The flames of autumn are falling to earth. Our beautiful run of clear, warm weather is slowly coming to an end. The millions of leaves now cover our yards and lawns and need to be blown to the curb. The turning back of the clocks foreshadows the cold darkness of winter. The beauty of nature in the fall assures us their must be a higher power responsible for this great show. Weather is universal. Having worked in local television news for decades, we knew the one story that interested everyone was the weather. There was no bigger story than a snow storm or nor’easter coming up the coast to have us mobilize round the clock coverage.

Weather can be violent and deadly. The names Katrina and Sandy will live on as terrible reminders of what weather can do. Recent wildfires and drought in California, and floods in Texas and South Carolina have affected millions more of us. There is great debate about climate change. Is it real? Are humans making it worse? Are the global greenhouse gases that are belching into the air heating up our planet to a dangerous degree? The Kyoto Protocol said greenhouse gases it measured increased by 80% since 1970 and 30% since 1990. The United Nations Conference on Climate Change meets at the end of November in Paris in hopes of getting an international agreement on climate change to keep global warming below 2 degrees C.

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It should be the most important day of the year. It’s why we fought the Revolutionary War. We wanted the right to govern ourselves. We wanted to call the shots. We wanted to say who would represent us. We wanted the people we voted into office to hear us and listen to us. It’s the foundation of a democracy, the right to vote in free and fair elections. Millions of dollars are spent to get our attention about candidates and issues. Many of us don’t seem to be listening or care. What happened?

This is what is called an off year election. It isn’t a presidential election year, or a mid-term election when the whole House of Representatives and one third of the Senate are up for election. But there are many local elections for county commissioners, county councils, township mayors and councils, district attorneys, and judges. There are some bigger offices, like Mayor of Philadelphia where there hasn’t been a Republican mayor in decades. Democrat Jim Kenney will probably get about 75 per cent of the small number of voters who do bother to vote. Some of the people who get elected to these local offices have a bigger impact on our daily lives than the president or our congressman or woman. Among other things, these local officials determine how much your property taxes will go up, and how your money will be spent.

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They had a lot to decide that summer of 1787 in Philadelphia. The Constitutional Convention was called for the 13 states to fix the Articles of Confederation. They weren’t working. Too many conflicts among the 13 independent states. A weak federal government with no ability to tax. Any changes had to be by unanimous vote. James Madison of Virginia and Alexander Hamilton of New York knew it was a lost cause. They believed a new form of government was needed. So the plan was to get everyone in a room and figure out how to create The United States of America.

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“It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”

-President John F. Kennedy October 22, 1962

Fifty three years ago tonight an 11 year old boy sat in front of a black and white television set, along with millions of others, and listened to a young president look possible nuclear confrontation right in the face. He was steady and unwavering. He told us what the evidence was that the Soviet Union had transported and installed offensive nuclear weapons in Cuba aimed at the United States. He said we would not stand for it. He said they would have to be removed, and said the U-S was setting up a quarantine around Cuba to stop any future shipment of missiles.

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If we say it faster, will it sound more urgent and important? ABC News thinks so. If you watch ABC World News, you’ll have to listen faster. I’m not criticizing their content. Although they are not shy about using the broadcast clichés that should make us all cringe. They are going after the young viewer, who research shows, are not watching network evening newscasts. To their credit, they have given NBC Nightly News a run for first place since the Brian Williams episode. They have chosen a path they think works.

Full disclosure, I worked for CBS owned and operated stations in Philadelphia for 25 years, after starting at ABC owned stations in Detroit and New York. I do think the CBS Evening News and all the CBS News programs are better than everyone else. The bigger issue is how television news, whether network or local, engages viewers. The biggest historical impact on television news presentation was Eyewitness News created by Al Primo at KYW-TV in Philadelphia in the mid 1960s and then used with great success at WABC-TV in New York. It became the standard for local news.

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It is the most famous speech in American history. Given by the most important president in our history, honoring the soldiers who died in the most decisive battle in the country’s history. Gettysburg is a special, even sacred place. I have great interest in history, particularly events that changed its course.

My wife and I took a trip to Gettysburg a couple of weeks ago. We had been there years ago when our sons were young.  We had both read “Killer Angles” by Michael Sharaa and even re-watched the television movie “Gettysburg” a couple of days before our trip to reaquaint ourselves with the main players and events of the three day battle. This, in addition to having read many books on Lincoln and the Civil War.

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It starts with a thought. After you think about it long enough, you put it on the page. It’s the first step. It can gush out of you, or it can be a painful trickle. I’ve written over a dozen pieces for this blog. Most of the sentences gushed out. But writing about the thing itself can be frightening. There have been volumes written about the meaning, structure, and style. Shorter is better. But length shouldn’t be the determining factor of what makes an impactful sentence. Re-writing and revising is an art form in itself.

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Family, Money, Community, Security. These are four things we all care about. I’m sure you can name others. In the news business, we were always looking for stories that had viewer benefit. What could they get out of a story? How did it affect their lives? Why should they pay attention in this world of short attention spans.

Concerns about money, community, and security all flow from the most important thing in most of our lives, our family. We want them to be rich enough to live a comfortable life. We want to live in a community with friendly, caring neighbors. And, we want them to be safe and free from fear.

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You can never anticipate what you may find when you start to search your family history. My wife had asked me to clean out an old metal box full of her late parents’ papers. I knew there was a handwritten history that her aunt had researched years ago. It traced their Irish heritage back for centuries. But among the papers, I found copies of several hand written poems by my wife’s grandmother. Norah Hagan was the person everyone wants for a grandmother. She took my wife Maureen on the trip of a lifetime when she was sixteen years old. A six week tour of Europe including, Ireland, Denmark, Austria, and Italy.

Norah died in 1976 while touring Greece with her daughter. She was 79. She died doing what she loved. Two of the poems I found were about her travels and her husband, John who died in 1967. On stationary with her initials NVH and datelined Cavan, Ireland, 1962 she wrote:

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We, as journalists, are destroying words. Our most important tool is being dulled by over use and misuse. We’ve done it to ourselves because it’s easy, and everyone else is doing it. This just causes the infection to spread. There are many examples of words that we have destroyed, but I have four that top the list. Major. Key. Controversy. Tragedy. How many times have you heard these on television newscasts? You may not realize it because they are sprinkled in so frequently. We just have accepted them as TV speak.

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