True stories and thoughts about life, the universe and everything, as told by journalist, explorer, musician, cheffe and accidental comedienne Charlotte-Anne Lucas

For Holly Lucas, the Journey Was the Joy

Holly Lucas, who sang, hiked, biked, snorkeled, canoed, sailed, stargazed, rafted, hang glided, rode horseback and kayaked her way from Alaska to Nova Scotia, from California’s Muir Woods to North Carolina’s Outer Banks, from Texas’ Big Bend to the Appalachian Trail, and from Maine’s Cadillac Mountain to Caribbean coral reefs, died on July 16, 2023.…

Love Wins

Twenty-nine years and six weeks ago, my husband and I chose to be married by our hero, Jerry Buchmeyer, the federal judge who on Aug. 17, 1982, decriminalized love between same-sex couples in Texas in the case known as Baker v. Wade. Buchmeyer’s ruling was way ahead of its time: The Fifth Circuit Court of…

Dear Lowes, ’tis the season for a happy ending

Updated: Dear Lowes, Thank you for giving this story a happy ending! This story needs a happy ending. You can make that happen. A while back, my Dad and Mom paid Lowes to put new siding on their home in Woodbury, N.J. After my Dad died this year, my brother and I realized Lowes had failed…

Home Away From Home

Kelly and Portia are home, awaiting our return. We’re in Woodbury, New Jersey, my hometown, 1,700 miles, a cultural divide and a three-day drive from San Antonio. I’m going through my Dad’s remarkable photos, negatives, slides, and prints. Life here is like a combination of Groundhog Day, with familial behavior patterns in a never-changing loop,…

Photographer Joseph Edward Lucas

Joe Lucas was a gregarious iconoclast, an uncompromising defender of civil liberties and human rights and a passionate Atheist, preaching to all who would listen. He was born on Jan. 19, 1933, to Anna Kathryn Thaidigsman and Joseph Biddle Lucas in the Riverside, New Jersey, home built in the 1890s by his German immigrant grandparents.…

My Dad’s life through a new lens

I struggle to write my Dad’s obit. And then I rewrite it. And rewrite it again. Where in the world to start? My Dad taught me to read before I entered Kindergarden, he taught me to be a photographer, how to build and fly radio control model airplanes, how to fish, how to paddle a canoe…

A Sax to Build a Dream on

Just getting into the after-hours club in Phoenix required an unlikely combination of connections and trust. You had to know it existed in the first place. Then you needed directions – there was no sign outside advertising the joint that opened at 2 a.m., the hour Arizona law required all bars to close. After knocking…

Entreprenureal Journalism links and Twitters

Here are some of the links from my discussion today on Entrepreneurial Journalism at the SPJ Region 8 Conference in San Antonio.Books for news startups: Entrepreneurial Journalism by Mark BriggsThe Lean Startup by Eric RiesLean Analytics Croll & YoskovitzNet Smart by Howard RheingoldSmart Mobs by Howard Rheingold22 Immutable laws of Marketing, Reiss & TroutRocket Surgery…

Planes, People and Another Piece of My Heart

I used to get flashbacks every August. The aching sadness would start to swallow me on the anniversary of the Aug. 2, 1985 crash of Delta Airlines Flight 191 in Dallas, followed by another collective sob on the anniversary of the Aug. 16, 1987 crash of Phoenix-bound Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in Detroit. As a…

New age journalism: With a pickaxe and a crap detector

This is going to be a little random, but I am grateful to Adrienne Flynn, my long-time friend, sister journalist, and now University of Maryland journalism professor, for asking me what I think journalism students should be learning these days. Away from academia, these centipede legs sometimes take me on a run, when what I…

My gold cocoon on wheels

The last thing I wanted was to own and drive a minivan — a gold Dodge Caravan that looks identical to its two million or so brethren on the highway and in every parking lot in town. But it was what I needed. Four years and a few weeks ago when we bought the van,…

It’s my birthday, I’ll count if I want to

I’ve never been afraid to go places few women have gone before, and to take names and kick butt. Thanks to my father, I learned to rebuild the engine in a 1964 Dodge Dart so I had a car to drive in 1974. (I named it Rocinante and aimed it at windmills.) I won’t reiterate…

What’s On Tap?

It is important to maintain a calendar of events

The community part of journalism

A bit more about what we are up to at NOWCastSA: [vodpod id=Groupvideo.3700903&w=425&h=350&fv=loc%3D%252F%26autoplay%3Dfalse%26vid%3D2391537] more about “Exploring the World of Online Journal…“, posted with vodpod

Clean Energy Forum

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Caremark CVS delayed my mom’s cancer drugs

Here’s what I wrote to them tonight after I found out from my dad that Caremark CVS has delayed my mom’s cancer medicine. They didn’t say why or what for. No explanation, just no delivery to the drugs that will help keep her alive – drugs to keep her white blood cells going. What in…

Inspired by design

We’ve chosen core components of the NOWCastSA home page, and it’s fair to say we’ve been inspired by the way some other folks have designed their sites. Here’s what we like and why. Because video is an important element of the site, we’d like to be able to feature it prominently. Perhaps it might look…

The most important words in President Obama’s speech

What you see here is a word cloud, created in Wordle.net of the 50 words President Obama used the most in the remarks prepared for his chat with school children tomorrow. Here’s a link to the text of the prepared remarks. (The cloud image links to details of how it was made.) Here’s one message…

Future seekers need better rear-view mirrors

As a Unitarian Universalist, I have a tough time embracing the Original Sin metaphor in the discussion about where news organizations went wrong online. Yup, there have been a lot of failures. But what’s getting lost in the discussion is a very real record of some game-changing innovation and achievements. Progress, it seems to me,…

Crowdsourcing my mom’s cancer

My mom has always been our clan’s chief information hunter and learner. That is, until last week, when she was diagnosed with a rare cancer: Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia. Mom was a medical research librarian – someone who delighted in being a generous resource for journalists like me. I remember her describing the day in 1981 or…

River Walk Tour Webcast

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Fair pay and fair play

Today is fair pay day. Here’s my part: I got into the journalism racket back in 1975, when the newbies were relegated to the manual typewriters and when it was considered too demeaning for a male reporter to be assigned to the “Womens” section of the newspaper. Although I’d completed one meager semester of journalism…

The Twitters tell the story

I was asked to be the wrap-up Rapporteur for the 10th International Symposium on Online Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin last week. The conference had the Twitter hashtag #isoj, and, partly because it is Webcast live, people were watching and Twittering about it in real time on at least four continents. (Here…

Fiesta fireworks

Fiesta Fireworks over Fort Sam Houston [kyte.tv appKey=MarbachViewerEmbedded&uri=channels/109515/410442&tbid=k_38&premium=false&height=445&width=425]

Newspapers don’t own journalism

I always thought it was odd to hear flat out declarations that there can be no life on other planets in the absence of water. How egocentric! So you’re saying that life can only exist if it’s precisely like us? Really? That’s the feeling I’m getting right now in the woe-is-us, hand-wringing sob-fest about whether…

Train in Brackenridge Park

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Pecan Season in San Antonio

Native American nuts [vodpod id=Groupvideo.1680627&w=425&h=350&fv=] more about "Pecan Season in San Antonio", posted with vodpod

Students, Denver and the Fifth Estate

I’m in Denver today with a group of University of Nevada, Las Vegas students who are kind enough to call me their teacher. Fellow-learner is more like it. Once again, we’re experimenting with the future of journalism — using the latest tools in different ways to help people get news and better connect with information,…

The offline mind

incurious \(ˌ)in-ˈkyu̇r-ē-əs\ lacking a normal or usual curiosity : uninterested <a blank incurious stare> synonyms: see indifferent – Merriam-Webster I am not at all relieved that John McCain, an acknowledged computer illiterate, is now “learning to get online,” without help. Here’s what he told the New York Times: Q: But do you go on line…

Gazpacho, cool soup for a hot day

We’d been married less than 10 years when we bought this old house on Mahncke Park, but our cookbook collection was already big enough to demand its own built-in bookcase in the kitchen. Each of the books has a story, which kind of explains why this librarian’s daughter thought it made sense to house Like…

See no AP, speak no AP, link no AP

I kept telling myself I was way too busy to compose a long, thoughtful piece about AP’s supremely boneheaded, wrongheaded, counterproductive and just plain stupid move to threaten to sue bloggers who quote and link to AP stories but don’t pay AP. But I am never, ever too busy to vote. So please count my…

Sex, texting, secrets and media lapdogs

I’m shocked (shocked, I tell ya!) at the high percentage of prudes and fraidy cat nannies in the Nevada press corps. It’s Nevada, for crying out loud, home to Reno, divorce capitol of the world in the north, Vegas Sin City in the south, and legal brothels in between. It’s a place where even the…

Sad face TwitterSync no workie

When my friend Chris O’Brien messaged me yesterday asking how I link my Twitter updates to my Facebook status, I had to haul myself out of denial and figure out what went wrong. For months I had been speeding along in the fast lane with my FB and Tweets all linked together for one-stop updating.…

Grieving for the turtles and their keepers

When my brother was about five years old, I gave him a carved onyx turtle for his birthday. I still have a snapshot of his ear-to-ear grin as he clutched his palm-sized prize. He was so innocently oblivious of the war then raging across the American fabric and the death toll in Vietnam. Turtles became…

Raising hell and having fun

So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. –Molly Ivins I am one lucky journo. So many times in the past 30 years I paused, looked up to the heavens, and thanked the stars that someone was actually paying me…

Visualizing Twitter

New Twitter applications just keep getting more and more fun, but they are tough to keep track of. Here’s a delightful and encompassing post from Flowing Data on 17 Ways to Visualize the Twitter Universe. (Call me crazy, but it reminds me of “Visualize Whirled Peas.” ) The blog’s author, Nathan Yau, says he is…

Twitter 101

What is Twitter? It is like a microblog, a place to say your piece, or Tweet, in 140 characters or less. And it is a place to listen. Unlike my soapbox of a blog, my Twitter home page is actually a waterfall of other people’s words, blended in a real time river from streams around…

Billion dollar bye bye

I come from the “follow-the-money” school of journalism, so I’ve written about more than my share of billions over the years. But Alan Mutter took my breath away with his post cataloging the staggering volume of dollars that have fled newspaper help wanted, or so-called “recruitment” ads. Newspapers have lost more than half of their…

Saul Alinsky would be proud

The students and I talked current events today in my Web Publishing and Design class, and the chit chat wasn’t about the Super Bowl or Super Duper Tuesday. It was about Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo and what that could mean for all of us. One among them knew that Google’s CEO reportedly called Yahoo’s CEO…

Fried squirrel, politics and the media

Some followup notes from my delightful conversation this morning on KNPR’s State of Nevada, with host Dave Berns and his panel of so-called “witty academics.” (The audio with David Damore, Ken Fernandez and me from University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Eric Herzik of University of Nevada, Reno, is here.) During the show, I mentioned…

Quote ’em if they can’t take a joke

That’s one of my basic rules of journalism, and never has it been so delightfully true as today, when we can not only tell you what someone said, but let you hear how they said it — in their own voice. One of my students got a very rude awakening last semester thanks to an…

Faster than the Pony Express

Thanks to the printing press, the mail coach and the steam packet—gifts beyond the gifts of fairies—we can all see and hear what each other are doing, and do and read the same things nearly at the same time. — Maria Edgeworth, (1767-1849) Irish author (thanks to Ted Pease and his alert WORDster Louise Montgomery)…

Beaver mania

We managed to leave Buc-ees without this gem — a beaver neck rest complete with smiling Buc-ee face, paws and a flat tail. The store on I-10 has added a lot of beaverphernalia, including boxers, but no briefs. Mobile post sent by charlotteanne using Utterz. Replies.

Selling the free stuff for $14.99

Chile pepper recipe bookOriginally uploaded by charlotteanne.lucas What if you give away the polished and edited content, but then put a price tag on the user-generated content? People will buy it. Those of us who have solicited so-called user-generated content know that there’s just about nothing more popular than people’s own stuff. The numbers are…

Twelve Days of Christmas and a Dreidel

I don’t care if it has already gotten 5 million YouTube pageviews and was made in 1998. This version of the Twelve Days of Christmas by Straight No Chaser at Indiana University is worth another click or three: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fe11OlMiz8&rel=1&border=1]

Sugar Plum Shoppers

hand to hand combat in the baking aisle Mobile post sent by charlotteanne using Utterz. Replies. mp3

Call out the posse — the Twitter posse

J.D. Lasica has a very interesting post here from a session at the Aspen Institute and San Francisco State University’s Roundtable on Mobile Media and Civic Engagement. He poses the notion of a “posse” of collaborators who could use Twitter to send questions to a reporter who is covering a news event. It sounds like…

Fog soup in Tejas

It’s 38 degrees and socked in fog on Interstate 10 about 175 miles east of El Paso. The McDonald Observatory can’t see a thing. Funny the things Ithaca and Big Bend country have in common today: Cold pea soup. True story. Mobile post sent by charlotteanne using Utterz. Replies.

One of my friends named Kim

What’s Happening Cover Originally uploaded by Something To See Thanks to Facebook and LinkedIn, I’ve been stumbling across a bunch of not-so-old friends, people I haven’t seen in many, many moons. Many of them have gone on to do wonderful things while I was in another time zone, doing something else. That’s the case with…

Dina Titus rallies students

UNLV budget cut protest Mobile post sent by charlotteanne using Utterz. Replies.

UNLV Protest

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Protest petition

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Blog it (well) and they will come

Students in my Digital Storytelling class zoomed into the prime time blogosphere this week, providing live, multimedia coverage of the Democratic presidential debate and the accompanying mayhem at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Besides making more than 150 posts to the UNLV Presidential Debate 2007 blog, many of the students published audio, photos and…

Billionaire Mark Cuban says bloggers should shun ads, sponsors

Easy for him to say. Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks and a net worth north of $2 billion, also happens to be a blogger. So when he came to speak at the BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas, a couple hundred bloggers showed up and listened up. Cuban said a lot of provocative…

Blogging, journalism and ethics

Just a quick note that I will be on a panel at Blogworld Expo in Las Vegas this morning talking about blogging ethics. This should be a great discussion, and I will recap it here later today. As the students in my Digital Storytelling class at UNLV know, we’ve spent almost as much time on…

The original journalists

petroglyph Originally uploaded by charlotteanne.lucas These petroglyphs were etched on a wall in in a wash at the Valley of Fire in southern Nevada more than 3,000 years ago. There is something thrilling about the fact that I can take a picture of them with my Treo, and in a matter of minutes, upload it…

It’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound?

What a fabulous time to be alive! It’s Gutenberg all over again, but this time with movable music and video (YouTube) in the place of movable type. A Renaissance of publishing creativity is underway. And some of my favorite musicians are using the free presses to make protest music again. Unlike the 1970s, today they…

Students out to save the news biz

Here’s the reason for my slow posts this past couple weeks, as I and other faculty herded students from seven universities to the Online News Association conference in Toronto to present youthful and innovative visions for the future of news. First, a video of students from each of the three projects from MediaGiraffe. I’m a…

Telling the truth, not just the facts

Note: I was asked to be on Nevada Public Radio’s KNPR State of Nevada program on Oct. 2 with host Dave Berns and Marvin Kitman discuss Kitman’s piece in The Nation Magazine proposing that CBS Evening News hire Keith Olbermann, the opinionated host of Countdown on MSNBC. Here’s a link to the audio from the…

Free speech in peril in Paris, Texas

A ruling today by a judge in Paris, Texas looks to me like it could have serious ramifications for the First Amendment rights of bloggers and whistleblowers. I first read about the case of The-Paris-site in this article by R. G. Ratcliffe (thanks for the onpass, Willie!): AUSTIN — Paris, Texas, population 26,490, has become…

Beaver redemption

I had a delightful conversation yesterday with Don Wasek, co-owner of Buc-ee’s, and an acknowledged novice blogger. “I am new at this,” he said in an email responding to my complaint that the Buc-ee’s blog had lifted my words. Then he asked if he could call me for some advice. We chatted on the phone…

The dam beaver stole my words

I’ve been doing this journalism gig for a good while now, and never before have I had to take on an imaginary beaver for a very real case of plagiarism. But Buc-ee’s gone and done it now. He stole the words right off of my blog and stacked them over here. If the beaver had…

Hey, check this out!

The Project for Excellence in Journalism just released a nice summary of the content on user-driven news sites Reddit, Digg and Del.icio.us, but I think the authors of the report missed the point. The report found little or no overlap between the stories that were pushed to the top of the page on the user-driven…

9/11 again

Thanks to my dear friend, colleague and adopted sister, Holly Hegeman, who saved and republished on her blog today the words I wrote when I was an editor at TheStreet.com to describe that awful September morning: At 8:26 a.m. I sent an Instant Message to our market columnist, Bill Meehan, asking if he’d be sending…

Dead tree dinosaurs and the fabulous future of the news bidness

I once said that I left newspapers in the late 1990s because I didn’t want to be encased in amber. That’s cold, I know, but true. I’ve worked for more than my share of “former” newspapers. And at the surviving papers today, I’m seeing many bosses do the blame game and have ugly public panic…

Why Facebook Bugsmenot and helps me heart my Westie

OK, so we screwed up. By we I mean the people such as me who were running news Websites. When we did it, you rightfully hated it. What’s remarkable is that Facebook is doing it and you love it so much you can’t get enough of it. And I think it has some tremendous —…

Buc-ee’s

Buc-ee’s in Luling, Texas is fast becoming the Wall Drug of the 3.5-hour stretch of Interstate 10 between Houston and San Antonio. They’ve got a couple dozen billboards along the highway, including one that says, “Eat here, get gas,” and my husband’s favorite, “Ice. Made from scratch.” Since we drive the route often to go…

I was “Rove’d,” but he didn’t leave prints

Jay Rosen has some provocative things to say today about how well Karl Rove played the press corps and how, in his opinion, members of the media aren’t writing everything they know about Rove’s wily ways. I really, really respect Jay, but I think he’s gone coastal on us here — East Coastal. News flash:…

There’s no such thing as off-the-record for journalists

Linda Greenhouse’s snit-fit over C-SPAN’s attempt to record her appearance in Washington D.C. at a journalism educators’ conference Friday is a stunning show of arrogance and cluelessness. (Here’s the take on it by Columbia Journalism Review, and here is this morning’s limp defense of her move by Slate.) In an interview with the AEJMC Reporter,…

Facebook, the dead tree edition and cute puppies

The other day I found something extremely cool hidden in plain view on Facebook, something that may spell more gloom for online newspaper classifieds, and which might even take a chunk out of eBay and Craigslist. I found myself in possession of two extra puppies, thanks so some lout who dumped them in our yard…