I’m back home after another “interesting” adventure in healthcare, the removal of my gallbladder. We arrived at the hospital to discover that the surgery had been canceled. What? Long story short, there was another Terry Heaton who got his gallbladder removed a week earlier. After some fancy footwork by my doctor (”We can fix this”), the deed was done. I had trouble getting out of recovery, but that was rectified with a catheter, and I was on my way. Not such a good night, but I’m home and it’s over.

Now for the Law & Order marathon on TNT.

The kidney stone blasting went well, and despite a couple of painful bouts of passing remnants yesterday, I’m doing well.

This is a good thing, because I get to do the whole surgical prep thing again tomorrow. It really is amazing to me that one minute you’re being wheeled into an operating room, and the next minute you’re waking up in recovery — or so it seems. As surgical procedures go, neither of these are biggies, which is why they’re letting me combine them into the same week.

Tomorrow is the gallbladder surgery, and I’ll celebrate the fourth with a Law & Order marathon on TNT (and my pain meds).

The coming week is going to be, well, interesting for yours truly.

Tuesday: Kidney stones blasted with sound waves. General anesthetic.
Wednesday: Painful cyst removed from my wrist. Local anesthetic.
Thursday: Gallbladder removal surgery. General anesthetic.

These procedures will all take place at different locations. It’s an insurance thing. Hence, I’ve gone through pre-op at two different hospital, sharing only a few of the tests. I have multiple specialists, their separate offices, and drugs galore.

I’m only a little anxious, but what’s been crystal clear to me as an observer of life is the need for a single medical database with multiple entry points. It would save billions and dramatically increase efficiency within the healthcare system (although it might cost a lot of jobs). Imagine if I carried a little device with my data and simply plugged it in at each place. No more forms. No redundant testing. Everybody would know my history, my drug regimen and pending appointments, regardless of when or where they were scheduled.

Of course, there’s the whole privacy thing, but let me tell you as a guy who is shelling out $3,000 in insurance deductibles this week that the benefits vastly outweigh the negatives. We simply MUST get a handle on healthcare costs, or only those who can afford treatment will get it.

In other words, kind of like what we have today, although the line keeps moving northward every year as insurance companies raise their rates and deductibles get higher.

I’m in a bit of an odd mood today — retrospective, I guess, but also a tad anxious, because I’m about to have a couple of “procedures” done next week that involve relieving pains in a body that’s obviously aging. And it appears I’m not alone. My friend Doc Searls is also having quite a week physically. He went through a blood clot in his lung earlier this year, and I feel for him.

I’ve been having upper right abdominal pain of late, and the diagnosis is a gallbladder that isn’t working. It’ll come out some time next week, I believe. On Tuesday, however, I’m having a large kidney stone blasted that was discovered during testing for the gallbladder. Medicine is like that, you know: look for one thing and find something else. I also had a melanoma removed from my back this week, so Doc and I sound like we belong in some old folks home somewhere, LOL.

In addition, I’ve also started on blood pressure and cholesterol medicines this week. My nightstand looks like a bloody pharmacy. This is a good thing, I think, because I certainly don’t want to court a heart attack.

I’ll be 62 next month, and there’s just no escaping that which Life has in store, the only certainty of which is death. “Three score and ten” is what the Bible promises. Anything beyond that is gravy, so I know that I have to take care of myself from here on out (something I did a really poor job of most of my life). There’s so much to write, so many things to say. That’s what keeps me going. Besides, I’m having so much fun these days enjoying every minute, and I’m not about to bring the curtain down just yet.

Still, it is sobering to ponder one’s fate and in so doing understand the insignificance that is each of us. Our world lacks two things that old age seems to bring: humility and the submission to an internal governor, what I call Life (or God).

My prayer for you is that you find these things before the years force them upon you. There is no greater conquest in this life than one’s self.

I moved awhile back, so my porch squirrels are history. But that doesn’t mean the little buggers aren’t still a part of my life. Here’s what happened this afternoon in my backyard. I apologize for the crappy camera work. I’m SUCH an amateur.

Most of the men my age recognize the item to the left. It’s a Vietnam-era service medal, to be worn only by those who served during that awful conflict. It’s hard for people like me to call it a war, because you get into wars to win, and we certainly weren’t there for that (can you say “Nuke Hanoi?”).

I have this little box full of memories from my time in the service (U.S. Coast Guard, 1965-1970), and the only time I ever get the urge to go through it is on Memorial Day. It wasn’t easy to serve your country back then, because the country, it seemed, didn’t want our service. By “the country,” I’m referring not to the government but to the people. Yes, the people.

If you’re a young person, you’ve heard the stories. Somehow, we were the bad guys, the symbol of the fear everybody felt. The draft was in full bloom, and again, we were drafted to serve in a war that wasn’t a war. Today, servicemen and women are looked upon with respect and admiration. They are recognized and even applauded in public places, but for us, removing the uniform was a necessary part of feeling like a human being on the streets of the U.S.A.

World War II and Korean War vets extended the hand of friendship and camaraderie, but publicly, we were scorned.

I think that one of the reasons young soldiers, sailors and Marines are so respected today is because of what we, their parents, went through back then. Service men and women who die in Iraq are heroes, but that honor was never extended to my friends and contemporaries who were butchered in Vietnam. We’re darned sure not going to let that happen again.

One of the most famous lines from General Patton is, “..no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” So today, as we remember (and I hope we remember) those who’ve died to preserve the freedoms that we enjoy in this country, let’s also give a few thoughts to what it means to be at war.

It would be nice to not have to have a Memorial Day some day.

Here’s the link for Amazon. It says they’re “temporarily out of stock,” but that just means the process hasn’t fully evolved yet. Nevertheless, you can order.

Barnes & Noble doesn’t have it available yet.

I’ll let the smile on my face as I sign for the order give you an idea of what I’m thinking about this day.

We’re installing a way for you to purchase the book via our website, and it should be available via Amazon and Barnes & Noble in the next couple of weeks. I’ll let you know when that happens. I also hope to have them available in the bookstores at NAB/RTNDA, but that’s not a promise just yet.

Once again, if you want an autographed copy, send a $30 check to AR&D at my address, and I’ll take care of it.

Terry Heaton
1913 Redwood Trail
Grapevine, TX 76051

They said it couldn’t be done, but I’ve gone and done it, LOL — written the ultimate New Media book: Reinventing Local Media, Ideas for Thriving in a Postmodern World, thus joining the world of published non-fiction authors. AR&D is publishing the first go-round of the book, although we’ll be seeking a contract with a major publisher in the weeks ahead.

This book is a compilation of the essays I’ve written over the past five years, a time of epochal change in the world of communications. It’s over 500 pages long and fully indexed, and it’s my hope that it will be used as course material in colleges and universities everywhere.

The book will be available via Amazon and other online distributors within a month, and we’re going to try and make copies available at NAB next month in Vegas. The price is $24.95.

I’ll have copies next week that I’d be happy to autograph and sell to readers of my blog. It’ll take a couple of weeks to process everything, but feel free to drop me a note with a check to AR&D for $30 (to cover shipping and handling), and I’ll personally take care of the rest. Send it to:

Terry Heaton
Audience Research & Development
1913 Redwood Trail
Grapevine, TX 76051

Of course, anybody’s work in this field is really an aggregation of the thinking of many. I’ve written before about The Unbroken Web, and I certainly feel I’ve been touching it throughout the process of writing this ongoing series of essays. The Unbroken Web is a place where many thoughts mingle, and it would be arrogant to assume that the ideas expressed there belong to any one individual, self included.

So I am honored to be a part of something so big, and to make this book available to you.

William F. Buckley has passed away at the age of 82. He was hard not to like, for me anyway. While most people considered him terribly stiff and boring (and oh so friggin’ conservative), I found his ability to extemporaneously deconstruct arguments to be inspiring. And he raised “leaning back” to an art form.

His position that abortion is not a legal issue and therefore should not be permitted or not-permitted by law impacted me on many levels, and I’ve more than once paused and appreciated him for that.

As I do today.

One of the most influential members of my tribe is Richard Adams, the British author of such works as Watership Down, Girl on a Swing, Maia and Shardik. One of his lesser works has had a great impact on me, not only on my writing but also on my philosophical leanings as it relates to the arts and especially life.

The book is “The Unbroken Web.” It is the author’s version of various folk tales from around the world. I’ve transcribed a few paragraphs from the opening chapter for you to ponder this winter weekend:

The weaving of emotion and experience into tales…is a spontaneous and involuntary phenomenon. We do it naturally, we can’t help doing it and of the ingenuity with which we find we have done it is startling…

…I see in fancy — I have a vision of — the world as the astronauts saw it — a shining globe, poised in space and rotating on its polar axis. Round it, enveloping it entirely, as one Chinese carved ivory ball encloses another within it, is a second, incorporeal, gossamer-like sphere — the unbroken web — rotating freely and independently of the rotation of the earth. It is something like a soap-bubble, for although it is in rotation, real things are reflected on its surface, which imparts to them glowing, lambent colours.

Within this outer web we live. It soaks up, transmutes and is charged with human experience, exuded from the world within like steam or an aroma from cooking food. The story-teller is he who reaches up, grasps that part of the web which happens to be above his head at the moment and draws it down — it is, of course, elastic and unbreakable — to touch the earth. When he has told his story — its story — he releases it and it springs back and continues in rotation. The web moves continually above us, so that in time every point on its interior surface passes directly above every point on the surface of the world. This is why the same stories are found all over the world, among different people who can have had little or no communication with each other.

Both in folk-song and folk-tale there is a paradox. On the one hand they are not attributable to individual authors, but impersonal and universal. On the other, they lose much when they are depersonalized — the songs written down and played on the piano, the talks written down and made anonymous for reading in a book. A folk-song is best when sung by a flesh-and-blood singer to real listeners. A folk-tale is best when told aloud, spontaneously, at a particular time and place. This is like drinking wine or making love. That time is that time — unique and irrecoverable. The thing may be repeated, but that will be different — another occasion. Filming, printing and recording are inappropriate.

I believe the unbroken web is the source of creativity, something that belongs to all of humankind. When I interviewed Bill Monroe many years ago, I asked him to explain how he was able to write all of the songs he had written. He responded quickly, “I never wrote anything. I just heard ‘em first.” He was a frequent “toucher” of the unbroken web.

I believe the arts belong to everyone and that artists should be revered in culture. They are not, especially in a world run by anti-creative, left-brained bean counters. I’m not sure it’ll ever be any different, and for me personally, that’s okay. For no bean counter will ever experience the rush that is touching the unbroken web. That, my friends, is a form of currency more costly than gold.

Romenesko offers up the discussion in several places about cursing in newsrooms, and I thought I’d drop in my two cents. It began with a Slate TV Club entry about the latest episode of Wired, HBO’s series about police in Baltimore. This year, the show features the newsroom of the city’s paper, which has gotten a lot of coverage by journalists over whether it fairly depicts actual newsrooms. In this episode, a reporter was taken to task for language in the newsroom, so Slate wondered if anybody had any actual experience with that.

Free speech and all, remember?

When I ran the newsroom for WDEF-TV in Chattanooga in 1988, the cursing was so bad that I put a jar (later dubbed “The Fuck Jar”) on the assignment desk and required staffers to put a quarter in it every time they dropped the F-bomb. We used the funds collected for parties, and it was a source of great fun for all.

Somebody decorated the jar, and I still have it on my desk. It’s a wonderful reminder of the time and the people.

One day, my assignment editor arrived in an especially foul mood and announced she was putting $5 in the jar, so that we all should be prepared. I’ll never forget that. I just spoke with her recently (she’s now a news director), and she said she had calmed down considerably.

So, yes, cursing in the newsroom does sometimes get out of hand, but at least for us in Chattanooga, we got the point while having a little fun, too.

I promised I wouldn’t do this again, but I can’t get this guy out of my head. It’s difficult for me to understand why HBO — or anyone, for that matter — gives the guy a stage. There’s nothing funny about him. He’s not clever. He’s not informed. He’s rude, obnoxious and boorish to the max.

But most of all, he’s ignorant. And this is the irony that is Bill Maher, for throughout his shtick — if that’s what you call it — ignorance is his enemy. As a Liberal (I know he often calls himself a Libertarian, not), Maher represents the worst. If the Democratic Party wants to know why it has difficulty getting conservatives to cross over, it needs to look no further than Maher.

I’ve written previously about his disdain for the South and the way he broad brushes the entire region by ridiculing certain groups of people who live here. He says we’re “a region still dominated by prejudice,” as if his form of prejudice is more righteous. He’s ignorant about this, because he chooses not to examine the truth. He doesn’t live here. He’s unlikely to have spent much time with people here. He doesn’t have a clue about southerners. His “problem” with us is that we don’t all think the way he does, so ridicule is actually a form of self-validation. How convenient.

Last month, Maher staged an Islamic women’s fashion show, wherein he ridiculed the hijab that many Muslim women wear. The audience laughed as the same outfit was paraded across the stage to the self-righteous mockery of Maher in the form of grandiose fashion show prose. Again, this proves his ignorance, because he knows nothing about the customs of the culture and he proved it by using his podium to spread stereotype and prejudice.

Regular readers here know of my daughter and son-in-law. They live and raise their family in Amman, Jordan, and theirs is an amazing love story. I visited them a year ago and used the opportunity to immerse myself in the Arab culture and learn, something Maher — and those of his ilk — would be well-advised to do. I blogged the entire experience, and here’s a part of what I wrote about Muslim women.

She (Jenan) wears the hijab (covering) not only because belief in Islam requires it (although there are many women here who do not), but she also wears it because she wants to wear it, for it honors her husband. The concept of honor is significant here, and it runs both ways.

When I visited my grandson Osama’s school, I asked to take a picture of the woman principal. She asked that I not take her picture, because it might somehow dishonor her husband. This was not a demand or law or requirement. It was her wish, and this is the nature of most of the culture.

Call it tribal, if you wish, but the family unit is everything here. If the families are strong, the culture is strong, and this Islam teaches.

As such, women are supposed to be revered in Islamic culture, and I have seen this with my own eyes. The idea that they are chattel is ancient Arabic and predates Islam. There are bad relationships and spousal abuse here, but this is also true in the West. Waseem and Jenan are very much husband and wife.

Like I said, Maher is an ignorant man.

Last week, he did a bit on the Bible and the Ten Commandments, wherein he essentially stated that we don’t need them anymore. Again, how convenient. In his usual smugness, he made statements that are simply untrue. The book of Exodus doesn’t say, for example, “thou shalt not tell a lie,” but that’s the interpretation Maher required to validate his ridicule, so that’s what he used. And in that sense, he is an ignorant man.

His bio on the HBO website calls him “one of the most politically astute humorists in America today.” The odd thing for me is that I don’t regularly watch his show; I just happen to “pass by” while surfing the channels before bedtime, but every time I do, he’s demonstrated that one man’s astute humorist is another’s fool.

I’m all for humor, but not when it’s based in the ignorant ridicule of those who can’t answer back.

There. I feel better.

I was awakened at 4:30 this morning to the sound of my cellphone going off. This, I might add, is unusual. I rolled over and answered the thing, only to be greeted my the nice feminine voice of the American Airlines computer telling me my 8 a.m. flight to Shreveport had been canceled. Not to worry. The machine told me they’d confirmed me on the 9 a.m. flight, and if I wanted to accept, I should say “yes.”

The extra hour of sleep would’ve been nice, but when I’m awake, I’m awake, I tossed a bit but eventually got ready for my trip.

At the airport, I got some Starbucks and went to the gate, then proceeded to seat 14A on one of those little jets. I got out some papers to read, put them and my coffee on the tray in front of me, and settled in for the flight. Then came the giant man in seat 13A, who plopped himself down like a giant wrecking ball, bouncing everything on my tray table and spilling coffee all over my pants. He apologized. The nice flight attendant brought towels. My butt was soaked.

I moved to to 14B.

They counted everybody and closed the door, and the captain hit the ignition switch. The cabin began to smell like a furnace that hadn’t been turned on all year, and soon we had a little smoke problem. They isolated it to a faulty air conditioner pack just before we would’ve had to evacuate. We “exited the aircraft” and waited to see what American would do. My butt was still soaked.

They located a new jet and moved us to a new gate. We boarded. However, some of the people had slipped away (perhaps unnerved by the smoke), so there was a manifest problem. And every experienced traveler knows you don’t leave with a manifest problem. They counted us. They counted us again.

We took off and landed in Shreveport only to discover that “our gate” wasn’t available, so we waited 10 minutes for the gooney bird to depart, leaving the gate to us.

I got to my client a little late, and I’m now writing this from my hotel. The scent of caramel macchiato is emanating from my underwear.

I should’ve just said no.

When Solomon built the first temple, he summoned all the people and prayed a prayer of repentance. Why, one wonders, would he use such an occasion — such a triumph — to ask people to repent?

Those more scholarly than I have attempted to answer that question, but I think it’s because we are most vulnerable at the moment of success. It’s when we choose to shine a light on US and all our greatness.

This is why it’s so important that we maintain a heart full of thanks, one of gratitude that will survive the roller coaster ride of life. For in the end, we have no power over anything — only in how we react. And I can tell you from experience, my friends, that a heart full of gratitude will survive where others will not.

And so we set aside one day to give thanks, to remind ourselves that we are not in charge. My wish for all of you is that you will carry that spirit for as long as Life gives you breath.

Pee BEFORE you get on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

I’ve been on-the-road and apologize for ignoring my duties here. I’ll post later today.

My old colleague and friend Jim Cummins has died, and I am sad. Jim and I were part of an amazing team at WTMJ-TV in the early and mid 70s and had stayed in touch. Like my other friend who died this year, Pete Wilson, Jim was a big early influence.

I use a story about Jim whenever I speak with budding journalists. When he came to WTMJ-TV from Grand Rapids, he was that station’s top reporter. I ran the desk, and Jim didn’t like that he had to wait in the wings while all the tenured reporters at the station got all the good assignments. Hey, that’s life.

One day, he came to me and asked, “What time do you get to work?”

“7 o’clock,” I replied.

“Tell you what,” he said, “if I have a story idea for you at 7 a.m., would you consider giving me a shooter instead of waiting until you’ve set up the day?”

What AE would disagree with that?

His first piece was on a local toy company that had stopped making a certain toy, because the manufacturer couldn’t get the petroleum necessary to make the thing. The year was 1973. The first line in the piece was this: “The Birdie Ball has gone the way of the energy crisis.” It was an outstanding piece, and it wasn’t but a few weeks until Jim was our top dog reporter. Nobody was surprised when he went to NBC Nightly News.

He loved the resources of the network. I remember a call from him while covering a tornado in rural Missouri. He arrived on a chartered plane at the local landing strip known as the airport, only to discover they had no car rental place. The guy who ran the joint had an old beater, though, so Jim (er, NBC) bought it.

I loved Jim Cummins. He was an amazing storyteller, a great husband and father, and my dear old friend.

Farewell, Jim.

This is a bit of a personal post, for I’m about to change something that’s been with me for years. Effective with my next essay, which will likely be published later today, I’m changing the title of the series from “TV News in a Postmodern World” to “Local Media in a Postmodern World.” I want to explain to you why.

When I first started writing about new media, I stayed within my comfort zone, television news. After all, I’d been a news manager for 28 years before retiring in 1998 and getting into the Internet. I could see where things were going and tried to shout warnings, although I have to admit that few people were listening.

I wrote about the news business and journalism’s history. I argued objectivity versus argument and became a voice on some level in the discussion of journalism’s evolution.

However, when I began consulting, the question from media companies was always, “Where’s the money?” Hence, my emphasis has changed over the years, and this is especially so since joining AR&D in the summer of ‘06. The reality is that professional journalism needs money to do its thing, so following the money — the business side of media — became my passion.

More and more, my writing began to reflect this. I didn’t really drift away from journalism as much as I drifted towards the business of news — and that includes broadcasting AND print.

So I’m changing the name. Besides, I think “Local Media in a Postmodern World” will make a better book title. Don’t you?

Anybody with a strong back is welcome at my place this weekend, as I’m moving from my apartment with its trees and squirrels for neighbors to a house a few miles away with trees and squirrels for neighbors. I doubt that I will be blogging at all during the next few days, because before I move, I’m off to Seattle for a blogger meet-up sponsored by a client, KOMO-TV. 184 people have given us their RSVP as of this writing, so it should be a heck of a party. I’ll bring pictures back, and if you live in the Seattle area, please come by and say hello.

A corporate executive called me “cerebral” during a meeting yesterday, which is something you don’t hear every day. The subsequent swelling of my cerebrum made it difficult to get out the door.

And so it goes…

What’s with all these old friends and acquaintances passing away?

Today, it’s Tom Synder, host of NBC’s “Tomorrow” show, which came on after Carson in the 70s. The picture at the right was taken at the Milwaukee Press Club’s annual dinner in 1979. I was chairman of the event, and I arranged for Tom to get the “Sacred Cat” award, a high journalism honor in the community. Tom grew up there and was most appreciative of the award, thanking me in a note especially for how happy the event had made his mother.

His career began in news in Milwaukee, and he eventually anchored in Philadelphia and Los Angeles before leaving the news business to do “Tomorrow” in 1972. He was, in many ways, the prototypical news anchor of the 70s, but he was an extremely intelligent and witty man.

No comments about my appearance, please.

Tom died this weekend of complications from leukemia. Tom Synder, gone at the age of 77 but not forgotten.