A bit of an update

I haven't been posting much because school has gotten real tough. So if you don't see updates, that's what that means.

My big looming deadline at the moment is a research paper that I will submit to an academic conference by April 1. But first the paper is due in class tomorrow, Monday. So I'm charging hard to get it turned in on time and reasonably complete.

It's about framing -- the way news media select and arrange facts and images to create a coherent story. That may sound sinister, but it's generally not; reporters can't tell you every fact they find out because it would be too much and would be a senseless jumble. So they and their editors figure out "what's going on here" and produce a story explaining it. If they've done their jobs well, then you, the reader, will be better able to make sense of things.

Where it gets interesting, from a researcher's standpoint (or a media critic's), is when you consider how the reporters and editors decide what to put in, what to leave out, and how to frame the story. A lot of factors enter into these decisions: the reporter's personal experience, the routines of news gathering, the news organization's corporate culture and priorities, outside influences such as PR reps and spinmeisters, and the wider culture itself. Some of these influences are so familiar that we take them for granted and don't question them.

I'm interested in questioning these influences. I did it some when I worked at a newspaper, and now I hope to do research that sheds more light on the frame-building process, in a way that reporters and editors can use. My main interest is cultural influences.

But that's a big project, and my research paper at hand is a bit smaller: A review of other researchers' framing studies. There are few broad themes in framing research, and I'm looking for some, in hopes of helping focus future scholarship.

That's if I manage to finish this paper in the first place. So back to work I go.

Toy store humor

Toy Joy put up this display (actually a larger version; they must have sold some mugs) shortly after the New Hampshire primary.

Lao, 1992-2008

I got two cats, Gaea and Lao, littermates, in 1992. Yesterday was Lao's last day on Earth. He had been diabetic for nearly three years and had kidney difficulties as well. The veterinarian said his heart probably gave out. (Gaea is doing well.)

It was a reasonably swift end, as these things go. Only last night, as was his custom, he hopped onto the bed to snuggle up to me and let loose a mighty purr. It was his favorite thing. (That's him as a kitten on the right, scanned from one of those old-fashioned "photograph" thingies.)

His second favorite thing was napping in the sun.

He had a good run. I'll miss him.

My neighborhood. Let me show you it.

Not long after I moved to Austin I took a few pix of the things I see when I walk around the neighborhood. Les voilá. (The foliage shown is thicker than it is today because these were taken in September.)

Here's the view of 28½ Street from my kitchen window, flanked by two big Magnolia trees.

One thing I had to get used to in Texas is that some evergreen trees have actual leaves instead of needles, including magnolias, live oaks and some other type of tree in the yard here that so far I haven't identified. Austin doesn't look nearly as barren in winter as Kansas or even Fort Worth.

(I'm using the term "winter" loosely; it was cold for a week or so, and cold at night for a couple weeks more, around the end of December and the first part of January.)

Right outside my door, at the top of the stairs, is a morning glory vine that finds its way up into a big pecan tree. I've heard of morning glories but this was the first time I've seen them up close; the flowers bloom blue in the morning, turn purplish by afternoon and die by nighttime. Unlike some flowering plants they keep it up, a few blooms at a time, for months -- at least this vine did.

Toy Joy is the oddest thing in my neighborhood. It has a lot of funky things inside. A good place for gift shopping if you do that sort of thing. Those things along the edge of the roof are plastic nuns. There's a vegan bakery and coffee shop, Dhaba Joy, attached on one side.

I didn't bother with pix but there are three pizza places within half a block of 29th and Guadalupe. Conan's is the best. One stays open till about 4am on weekends. That's a nice college-town contrast from Fort Worth, where if you got the pizza jones after about 11 your only choice was a frozen über-puck from 7-11. But I digress.

This lovely hot-doggery is, sad to say, closed now. I had a veg chili dog there, and it was reasonably tasty. But overpriced.

One of two video stores two blocks apart that cater to cinephiles. (The other, Vulcan Video, isn't visually interesting.)


I get my health-food necessities at Wheatsville. One big draw of the neighborhood I moved into is that I can walk here. Austin is the most friendly city I've lived in for getting by without a car. Except for one weekend when I had to rent a car to take one of my cats to the emergency vet, I haven't been behind the wheel since August. There are places I have a hard time getting to sometimes, but OTOH I never have to find a place to park.

The Spider House is a funky coffeehouse behind the funky video store (owned by the same people) that has live music sometimes and apparently has a long history with the counterculture crowd. I used to like going there to hang out, but the last few times the service has ranged from indifferent to hostile, so it's off my list. It's still cool to look at. These pix are from the alley in back.

Martin's Kum-Bak, a.k.a. Dirty Martin's, is an old-fashioned burger joint and soda fountain. I don't go in much but I like the building.

And we're back! Thanks for taking the tour. Please visit our gift shop on the way out.