Recent Journal Entries
- A Report Card on Forgiveness
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I’m a board member of the San Diego chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. We sponsor events to help raise awareness of media topics and provide education to current and future journalists. I’m new to the group, having joined the board in December, but so far I’ve been quite impressed with this chapter and its efforts.
My journey to Point Loma last night for “Report Card on the Media” provides a good example. This annual event features a panel of people who were in the news—preferably controversial in some way—and allows them to discuss how they feel the media treated them. The audience is SPJ members and other professional journalists and student journalists. It is taped for local TV, and moderated by a local TV personality.
This year’s panel featured a suburban mayor who was found drunk in his parked car and escorted home by police, the leader of a movement to ban alcohol at San Diego’s beaches, and the lesbian daughter of San Diego’s mayor, who although a conservative Republican on other issues is publicly supportive of gay marriage because of his daughter’s influence.
The fourth guest was the most compelling. Mark Struk was driving up the I-5 a few months ago when he came upon a car accident. Seeing a purse on the side of the road some ways away from the accident, he had his passenger pick up the purse and he dropped it at the crime scene.
The problem is, in the chaos of this fatal scene (Struk said he didn’t know at the time how serious the accident was), no CHP officer saw Struk drop off the purse. Instead, Struk somehow was arrested and vilified in the media as the guy who stole the purse of a car crash victim (who also was 6 months pregnant, making it even more poignant).
Two Marines who were at the scene helping —and saw Struk drop off the purse—later corroborated his story. But this was after he had spent a night in jail and had his picture plastered across every local TV news program and in the newspaper. He says he’s spent $5,000 in legal fees already to clear his name, but he’s still afraid to be seen in public.
The amazing thing about this guy is how calm and humble he was as he told his story and patiently answered questions. Wouldn’t you be angry? After all, he was just doing a good thing, being a Good Samaritan, right? And now he’s not only lost his reputation but he’s out $5,000—and that’s probably not the end of it.
I was really touched by Struk’s forgiving spirit. He clearly was burned by the media’s need to get this story, which if true would have been shocking and appalling, disseminated as soon as possible. But he agreed that a more in-depth analysis—that is, interviewing everyone who had been at the scene, including these Marines, and not just the CHP—could have resulted in truth much sooner than it did. Perhaps he would have suffered less.
But he never played the “poor me” card. In fact, he several times reflected on the life that was lost that day and said what happened to him was nothing compared to that.
Even though last night’s lessons were geared toward media, I was reminded of something much more profound: forgiveness is a choice. The wrongs against us might never be proven otherwise, and the wrongdoers might never ask us for forgiveness, but we can choose to forgive anyway. I don’t know anything about Struk’s religious background or if he is a believer, but I thought he was a wonderful example of Jesus’ teachings to turn the other cheek and approach your “enemies” with love.
Many there last night probably gleaned how they should be more careful in reporting. I walked away with a stronger determination to forgive. And I don’t think this new resolve was just because we were at a Christian college, although the beautiful lighted cross at the exit as I drove out did seem to be cheering me on.
- February 27, 2009 | 0 Comments | View or add comments
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- Finding Character in TV Land
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People who can’t post on their blog in seven months do not deserve a blog. I’m pretty sure that should be in the Blog Bible, but thank goodness there is no such book or I would have been excommunicated from that church.
OK, I think I’ve taken that analogy a bit too far.
Anyway, I’m back. Here’s what happened. When we were doing all the work on the kitchen, I promised (note to self: don’t promise what you cannot deliver) to post the finished pictures. Well, I never did that, and the more I thought about it the less I wanted to do it. But then I felt like I couldn’t post without doing that first, so I didn’t blog at all.
A vicious cycle.
Then my third book came out and I figured I’d better let go of the kitchen picture promise and get back to running my blog in case one of my 11 readers came here expecting an update. So here I am.
By the way, something is wrong with the image upload for my website, but if you want info on the book you can go to amazon.com or christianbook.com. The title is “Katt’s in the Cradle”—and you’ll have to read it to find out why.
With that series completed (we think), I’ve started ruminating on new book ideas. Ginger wants to do non-fiction for now, but I’ve been bitten by the fiction bug so I’ve been working on a couple of proposals. I’ve really been focusing on character development because that was something that frustrated me with the “Lulu’s” series. With four main characters and all the subplots in those books, we never were able to flesh out the characters as much as we would have liked and I always felt some of the minor characters were too stereotyped or obvious. So with my new proposals I want to develop really strong, interesting, and even surprising characters. But most of all I want them to be relatable on some level.
Most writers read a lot as a way of building skills. I love to read, but because I edit and write for a living, I find it difficult to read for pleasure. Plus I find myself too influenced by what I read and then I can’t remember if I imagined something myself or if I read it somewhere.
Instead, I look to TV and movies for my lessons in character development. (I know, flog me all you want, purists, but at least I’m honest!)
Two shows that have captivated me recently are “Big Love” and “Friday Night Lights,” but for different reasons. “Big Love” is the HBO series about the polygamist family that lives as “normal” people. I find the whole thing fascinating, especially because in all their weirdness they face the same marital, family, friend, and spiritual issues most of us face. And for HBO, it’s clean (of course, we are dealing with pseudo Mormons so how dirty could it get?). Most of all, “Big Love” has terrific character development. If someone asked me to describe each person—motivations, likes, dislikes, probable actions, etc.—I could do it. Yet the characters still surprise me sometimes. How could Nikki, the straitlaced daughter of “the prophet,” allow herself to become infatuated with her boss? How can Barb allow a fourth wife when she doesn’t even like the other two? How can Bill get involved in the gambling business? But even when the characters do something surprising, they are still in character. And that’s the catch: some shows try to surprise you so much that the characters go completely out of character—such as “fat” Gaby in “Desperate Housewives.” That’s when writing gets lazy, and the watcher/reader loses interest. Sort of like when a show “jumps the shark” (a reference to when the Fonz jumped a shark on skis in “Happy Days”) meaning the show has gone too far and either needs to return to its roots or just end.
One show that has returned to its roots is “My Name Is Earl.” This series started as one of the most clever I’d ever seen, but last season it dissolved into a complicated flashback mess that thankfully ended. This year the writers are back to their funny and snappy little plots that make for the perfect 30-minute sitcom. (But the best sitcom on TV in my book is “30 Rock.”)
But I digress. Back to my current captivations—the other one is “Friday Night Lights.” I’ve heard a lot about this show but never got around to watching it until last night. I DVR’d five episodes and watched them in a row, which is fun because there are no commercials, you feel like you’re watching a movie, and you don’t have to wait til next week to find out what happens. FNL is about a high school football team in fictional Dillon, Texas, and everything that happens around it. Having grown up in a town that was high-school-football-crazy (and being a football fan myself), I can relate to the set-up. But what really got to me last night was how well the show portrays middle-class Americans. Hollywood never seems to get middle-classers or Christians right—they end up as stereotypes or unrelatable. But watching FNL I saw settings and motivations that looked almost exactly like what I remembered growing up in Huber Heights, Ohio. Most of the homes in the show (it is shot on location in Austin, Texas, which helps) are real middle-class houses with smallish living areas and furniture that is more Value City than Ethan Allen. The kids do what kids do in a town like that, and so do the adults. Conversations are what I remember from those years, not the intellectual or sexy dialogues we so often see in contrived attempts at portraying the middle class. In other words, the people are REAL. And that makes the show almost like a documentary rather than fiction. My only complaint is almost all the women in the show wear low-cut or tight tops, which seems unnecessary. But it is Texas, after all.
I’d be curious, my dear 11 readers, which TV shows pique your interest because of believable characters, settings and plots. And which seem outrageous to you?
- February 21, 2009 | 0 Comments | View or add comments
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