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I’ve been quite busy today, so there’s not a lot to share here.
You won’t need anything after this, though:
That’s from my friend Victoria Cumbow.
Three new pictures on Tumblr, here and here and here. There are other things on Twitter. There is nothing else here.
Until tomorrow.
Here’s something insulting:
Some journalists are starting to renew attention to an old storytelling form — “the one-shot” technique.
Rather than editing together dozens or even hundreds of shots to tell a video story, the one-shot story uses just one shot, sometimes a couple of minutes long, to tell a story. A reporter drops in sections of voiced-over track to fill in the gaps or explain information the viewer might not know. It sounds amateurish, even YouTube-ish, until you see a journalist like John Sharify use it.
Because the videos you make aren’t good. Unless you are a reporter.
This is the example that column uses. Be the judge:
It doesn’t do anything for me. It comes off like a reporter trying to walk up to a post, which is amateurish, unless a DJ does it. And he doesn’t have a lot to say, except for repetition, which maybe doubles for emotion. But that just feels like someone who is unprepared.
But at least a journalist did it, saving us from so much YouTube.
Here’s a story from Madison, Ala., where Easter is too … Eastery for one principal:
The power went out in Homewood tonight. So I ducked out for dinner, only the power was out. No intersections had lights. No restaurants could run their neon or their kitchens. People took it in stride. They knew it was coming back on eventually. So I went downtown and finally settled on a calzone at Mellow Mushroom. It was silly to say, but I ordered the Italian Stallion, and it was flavorful.
Then I was able to watch the soccer match:
Just the second point the Americans have ever earned at Azteca. Even if Mexico is playing bizarrely uncharacteristic soccer right now — nothing I saw made sense at least — you take the point toward World Cup qualifying.
Two of the weakest things I’ve put on Tumblr, here and here. There’s also a lot more of useful things on Twitter. Be sure to check that out.
That’s all for now. More tomorrow, have a great evening!
Back to the Glomerata section, where I share the covers of all of the yearbooks from Auburn, my undergraduate alma mater. This is the newest book in my Glomerata collection, the 1898, only the second volume they’d ever published.
Check out the 1898 cover, when William McKinley was still the president and Joseph Forney Johnston was the governor. Johnston was wounded at Chickamauga, Spottsylvania, New Market and Petersburg during the war before coming home, getting a law degree and becoming a captain of industry and then the governor. You never hear his name anymore, good or bad.
Anyway. The institution was still called Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama before being re-named the next year as Alabama Polytechnic Institute. William Leroy Broun, who fought at Richmond and was entering his second appointment in the position. Broun is considered one of the more influential presidents in the university’s history, something of an odd distinction given the continually repeating history, but nevertheless. One of the engineering buildings is named in his honor, the second building on campus to carry his name. The modern Broun Hall houses the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Alabama Microelectronics Science and Technology Center, and the Center for Advanced Vehicle Electronics.
Things were changing at Auburn. These were important times on the Plains:
In 1887, the United States Congress passed the Hatch Act, which appropriated $15,000 per year to each state for the establishment of an agricultural experiment station in connection with the land-grant college. Meanwhile, the legislature had appropriated $12,500 for the college, beyond the funds generated through the fertilizer tax, for use during the coming two years. In the summer of 1888, the president reported that the Department of Mechanic Arts had been well-equipped through the earlier state appropriation and urged the officers of the experiment station to begin a series of farmer’s institutes, in addition to the bulletins they already produced. In 1890, Broun reported that the college’s enrollment had doubled in the past five years, which he attributed to the board’s efforts “to establish in conformity with the legislation creating the institution, a school of science and its applications adapted to the wants and necessities of the growth of the state.”
Electrons had just been discovered, the same could be said of what transmitted electrons. And speaking of transmissions, Guglielmo Marconi had just sent the first ever wireless communication over open sea. Five new chemical elements were discovered in 1898: neon, krypton, xenon, polonium and radium. Henry Bessemer, the inventor of the Bessemer process for steelmaking which was so important to this region, died. Isidor Isaac Rabi. the American who invented the atomic beam magnetic resonance method of measuring magnetic properties of atoms and molecules, was born. The first commercial cars were being made in America, though most people were only reading about them in the paper, at best. Dracula was becoming a hit. The USS Maine sank and the Spanish American War was about to begin. Times were changing everywhere, even when the people living in them didn’t know it.
Anyway, you can walk through all the covers if you start here. For a detailed look at selected volumes, you might enjoy this link. Here is the university’s official collection.
We have half the grapes that we started the day with. And one less navel orange. Also, the leftover spaghetti from last night disappeared. And then I was full for about an hour. But white grapes only last so long and I had to talk myself out of an extra lunch. Miles on the bike speed up the metabolism, or so I tell myself, and I want to eat everything.
Strange since my energy was all over the place yesterday. I chased The Yankee around town, counting my second, third and fourth wind. These things should be more predictable, but yesterday I was left amazed at how I couldn’t find my legs to get over this hill, but soft-pedaled over the next one, with my legs feeling bored with it all. The body is an amazing thing, and a body on a bicycle is a curious miracle, all balance and whirring and swaying and moving forward. I’m not a good cyclist. Usually I do well just to stay upright. Balance and whirring and all that. At my best moments I’m either trying to make nice little circles with my feet or, if I’ve given up on that, I just try to make it all look casual. That’s also impossible.
But, 30 more miles yesterday, and I really need to start putting more miles back in. We got home just as the wind picked up. She’d forecast the afternoon perfectly. Meteorologists call her for input, or they should.
And now back to work today, the cold week of spring break is over, replaced by a cold regular week.
In class today we talked about films, which means a lot of clips of special effects. One of the students found a five minute EXPLOSIONGANZA of CGI that just melted everyone’s brains. Oh, for a few scenes of expository. Or even a Stallone quote.
When they talk about film they also talk about awards, which everyone loves except me, apparently. I’m fine with it. I did enjoy the Oscars poster someone showed off. It had the statue in the foreground surrounded by floating lines from memorable award winners. I saw this famous line and thought about adding in some running commentary — we’d recently talked about civil rights, the 50th anniversary of various events in Birmingham and across the south, how critical a time that was and how there is such a great museum just over the mountain — so bringing up In the Heat of the Night would have been perfect.
I decided against it. I’m not sure kids born in the 1990s would understand 1960s Mississippi and why all of this was so important. Even the television show was off the air by the time my oldest student was born. Sidney Poitier, though, he just gives you more every time you watch that quiet moment.
Everyone always remembers this, perhaps a cinematic first:
They filmed most of In the Heat of the Night in Illinois because of conditions in Mississippi. The country’s come a long way in those two generations.
There are two new things on Tumblr today. One is here. This is the other one.
I call that Tumblr page “Extra stuff in an extra place.” That is, perhaps, the most apt thing I’ve ever written.
And, finally, I’ve watched this twice now. It will be the best five minutes of your day on the web.
If you’ve never read the Wikipedia entry on Ode to Joy, you should.
Back to work for me, have a lovely evening you. See you tomorrow, when there will be more on Tumblr, more here, always more on Twitter, another Glomerata and who knows what else we can find.
The post that starts the week with leftover pictures from last week. The post that fills up the space with colorful extra things for no other reason than that the space, and the pictures, are here. And here they are.
A container grown purple and white cabbage. Don’t you want something leafy and delicious now?
Blackberries from a cheesecake dish at Ted’s Montana Grill. I had a caesar salad:
Things are blooming in Opelika …
Hard to believe the picture above and the picture below were taken on the same afternoon. Rain in Atlanta:
And after a week of cold, cloudy, overcast, drizzly, downpourish conditions we finally got a bit of spring. And the ugliest power pole in town. These things should be built along boorish aesthetic guidelines:
Riding up the road behind Grand National:
I think I rubbed my computer halfway through the ride, so this would be the pollen collected over the last 14 or so miles. Lots of pollen:
Today was, I think, the first time we saw the sun since Tuesday. The sun was beaming into the bookshelves during the late afternoon today:
