In the Books section of this past weekend's Wall Street Journal, Stuart Isacoff picked the five best books on cultural turning points. The fourth, Bad Boy of Music by George Anthell, is described as containing the author's "memorable observations on music," including "the reasons a Mozart concerto is like a baseball game."
Going into the weekend I had never heard of Katy Tur. But watching CBS Sunday Morning, I saw a story on her and her new memoir, which is about her life as the child of news reporters. I also learned that she is married to Tony Dokoupil, an anchor on CBS Mornings. This seemed a little odd, that the network was doing a story on the wife of one of its employees. The memoir, I should add, includes revelations about her abusive father who, in later life, transitioned as a woman.
Then in the afternoon, I picked up the New York Times Book Review and found that the weekly By the Book interview was with Katy Tur. When asked what contemporary writers she admired, she mentioned, among others, Tony Dokoupil.
This morning I turned on CBS Mornings, with Gayle King, Nate Burleson, and Tony Dokoupil, thinking the first two might mention to the third the Sunday appearances of his wife, maybe even razz him a little about them. No, King said they would have a story about her.
Yesterday morning there was no New York Times at our door. Around 9 we received an email informing us that, due to a production delay, the Sunday edition would not arrive till Monday.
Heading out early yesterday afternoon, we found the paper outside our door. Using basic psychology, the company made us thrilled to find our paper delivered seven hours late.
The Pulitzers were awarded yesterday, and I still enjoy reading over the list of winners and runners-up, noticing surprises and looking for familiar names. Reporters from the New York Times not only won the international reporting award – no surprise there – but took the two finalist spots (as they will probably continue to do as other newspapers cut their foreign coverage). As for names, I used to look for those of friends and colleagues, now I look for those of former interns.
When my brother visited us last year he got us watching the ABC evening news, with David Muir, instead of our usual CBS evening news, with the histrionic Nora O’Donnell. This year he visited and turned us on to Morning Joe after years of CBS Mornings. This morning Mika Brzezinski conducted a long and indepth interview with the mayor of Warsaw, about the city’s acceptance of 300,000 Ukrainian refugees, something you don’t get with Gayle King.