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

May, 2011

Samford / Wednesday — Comments Off
4
May 11

Sunny and 66

I’d take a picture, but a frame — or even a video — wouldn’t do this day justice. It was trendy away from chilly, rainy and overcast yesterday, but today was pitch perfect. It was the kind of day where the piano tuner, with crusty old hands and tools he inherited somewhere along the way, strained with the effort to get the tension just right and then sat to admire what he had wrought. This wasn’t a day of addressing this task and moving on to the next chore, but sitting and savoring the joy of it.

There’s a lesson in here somewhere. What you complain about today could be perfect tomorrow. There’s no guarantee, but life, like weather, is variable.

So I did the outdoors part of my job today, stealing a few minutes to recycle old newsprint, taking a few extra minutes in the breeze and shade and sunshine. I wish there was a walk-across-campus chore on my to do list for the afternoon, I would have skipped my way there, so perfect was the day.

On the upside, the office is now 72 percent cleaner.

Had an entire meeting via text message today — I don’t recommend it — and then another phone call with video camera repair people. They are, surprisingly, uninterested in diagnosing your problem and providing you estimates over the phone. One must stress very clearly how you understand this figure is meant to merely get the ball rolling to satisfy others looking at budgets and not a legal document. And, also, if I hold my phone under the hood could you tell me what this noise in the engine means?

Bought my Mother’s Day flowers today. (Picked up the cards this weekend and mailed them on Monday. I’m ahead for once. All of that credit goes to my lovely bride.) My mom will get a nice presentation of roses and they’ll be there to perfume the place all weekend. I can order something on Wednesday and it will be in some place else on Friday, originating from parts unknown. What a country.

And as soon as that transaction is completed, the Email spam for Dads and Grads begins. The respite was precisely eight minutes. What a country.

music / Samford / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
3
May 11

A random assortment of observation-like observations

This cropped up on the this day in history feature. That wreck is almost as terrifying as the production values. Bobby would walk away and outlived his sons, Davey and Clifford, and his friend Neil Bonnett, who all lived and died in racing. The rest of the Alabama Gang are still around. Bobby is doing commercials, his brother Donnie is retired, Jimmy Means is a race car owner and Red Farmer was racing in the 21st century, into his 70s, a product of an era where he even he didn’t know how old he was.

But back to what’s important. Here’s the early race from Talladega this year. That’s television in 24 years.

You never really think of the late 1980s as being ancient for an art and technology like television, but there it is.

Cold today. It was 54 degrees this afternoon, this is odd being Alabama in May. It was warmer, by 15 degrees, at my in laws in New England than in the deep South.

Sitting in my office and shivering I discovered that a bit of a Jerry Lee Lewis song I recently taught myself is actually a Rabon Tarrant (or older) riff. Listen to this.

Hear that piano? Speed up Blues With A Feeling and you’ve got the Killer. A few weeks ago I pulled up a tutorial from YouTube and learned how to peck that out on the piano. Tarrant played in brass bands all over the country during Prohibition and switched to the blues and left orchestras somewhere around World War II and started playing the blues. He recorded a lot with Jack McVea and now, 64 years after Tarrant laid down Blues With A Feeling here we are.

Artists back then might not have given much thought to the longevity of their music. It was here, it was recorded, you played it in dank, smelly clubs and then the little checks came in. You had to write more tunes to keep the money rolling, to keep the car filled with gas so you could play more of those clubs. No one probably had any time to consider that the great-grandchildren of the people they were playing in front of might also discover their music.

Three-and-a-half hours in class (and extra time) with Dreamweaver this afternoon. This was the next to last day of the class, where most are rounding the corner from being perplexed or dismayed by the program to having something almost ready to show off. Most of their portfolio sites I’ve watched them build from the ground up, helping out a bit here or there with the tricky parts. There are a few that have big strides to make, but by this time next week everyone will have managed to shuffle themselves into pretty good shape.

Amazing how a deadline will do that for you.

errands / Monday / Samford / site — Comments Off
2
May 11

Living right

Busy day as the semester begins to wrap itself up with a tidy bow.

Made the commute to campus to pop in and pick up a newspaper plate. We give one of these to the editor of the paper every year. It should have been in the office early last week, but the storms got in the way, as they passed over our printer’s facilities, ruining their town, killing the power and making travel impossible for a while.

So now comes the task of trying to get this thing prepared in a few minutes for its presentation tonight. I stopped by the Framin’ Shoppe where the nice lady that makes all of our beautiful projects said “You must be living right. How’s 3:30?”

And that was perfect. So I left for other errands, swinging by AAA for a currency exchange and then to the old homestead for a termite inspection. It passed. The guy that gave it the close examination may have been younger than me. (That is starting to happen more and more.) And he was the teach you how to build a watch type of fellow. I’d simply asked him about this new Sentricon product I’d heard about — figuring I might get his professional opinion since he wasn’t selling anything to me — and received an education and a demonstration.

We went to the back of his truck, the appearance of which he apologized for. Seems it wasn’t clean enough to be the backdrop of his demonstration. But he pressed on, pulling out bait traps and discussing the finer points of this evolving treatment system. Seems this particular company is going to be moving to this technique later in the year.

I like this company. They do it all the right way. They answer the phone by saying “How may I make your day better?” When they come visit you have to remind the technician what to check out. In one of those clerical errors that never gets resolved the out-building isn’t on his manifest, but he just accepts that the out-building is part of the job and he does what you ask of him. They show up on time. They don’t stick around longer than necessary and still manage to come off as very personable people.

One time a guy beat me home and he sat in the drive and waited for a few minutes, doing his paperwork. I pulled into the drive and then he cranked his truck and left. He somehow managed to miss me standing there. So I called the office and we all had a good laugh. Except for that guy. He was very concerned about the mix-up.

“Accidents happen, my friend. Make sure there are no bugs.”

So all is well there, and another errand off the list. Back to the framing place, where the newspaper plate was ready to go and I promised I’d brag on them. Framin’ Shoppe, Framin’ Shoppe, Framin’ Shoppe.

And that got me back on campus in time for a meeting with next year’s staff of the Crimson. There are a lot of holdovers from this year’s staff. Some of the new faces have been in my classes. They’re all seem pretty sharp. And really didn’t want to hear me blather on today. There’s the picnic, finals for which to prepare and tonight’s intramural softball championship.

Priorities.

So we all made our way over to the picnic, which is indoors, because we often have rain about this time. The meal is catered by Johnny Ray’s, a local barbecue place that is apparently in some decline. The website is gone and, I was told tonight, most of the locations are closed, including the original store on Valley. Shame, too, because the food is good.

We gave out awards to journalism and mass communication majors at the picnic. I got to call out the names of several hardworking students.

And when it came time to present the now handsomely framed newspaper plate to this year’s editor-in-chief I mentioned the dedication to this task displayed by the printer in getting the thing here despite the storm and the huge save today. (Framin’ Shoppe!) I said the things I’d prepared — noting Jennifer’s can-do attitude, her always-present smile, how hard she and her team had worked this year and so on — I discovered … she had disappeared.

Can’t win ’em all.

So I thought up a new joke. When in doubt, laugh at yourself.

The picnic is great fun. The students and professors are a bit more at ease — there is nothing due in an evening to brag on the best students — and there is much laughter. This is the moment when the end of the spring semester becomes a reality, and you can allow yourself to think of the summer without it feeling like far off daydreaming.

This is the beginning of the final week of classes. Things are winding down as they ramp up to finals.

One update on the LOMO blog.

iPhone / photo / weekend — Comments Off
1
May 11

Catching Up

A few pictures from the preceding week that didn’t land on the site somewhere. This is the regular Sunday feature with the sole requirement that they amuse or captivate in some way. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday to our friend, Shane. He’s now officially old at 30, but young at heart.

Saw this wreck one day earlier this week. The pickup was towing some small little trailer behind it. Not sure how the truck came to be on its side, but two guys from the accident seemed to be OK.

That cat. I’m never sure if I should wake her up when she sleeps as revenge for her waking me up or if she howls at me for revenge for waking her. Never engage in a circular argument or vertical warfare with a feline.

You can’t tell a book by it’s cover, but you can often tell a tree by it’s bark. Consider the humble, beautiful crape myrtle. It came to us from China and Korea from a French botanist by way of England, which wasn’t warm or bright enough to prompt the blooms. All of that happened in the global economy of the 18th century.