Thinking backward.

Worked at Sissy's this morning and found that the house servants had locked all the outdoor water spigots. Most unhelpful. Most decidedly unhelpful. Called Charles, he told me where the key was to the lock. Unlocked them and got everything all watered in beneath the eaves and on the patios, where it didn't rain.

Charles gave me a HUGE Aloe Vera plant. It's sitting in my enclosed patio now and I can tell it's going to become one of my most treasured plants. I have no idea how old this thing is, but I've only ever seen one bigger, and it was in the shop of a Curandera near my old apartment on Central.

Shadowed Steve in the Control Room this afternoon for the first hour of Weekday "All Things Considered" (ATC). Then he turned it over to me for the second hour -- "the easy hour". Hah! It's only "easy" if listeners don't already expect considerably more than is required by the program log.

I won't bore you with all the details of everything I screwed up on, but it *wasn't* a *complete* disaster. I had one dirty cutaway, and missed the 32:30 headlines when I had *everything* lined up for headlines at 34:30 at 32:10 and just let network run instead of going ON AIR and sounding panicked. No one called to complain -- though I did get one decidedly drunk caller who thought I was the host for the music show that followed me: "The Home of Happy Feet", which is probably the longest-running show we have. *Amazing* music, and I couldn't have asked for a better crew to take over from me during a weekday transition. But I did say something along the lines of "stay home for the tune of happy feet" in forward announcing. And I'm rather expert at being kind and polite to drunk people, and know at least enough to tell when they're talking about a folk singer whose name I vaguely recognise "slapping the shit out of Dick Cheney" that they're clearly meaning to talk to the takeover crew, and are just kind of free-associating what they're hearing on the news.

Instead of going over everything I did wrong, I'll just share this little snippet of conversation that happened in the newsroom yesterday:

Steve: So let's make this easy. You've got three stories to run, totalling 14 minutes. Where do you run them?
Me: Well, if I run them at 35:30, I've got 17 minutes to play with, and can start out with headlines.
Steve: No. You're trying to hit the post at 58:20.
Me: I know. But I mean. . .
Steve: No. You time from the top of the hour.
Me: I am. Oh. . . you mean. . .
Steve: Yeah. The other way.
Me: Oh. I see. I just have to think backwards.
Steve: Yes. It's called "backtiming".
Me: Oh, right. I did that for that music show.
Steve: Exactly.
Me: So I should be thinking, instead of 35:30 plus 14, I should be thinking 58:20 minus 14.
Steve: Yes.

And then, again:

Steve: Hypothetical. Senator Bingaman dies in an aeroplane crash at 5:41. What do you do?
Me: At 5:41? Jeez -- since hour one is hour two, I let the network run 'til 44:30 and then bump whatever I've got to lead with what I've got. Or I check the rundown and figure out what comes closest in time that I can read the headline and cut back to network or go to local before cutting back the stories we had scheduled.
Steve: More realistically -- Say Governor Richardson drops out of the presidential race. What do you do?
Me: Depends. When does he do it?
Steve: 5:57.
Me: I print out the wire and read it over "billboard" at the top.
Steve: Good. Then what?
Me: Then what? I dunno. I guess I keep checking the wires, let Newscast I run on network, and then lead other local headlines with it over Newscast II, then try to get the Governor on the phone, during segment 1A rather than nursing the board.
Steve: Good. Or, call Jim or me. He might be holding a press conference, and one of us might be able to get it.

It's a matter of factual legend in the radio news world to this day that when aeroplanes started slamming into buildings on 11 September 2001, the "Emergency Alert System" *never* activated.

Say whatever you will about how the press covered the events on that day. It was *only* the press covering it.

The nationwide emergency broadcast system *never* kicked in with *any* kind of warning.