Reading Ted Koppel’s Off Camera, a daily journal he kept during the year 1999, with a backdrop of Monica Lewinsky, Clinton impeachment, crisis in Yugoslavia, etc. Koppel was one of the last national journalists who wasn’t an ideologue — what we have instead today among prominent media types.
Running throughout the book is an amused and somewhat sardonic view of American life and politics. Koppel — a gifted writer as well as a penetrating and objective journalist. Too bad we don’t have more like him today. Things don’t always get better.
I am a voracious reader and also enjoy writing. I often have a very different point of view than the popular one. I do see value in debate, and thought it might add to the public debate on controversial issues if I were to express my contrarian opinions. I also started keeping my poems recently (I've written little pieces my whole adult life but never kept any); and I've been a photographer now for over 25 years. So I will be adding an occasional poem and hopefully interesting photograph to the blog along the way, just to spice things up.
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