. Badger tells the story of Kenny Cross, a young black man raised in Raleigh in a loving, supportive, well-off home but who deliberately took a wrong turn in life. Cross had the potential to become an Olympic swimmer but fell in with the wrong crowd in college. Convinced he needed to prove he was “black enough,” Cross joined his criminal friends on an armed-robbery crime spree across the Southeast, holding up dozens of motels and check-cashing stores. He’s now in prison serving a 15-year sentence.
Though Cross’s mother is a doctor and his family apparently did everything right, Cross still chose a life of crime. As his father put it, “He’s stealing from people $300 when he could have called home for a thousand. It made no sense. It still doesn’t make any sense.” Cross had such a promising future but he threw it away. Why?
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Hunting Isaac Hunter’s tavern
Wake Forest Road in 1965
On a whim I looked back at the 1965 aerial photo I got from the North Carolina Geological Survey when I was researching the Raleigh Speedway. It turns out this photograph nicely covers the Wake Forest Road area north of the Beltline! This means it probably shows Isaac Hunter’s Tavern, but the question is where?
Looking at this shot you can see many residential-type buildings along the road. At the bottom is the Beltline, still being constructed and at the top of the photo you can see the eastern half of St. Albans Drive branching off. This area roughly corresponds to this modern-day view shown on Google Maps.
Now my Navy military-intelligence training did not make me a satellite imagery expert, but looking at this photo and comparing it to the roof of the tavern as shown in the Flickr images it’s pretty easy to rule out many of the buildings shown. Second-story homes cast longer shadows and the tavern is decidedly single-story. There are also homes with much fancier rooflines than the tavern, so those are easily ruled out. What does that leave? I’ve (crudely) highlighted two buildings that seem like good candidates.
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Isaac Hunter’s Tavern
Courtesy North Carolina State Archives
This post over at New Raleigh got me wondering again about the long-lost Raleigh landmark, Isaac Hunter’s Tavern. In its day the tavern was known far and wide. It drew our early state representatives together long enough for them to decide to create a new state capital, and thus decreed that this capital would be located within ten miles of the tavern. Yet, in spite of its historical significance to our city and state, no trace of the tavern still exists. Sad, isn’t it?
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Downtown lowdown
I was wandering around downtown this afternoon, on a mission to update the Wikipedia photos for Raleigh and also Memorial Auditorium. As I snapped pictures of Memorial Auditorium a man walked up to me and asked for things to do around town. He was a bit shorter than me with curly shoulder-length hair and wore a tam-o-shanter cap and dark sunglasses. I imagined that he had just gotten off a plane from New York City.
“Isn’t there a museum nearby?” he asked.
“Yes, there are a few. Perhaps you’d like to go to the North Carolina Museum of Art?”
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Columbus Day
Columbus
I’ve got Columbus Day off today, for the first time I can recall. Most businesses keep chugging away on Columbus Day, and while I appreciate an extra day to get things done I have to say that I don’t think Christopher Columbus is the kind of guy we should be celebrating.
Columbus was a greedy, murderous, slave-trader who cared little for the indigenous people he met: the same people who repeatedly saved his bacon in spite of his cruel behavior. He was deluded to the day he died that he had discovered a path to India. Not exactly a role model, in my book, but I’m grateful for the day off anyway.
Secret media cabal weighs information future
Ok, not really. I was invited to participate in a roundtable discussion today about the state of the Triangle media by Fiona Morgan of the New America Foundation. The roundtable was to three general questions about our community:
1. How healthy do we consider the Triangle’s “information community?”
2. What are the challenges as we move into a digital age?
3. What are the opportunities for the Triangle and its communities?
Joining me were a number of leading media experts, both traditional and so-called “new media.” John Drescher of the N&O, Steve Shewel of the Independent Weekly, Barry Moore of the Garner Citizen (whom I last saw wearing a badge when I lived in Garner and was working closely with Garner PD), Kevin Davis of Bull City Rising, Paul Jones of Ibiblio fame, Gail Roper of the City of Raleigh, and many, many others. I felt a bit out of place in the room, as my experience with journalism ended when my high school journalism class did. Fiona has been impressed with my East CAC efforts to connect my community, so I provided perhaps a nontraditional angle to the discussion.
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