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A postcard after sunrise

By Kris Vera-Phillips

A perfect fit?

Posted Sunday, December 17, 2006 - 5 comments

My niece from Syracuse, New York, needed help with a school project. For class, she read about the adventures of a lost mitten. Then her teacher had students make some mittens of their own. She asked them to mail out their mittens to family and friends in other parts of the state and the country. The idea behind this project -- for the mittens to bring back stories about their own adventures.



This purple Mitten with hand-drawn hearts made it out to Topeka last week. One morning, I let the Mitten shadow me at work. Like most folks, it had problems adjusting to my graveyard hours. But the Mitten did not enjoy the taste of coffee, so it tried staying awake by humming along to the promo jingles that ran during ourcommerical breaks. The Mitten had lots of questions about how everything worked and it did it's best to keep up with all the different things going on inside the booth. The Mitten enjoyed listening to cues and directions being bandied about on headset. Unfortunately, it also heard a few adult jokes and I apologize for that. I did my best to keep the conversation on headset to mostly PG-13 language. But sometimes it's difficult for people to keep their colorful exclamations to themselves when juggling elements of a live newscast.

The Mitten tried to imagine working for a television news station. I pointed out that the producer, show director and graphics designer end up using all ten fingers for typing up stories, creating on-air graphics and programming the studio equipment. I also pointed out that the floor director needed at least five fingers to give the anchors cues and count-downs.



I introduced the Mitten to Jessica and Craig. Then the Mitten thought it may have a chance at landing on the news desk as on-air talent. I told the Mitten it helps for anchors, reporters and meteorologists to have at least, a mouth and a pair of eyes, in order to read scripts and communicate with the viewing audience. Then the Mitten said it looked like I worked in the booth because I had a face for radio. I told the Mitten at least I had a face. It's fun to talk smack with the Mitten. I like its sense of humor.

I told the Mitten maybe if Ted or Rupert decided to launch a news station for hand apparel, it may have a chance at scoring a job in production or news. (Granted...the powers-that-be may want to go with brand names like Prada or Gucci, to make a splash with this type of station...but they may also want a fresh face. You never know.) These days, there seems to a cable station that fits the needs for every viewing clique, so why not one for gloves and mittens? I suggested the Mitten consider doing a news internship or two to see if this career path would be a good fit.

Over the weekend, the Mitten sneaked into my honey's baggage for a free ride to California. I think it didn't like the rainy conditions in San Francisco, but the Mitten also enjoyed checking out the lights decorating the Menorah and Christmas tree in Union Square.