It indeed pleases me to report that in the past hour, The Knight Shift has registered its TWO MILLIONTH VISITOR since the meter first activated in September 2004!
Thank you everyone, for making my humble little blog so well visited. And I shall try to continue to make it worth your while to come here :-)
There were fifteen prime ministers, many James Bonds, four Beatles, and thirteen Doctor Whos... but there was only one Queen.
Thinking of her family and this blog's friends throughout the Commonwealth, on this sad occasion.
Dad wanted me to write a book, about my life with bipolar disorder. He thought it would serve as an inspiration for others. He was really proud of how I had gone forward with having a mental illness, how I was trying to use my experience with it to help others. I like to think he would be proud still of my work the past three and a half years at a state department of mental health, where I've been employed as a peer support specialist. I've gotten to utilize my knowledge and experience just about every day of that, toward assisting others to have more full and complete lives despite their diagnoses.
I had been working on a book, and had quite a lot of it completed, before Dad passed away in November of 2014. And that... took the wind out of my sails, to put it mildly. A year and a half later I left my old hometown for a year's journey across America. And ever since a LOT has transpired that effectively make the original plan for a book, well, obsolete.
But I think that it's finally time to get back to work. Last week I finished the prologue. I know how it begins and I have bits and pieces in mind for the rest. I haven no idea how to end it. Friends have told me that since it's an autobiography that I shouldn't have a definite ending. Maybe it will wrap up with me going into peer support: some symmetry there, from how the book begins. The opening paragraph is me getting put into handcuffs for my first time en route to a psychiatric hospital. Not a particularly cheery image to evoke but it happened, and I'm going to be brutally honest with this work.
It's not going to be entirely all about my life with bipolar disorder. There are going to be other things too, like the trek across the country. Something like that changes a person, I prefer to think for the better. And I thought it could include the school board run, since that was so much fun and educational.
And hey, this will actually be my second book. The first was a children's book I wrote a few years ago. Maybe getting this one published will help me get that one to see print too!
Margaret Moffett is a journalist's journalist, and I would say that even if I had not known her for quite many years now. She has brought her enormous talent to bear wherever she has gone, whether it was at The Reidsville Review (when we first met) or at the Greensboro News & Record, where she was reporter and editor of a number of sections. She has earned my respect many times over.
To be brief: it was heartbreaking to read.
Moffett chronicles a series of horrible management decisions on top of what was already a drop in readership typical of the industry as online news grew. In reading "Below the Fold" I got the sense that the News & Record's fate was an avoidable one, had its leadership not been so eager to grow too big, too fast.
From Moffett's article:
The News & Record used to be a great paper—maybe not every day, but on a lot of them.
From 1965 to 2013, the newspaper’s owner was Landmark Communications in Norfolk, Virginia, whose papers included The Virginian-Pilot, Roanoke Times in southwest Virginia, and dozens of smaller ones. (It also created The Weather Channel.)
Landmark, which sold the last of its media holdings in 2021, was in the business of making money—though it’s unclear how much, because the company was privately held. But controlling owner Frank Batten Sr. believed in local journalism, at least enough to keep editors reasonably happy with their resources.
The News & Record was where staff received a runner-up nod for the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 1979 Klan/Nazi shootings, when white nationalists killed five people at a local “Death to the Klan” rally organized by the Communist Workers Party.
It was where, in 1985, people lined up along East Market Street to buy Jerry Bledsoe’s latest installment of a series chronicling murders involving three prominent local families, which later became the book Bitter Blood.
It was where Jim Schlosser, propelled by innate curiosity and boundless enthusiasm, delighted readers for 41 years with articles about things he found interesting: an old building the history of Greensboro’s PGA golf tournament, urban foxes.
And it was where I reported and edited, to significantly less acclaim, from 1995 until 2018.
There were a lot of solid writers at the News & Record at the zenith of its glory. It was the journal of record for that region of North Carolina, and beyond. It was also where I first discovered the joys of writing for publication: first as letters to the editor, and then a few larger pieces. I was always thrilled to see a new essay in print, knowing that it was being read by thousands upon thousands of people throughout central North Carolina.
Good Lord... what happened to all of that?
Now, this is just me talking. Nobody else. But I have some notions...
The biggest of them is this: the News & Record has gradually abandoned whatever principle it had of being objective and has instead turned full-bore liberal. It can be seen in everything from its editorials to its array of columnists, to its choice of stories. In doing so it insulted the intelligence of a vast swath of its readership, who did not care for politicizing its daily news.
As I just said, its selection of op-ed writers has become severely lacking. Leonard Pitts Jr. is the worst columnist I have ever seen (doesn't this guy see anything beyond the lens of alleged racism?). Gone are the days when George Will and his kind were considered cutting edge conservatism. Even Rosemary Roberts (may she rest in peace), as much as I loathed her leftism... she still had some of my grudging respect. I like to think she had some for me too.
Its letters to the editor reflect the intellectual wasteland that is the modern day News & Record. When the public input is far more boisterous at the now-online incarnation of The Rhinoceros Times, something has gone very wrong.
Does the News & Record even have a regular sports page any more? The late Wilt Browning was always a pleasure to read (even if he was biased toward UNC in basketball). What happened to that?
So much else that I could share aloud, about the fall of the News & Record. But I will say this in closing: I believe it can still become a good newspaper once again. It will require some serious revamping however. And more than a little humility as a publication. That region of North Carolina deserves to have a journal of record, not just for its present potential readership but for all of those still to come. Many a time I've driven past the main branch of the public library in Greensboro, and wondered at all of the print copy it possesses of Greensboro newspapers, large and small, that are deposited within. A printed News & Record and all it has to say about the people it serves should have an ongoing presence within those walls.
I hope it persists. But as I said, it's going to take some effort. And maybe more than a little clearing of conscience.
Just made a new post on my Substack at christopherknight.substack.com. I don't know who originally wrote this. But I found it this morning and it resonated greatly with me in regard to some things I've seen firsthand about transsexuality. It is with a seething rage that I am witnessing what is being done to kids in the name of "gender fluidity". The youth are being told lies and getting persuaded to do irreparable harm to their bodies and in the process their minds and souls. By the time they realize what has been done to them it is too late.
Maybe this will come as not only words of warning but also wisdom, to any person considering "transitioning" to a male or female. Because the long and short of it is, it's not possible to do that and it's madness to try. Perhaps this will be found by a young man or woman who is being given smooth-sounding words about their "real identity". I hope this will make them pause and consider what it is that they are contemplating doing to themselves.
From the short essays I came upon:
You will never be a real woman. You have no womb, you have no ovaries, you have no eggs. You are a homosexual man twisted by drugs and surgery into a crude mockery of nature’s perfection.
All the “validation” you get is two-faced and half-hearted. Behind your back people mock you. Your parents are disgusted and ashamed of you, your “friends” laugh at your ghoulish appearance behind closed doors.
Vice has the story of the Polish LARPers, who were inspired in part by shows like Stranger Things and The X-Files (and also by Breaking Bad, if some of the photos are to be believed). And at least two pages on Facebook (here and also here) are filled with more pictures. Seems that these folks wanted to imitate the Fourth of July. They certainly do not lack in their research. These are just... wow. It's like that Star Trek episode where the crew finds the planet that's copying 1920s-era gangster Chicago. The cop with the donut (pictured here) is cracking me up hard.
We should do this here. Sort of have a cultural exchange. LARP our friends in Poland for a day. Who's with me? :-)
...maybe I should give it time to still prove itself?
So I'm a real fan. And I've been looking forward to seeing how it would fare as a Netflix series: arguably the perfect medium for an adaptation.
And now, having seen the first couple of episodes?
It looks right. It's hitting on all the right cues visually. That isn't a problem at all (though at the risk of being labeled a racist I do think that Death should be the pale goth girl that she is in the comic). But something is off and it's making it hard for me to get completely engorged by this series. The first episode is a fine replication of The Sandman's premiere issue, other than introducing the Corinthian WAY too early in the story. But the pacing could have been better. The episode ran a little long and with some editing could have spanned maybe half an hour. There are ten episodes in this first season and I'm wondering if Netflix erred in devoting almost an hour to each one, when perhaps each issue could have thirty minutes of screen time devoted to it.
Speaking of the Corinthian, I don't really care for him being turned into the stereotypical bad guy of the tale. Again he looks perfect, but his execution is so wildly off that it corrupts the story around him. Then again, that is perhaps counterbalanced with touches like Cain and Abel, who are exactly like I imagined they would be from the book.
Apart from the matter of Death (which to be fair, I haven't gotten to see her really in action yet) the casting is strong in this series. Tom Sturridge is as close to a perfect portrayal of Morpheus as we're apt to get, and he brings the right intensity and sense of vengeance to the role. Vivienne Acheampong has won my approval as Lucienne. In fact, other than being gender-flipped from the graphic novel her attitude and speech are pretty much how I envisioned Lucien's. Charles Dance turns in a fine performance as Roderick Burgess, the sorcerer whose dark ritual imprisons Dream for a century.
Yes, all the right ingredients are there. But two episodes in and it's not resonating with me at all.
Or, maybe it really is simply the matter of being unfeasible to adapt The Sandman books. Reading about Morpheus and the spheres he influences is a dense exercise. It requires a fluid mind switching on and off between the worlds of waking and the Dreaming. Gaiman weaves a thick tapestry rich in metaphor. Which, is what the Endless (Dream and his siblings) are: anthropomorphic embodiments of the base concepts of the universe. How does that translate off the page and onto the screen?
I suppose I'll give The Sandman a few more episodes to convince me. But if not, there are the books and I will always treasure them for the company they have provided. Imagination is a beautifully protean thing, and some things don't need to be seen on the screen to be fully appreciated.
But I will say this: Netflix's The Sandman it is an admirable attempt. Maybe others will find it suits them in ways that a book cannot. And that will be fine, too.
