The night I met Lloyd Robertson

I met Lloyd Robertson at the Atlantic Journalism Awards in 2002, a decade ago now.  The memories are a bit frayed around the edges but I’ll try to take you back in time.

I was a journalism student fresh from Holland College.  My learning managers (what Holland College called its instructors, as they apparently manage learning) submitted a body of my work for a student award at the Atlantic Journalism Awards.

The second photo of me with Lloyd Robertson.

Imagine my astonishment when I was selected, along with one of my classmates, for an award!

Recipients scored a free meal at the gala, held at the casino on the Halifax waterfront.  My parents bought tickets so they could watch me receive my award.  It wasn’t a cheap affair: tickets were $70 or $75 each.  This included an open bar.  I don’t drink.

Once my father discovered Lloyd Robertson was the keynote speaker, he made me promise to get a picture with Lloyd.

Lloyd’s calm baritone always filled our living room at 11, regardless of the tragic events of the day.  The world could be in upheaval, but Lloyd was always there at the anchor desk, reading the news with his quiet reserve, commenting where appropriate.  When the World Trade Centre buildings fell a year before, he offered his grandfatherly concern and solemn face.  Yet when something was funny, he wore a knowing smile.

Needless to say, I was excited to go to the gala.

At some point in the evening, I was stalking Lloyd, and found him at the bar in conversation with Steve Murphy.  When my father realized Steve was there too, he asked if I would get BOTH of them in the photo.

So here I am, a shy little journalism student, out of place in a crowd of hardened veterans and lipsticked TV reporters schmoozing and chatting like old friends.  I’m asking the national news anchor I’ve watched since I was knee high to a grasshopper, and my local news anchor, for a picture.  I think I burbled some tripe about being a journalism student, winning an award, wanting a photograph with the two of them.

To this day, I still have the picture of me between Lloyd and Steve.  I’m surprised they aren’t much taller than me.  They look taller on TV.

When I finally went up on stage for my reward (praying to God that I didn’t trip in front of the whole industry), I heard someone issuing a whistle and saying, “Here, here.”  I think it was Lloyd.  I’ll never know for sure.  I tell myself it was him.  It makes the story more interesting.

When my learning manager from Holland College discovered I had a picture with Lloyd Robertson, he expressed disappointment he didn’t have one.  (Remember this is the era before Facebook and Flickr.)

So here I am, a shy little journalism student, stalking Lloyd Robertson the second time.

“You again,” he said when I finally found him.  At this point, he was probably regretting our new relationship.

My learning manager got me to pose with Lloyd (I was a little embarrassed this second time around) and even thrust my award at me.  I’m holding it between us in the picture.  Lloyd was gracious and gentlemanly.

The gala made me giddy.  I never had a waiter pour my salad dressing for me before.  I’d never had food come in such small quantities, as true fancy food must.

The salad was a piece of artwork I didn’t want to undo.  The rolls were chewy and seedy.  Maybe fashionable people like seeds.

I was relieved when desert came, because desert was less intimidating than all the forks flanking my plate.

In the end, I haven’t worked in the industry formally, though I like to blog up a storm.  It’s a pity, since I’m pretty certain the national CTV anchor whistled at me.  I’m not sure where my career will end, but it is safe to say, I have a voice for newspapers and a face for radio.

And so, on Lloyd Robertson’s retirement, I’m reminded of the time I went to the AJs and had my brush with celebrity.

And had my first taste of a $75 a plate meal.  Let’s just say it was no KD.

Procrastination: the art of shagging the dog

I know all about procrastination.  I’ve been in school since I was five; I’ve mastered the art of shagging the dog.

Acadia University allowed me to take my skills to a whole new level as laptops were encouraged, sometimes required, to be in front of me during lectures.  And those blinking conversation boxes on MSN were just too darn tempting to ignore.

Imagine if Emily - the mythical Dickinson - had written a blog - Who knows what gems - There could've Been!

Even in high school, before computers’ heyday, I was not averse to pounding the ivories or going for a bike ride to escape homework assignments (and I was a studious student.)

Oh, procrastination, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.

Video games, music, Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, more e-mail, Youtube, cleaning, organizing, eating, bathing, playing with my animals, going for a walk, heading to the gym.  I could go on.

My computer, obviously, is my worst offender.  The internet holds vast opportunities for procrastinating, including blogging.

For about a year, blogging has been one of my favourite ways to shag the dog.  I tell myself it’s a great exercise to keep my writing skills gooder but it’s still prevents me from doing something more important, or seemingly important.

In the scheme of writing, the immediacy of blogging makes it the immanent genre of the literature world, while novels and poetry are more transcendant, respected.  They last in the canon, studied by readers and critics alike for years to come, depending on the fashion.

Blogging is much like journalism in that it is immediate, a transient who will leave town on the next train.  You won’t recognize a journalist’s voice because it is the united voice of the Canadian Press: fast, efficient, fact-packed to the max.  After you read it, it’s no longer important (unless you enjoy combing through the minutiae of newspapers and magazines past.  I do.  Note there were no bylines back in the day because journalists were not to be seen or heard, just their stories.)

Few people could tell you the names of famous newspaper or magazine writers (I took journalism and fail at this exercise too, so don’t feel bad.)  Someday, the same will be true of bloggers.  High school teachers won’t be dissecting blogs or the clever tweets of Sockington the Cat.

After publication, your post is adrift in a vast universe of people thinking out loud.  One small post isn’t enough to make a difference to literature, even if it does receive a lot of “hits” one day.

In blogging’s defense, however, it opens up possibilities for someone excluded from the hoity-toity canon, a bastion of often white males from dominant western nations.  Would Shakespeare have been successful if she were a woman?  Virginia Woolf answered, in “A Room of One’s Own” a hell no (not an exact quote.)  Of course not.  Maybe if Judith Shakespeare had a blog, she would’ve made it somehow.

Blogging offers writers and even non-writers a chance to have their voice heard by anyone who stumbles upon their blog (or is directed to it from a Facebook link that shamelessly promotes the site.)  While technology and the cost of computers might be a barrier to some in developing countries, blogging is arguably more democratic for many people, more so than traditional publishing.  All it takes is an internet connection, computer, and a little technological know-how and voila!  You are a published blogger.

Posting online is an invaluable tool for expressing one’s self, kind of like a diary or journal that everyone gets to read now and not a century down the road.  I’ve always enjoyed a good diary; even the most everyday thoughts have value, even if that value is not Literature with a capital L.

My point?  I’ve digressed a little, but I’d like to bring it back around to procrastination.

For me, blogging is writing procrastination.  It takes away my writing appetite, leaving me with a few posts on a few subjects, when I really want to be working on fiction that has been sitting in the wings, waiting to be finished in some draft or another.  Not that I’m trying to dismiss newfangled forms of expression: I’ve just spent too much time in a classroom studying literature to abandon it now.

So I give up the transcendence of creating a fictional work for the immediacy and immanence of a blog post on celebrity gossip or random thoughts.  Quick gratification.

Though I enjoy blogging because it allows me to play with pictures and words and share that play with others, it is something that will disappear as soon as there’s new blog post.  Here today, gone tomorrow.  While not all fiction is immortalized, blogging has yet to reach a status worthy of classroom discussion and academic papers.

Now that I’ve finished my post, it’s probably time to start some fiction, if only because my blog voice will soon be the voice that comes to dominate my historical works and that would be all bad.

On second thought, maybe I should write a contemporary story about a blog!  Dilemma solved!