Brome Hill

Stories and more from an old Iowa farm boy and recovering newsman

Tag Archives: Twitter


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Twitter — the good and the maybe not-so-good

text from last nightNot everyone who returns here regularly to read what has been written may be familiar with Texts from Last Night. In fact, I’d guess most readers over the age of 40 aren’t familiar with it.

If you are, you probably follow it on Twitter or Facebook.

I saw the post above on Wednesday. It’s typical of what shows up several times each day from Texts from Last Night.

An outdated Wikipedia page says TFLN is a “living document of twentysomething life” that features “many blackout drinking, sex, and vomit stories,” along with discussions about morality.

Many of these texts are funny, but I often wonder just how truthful they are. Methinks there is a fair amount of exaggeration in them.

At first, I was especially inclined to call B.S. on this text. I’m just not sure how many teachers or professors would do this. But there are lecherous educators out there, I suppose, and getting your students to write these kinds of stories could be a more discrete way to get your jollies and just as titillating as reading the Penthouse Forum — if it’s even still published. (And while we’re on the subject, I once hired a reporter who claimed to have worked for Penthouse Forum, an experience that he never made sound particularly exciting.)

But my takeaway thought after reading some of these texts is to be grateful no one thought to capture and publish the drunken anonymous prank telephone calls of a generation ago. And I’m really glad text messaging didn’t exist back then.

This and that …

Positive tweets: If you’d like to know more about a more productive way a 17-year-old junior at Iowa City West High School is using Twitter, check out this video story from the Today show.

It seems simple to me: Just drink water.

Hello, my name is Chris. And I am a book nerd. Thank you to my friend, HP, for pointing out this link.

Michele Bachmann

Michele Bachmann

And finally, a Quick Hit: House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence …

Let that soak in for a second.

If ever there was an oxymoron, could there be a better one than House Intelligence Committee? Especially when it is called the SELECT committee and it includes Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.

With that kind of membership, how select and how intelligent can it really be?

God bless her district in Minnesota for re-electing this woman. It helps keep the national spotlight off Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.

Thank you and keep up the good work: Wednesday, I wrote about the lack of dialogue on this blog and encouraged more of you to begin posting comments. It prompted 11 readers to post 19 comments.

That’s a good start. I encourage them to keep it up today and for other readers to join in the fun


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Is anyone out there? Anyone? Please speak up

ben-stein-ferris-buellers-day-offThe worst teachers stand in the front of a classroom or lecture hall and drone on from the time their classes begin until they end.

Communication in these classrooms is mostly one-way.

chariton-high-school-1The teacher talks and talks and talks and talks. Students in the classroom listen or take notes. Or, speaking from personal experience, they sometimes sleep. This is what I did in high school for an entire semester of seventh-hour U.S. government.

And that brings me to this blog and the conversation it doesn’t ignite. So far, the dialogue has been generated mostly by me. That may not be a good thing.

Tuesday, on the other hand, was actually a better day. Of the 103 people who read the blog by Tuesday evening, five posted comments. I responded three times, raising the day’s total number of comments to eight.

Also, a total of 11 readers voted in a poll posted on the blog Tuesday.

Nancy Nall Derringer

Nancy Nall Derringer

This is something I’d like to change at Brome Hill. A blog I read nearly every day is written by Nancy Nall Derringer, a former newspaper columnist who lives in Michigan. Granted, she has been blogging for quite a bit longer than I have been. And she’s a better writer than I am to boot. But on a daily basis,  Derringer and her readers have a great dialogue. They discuss. They debate. On days when she is busy, she simply opens a thread and turns them loose to carry the conversation on that particular day.

I see similar things going on at some of the WordPress blogs I have started to follow.

Wouldn’t it be great to have that kind of community here? Or maybe I’m the only one who thinks so.

It seems to me this blog could become a great place for people to chat. It’s read by quite a few Muscatine residents, along with a growing number of WordPress bloggers and many of the friends I’ve made going back to my grade-school days. Readers have come here via word of mouth, their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds and via Google and other Internet search engines. The readers I know are as far-flung as Finland and Oregon. They are both politically conservative and liberal.

Just imagine what we could learn from one another if more of them joined me in what has been largely a one-way dialogue up to this point.

Speaking of Nancynall.com: There were a couple of links posted Tuesday on this blog that are worth your time. I often wonder how she finds this stuff.

The first link was a great commentary on Lance Armstrong. Nall Derringer called it the best column she has read about Armstrong in a good long time. For what it’s worth, I agree.

The second link is from the TV show, Myth Busters. It’s far more interesting than was the movie on which it was based.


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An apology to Bill Decker and Muscatine school district

black-crow-silhouette-perchThe season’s first snowfall arrived today at Brome Hill with a heaping order of crow.

When I woke up at 4 a.m., it was raining pretty hard. In fact, we had thunderstorms throughout the night here on the west bank of the Mississippi River. Without getting out of bed, I grabbed my phone and started reading my Twitter feed to find weather news.

And then I sent out this tweet:

tweet

Unfortunately, misspelling “cancelled” wasn’t my biggest mistake with this tweet, because the canceled winter storm warning was upgraded to a blizzard warning.

After I headed for the Muscatine Community Y to teach a cycling class, Bill Decker, the Muscatine superintendent of schools, responded with a tweet that I can’t find now in order to post it here. But according to the text message I received from Twitter it said:

“@CSteinbach, winter storm warning canceled because it was upgraded to a blizzard warning. Student safety>name calling #NotFunny. #NotClassy.”

Fair enough. And I apologize to Decker for jumping the gun with a tweet that was meant to be funny and fell short.

For what it’s worth, he got the last laugh without knowing it a few hours later when I was pelted by sleet as we loaded Christmas food baskets at the Salvation Army for 30-some MCSA residents.

The lessons learned from this experience for me are:

  • School officials are often second-guessed for closing — or not closing — school when winter weather strikes. From here on out, however, I no longer plan to be among the second-guessers.
  • Without a doubt, student safety should always be priority No. 1.
  • Flippant tweets sent at 4:30 in the morning are best left to others. And the next time I feel the urge, I plan to roll over and go back to sleep.
  • Crow isn’t very tasty, but it can be choked down if eaten with enough Sriracha sauce. (OK, no more jokes, I promise.)

As for my not being funny or lacking class, I’m not going to spend much time today worrying about such shortcomings. I’m going to be too busy shoveling snow.


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Some thinking out loud

big gunSo, I’ve got my toe in virtual water and am thinking of changing the way I use social media. In fact, the changes are sort of taking shape in steps.

In a blog post 10 days ago, I threatened to step back some from Facebook. And then Adam Lanza burst on the scene at a school Friday morning in Connecticut, which really turned up the heat in what writer Charles Pierce calls Blogistan.

I couldn’t stay away. I posted one comment on my Facebook page that said: The AP says the shooting suspect in Connecticut used a .223 caliber rifle similar to this one. I really don’t care how many guns people legally own. But why does anyone need a gun like this?.

That post stirred enough of a discussion that it made me rethink walking away completely from Facebook. But that doesn’t change the fact that there are aspects of Facebook I’ve come to really dislike.

While all of this has been going on, WordPress has been making changes to its platform, adding a number of new features. Finally, I decided the other day to start learning how to use at least some of these features. Among other things I have:

  • Added the Ephemera feature in the left-hand column.
  • Started using Word Press formats for Status Updates, Quotes, Photos and what WordPress calls Asides, which I’m still a little unsure on how to use.
  • Linked what I post here to both by Facebook page and my Twitter feed. Doing that includes my Facebook friends and Twitter followers as Brome Hill subscribers.

What I think all of this will mean is that regular Brome Hill readers will begin to notice more frequent — and probably shorter — posts on this blog. And all of those posts will go to my Facebook page and Twitter feed. I’m going to try it this way instead of posting stuff directly to Facebook. And if I should feel the need to post something quickly, I’ll tweet it. My tweets also show up on Brome Hill and can go to my Facebook page if I want them to.

That’s a pretty dense paragraph. Even I’m not sure exactly what it all means. But it’s what I’ve decided to try for now. Stay tuned. In a week, I could change my mind again.

As always, thanks for reading, regardless of how you got here.

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