April « 2012 « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

April, 2012

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30
Apr 12

An indoor picnic

Last field trip of the semester today. I took my class to meet the nice people at Hoffman Media, who runs an always-growing office not too far from campus. They just bought a new magazine last week, Louisiana Cooking. I believe that’s nine special interest magazines under their banner these days.

The students learned about layout, scheduling, food photography, menu prep, circulation strategies AND got a tour of some of their six test kitchens.

No wonder the students always think that’s one of the better trips of the year. You should see the food stored in those pantries. They test every recipe, and re-test it, before it goes in the magazines. They say the only downside is when their cooking fish, or Mexican first thing in the morning.

The journalism and mass communication department’s awards picnic was this evening. Some two dozen awards and honors were given to people I’ve had in class or worked with in the student media.

Some of them I had in their freshman classes, and now they’re getting set to graduate. They grow so fast …

Last night I watched a bit of Apollo 13 for the 478th time. Love that movie, even the parts where it diverges from history, it does so a bit apologetically. I can take that. It is one of the better film adaptations of a book — in this case the book — that I can recall seeing.

Up the dial a bit Forrest Gump was also on. It allowed me to tell the movie theater story, where a woman in an Apollo 13 screening was frightened for the crew’s safety. Her son said something like “Don’t worry mom, Forrest Gump will get them home.”

I mention all of this because that little tale is cute, but mostly because I wanted to post this video, which is one of the most deliberately underplayed, intense lines ever.

Turns out that’s Ron Howard’s mother playing the part. Jean Speegle Howard was still working until shortly before she died in 2000.

That quote isn’t from the Jim Lovell/Jeffrey Kluger book, but the real Blanch Lovell is in there, scroll down just a bit:

I bet she would have delivered that line with even greater elan.

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29
Apr 12

Catching up

Welcome to the portion of the site where we throw a bunch of photos up, show them off for the first time and call it a day.

This is from the wedding reception yesterday. The Yankee hanging out with a bunch of her former students. They’re a nice group. Very funny. They’re mugging for the official photographer. I’m just butting in here:

I discussed the bouquet toss, so it is only fair to show the garter. This might be the first one I’ve seen where more than one person was interested in catching it:

Our local baseball vendor. He “don’t sell to no Tennessee fans.” He has enough patter to go about six innings without repeating himself. Makes a lot of money off those jokes, too.

We have to do this one every year, and today was the perfect opportunity to sneak it in. Hot, bright and not a cloud in the sky for our reflection picture of Samford Stadium-Hitchcock Field at Plainsman Park. Auburn has runners on the corners and is about to turn this game into a blowout to sweep the weekend series:

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28
Apr 12

The day, in one picture

We were invited to attend the wedding of one of The Yankee’s former students. She was marrying her college sweetheart. As the two Auburn alumni walked back up the aisle, having been announced to everyone gathered at the lovely country home wedding, the classical guitar band played War Eagle.

Later, after the food there were the dances. The bride and groom danced to a Jason Mraz song — I called it on the way to the wedding. The bride and her father enjoyed a Steven Curtis Chapman song. The groom and his mother danced … to the Cupid Shuffle. After that and all of the other things you see at weddings, everyone gathered for the traditional tosses.

Here one of the bride’s former classmates demonstrates the thrill of bouquet victory:

And another shows us the agony of “I might not ever marry now” defeat.

It was the minister’s first marriage ceremony. They had a reception band that insisted on turning everything into a Jack Johnson-type song.

The groom’s truck was decorated in the traditional, embarrassing style.

(As we left we wondered how that didn’t happen to us. We had valet parking. That’s the way to go, friends.)

Despite that tiny setback, it was a beautiful day for an outdoor wedding to see two nice young people, Dan and Ally, exchange vows. Glad we got to be there.

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27
Apr 12

The acceptable uses for chalk

When you think about it, beyond the classroom setting, there’s just not that much call for chalk.

Sure, there’s that rousing game of hopscotch. And kids occasionally scribble on sidewalks to amuse themselves. On college campuses that remains a moderately effective message delivery system. But that’s about it.

Oh, and the produce aisle.

This is at a cafe, which is also a produce store, attached to the back of a nursery. The nursery is well located, but who knows how many times I’ve passed the cafe without it registering. There’s limited parking. You have to walk through or around the nursery to get to the Crape Myrtle Cafe.

More chalk:

The food there is very good, so I’ve heard. We order a fresh veggie basket every week. They are locally grown, organic, and all the rest of those happy little buzzwords. We make huge salads and are forced to find recipes for things like kale and radishes.

While the nice lady that works there puts my basket together I look around, enjoying a warm day, noisy birds and the smell of strawberries and tomatoes. I take pictures of local honey jars and labels that read “Certified Organic Sprouted Bagels — with grains as referenced in Ezekiel 4:9.”

That verse, by the way, says “Take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread for yourself. You are to eat it during the 390 days you lie on your side.”

My neck and shoulders are about 15 percent better. I’m trying to lie on my side, but I’m not doing this for 390 days. Two weeks in and I’m beyond that point of “This hurts, and that, in turn, magnified every other little thing.” I’m now to “I’m really, really tired of feeling like this.

But it is heartening that there’s progress. Tonight something popped in my neck and it helped a great deal. Moving slow, but now more by design than anything else.

I’ll take some more of that progress, if you don’t mind.

On the site: The March and April photo galleries are now updated. You can see those and much, much more on the photo page.

One version of the chalkboards above has worked into the rotation of the banners at the bottom of the page. You can see it here. You can see all of them simultaneously, with cutline info, right over here.

I’m going to go rest now. And by rest I mean make a bunch of phone calls.

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26
Apr 12

Pain in the neck

Much as I like to complain about this sort of thing, I haven’t done so. Until now, of course.

Three weeks ago I narrowly avoided broadsiding an SUV on my bike. I’d been in the saddle for three or four hours. I was back in the neighborhood, but was dragging. My head was down. A lady turned right in front of me. I looked up just in time to yank my bike over hard.

I missed her handsome SUV, but strained my neck. It stretched out just fine that afternoon, so I figured I was dehydrated.

Two weeks ago, in San Antonio, I slept on a poor bed in a shabby room. On Saturday I stood up from breakfast and everything in my neck suddenly felt weird. I took a few extra hot showers that day and everything stretched out, improving so much that I’d all but forgotten about it by dinner time.

And that’s when I played with our friends’ four-year-old. We were doing that thing where you swing the kid’s feet over his head by his arms. He loved it. Four or five times his father and I pitched him in the between us.

Suddenly there was a blinding, white light. Put the kid down, deal with this strangely powerful pain in the neck.

I’ve been fighting this, and losing, ever since. The odd thing is that it moves around. One day it is on the right side of my neck. The next day it could be on the left side. I look like a zombie in the mornings. There’s no turning of the head, and I’m trying to do everything from my waist. It loosens up as the day progresses, but there’s always some point I can’t move beyond. Looking down is pretty much impossible. Tilting my head back is about the worst thing imaginable.

It has moved to my back. Everything from my shoulder blades up is suspect. My trapezius muscles don’t know what is going on.
Tuesday I complained about a spasm in my right shoulder that almost turned me into a one-handed individual. So The Yankee booked me a bit of soigneur-style therapy.

Which was great. Nice lady. She was from Pennsylvania, studied in South Carolina. Found her way to Birmingham … “There was a boy.”

A familiar tale. But I didn’t press for details. As I sat on the table and as we talked my left shoulder spasmed up. Interesting sensation.

So I must, somehow, change the way I sleep. Do this, do that; come back if you aren’t better in a week or two.

I’m tired of this. I’m not interested in giving it two weeks. Sleeping is tough, waking up is worse. Can’t ride my bike. Turning around in the car is a bit painful, making some intersections uncomfortable.

This is approaching miserable, but it could be worse. Then again I could also not hurt.