March « 2011 « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

March, 2011

Sadly they did not have strawberries

I made a video of our visit to the farmers market this morning. Enjoy.

The most important thing about this video is not that I shot it on my phone, but I edited it in the car on the ride home. After that the iMovie app offered an update. The description sounds promising. Can’t wait to see it in action.

I promised you two stories yesterday.

Here’s the first: My longtime friend and radio mentor, Chadd Scott, lost his job at an Atlanta sports talker this week. He was stuck in St. Louis, stranded by Delta and weather. He tweeted about it, Delta took offense and, being sponsors of his station, put a lot of pressure on his employer. So they fired him.

This is regrettable, but everyone in the business pretty much understands the tough spot the station was in. Less excusable was Delta’s overreaction. Here’s why. He tweeted about it on Tuesday and the power of the Internet took over.

He started that day with about 800 followers, and now has almost 1,200 as of this writing, but that’s not what is important. I collected his original tweets, minus one, which he deleted for his former employer, and the next nine hours of original tweets and posted them on Storify.

If you don’t read the entire thing, I ended with the important part. The last 50 tweets mentioning @chaddscott and thus, Delta, had (at that point) reached 19,113 potential airline customers, creating 22,711 impressions.

So this is unfortunate for Chadd, but he’s the kind of guy that lands on his feet. You don’t build the fastest growing syndicated show in the country as he did a few years ago or work at ESPN for two of their top shows as he has done without being the kind of talented person capable of landing on your feet. While no time is good to be out of a job, now especially so, Chadd’s going to move on to bigger things.

But poor thin-skinned, corporate Delta. The guy had a few jokes, sound observations, really, and a few people online saw it. Now he’s going on television, thousands and thousands and thousands of people saw this and, apparently, are making travel decisions around it. (And as soon as my already-booked next Delta trip is up, I’ll be sure to figure this into my personal calculus.) If they can’t figure out when to have deicer at which airport they might not be worth my money, either. Also, they did my friend wrong.

Here’s the second story: I went to a local bookstore last night, a Hastings. We don’t seem to have another one around (that isn’t attached to the university). I remember when this Hastings arrived, when I was in college. it was a novel thing, then, because they had books and music and movies. But only mildly novel. They had some of all of those things, but other places had more of any one given thing.

The writing was almost upon the wall then, but there’s no mistaking what it says now. These stores are dying, at least the ones that aren’t dead. It was like strolling through a video store — Can you still do that in your town? — the only thing you need is the preservative fluids.

Finally found the biography section. Two entire sets of shelves. Amazon has a few more selections.

Not much of a story, but Hastings, I learned, has used books. Then again, so does Amazon. I hope the place makes it. Towns need bookstores. College towns should have more than one. Several people work there and they have at least three chairs for sitting and reading. Also, they have free coffee, so if you need a fix, that might be a good place to try.

I don’t drink coffee, so I couldn’t say.

Worked on what will become a new section of the site. I’ll give you a hint:

Give up? That’s from an old 4th grade science book. It was published in 1940. It belonged to my grandfather. I have a few of his old books and I’m scanning the fun pictures for a small extra section of the site. Not in this book so much, but in one of his high school literature books, there are notes in the margins. I get the impression that he was a funny kid.

I’ll try and trot out part of that section next week.

errands / iPhone / movies / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
15
Mar 11

“Oh, you meant with the Chex”

(Someone overheard me say that today and was apparently offended (or surprised). That was the one sentence I uttered, so they were offended without context, which is always amusing.)

So today we had breakfast at Barbecue House, where we could not yesterday. The place was more than slow late this morning. There were more people behind the counter than dining. But that’s Spring Break. The food is not taking off. Delicious as always.

The cable people had to come back out today. Last night we discovered a lot of pixelated programming had been recorded. There was a Les Mis special on PBS that The Yankee wanted to see and that was mangled so badly it hurt to watch. Shame, too, because what you could hear sounded great. And, then, the straw that broke the camel’s back was a ruined episode of 19 Kids and Counting. And you just don’t mess with the Duggars or they will show up and make you babysit.

So I walked out of the room for a moment to put a dish away and when I came back she was on the phone with the cable people, who helpfully booked an appointment for this afternoon, lest the Duggars hear about it and come visit the cable office.

And they mean business. Two guys came out today. Charter has been here so much, though, that they’re having to recycle techs. One of them had been here before.

He plugged up his tricorder to the cable, pronounced the numbers flatlined and then went outside to jiggle the wires, call a friend and have a sandwich. Do you really know what they’re doing out there? A second guy is inside and I am insistent that he explain everything to me — but in analogies I can understand (“So it is like water in a pipe, then?”) — and have no idea what the first guy is doing outside.

He comes back in after a few minutes with a few pieces of hardware in his hand. He has replaced some splitters. We now have the industrial strength Cabletronic 4000s, which is a step up from the 3000 series Crash-A-Lot model. It seems that we have now exhausted all of the possibilities for diagnosis, repair and replacement inside the house (they’ve been here approaching a dozen times in the last several months) and if this continues a systems tech will be airlifted in to examine things at the hub.

It sounds so ominous, but really, we’re just keen on a signal that plays audio and video, displays the channels for which we’re overpaying and keep a consistent Internet connection. (Though, to be fair, that last one hasn’t lately been a problem.)

They’re nice guys, these guys. They tell jokes. They notice the cat. We comment on the larger company and they spin tales about some of their better calls. The first guy plugged his tricorder back into the cable stream and found everything to be much better. Now we shouldn’t have a problem.

But there’s all kinds of problems you can have. Today I learned that, in addition to signal load, competing tech demands of phone/cable/Internet, rainwater and what your neighbors are watching, another thing that contributes to data transmission rates is temperature. It seems that when it is cold the insulation on the cable shrinks. That means less cable can get in your home. When the weather turns warm the insulation expands, letting cable in. When July gets here we’ll suddenly get a rush of things that couldn’t make it through in December, I suppose.

Drove to the grocery store for a few items today. We walked last night for two, drove today for two bags worth and yet we must still make the HEAP BIG trip sometime later this week. We think, though, we have this down to a science: farmers market for produce, Sam’s for poultry, Meat Lab for beef, sausage, eggs and bacon and Publix for everything else.

We planned this. We’re planners.

Saw a new item I hadn’t noticed before. I gave it a “Where have you been all my life?” moment:

There is a coco version too, apparently, which just seems evil. Don’t ask why one is OK, but another is not. I enjoyed more than my share of kid’s cereal (and still do on occasion) but the chocolate ones always seemed a bit over the top. Except for Cookie Crisp. There’s nothing wrong with that cereal except for their odd character erasures.

Speaking of cereal being erased. I read recently that Cap’n Crunch was going to walk the plank. (And now, who knows? Sad as that is, they’re just pulling on your heartstrings with the old graphic treatments:

Went to the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art tonight to see the documentary Awake, My Soul, which is about the oldest surviving form of American music: Sacred Harp.

It is an intriguing thing, mostly southern and western — which makes a great deal of sense as spelled out in the documentary — but growing across the country and, in several other countries as well. Most everyone interviewed for the documentary lives in Alabama or Georgia, however. They’re all very passionate and it makes for a nice documentary.

Raymond Hamrick, the first gentleman you see in the trailer has a great story, and is a marvelous storyteller. Doesn’t hurt, then, that he has been a prolific composer in the genre. He’s still working, in his 90s, six days a week in a jewelry shop in Georgia.

The history, reaching back to pre-Revolutionary America, was nicely explained. It moves into the work and perception of those who brought it to this generation and then those who would be the prominent contemporary leaders. In the midst of all that are the lost bridge between the 19th Century and those very aged devotees. Somewhere in all of that nostalgia and hope and loss all mingle together, powered by this incredible, powerful sound.

Much of this documentary makes sense to me, or anyone that’s ever been to a primitive style church in the South. I’ve never been to a Sacred Harp singing and I don’t know these people, but I know these people. The documentary touched on the people in this singing community that had died before or during the recording. There was a shot or two that lingered on some old lady, and then a comment by an old gentleman who’d lost his wife and those just sat on the room for a while, until the next joke came along.

Matt Hinton, one of the filmmakers, was there for a Q&A. No one asked why he didn’t put a joke immediately after the most solemn moment of the film, but they should have. Instead, he fielded very intelligent questions for about half-an-hour. One of his central points is the participatory nature of this style, as compared to the performance-based styles of modern music. That becomes quickly evident in his film.

I came home to dinner, a baseball game (Auburn beat Alabama 2-1, in Montgomery’s Capitol City Classic) and two other anecdotes that I’m keeping for tomorrow. You have to come back now.

iPhone / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off
14
Mar 11

The one problem of disappearing weeds

And the next day of your life starts with breakfast. Or it does if you’re the lucky sort, a group of whom I am most definitely included. After a long, long Sunday — eight hours or so in the car, getting back home just before 11 — we figured on sleeping in and then a hasty breakfast.

So with a baseball cap on my head we headed out just in time to get near the end of the traditional breakfast hour. We visited the Barbecue House, where I ate so much as an undergrad (thanks, Chuck) that they knew me by name. Don’t care for the barbecue (it is a preference of style) but the CoAg students know they have the best breakfast in town right across the street from all of their major buildings.

We took my in-laws there when they visited last fall. They enjoyed themselves so much the New Englanders came back for a second time during that brief trip.

But they couldn’t have visited today:

It is Spring Break in Auburn. You take the off days where you can. So we went down the street — where we learned that metered parking is free downtown this week — near the corner of College and Glenn, to try the new Waffle House at the site of the former Daylight Donuts. I eat at Waffle House once a year, Christmas, but we wanted breakfast and IHOP was the next choice, so we pulled in.

I sat facing the campus and telling stories of things I’d forgotten. Just down the street lived so and so. And right over there was where my car died that one time and I became so frustrated that I forgot my mother’s phone number while trying to call and tell her I wouldn’t be visiting that weekend. (In my defense: she’d just gotten her cell phone and I’m terrible with numbers.) Here was how she and I met. This is apparently how Daylight Donuts closed down.

So we drove home. The Yankee went to her office for a little work. I mowed the lawn. Well, the front yard. But with our lawn mower you have to hit everything six times, so really it is like everyone in the neighborhood got their grass cut.

“But now I won’t know where to spray for weeds,” she said when she got back home.

That’s the thing about weeds, though. They grow back.

We walked to the grocery store this evening. It is a mile-and-a-half from the house, with a nice, new, wide sidewalk the entire way. Bradford Pears line the first half of the walk, and they are in full bloom. We go by a golf course, a subdivision, some local businesses and a few houses. We did the walk just as the sun was going down for the night. Cars were depending on their headlights as we returned, with pasta and spaghetti.

Today I’ve just been reading. Tomorrow I’ll dive into more productive things. Later this week I have grading to do and a few phone calls to make. There’s a lot of scanning to wade through this week, too. Also, the joys of class prep.

Tomorrow I’m going to do a few of those things, and we’re going to have breakfast again, because we’re lucky enough to be able to do that. I’m going to a documentary showing tomorrow night and, who knows what else will come up. Stop by, though, to check it out. Follow along on Twitter, too.

site — 3 Comments
13
Mar 11

So faith, hope, love remain

Ocie, Mother’s Day 2010

Being a part of a loving family is a special thing. Being welcomed, truly welcomed into a family that isn’t yours is an even greater blessing.

This is a story about a woman, this woman, and a man who had a son. Their son married a widow. He walked into a family that had two grown, married kids and one grandchild. That man’s parents took them all in for their own.

I was that grandchild (they’d ultimately have three more grandchildren the old-fashioned way). My grandmother married into this family.

That beautiful lady above was my great-grandmother, Ocie. (I remember her mother, clearly, too. She’d split a piece of Wrigley’s with me each time I saw her. To this day I can’t smell spearmint without thinking of my great-great-grandmother.)

They were good country people, soft-spoken and hard working. They probably gave more of themselves to others than they could have ever asked of anyone. And that’s how they treated us, taking in a full family as their own. More Christmas presents to buy. More chaos at Easter. More food on the table. More loud toys on the front porch. More everything. They did it with grace and dignity and a simple charm. My mother said she had a conversation once with my great-grandfather about it, but I suspect that even that was probably a little too much for him. It just was. You just were. And that was enough.

That and the hugs. She gave the best hugs.

My great-grandmother made the world’s greatest tea cakes in the world. There’s no discussion here. She’s the only person you would have ever met with a wait-list for a casual dessert she made for kids in her community. There are lots of ideas about what made her cookies better than anyone else’s. Some have suggested it is the old Pepsi can she used to cut the cookies. So important was this can that once when it was thrown away by accident several people dove in to search for the thing.

The famous Pepsi can, with the old pull top and ancient logo.

I think it was her soft hands, or the water from her well.

The grandkids would always fight over the water. They had this dipping cup hanging by the kitchen window. It was always a neat treat for us, just because it was different, I guess. But also there was a great solemn moment to the ceremony. Someone had to turn on the water and reach for the dented old cup. When we were really little someone had to hold us up over the counter. Who got to go first was, of course, a big deal.

The famous dipper. At the time we thought it was the unique (to us) cup-with-handle that made the event. Later we decided it was the dents. We’ve learned it was our grandparents who made it special.

We’ve discussed it, the grandchildren as adults, the communal nature of this dipping cup. We’ve decided that no germs were ever spread because she was too efficient and clean and just plain ol’ full of love to ever let any germs get in her kitchen.

As I’ve mentioned here before, her husband, Tonice, died in 2001. He had a particularly slow and painful cancer that took years to beat him down. Even toward the end he was visiting other people in the hospital, because his was a life of service. They were married almost 62 years when he died and Ocie has missed him every day since.

She’d lived in her home for all of those years, until late last year, when she fell. Getting better, she thought, would just be too tough. She could have done it, she said, if Tonice were still here. And this was the first time I’d ever seen her not be strong and sure of herself. (Well into her 80s, the night before an open-heart chest surgery, she told me she was more worried about keeping the grass cut. This is a strong lady.) But despite last autumn’s brief lapse of confidence her hip mended and she was walking by Christmas.

But, at 91, her body had finally given out. She died peacefully on Friday. The sadness of losing one who chose you willingly, whom you’ve loved your entire life, is replaced by the image of her re-joining her beloved husband.

Tonice, Ocie and their son Clem, my step-grandfather, circa 1942.

We buried him in a small cemetery not far from his church and home. He was the type who came home to his farm from the war in Europe and never talked about his experiences. No one, not even his own children, knew of his many medals and honors until the gray, muddy day we buried him. We did that ourselves, keeping with the old traditions. He was eligible for a military funeral with full honors, but he only wanted a member of the VFW to present a flag to his wife. Afterward his family and church brethren turned the earth.

And that’s what we did today for Ocie. We sang through three hymns and then one man said “I’ve never read these verses in a funeral before, but I think they fit Ms. Ocie.” And he recited 1st Corinthians, Chapter 13. And, wouldn’t you know it, but they describe her perfectly.

Her preacher stood up and pointed out again that Tonice and Ocie were charter members of their church, which was organized in 1939. (Think of it: the end of the Depression, World War II, the peace, Korea, Vietnam, hippies, rock ‘n’ roll, decades of farming, an entire world growing up around them and they’d watched it all from there.) The preacher recalled her strength and her quiet faith and how the two of them together had made such a wonderful team. He talked about how there was always room for one more at her table, and there was always hospitality found in her gentle way. And, wouldn’t you know it, he described her perfectly too.

“She’s my baby,” he said, as I snapped this picture in August of 2001. We buried him with it that year. We included a copy of this photo with her, too. Now they each hold one another forever.

We placed her next to her husband. It was a mild day, the ground was again muddy. We took turns returning the lumpy clay into the ground. Her flowers were stacked as tall as their gravestone. The sun was refracting through the cloudy afternoon in such a way that everything in the sky looked white.

Heaven is an even better place for her having arrived; we’re a bit lacking without her here.

Auburn / cycling / weekend — Comments Off
12
Mar 11

The umps changed their shoes

At the baseball game last night the guys one section over from us ridiculed the first base umpire mercilessly. He had bright, shiny, new shoes. They liked them very much. Today the umps had solid black shoes. Apparently the fans had gotten in their heads.

As the game today ran into the middle innings those same guys realized their shadows were falling on the mound, upon which they made shadow puppets for the opposing pitcher. They got in his head pretty well, too. All for not, the seventh ranked Arizona State has won two games in their weekend series against number 23 Auburn. Hardly matters. We shivered last night and enjoyed the sun and the shadows today. We’re sitting near a man who’s been buying season tickets to Arizona State baseball for 40 years. (They’ve had a great program for a lot of that time, their fans know their stuff and this particular bunch are vnice people and were complimentary of their trip to the plains.)

Today he was talking about how the college game is better than the professional game. The players don’t have to play hurt. It is a faster game. You can’t get seats like ours, about seven rows above first base, in the big leagues. I eat peanuts during the whole game and sit near people who are critical of the umpires’ shoes.

Got my bike back today. Took seven days to replace the crankset. By contrast I’ve had a radiator replaced in my car in half the time. But they apologized for the delay and thanked me for my patience. They didn’t charge me for labor on replacing a tire tube. They did charge me labor for replacing the crankset. We hadn’t discussed that.

So I think I’ll become a bike expert and learn how to fix everything myself. Because I can’t afford this business all the time.

Got my oil changed today, too. The guy asked if I wanted a new air filter. I said no. When the bill came it was about 15 bucks higher than it should have been. “You wanted the air filter, didn’t you?”

I’ll remember that, sneaky, duplicitous Express Oil Change man.

Then there was baseball and then home for steak and ironing. And then there’s tomorrow. No one’s especially looking forward to that.

(And don’t forget to spring forward.)