Oklahoma red clay Saturday

"Dust swept up from the new flowerbeds and swirled around the foundation of the building. I hoped from the bottom of my heart that she would pour out everything."

"At night I law awake, noticing how our house sounded. ...but now the house itself made a kind of wheeze every once in a while like it was remembering the time before it was level."

Would you keep reading? How about an autographed copy of the book, signed in person by the Oklahoma native author?
You can get one  when Louise Farmer Smith comes to Full Circle Bookstore www.fullcirclebooks.com/ this Saturday at 3 p.m. to sign her book, 100 Years of Marriage-A Novel in Stories.
Hooked yet? How about the grabber she asks, "Why did your mother say yes?"

It's an Oklahoma family epic spanning generations--moving in Michneresque structure from the past to near the present, and while Louise lives in DC and has East Coast college degrees, these stories have Oklahoma red clay on them, set in the state.
See the review of the book on this blog back in June. Here's the link:
http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2012/06/why-did-your-mother-say-yes.html
I intend to go and just meet this spunky, erudite Okie, to see her smile and listen to some stories.

Public polling pointers

    Because of their polling, Mitt Romney, his family and campaign people were confident of victory and then literally stunned and shell-shocked as the election night results rolled in and they lost to Baarak Obama. 

http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/110597/exclusive-the-polls-made-mitt-romney-think-hed-win#

    This link explains why they were so wrong. What they really needed was this Prof’s Primer on Polling, especially this editor’s checklist for evaluating polling, or any research.

Americans are justifiably suspicious of polling, and not just for political reasons. Some of the fault lies with newspapers and broadcast which have reported off-beat “research” to try to snag audience. Yesterday I referred to USA Today once carrying a Women’s Day’s poll of its readers wouldn’t marry the same man is just one example. The poll was loaded with faults, and the media failed to point them out. Then Fox broadcast picked up the myth in September and continued with it. Carl Rove's meltdown on Fox on calling Ohio for Obama on election night is typical of the consequences of ignorance. Be suspicious, but understand the facts.

   So here is this editor’s checklist for evaluating polls. I think this should also be every American’s checklist too.

• Who sponsored the polling? Is there a conflict of interest?  Political polling is especially suspect if it’s loaded with distrust for the other side. Beware any polling done by a PR firm for a client. I understand the Republicans with their distrust of the so-called “liberal media” wanting to conduct their own polls.  But they fell victim to the same faults they suspected from the other side.
• Who was included in the polling? If you poll certain age groups or geographic areas or don’t reach likely voters, you’re results will not be valid. See number three.
• How were the people chosen? Was it a true “random” sample? If not the results will be skewed (as with Romney’s polling).
• How many people were in the sample? If the poll has fewer than 1,100 respondents, your margin of error is going to be more than three percent.
• What was the response rate? If your sample was 1,000 and only 400 answered, you get results like the Women’s Day article which threw out more than it counted. Don’t seriously consider any response rate less than 60 percent.
• How accurate are the results? Always compute the margin of error—it results ware within it, then “it’s too close to call.”
• Who were the interviewers? Were they professionally trained and neutral? If not, prejudice, inflection of the voice and other factors can affect results.
• How was the polling conducted? Robo-call? In person? If it was a call in or send in, the results are worthless because they’re not random.
• When was the poll conducted? Results can change overnight.
• What were the actual questions asked? Wording can influence results, and can lead to opposite results on the same matter, depending on wording.
• Are the results cause and effect or just correlation? I saw a headlined story once: “Want to live a longer life? Marry yourself a younger wife.” The poll found that men with younger wives lived longer. But—this might not be cause and effect because there are many other factors involved—health, wealth, etc. 
• Does the headline match the polling results? 

   If you’re an American and can’t answer these questions satisfactorily, you shouldn’t believe the results. If your newspaper or broadcast or online source doesn't answer the questions for you, you should be very skeptical. 

    A few of the faults of the Women’s Day poll and article: 1. It’s not random for all women in America, only subscribers. 2. Women’s Day has more than one million subscribers. About 100,000 responded. 3. The results were clipped out of the magazine and sent in (pre-Internet). 4. Once the magazine got the results, some of them were not counted. 

   So, a responsible newspaper  or news outlet reporting polling results should include an explanatory item with every story. It should be written along these lines:

“The Daily Geezer poll of 1,200 registered voters in Geezer County was conducted Oct. 31, 2012, and asked two questions: ‘Will you vote Nov. 6?’ and ‘Which presidential candidate will you vote for?’ The results have a margin of error of plus and minus three percent."

   A final note: Newspapers, broadcast and other news sources have an obligation to explain this to you. If they don't, they're not being responsible. If they report frivolous poll results to get your attention, it should tell you they're a frivolous news source.

Opening the pages of the West

Western non-fiction books to be judged, in front of my Dad's old drawing and watercolor of the Sandias.

One of the pleasures and blessings of my life these last few years has been serving as a judge for non-fiction books for the Western Heritage Awards at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. www.nationalcowboymuseum.org/

This December, 29 of them arrived in two boxes with a January 31 deadline. I have to pick the top three, and my selections will be combined with the selections of two other judges before the winner is selected. That author/publisher will be presented one of the handsome bronze Wrangler statues at the annual shindig at the museum, scheduled April 19-20 this year.  
www.nationalcowboymuseum.org/events/wha/default.aspx

There are many categories of awards, from poetry to fiction, music to movies, and more. The celebration brings a crowd of movie star celebrities, authors, publishers, and unbelievable western characters and dress from across the West.

So what do I get out of it, other than just judging books, seeing photographs and maps and reading about the West? 

First of all, as my wife Susan will tell you, we get complimentary admission to the Jingle Jangle Mingle on Friday and then to the black tie awards dinner Saturday. That's where she got to go ga-ga over Tom Selleck and get her pix taken with Ernie Borgnine. http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2010/04/agog-at-mingling.html The food and liquid refreshment is terrific--a don't-miss-event.

Here also I got to meet poet and Mongrel Empire Press www.mongrelempire.org publisher Jeanetta Calhoun Mish a few years ago when her poetry book Work is Love Made Visble won the poetry division. I usually buy a book or two here, and the benefit was a new friend, and painting buyer for that matter.

Then last year, I noticed that of the 37 entries, about one third of them were from the University of Oklahoma Press. www.oupress.com/ I took that idea and Oklahoma Today www.oklahomatoday.com/ bought my story on the press and its role in printing books about Native Americans this past year.
I also get to work with the folks at the Meusem's magazine Persimmon Hill--editor Judy Hilvosky and former student and photographer Carolyn Seelan. Fun all around.

And then, I get to keep the books...those I want, and give the others away, to libraries and friends.

So now I've finished judging the books, and will have to wait till April --as will you-- to find out if the other judges are  close to me (I've managed to pick the winner for several years now).

If you'd like to see more  images of the Western Heritage Awards, search that term in the Search This Blog blank on the sidebar. It's a natural for photos and writing and lots of posts over the past few years. Here's one link to whet your appetite:

http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2010/04/jingle-jangle-mingling.html

I've scattered them across the floor in the photo above, to give you an idea of these books, in front of my Dad's old drawing and watercolor of the Sandias at Albuquerque, where I grew up in the West. This is also meant to gig Jeanetta a little too, because she and her husband recently moved from Oklahoma to the base of those mountains, and she keeps posting photos of the Sandias, gloating away.
These books and people and connections are the power of the West to me. 

"Polling-tics" for Americans

It’s a long way from the banner headline “Dewey Defeats Truman” in the Chicago Tribune.

  I’m not talking about politics and the press, but about polling, which most Americans are probably sick of about now. Back in 1948, public opinion polling was in its infancy, contributing to that journalistic fiasco.

The just completed inauguration of President Obama  concluded the 2012 election, where we were deluged with more polls than ever, and they remarkably foretold the results, correctly predicting the electoral outcome in every state.

How? Americans are justifiably suspicious of polling, but it is a fact of our lives, and not just in politics. This is a version of an article I wrote for the Oklahoma Press Association Publisher.

Forget the poo-pooers who argued with what the polls showed because they disagreed or didn’t want to believe, or thought they were biased.  Forget your political views of Huffington Post. But its poll aggregator of hundreds of polls nailed the results. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/07/2012-poll-accuracy-obama-models-survey_n_2087117.html?utm_hp_ref=@pollster
It is a fact that most Americans don’t understand scientific polling, and I think it is up to newspapers to help make that clear as to what can be trusted and what can’t.

Hence, here’s 
 Prof’s Press Primer on Polling, Part One

Definition of terms is first.

•    Population—The group to be surveyed, such as likely voters, residents of Hennessey, Thunder season ticket holders.
•    Random—Random does not mean “haphazard.” It means that every person in the population has an equal chance of being chosen. It’s easy in a classroom—you put every name in a hat and have a few names pulled out. Bigger groups require phone numbers or addresses, all more easily available than ever with computer data.
• Sample—The portion of the population to be chosen randomly to ask the poll questions
•  Valid—A poll is valid if the results collected from the sample can be applied to the entire population.
• Margin of error—Expressed as a plus and minus percentage. Every poll has flaws and variables that will affect the accuracy of the results, but the larger the sample, the lower the margin of error (If you poll everyone in the population there will be no margin of error, but that isn’t possible in most cases).

Now the key question—how big a sample do you need to conduct an accurate poll?

You’re not going to believe the answer. So first things first. Timing, wording of questions, training of the pollsters, polling methods, and other factors also affect a poll’s validity, not just the sample size. But sample size is not dependent on population size.

That said, to get a sense of how people in Stillwater might vote on any issue, or people in Oklahoma on another issue, or people in the United States,  for a five percent margin of error, you need roughly only 400 registered, or likely, voters selected randomly. Yep, that’s all.

Here’s how the margin of error figures. Suppose the results come back showing Panhandle residents favor seceding from the state by a 52-48 percent margin. The results are within the margin of error so the election could go either way—it could be 52-43, or 47-52, or any combination. If on the other hand it was 75-25, Oklahoma, you have a problem.

Most national polls try to have a sample of about 1,200 people—that produces a margin of error of about plus and minus three percent.

Also important in polling is the timing. A poll or electability two days after Romney winning the first debate is valid that day. But as fast as things change in this digital news country, it wouldn’t be valid in five days.

'Other factors can affect outcome...

you could live in Florida'

Other factors can affect outcome. People who say they will vote and don’t show up. Or a Hurricane could shut the place down. Or you could live in Florida.

As with everything in journalism, sources also matter in polls. Who conducted it?

But that’s a separate subject—tomorrow, an American’s checklist for evaluating a poll (should you believe it?)

Hint: USA Today once ran a story and headline at the top of the page about most American women wouldn’t remarry the same man, based on a Women’s Day survey. What was wrong with that? And why Romney was shocked that he didn't win.

Book journeys--pages of 2013

"As the pen rises from the page between words, 

so the walker's feet rise and fall between pages, ....."

Some of the best books are those discovered by accident, and the first book of the year for me is one of those, found in the travel section at Barnes & Noble while searching for something else.
Did you know there is ancient kinship between the words "narrative" or "story," and "way" or "path"? I didn't either, but this book by a foot-traveler and fellow at Cambridge took me on many journeys in the past two weeks.

The Old Ways by Robert MacFarlane is just that, a record of his walking in England, Scotland, and elsewhere, as he covers hundreds of miles in physical geography and more in mental geography, writing of the relationship of landscape and self. I know the relationship of place to self most strongly in New Mexico.
I don't know how I've missed this author, so the discovery is double sweet. He's written  Mountains of the Mind, about  climbing, and The Wild Places also. I will find and read those.
It's my kind of journalism, going back to the original meanings of that word, though his work is often poetic and deeply spiritual in the oldest of ways.
He's fortunate to live in England where he can take off and walk the footpaths, which is almost impossible in automobile-ridden Oklahoma and America. Maybe that's why I like Hafer park so much, or Martin Park. Having tread the old paths at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico though, I deeply connect with the self discovery you find when walking. Who does not stop if briefly when crossing a path and wonder where it leads?

"The eye is enticed by a path, and the mind's eye too."

My copy of the book is now marked and underlined, key words, strong phrases, fresh imagery, powerful verbs,  or new words circled  for more discovery, and new history and geography and people and language met around the bend of every path on every page. I only wish the book came with maps, because I had to go to Google to find the places I'd never heard of, but maybe that was his intention, since going on paths is self discovery. Thus I think I was meant to find this book, to attack my winter cabin fever, and to set me back on the paths of reading, and reawakening this blog, after semi-hibernation this winter.