Big storms, bad weather overnight and this morning. Campus delayed opening for a few hours. The most destructive elements of the storm were elsewhere, thankfully, not nearly as severe or widespread as it could have been.
There was a leak in my office.
My desk faces a wall. On the other side of that wall is a part of the campus radio station studio. Behind the wall to my desk’s right is part of the newspaper’s newsroom. The wall to my left opens to the exterior of the University Center. There’s a large, long window that looks out onto a green hill, a parking lot and a tree line in front of the next building up the hill.
From the top of that window there was a long, slow dripdripdrip. Under loud booms of thunder I called the facilities department to see about this leak. Our building is about 60 years old, so there are leaks from time to time. Offices across the hall had a good scare in the last year or so. The radio station had a leak, too, but managed to avoid damage. An office on the floor directly below the newspaper had a leak a few weeks ago. The folks that did the repair work surmised it must have gotten there from the newspaper, but we showed no damage. There are a few ceiling tiles in the hallway that have seen better days.
But now the gutter outside my window is threatening neatly stacked piles of paper filled with lecture notes and classroom exercises.
I met a man today who started his career at Samford years ago as a member of the campus safety department. He told me a story about working a late shift in the guard shack at the entrance in his first few weeks on the job.
A car pulled up, he asked to see some identification. The driver couldn’t produce any. He’d left his wallet and license at home.
The man, citing state law, said “I should make you park your car and call you a cab since you have no license with you.”
The driver said he’d turn around, head home and fetch his ID.
The next day the new guard was talking to his boss, who’d just had a conversation with his boss. They talked about the man he’d encountered last night. Older gentleman. Tall. Well dressed. Turns out the car was driven by Dr. Thomas Corts, the president of the university. The new employee didn’t recognize him.
The president said the man at the guard shack had behaved appropriately. And he should never do that to the president again.
We all had a nice laugh. Corts stepped down as the university president in 2006 and died four years ago. People still tell great stories about him. They all have some lesson in them, which is probably one of those marks of a good man. This one was pretty clear: You never know when you’ll meet someone important to you.
We talked about those kinds of first impressions in class a bit today. We talked career expos, first impressions and so on. It was resume day for the intro class. The Career Development Center led a great discussion on the Dos and Don’ts.
Rule Number One: Don’t use your mother as a reference.
Things to read: 4 TED Talks every journalist should watch.
For 40 years, this Russian family was cut off from all human contact, unaware of World War II:
Led by Pismenskaya, the scientists backed hurriedly out of the hut and retreated to a spot a few yards away, where they took out some provisions and began to eat. After about half an hour, the door of the cabin creaked open, and the old man and his two daughters emerged—no longer hysterical and, though still obviously frightened, “frankly curious.” Warily, the three strange figures approached and sat down with their visitors, rejecting everything that they were offered—jam, tea, bread—with a muttered, “We are not allowed that!” When Pismenskaya asked, “Have you ever eaten bread?” the old man answered: “I have. But they have not. They have never seen it.”
Birds dancing in the sky, beautiful and hypnotic:
I remember discussing this phenomenon in a leadership class once, discussing birds flying in formation. Emergence:
A school of fish or a flock of birds is not controlled by any leader. Instead, it emerges naturally as each individual follows a few simple rules, such as go in the same direction as the other guy, don’t get too close, and flee any predators.
Surely someone made some sort of Aristotelian reference. Of course Aristotle also thought it was transmutation … But Aristotle had a lot to say about rain.
