November, 2011


16
Nov 11

The tornado

Had something of a panic today. I am not prone to such things, thankfully. And, furthermore, this was a bit of anxiety after the fact. But it was warranted. I just threw everything into Storify (which wasn’t behaving properly when I built this one, so it might not be the normal perfect presentation), because it needs to be remembered for a while. First there was the storm. I got an alert on my phone via Twitter. I texted my wife, telling her to hide as there was a tornado warning and the radar did not look good.

And that was when the sirens over her, the location of the storm, were finally activated. This is problematic. A few minutes later the tornado touches down. She was safe, her office is in the basement of a building built in 1940, so that’s a pretty safe bet. I’d called around the neighborhood and found where it was good and bad. And some places were fine, in the way that often marks a tornado’s appearance. Other places had plenty of damage. In the end, all of the places were familiar. Some were close to home. Some, very close.

The damage was just a half-mile away. Fortunately property damage and minor injuries were the extent of it. The biggest loss seems to be a horse that I wrote about at the end of the evening. There was a collective sigh of relief. A supposed EF1 or EF2 just appeared overhead, whipped up some trees and pulled apart some signage and then moved on. But what might have been.

Elsewhere: I’ve been saying this for years: if cities cared about the environment and their community, they would synch intersections better. One of the Birmingham suburbs is listening:

Drivers along a stretch of Allison-Bonnett Memorial Drive in Hueytown may notice improved traffic flow following a project to synchronize the traffic lights at 10 intersections.

[…]

Baumann said the upgrades to the traffic signals will have an impact on driver’s wallets and the environment. Better traffic flow will lead to lower fuel emissions and a reduction in air pollution, he said. The mayor said synchronizing the lights will save an estimated $45,000 a month in gas as drivers cut down the time their cars are stopped at the traffic lights.

As the second comment notes, the rest of the metro is on the opposite, anti-synchronized, plan. Because, well, because they are.

Looking for something to read? Here’s a list for future journalists.


15
Nov 11

Deadlines, dead store

A series of meetings punctuated the beginning of my work day. Check in with a colleague about the big upcoming journalism awards submissions that must go out tomorrow. Check in with my department chair for the regular this and that. Check in with another professor to make sure we’re on the same page about a class session later this week. There’s another professor with whom we must organize the awards submissions.

Then I ran into someone else I needed to speak with, and so we had a brief meeting at the top of a stairwell.

Make sure everything is graded for this afternoon’s class, nurse the printer through another round of printing things. I’ve been pointing out the eventual demise of this machine for a few years now. One day it’ll day, or they’ll replace it. Until now, CMND-P, which stands for Pray.

Staple all of those things which just got printed. Go to class where students are writing things that need writing.

And then to the Crimson, where the student-journalists are busy putting out another paper.

After a while, I went out for dinner. Stopped by the bookstore to look for a particular magazine for research. There was a book signing, featuring some science fiction writer I don’t know and his new book of which I am not aware. Not really my reading genre. The place was jammed, with little hope of walking or browsing.

So dinner, then. Stopped at Jason’s Deli in the mall where I met a couple who’d been at the book signing. Said he was a nice guy, who stopped and talked to his readers and signed all of his books, not just the new one. The restaurant employees, experts on book signing dynamics since the chain often has them, said a crowd that size would be there until midnight, easy.

Thought, then, I would go up the street to the other bookstore to look for the magazine we need. This was the scene:

Empty

Shame, really. This Books-A-Million always had great sale racks. Though, like every Books-A-Million, the tome you wanted was inevitably the 1,000,001st book. Never seemed to have the thing you’d want. Still, there were a lot of things in there. The entire back wall was magazines. I read an important newspaper in there one day. Another day I found myself making an important decision in the local section. I liked that bookstore.

They closed in September, the sign on the door said. Now, there’s only this:

Cheese

As I mentioned this summer while in Portland, there’s really no need to buy anything in bookstores anymore. But still, this is a sad turn. And, yes, I appreciate all the many contradictions in this paragraph, but there is something useful about browsing a bookstore. There is a great deal of charm in spending part of a lazy afternoon aimlessly looking through the books. Now you’ll just have to do it somewhere else.

And now back in the office. The student-journalists are working on their paper in the newsroom. I’m working on the journalism awards submissions. This will require more work tomorrow. I’d bet we spend about three full days on this when all is said and done.

And that will be tomorrow, when the things have to be postmarked and shipped to the judges.


15
Nov 11

Glomeratas

The Glomerata is the annual yearbook of my alma mater, Auburn University. This feature on the site gives a quick glance at the beautiful and curious covers of the book, which I collect.

Glom74

At this point in the Glomerata feature section of the site we are now boldly entering the late 1970s. This is Homecoming week at Auburn. And within these three Gloms you’ll find the one marking my birth year (which happens to be one of my favorites). These facts together mean absolutely nothing.

Anyway. Go here for the next three installments. Visit here for the entire section of Glom covers. Try here for some more in-depth looks at various years.


14
Nov 11

“It transpires that the lifeboats are useless”

Gov. Bentley, on the state’s new immigration law.

That’s via The Daily State. (Update: That site later noted the most prominent sponsor of that bill has lost his job as head of the senate rules committee. Sen. Scott Beason has been … less well-measured than the governor.)

Speaking of politics, Newsweek is dropping the best feature they had:

It has been one of Newsweek’s signature ventures and a staple of American political journalism since 1984.

Every presidential election season, the magazine detached a small group of reporters from their daily jobs for a year to travel with the presidential candidates and document their every internal triumph and despair — all under the condition that none of it was to be printed until after the election.

Then two days after Election Day, the sum of their reporters’ work would appear in the magazine. But the ambitious undertaking, known inside the magazine simply as “the project,” is no more. Newsweek, bleeding red ink and searching for a fresh identity under new ownership, has decided the project would not go forward this election season.

They’re blaming the faster news cycle, because rich, in-depth coverage gets trumped in 140 character increments. But not always.

As indulgent journalism goes, this was good stuff, but the bigger problem for the series is money. Following the campaigns at length is an expensive proposition. Shame, too. I stopped reading Newsweek years ago, but always picked up this election edition, but it will be no more.

There is an alternative.

Politico and Random House have teamed up to produce serialized campaign e-books that will be released in four installments as the presidential race unfolds. The first is due out Nov. 30 and already has a title: “Playbook 2012: The Right Fights Back.”

Might be worth checking out.

Speaking of e-books, the Los Angeles Times is publishing their first one, an expanded version of a two-part series, one of their most popular stories of the year. They’ve got several more in the pipeline, which seems a good idea. That might be a nice piece of supplemental content in the near term.

Otherwise your typical Monday, preparing for classes and things. Wrote a current events quiz I decided not to give. Did some more reading. Watched Pirate Radio, marveled at the music and the musical anachronisms. The movie was set in 1966, but a lot of the songs were newer than that. And there was a great Seekers line, but they were never played, as far as I noticed. This wouldn’t fit into the feeling of the film:

The writing was rather witty, the title of this post comes from late in the action, though not much that took place was unexpected. Still, a fine thing to listen to in the background. This was in the movie, but it is from 1968:

Same deal here, two years too young, but a fantastic song:

Cutting edge Australian rock from 1966:

And I could have put Dusty Springfield here, or the Isley Brothers. But a 1962 Otis Redding track is in the movie, and so it really isn’t a consideration:

Wondered where the day went, even as it was full of little things here and there that filled up the afternoon. Today having already slipped into some realm of memory, and tomorrow remaining out there on a horizon of possibility, maybe it is more important to know where tomorrow is going.

I have a pretty good feeling about that.


14
Nov 11

My grandfather’s textbooks

Returning to the mini-feature fun of the texts of my maternal grandfather’s education in the rural 1940s.

aubrabooks

Here are the two final installments from a book on English literature. Go here for the beginning.

After Thanksgiving we’ll dive into science!