May 8, 2014

Dear Friends:

So far, so good.  This is the fifth Weinberg House Organ/PY-O-MY Letter since it emerged from a 40-something year slumber in January.  And I’m nowhere near running out of stuff to send you.  Quite the contrary my ”House Organ Material” file runneth over.

In a certain way, it reminds me of the time in 1978 when we convinced the management of WTTW/Channel 11 in Chicago to broadcast an unprecedented weekly TV show featuring the work of independent producers, (Image Union, “Films and tapes you don’t usually see on TV.”)  They told us we’d run out of material in about a month.  We never did.  More than 700 shows have been on the air.

Now, in this everyone’s-got-a-channel, everyone-makes-video 2014 digital media universe, it feels like the time is ripe for a multi-hour, long-form on-air and online schedule of independent videos on TV…particularly on Public TV, which has lost so much of its edge (and viewership) in recent years.  But that’s for another edition.

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Let’s start May with something a little more fun, a new House Organ ongoing feature:

Stats as of May 7, 2014:
35 games
139 At Bats
86 Total Bases
12 Home Runs
35 RBI’s
.266 Batting average
.619 Slugging percentage

(for reference, only Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and Lou Gehrig had higher career Slugging %)

We’re lucky to be able to watch the start of this great hitter’s career in Chicago.

You might recall that before Jose Abreu ever was in a major league game, I wrote this:

…But, it’s still baseball and we all still love it…what an absolute thrill to get the first look ever at a player we KNOW will be a Hall-of-Famer like José Abreu,* White Sox first baseman who emigrated from Cuba over the winter…

Now, in just over a month in the “Grandes Ligas,”, Abreu leads everyone in home runs and he was named top Rookie of the Month of April and the outstanding player in the American League.

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THE ONE PER CENT

Everybody now knows about “The 99 per cent and the 1 per cent.”

Even though ideas about income and wealth inequality have been bandied about for decades academically by social scientists, critics, and other wonky types, it didn’t get imbedded in all of us until 2012.  That’s when it was made famous by the Occupy “movement.”

“The One Per Cent” is a phrase that stuck.  Just like “Kodak Moment,” “Wall Street vs. Main Street,” and “The Tea Party.” Everybody knows what the One Per Cent is…or at least that there really is one.

What we didn’t know for sure was whether “The One Per Cent” was just a commie-pinko conspiracy or whether it was substantive fact behind it. Recently I came across a wonderful piece of animated video that made me think about it in a new way.  Some would see it as stilted left-wing blather.  I think it’s a great use of animation to get an idea across.  My (“FDR was a Commie”) grandfather would have called it propaganda.  And maybe it is.

It’s on Upworthy.com, the intentionally provocative site that, in this case, is living up to its motto on the home page:  Things that Matter.  Pass ‘em on. 

Maybe you’ve been checking out Upworthy since it was started just over two years ago by Eli Pariser, 30, a major moving force behind the phenomenal success of MoveOn, and Peter Koechley, 33, former managing editor of the Onion. 

A March New York Times story quoted the founders saying their mission “is to host the intersection of the ‘awesome’, the ‘meaningful’ and the ‘visual.’

They designed it to go viral. And it has succeeded. Fast Company called it “the fastest growing media site of all time.”

So, here’s the six minute video from Upworthy that sets out to prove that 99% of Americans don’t have a clue how much wealth the 1% owns. 

I haven’t read Thomas Pikkety’s hot-selling book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (see a cheat-guide from Telegraph), but I refuse to believe that income inequality is an economic constant.  Intuitively, it doesn’t make long-term sense.

Maybe, like quite a few questions raised in the House Organ, the one per cent/99 per cent question is a SO WHAT?

But for me, the video brings home a point and is remarkable, both for the message and the way the medium is used. What do you think?

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WHY WE LOVED OBAMA

How many people these days do you hear saying how disappointed they are with Obama as President.  Statistically, his approval rating measured in a Gallup Poll (“Do you approve of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as President”) reached an all-time low last week:

–>41% said they approve.

–>69% was his all-time high rating…the week he took office in 2009

In 2008 and 2009, I almost always felt that what he was saying was inspiring.  I was excited about how our lives would actually change with a President who GOT IT.  The hope was that this guy could have the most positive influence and impact all over the world of anyone in our lifetime (I was less than a year old when FDR died).

I want to think that there’s too much muck in the system for Obama to have been able to accomplish what we hoped.  Not just in Congress and the Supreme Court, but in the way power flows now, locally, in the USA and globally.  Good intentions aren’t winning.

So, when I saw this other video piece in Upworthy, a talk he gave in the White House recently to a group of schoolboys, it rekindled the coals of my practically snuffed-out optimism. Do you react the same way?

Then, there is this, courtesy of long-time friend and co-conspirator, Nancy Cain, via WHUR radio:

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LOU WEINBERG’S PUZZLE

Time for one of my father’s puzzles…this one from the PY-O-MY letter, July 3. 1958:

A book has a stiff cover that is ¼” thick and a still back cover that is ¼” thick also.  The pages of the book, excluding the the two covers are 2” thick.

The book is published in two volumes—Volume I and Volume II.  They are placed on the shelf in the proper order.  While on the shelf, a worm eats from page 1, Volume 1, to the last page of Volume II.   How far does the worm travel? 

Don’t do this problem too quickly.  While it contains no unfair trick, the answer is not what you might first consider obvious.

The answer will be in the next House Organ, or if you can’t wait, you could email your answer and you’ll get a quick reply.

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This edition’s excerpt from my still-unpublished 40+ year book-in-the-making addresses phraseology of video.  For the early years of producing documentaries, we’d almost always say “We’re shooting a video (or movie).”  In the last decade or so, “shooting” has become a charged and confusing phrase, as explained in one page in Media Burn, The Book.

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MEDIA BURN IS MOVING UP!

By the time you get the next issue, we will have ended an era and begun a new one.  Next week, the Media Burn Video Independent Video Archive and about 7000 videotapes, dozens of file drawers full of paper archives about early video, our computers and video equipment will be at our new home.

Snail mail: 935 West Chestnut Suite 405 Chicago, IL 60642.

For the first time in ten years, I will have a window in my office. It will be great to welcome my returning officemate and producing co-conspirator, Joel Cohen.

As all of you know, moving is awful.  But, I’ve never been involved in as organized a move.  I take very little credit—it’s mostly due to the multi-faceted skills of Executive Director Sara Chapman.

We have a fantastic view from the 4^th floor loft of the Prairie Material Concrete yard, about 10 acres with piles of gravel and huge earthmoving equipment. Sara and our staff have labored every day without seeing the outdoors for almost a decade.  In Chicago winters, that might be OK, but we’re all thrilled that Media Burn is coming up in the world, in more ways than one.  We hope to see you there soon…there’s enough room now for visitors to sit on chairs, not on little end tables and even watch some video on a good-sized flat-screen!

Until next time, as Studs Terkel* always signed off, “Take it easy, but take it.”

*If you’re around Chicago this weekend, May 9-11, we’d love to see you at the University of Chicago Logan Center for the Arts where we are showing some of “The Best of Studs,” tribute to my mentor and friend and people like Ira Glass, Haskell Wexler and Andy Davis will be singing their praises to him.