December « 2014 « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

December, 2014

family / history / maps — Comments Off
11
Dec 14

70th anniv – My great-grandfather’s war

I’m revisiting the map I made a few years back tracing his experience in Europe. Tonice was a combat medic, but he never really told his family about his experiences. He was in the 137th Infantry Regiment, but we don’t know which company, or even which battalion, so this is only a regimental overview with some movements down to the company level.**

So, then, for Dec. 11:

The 137th Infantry continued the attack with the 2nd Battalion liberating 995 POWs the Germans left behind in Sarreguemines. The 3rd Battalion pushed on from Neunkirch and captured the town on Frauenberg.

The 2nd Battalion experienced considerable difficulty in ridding Sarreguemines of the remaining enemy. Frauenberg fell by evening. The 1st Battalion had crossed the Saar River and closed into eastern Sarreguemines.

View Tonice in the Bulge in a larger map
View Tonice in the Bulge in a larger map

This information is derived from the unit history, found here and here and from this unit overview. These markers are rough estimates and are meant only to be illustrative. Any errors are mine alone.

journalism / links / photo / things to read / Wednesday — Comments Off
10
Dec 14

A flea mall trip

I mentioned on Monday that I was withholding the most fun part of my afternoon’s adventures. I wanted to share some of the pictures with you today. Here are a few of them now.

For $20, you can pick up a five-album set of the Boss.

They looked good, too.

There’s this collage of paintings you see in one or two places. One of the pictures is a color version of this old hand-drawn shot of Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum and Cliff Hare Stadium. I’m assuming this is an original draft from the artist, then. That it is labeled as Cliff Hare means this board, if it was drawn contemporaneously, is from at least 1973. It can be yours for $9.

They used to do these in the textile buildings, as part of the students’ work, I guess. I used to see them on ebay and the like, but I haven’t run across them in a while. Who knows how old they are:

When was the last time you saw a postage stamp vending machine?

I saw other things in my quick stroll. Also I picked up three Gloms for my collection. I also met Mr. Brewer, the owner of Angel’s Antiques. We talked about my collection — I now have 101 books, 86 percent of the entire series — and he promised to keep an eye out for me.

Also, I just realized how many of those things I need to scan. We’ll have weeks of covers to look at soon.

Things to read … because you can check this stuff out right now.

This is a long excerpt, but you need it. And it isn’t every day you read about high school journalism. This one you should read, because it is awesome: Student journalists learn to cover scandal from Stamford High School halls:

After the newspaper staff returned to school in the fall, the story ratcheted up. In October, Stamford police charged the principal, Donna Valentine, and an assistant principal, Roth Nordin, with failing to report what they knew about Watkins and the student to state authorities.

Rebecca Rakowitz, features editor of The Round Table, said Ringel asked the staff whether they wanted to report the news by summarizing the work of outside organizations or “whether we wanted to go to the courthouse and the police station and take it on ourselves. We wanted to take it on ourselves.”

They ran into barriers. They learned nothing more from police than what was said during a news conference that followed the arrests of Valentine and Nordin, for example.

And teachers weren’t talking.

[…]

Sports editor Bailey Bitetto said the newspaper has a role.

“Teachers are supposed to be the voice but now we are the voice, because the teachers are too scared,” Bitetto said. “It’s a lot of responsibility but we understand that their jobs could be at stake.”

Four news stories:

‘I don’t feel like he’s dead’: Son vindicated as father rescued after 12 days at sea

Police look for clues in case of Mississippi teen burned to death

Credit unions: Retailers “should be held accountable” for data breaches

Instagram Hits 300 Million Monthly Users To Surpass Twitter, Keeps It Real With Verified Badges

I kinda hope this goes to court. I don’t have any strong feelings about it in any of the possible directions, I simply think this would be an interesting First Amendment case — assuming the issue of “tag as state property” was mitigated. Is ‘No Homo’ license plate free speech? Alabama Revenue Department says no, recalling tag:

Amanda Collier, spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Revenue, confirmed the tag saying “NOHOMO” does exist and was approved by mistake.

“By law, the issuance of motor vehicle registrations is not centralized and must be processed at the county level. However, the Motor Vehicle Division of the Alabama Department of Revenue does hold the authority to approve personalized messages on license plates,” she said.

[…]

When a person buys a tag, the county employee enters the desired message into its system. Those on the banned list are supposed to be automatically rejected, but that didn’t happen here.

And a thought exercise, what if the plate had said “YESHOMO”?

How would you like to be on the plate approval committee? Well, a 1982 DMV rule, by the way, says they’ll turn down any plate “which contains objectionable language or symbols which are considered by the Department of Revenue to be offensive to the peace and dignity of the State of Alabama.”

They are typically very proactive in their refusals. And you better like the E-Street Band. You couldn’t get H8BOSS, for example. But you can get those records at Angel’s …

family / history / maps — Comments Off
10
Dec 14

70th anniv – My great-grandfather’s war

This is the 70th anniversary of my great-grandfather’s service in Europe, so I’m bringing back this map I made of Tonice’s time as a combat medic. He was attached to some element of the 137th Infantry Regiment, which fought in the famed 35th Division. We don’t know which company, or even which battalion, so this is only a regimental overview with some movements down to the company level.**

So, then, for Dec. 10:

The 137th attacks, marching from its assembly area and across the Saar.

The 2nd and 3rd Battalions abreast, the 2nd on the left was to take Sarreguemines north of the river and attempt to seize the bridge that crossed the Blies River. The 3rd Battalion was to seize the high ground south of the Blies River. The 1st Battalion, from positions on the south bank of the Saar, was to support the advance of the 2nd. Anti-tank Company was to support the attack from positions on the Saar River.

On December 10, the attack moved smoothly with the 3rd Battalion and then the 2nd crossing the railroad bridge on the southeastern outskirts of Sarreguemines without receiving any enemy fire. The two battalions jumped off at 0730, the 2nd on the left and the 3rd on the right.

The 2nd Battalion met bitter resistance from the enemy in the Pottery Plant southeast of Sarreguemines. After a four-hour battle, Company F captured the factory and moved again into Sarreguemines proper. Company E was cleaning out the buildings north of Sarreguemines while Company F worked in the factory.

The 3rd Battalion operating on the right flank was receiving heavy fire and bitter resistance in its sector. They called for air support against enemy tanks in the town of Neunkirch. Company L moved off into Neunkirch and at 1500 had cleared the town. The 1st Battalion across the Saar was still in support of the 2nd Battalion and encountering sniper fire when darkness fell on the city. The 2nd hadn’t quite cleaned out the city and the 3rd Battalion was occupying Neunkirch.

View Tonice in the Bulge in a larger map
View Tonice in the Bulge in a larger map

This information is derived from the unit history, found here and here and from this unit overview. His quiet choice means that these markers are rough estimates and are meant only to be illustrative. Any errors are mine alone.

journalism / links / things to read / Tuesday — Comments Off
9
Dec 14

Things to read

I haven’t ran through a day’s worth of links on the site in about two weeks. You’re welcome and/or I’m sorry. I’ve been saving them up for a rainy day. And while it is cold and sunny outside, today is that day.

For this mega-installment I’ve broken it up into segments. If you’re here for the journalism or the tech links, they’re down below. Beyond that you’ll also find a social media section and something I just named “deep reads.” That section holds a few pieces that defy excerpting and are important.

First, some nice or important stories of late.

Rankings: Auburn-Opelika fourth smartest metro area in America:

Not only is Auburn-Opelika the smartest metropolitan area in the state of Alabama, according to NewGeography.com, but it’s also the fourth-smartest metropolitan area in America — only behind St. George, Utah; Bloomington, Ind. and Ocean City, N.J.

“For the most part, the top 10 on our list of the 51 largest metro areas is dominated by places with large concentrations of colleges, and those that long ago made the transition from industrial to information-based economies,” survey authors Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill stated on NewGeography.com. (Other college towns in the top 10 include Bloomington, Ind., Hattiesburg, Miss. and Lawrence, Kan.)

Grew up watching this guy play. This is a hard story to read. Broke and broken:

Those closest to Darryl Talley are terrified. His wife, daughters and former teammates openly cry for him. They lament what has befallen him. They dread what his future might hold.

Talley’s life is in tatters. Loved ones say his mind is deteriorating. He’s begrudgingly starting to agree.

He’s 54, but his body is a wreck and continues to crumble. He suspects collisions from playing linebacker for 14 NFL seasons, a dozen with the Buffalo Bills, have damaged his brain. He’s often depressed beyond the point of tears.

He’s bitter at the National Football League for discarding him and denying that he’s too disabled to work anymore. He says the Bills have jilted him, too.

He learned after he retired that he’d played with a broken neck.

Shared this in class last week. We all agreed the video added a little something extra to the story. Family hears son’s heartbeat in another man’s chest:

Doctors say Matthew Heisler’s heart stopped beating twice. And soon after, there was no brain activity.

Turns out, Matthew Heisler signed up to be organ donor when he was 16 years old. After renewing his driver’s license, Matthew Heisler asked his father, Jared, what he had done by “checking the organ donor box.”

“He made the decision that if life ever slipped away from him, he would give life to someone else,” Jared Heisler said.

And that decision was no small feat. Tom, who waited nearly three years for a lifeline now lives with Matthew’s heart.

Eight month’s after Matthew’s death, his parents and younger sister, Casey, listened to Matt’s heart beat inside of Tom’s chest.

Rare cancer can’t keep Oxford teen out of 10K race:

Oxford High School ninth-grader Keyshon “K.J.” Lynch woke up at 6 a.m. Thanksgiving Day. He was nauseous, but didn’t tell his mother, Christeena.

He was afraid that if he told his mom he felt sick, she’d try to keep him from running in the annual Plucked Turkey 10K in Golden Springs. It would be his fourth time participating in the 6.2 mile, bragging-rights-only race, the proceeds of which go to the YMCA of Calhoun County.

Lynch is no stranger to an upset stomach. He finished his fourth round of chemotherapy Wednesday.

Yes, the VA story can get more shameful. Bad things happen to whistleblowers when watchdogs become attack dogs:

“It was a disappointment,” said Peterson, a Navy veteran who served with a Marine unit in the Persian Gulf in the late 1980s. “One of the core things you are taught in the military is to take care of your brother. That stays with you. How can I wear a uniform and then cower to the VA mentality?”

What happened to Peterson is not unusual, according to outside watchdogs, members of Congress and a review of recent media reports involving whistleblower retaliation at numerous federal agencies.

I don’t care if it is true. Nichelle Nichols deserves to have people loudly stand up for her. So I want the punchline here to be true:

Unfortunately, as is the case for many people her age, she has some mobility problems and was seated in a wheelchair as we approached the metal detector. With some difficulty, she got out of the chair to go through the machine, and the TSA Officer waiting on the other side ordered her to take off her shoes.

Wartime spy finally accepts she is a French heroine:

“It wasn’t until after my first round of training that they told me they wanted me to become a member of the SOE,” she said in a rare interview five years ago, “They said I could have three days to think about it. I told them I didn’t need three days to make a decision; I’d take the job now.”

A close family friend – her godmother’s father – had been shot by the Germans and her godmother had committed suicide after being taken prisoner by the Nazis. “I did it for revenge,” Mrs Doyle told the New Zealand Army News magazine in 2009.

In Britain, the SOE operatives were trained by a cat burglar, released from jail especially. “We learnt how to get in a high window, and down drain pipes, how to climb over roofs without being caught,” she recalled.

Couple marries at Harvest Thrift Super Center:

Takeia and Nelson Alvarez Lopez came with their daughter Royalle to Alabama from New York without realizing how their lives were going to be changed.

A wedding was held for the couple Thursday evening during Harvest Evangelism’s annual Christmas party at the Harvest Thrift Super Center. Pastor Rick Hagans officiated the wedding. The wedding dress came from the Harvest Thrift Super Center, and the bride’s ring was donated.

That’s an adorable story, though it is a bit disorganized. I hope those crazy kids make it, they’ve surely got a lot of people cheering them on now.

The journalism links:

Why Serial is important for journalism

How to handle fast-paced multimedia reporting

Note the word “former.” Former Sun deputy news editor: Inventing quotes to ’embellish’ stories is ‘standard journalistic practice’

Corrupt politicians suffer only when there’s local media to report on it

Miami Herald continues to treat some South Florida neighborhoods as though they don’t exist

Five steps for shooting the perfect sit-down interview

A new study looks at the interplay of journalism and PR in the digital age

Rolling Stone’s disastrous U-Va. story: A case of real media bias

Rolling Stone’s Rape Story: A bigger journalistic train wreck than we thought

Uh huh. This never works the way you want it to, senator. Defining ‘journalist’ may become necessary

Senate leader Del Marsh taking heat for advocating an official state definition of ‘journalist’

Google News: The biggest missed opportunity in media right now

How much of your news site’s search traffic comes from Google News? Probably 5 to 25 percent

How 5 media outlets are using Tumblr

The newsonomics of the newly quantified, gamified news reader

The social media links:

Tumblr Overtakes Instagram As Fastest-Growing Social Platform, Snapchat Is The Fastest-Growing App

Five companies doing social media right

Anheuser-Busch Is Plotting to Win the Super Bowl With Four Social Media Command Rooms

The tech links:

How the iPhone 6 Plus Impacts Where We Read & Watch

A new dawn for the podcast

Netflix CEO: Broadcast TV Will Be Dead By 2030

NAB Labs: FM Capability in Smartphones Rises

56% of Digital Ads Served Are Never Seen, Says Google

Discarded Laptop Batteries Keep the Lights On

Older viewers also abandoning TV in favor of phone, computer

New cord cutting data spells trouble for traditional TV

Research Confirms the Crowd: Netflix and Others Are Upending the TV Business

Six Drivers Of The $700B Mobile Internet

What’s next for the smart home?

Deep reads:

‘The most expensive regulation ever’

Cartelists’ conundrum: OPEC meets

Chief justice questions whether rights might be curtailed in Internet speech case.

Cost Still a Barrier Between Americans and Medical Care

Cycling over the Pyrenees with one leg

Love the A-10. America’s Toughest, Ugliest Warplane Is Going Back Into Battle

Pearl Harbor survivors reunite in Hawaii to mark 73rd anniversary of attack

Survivors Gather to Remember Pearl Harbor Attack

There’s something for everyone in this post. Thanks for making it this far. Please bookmark it and come back for more of these links. If they are here, they are worth a quick look.

And come back tomorrow. There will be more pictures and, perhaps, things to read.

family / history / maps — Comments Off
9
Dec 14

70th anniv – My great-grandfather’s war

I pulled this map together two years ago, but this is a good time to bring it back with daily updates. Tonice was a combat medic, but he never talked about his service, so this was all something of a mystery to most of his family for decades. He was attached to some element of the 137th Infantry Regiment, but we don’t know which company, or even which battalion, so this is only a regimental overview with some movements down to the company level.**

So, then, for Dec. 9:

The 1st Battalion of the 137th moved up from Hambach to Sarreguemines to occupy the town. The riflemen occupying the city proper were constantly bothered by snipers, who killed one man and wounded six. Service Company moved up to the town of Hambach and was closed in by 1130.

The 137th attacks, marching from its assembly area and across the Saar.

The 2nd and 3rd Battalions abreast, the 2nd on the left was to take Sarreguemines north of the river and attempt to seize the bridge that crossed the Blies River. The 3rd Battalion was to seize the high ground south of the Blies River. The 1st Battalion, from positions on the south bank of the Saar, was to support the advance of the 2nd. Anti-tank Company was to support the attack from positions on the Saar River.

View Tonice in the Bulge in a larger map
View Tonice in the Bulge in a larger map

This information is derived from the unit history, found here and here and from this unit overview. These markers are rough estimates and are meant only to be illustrative. Any errors are mine alone.