We held a big committee meeting today and held interviews and selected next year’s student media leaders. This is always a great day because our most motivated students come forward and share their ideas and answer a few questions and we try to make sure we pick the right people, and there are so many fine choices for most of those jobs.
I haven’t been to this meeting on a day when the sun wasn’t shining and the people in the room weren’t pleased to be there. Some of the elements of what happens in that meeting are among my favorite things about being at Samford. I get to watch highly-placed people in the university thinking about the best possible thing for a particular student. To be a part of that is to realize you are in a great place, surrounded by people there for the right reasons. That’s a fine thing to know.
Made it home in time to enjoy dinner with our friends Barry and Melissa, who were in town for meetings and things. We’d just spent the weekend with them and others in Louisville, but now they had their sun, who is a huge ball of 5-year-old energy. We saw Dr. Magical, who made Matthew, who is awesome, a balloon. He likes Angry Birds so …
I mention the Boston scanner and listening to that last night. I stayed up until 3 or 4 a.m., late enough to not be sure. I fought my eyelids for a good long time and then when the officers decided to tighten their perimeter and wait until daylight it seemed a good time to get some rest. So I had about three hours last night. And when I woke up they’d turned off the streams to their scanner chatter for security reasons.
That made sense, but it was unfortunate in a way. All last night, when they were chasing people they didn’t know, when they were taking automatic fire and explosions in a suburban neighborhood, when they were searching door to door in the darkness and didn’t know what they’d find, they exhibited the best of their professionalism.
The good people of the great city of Boston have a lot to be thankful for. Their police, and the feds and other municipalities who were involved in all of that performed admirably. Today, too, we found a link to a still-active scanner feed for about a half hour before dinner and it was the same thing, even as they were drawing close, and even as they realized they had their suspect contained.
And so when they announced, when we were at dinner, that they’d caught their man, and started pulling out of town, the road lined on either side with neighbors who looked like the Celtics had just won a championship, when the SWAT team took to their loudspeaker and told the people of that neighborhood that it was their pleasure to be there, that was a beautiful site.
Here is the scanner chatter as they caught their man. “Neva betta” indeed.
There are, already, at least two sites taking donations to collect money to buy the Boston police officers a beer. That seems fitting.
YouTube Cover Theater: Where we irregularly celebrate the talent of the undiscovered, who take their guitars and their computers and show off their song stylings to the entire world, by showing off people covering popular performers. It is a testament to all of the talent that is out there that ought to be acknowledged, and only gets mild notice. We do this by picking one musician and finding people who are covering them. This week’s featured artist is Colin Hay.
This version of I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You is by the U.K.’s Kieran Smith, who is a music teacher, it turns out:
Australian Jace Leckie’s cover of Beautiful World has only been watched 62 times, which is a shame. It is a chill cover of a terrific song:
Here’s a guy sitting at his desk, just strumming out Maggie. No big deal:
Guess it wouldn’t be Colin Hay without some Overkill. Monica Brentnall is handling it. It really needs some more views:
And, finally, a bit of Colin Hay himself. Another great song, Waiting for My Real Life to Begin:
Hope you have a great weekend. Let’s all celebrate it like we’re in Boston.
