“Cats do not have to be shown how to have a good time, for they are unfailing ingenious in that respect.” – James Mason
September, 2010
7
Sep 10
Teaching grammar is fun, making newspapers is more funner
Kidnappers are dumb. Seems to be a universal thing, as Japanese reporter Kosuke Tsuneoka can attest:
A Japanese journalist held hostage in Afghanistan for five months managed to send out a message via Twitter that he was alive when his captors asked him how to use a cell phone.
Just days before he was freed, Kosuke Tsuneoka said one of the militants brought him his new cell phone and asked the prisoner to set it up.
The younger militants were more interested in accessing Al-Jazeera on the phone, but Tsuneoka managed to shift their attention to Twitter, successfully getting them to ask him to demonstrate how it worked.
“That’s how I got the message out,” Tsuneoka told a news conference in Tokyo on Tuesday, a day after he arrived safely back in Japan. “I’m sure they never thought they were tricked.”
Then you must also question the sanity of some reporters, as well. Tsuneoka was also kidnapped in Georgia (the country) in 2001.
Oh we all want to be war reporters, but you don’t think about the possibility of being kidnapped or the even more attractive things like dysentery and getting shot at. War reporting sounds like so much fun.
Taught 90 minutes on grammar today. I spent an inordinate amount of time preparing the lecture yesterday. It isn’t the most fun class the students have, but it is necessary. They were patient, though, and laughed at all the right places. Next week I’ll change things up and we’ll discuss … punctuation!
Meanwhile, the editorial staff was spending the night putting together their first newspaper of the new school year. It’ll be on newsstands tomorrow. I looked over their shoulders a bit. It should be a nice start for an almost entirely new staff.
If they can ever get finished. This is usually a late-night-early-morning process. The beginning of the year even more so since there are the inevitable software struggles and design difficulties.
It’s a long day, but a rewarding.
I wrote something on Auburn’s season opener for al.com today. (They didn’t link to me, unfortunately, so I’m not going to waste a lot of time on it.)
My inbox has been full of the comments that came in under that contribution, though. Most of it from Alabama fans. Using the prevailing logic they must be very concerned about Cameron Newton. I don’t blame them. The guy is terrifying.
Tomorrow, newspaper, meetings, studying, the 1939 World’s Fair and probably more.
7
Sep 10
Black and whites
The favorite section of the site for the antique store set returns for a brief and triumphant run this week. If you’d like to see what all the fuss has been about — and indeed there has been a fuss — start at the beginning of the section.
If you’ve been keeping up, then I invite you to click here and return to the great upper Midwest for four quick pictures.
More of substance when time permits.
7
Sep 10
Catember, Day 7
“God made the cat in order that humankind might have the pleasure of caressing the tiger.” – Fernand Mery
6
Sep 10
Some Mondays are slower than others
And some Mondays the ideas come slower.
My Monday? I spent the entire day on class prep. How does one spend two hours on grammar and keep students interested?
I think I’ll have about 75 minutes, actually. And then I’ll do a case study.
I liked case studies. That was my favorite class exercise, talking about a story or circumstance and weighing the pros and cons, taking the other position just for fun. It was a bit Socratic. A friend of mine tells me I’d like law school for this same reason. For once I’ll just believe him and not find out for myself.
The thing I really missed, after graduating and finding myself in a newsroom, were those conversations. We just never had time. Too many deadlines. And, in some later newsrooms, there weren’t that many people. At al.com we had these discussions, but it was about a lot of 2.0 and 3.0 topics.
Do students still enjoy case studies? I bring up one or two in the Crimson newsroom when I can. Tomorrow I’ll add one to my classroom goody bag.
So, yes. this took a great deal of the day. But the slide show, for the grammar, should be thorough.
We grilled steaks tonight. Had dinner over the Boise State-Virginia Tech game. Very fun to watch. They both look fast, if only Virginia Tech played with more certainty early. Since it was a back and forth game, though, and since Boise is from, well, Boise, I’m sure people will argue they haven’t proven themselves. They get a sponge cake of scheduling every year, but they beat everyone they play, even in the marquee, game of the week settings halfway across the country. Boise State belongs.
Those uniforms do not. Just dreadful stuff. The game looked like Tecmo Bowl, 8-bit graphics and a flea flicker to start the action followed by calls with little internal logic. Not that anyone noticed, every fanbase was too busy silently thanking the merchandising gods that their school wasn’t in a Nike deal. And the Nike fans were just dreading the next big “experiment.”
When I was in undergrad — two memories in one post! — someone had the nice idea to add an orange shadowbox under the jersey numbers. You would have thought they were tearing down beloved campus buildings based on the response. It is hard to imagine what would happen if Nike had the Auburn unis with which to tinker.
Not much else here for now. No history lessons today. The day just got away from me. Sorry about that. It won’t happen again.
Anyway, enjoy your four day office jaunt. And while you’re already mentally coasting into Wednesday, you can join me in wondering why someone didn’t advocate for Labor Week.
Just something to think about.
