books « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

books

Sadly they did not have strawberries

I made a video of our visit to the farmers market this morning. Enjoy.

The most important thing about this video is not that I shot it on my phone, but I edited it in the car on the ride home. After that the iMovie app offered an update. The description sounds promising. Can’t wait to see it in action.

I promised you two stories yesterday.

Here’s the first: My longtime friend and radio mentor, Chadd Scott, lost his job at an Atlanta sports talker this week. He was stuck in St. Louis, stranded by Delta and weather. He tweeted about it, Delta took offense and, being sponsors of his station, put a lot of pressure on his employer. So they fired him.

This is regrettable, but everyone in the business pretty much understands the tough spot the station was in. Less excusable was Delta’s overreaction. Here’s why. He tweeted about it on Tuesday and the power of the Internet took over.

He started that day with about 800 followers, and now has almost 1,200 as of this writing, but that’s not what is important. I collected his original tweets, minus one, which he deleted for his former employer, and the next nine hours of original tweets and posted them on Storify.

If you don’t read the entire thing, I ended with the important part. The last 50 tweets mentioning @chaddscott and thus, Delta, had (at that point) reached 19,113 potential airline customers, creating 22,711 impressions.

So this is unfortunate for Chadd, but he’s the kind of guy that lands on his feet. You don’t build the fastest growing syndicated show in the country as he did a few years ago or work at ESPN for two of their top shows as he has done without being the kind of talented person capable of landing on your feet. While no time is good to be out of a job, now especially so, Chadd’s going to move on to bigger things.

But poor thin-skinned, corporate Delta. The guy had a few jokes, sound observations, really, and a few people online saw it. Now he’s going on television, thousands and thousands and thousands of people saw this and, apparently, are making travel decisions around it. (And as soon as my already-booked next Delta trip is up, I’ll be sure to figure this into my personal calculus.) If they can’t figure out when to have deicer at which airport they might not be worth my money, either. Also, they did my friend wrong.

Here’s the second story: I went to a local bookstore last night, a Hastings. We don’t seem to have another one around (that isn’t attached to the university). I remember when this Hastings arrived, when I was in college. it was a novel thing, then, because they had books and music and movies. But only mildly novel. They had some of all of those things, but other places had more of any one given thing.

The writing was almost upon the wall then, but there’s no mistaking what it says now. These stores are dying, at least the ones that aren’t dead. It was like strolling through a video store — Can you still do that in your town? — the only thing you need is the preservative fluids.

Finally found the biography section. Two entire sets of shelves. Amazon has a few more selections.

Not much of a story, but Hastings, I learned, has used books. Then again, so does Amazon. I hope the place makes it. Towns need bookstores. College towns should have more than one. Several people work there and they have at least three chairs for sitting and reading. Also, they have free coffee, so if you need a fix, that might be a good place to try.

I don’t drink coffee, so I couldn’t say.

Worked on what will become a new section of the site. I’ll give you a hint:

Give up? That’s from an old 4th grade science book. It was published in 1940. It belonged to my grandfather. I have a few of his old books and I’m scanning the fun pictures for a small extra section of the site. Not in this book so much, but in one of his high school literature books, there are notes in the margins. I get the impression that he was a funny kid.

I’ll try and trot out part of that section next week.

books / iPhone / LOMO / photo / Samford / Wednesday — Comments Off
9
Mar 11

Rainy and busy

Rain, lots of rain. Even the radar doesn’t know what to make of it. I tried to time my dinner in between storms and managed to get caught outside in the rain twice. Only one line had shown up on the radar. So that was just lovely. If you’d been standing outside for the last two or three days you’d find somewhere between five and eight inches of rain on your head, depending on your neighborhood.

Beware of falling exclamation points. They may strike you on the head, whereby you may then slip on a pile of bacon.

They think of everything on our campus, really they do.

Samford named a new athletic director today. He’s a Samford grad who’s coming home from Kentucky. The paper came out with a story on his appointment just as they held the official press conference. On the same front page you could see the women’s basketball team. They’d just won their conference tournament and secured their first berth in the NCAA tournament. Meanwhile, the debate team has won a top seed in the national debate tournament. Also, the mock trial team qualified for their national tournament. And the Brock School of Business named a new dean.

Been a nice week on campus.

Meetings with the boss, the editor-in-chief, the managing editor, the web editor today. Also phone calls with a person carrying the impressive title of operations manager. Another with a camera repair expert. And another chat with my dissertation advisor.

At lunch I read through Remini’s The House through World War II. At dinner I made my way through Korea and into the Eisenhower administration. He had an interesting one-paragraph final analysis of FDR through the prism of the 22nd amendment. I think he misreads Eisenhower a bit. (Or maybe my understanding does not comport with the esteemed historian. This is more probably the case.) It is a fine book, if you find yourself thinking about history or about the House of Representatives. And I know you do.

Curiously, though, I find I was more intrigued by earlier eras than what it has to offer for the second half of the 20th century. I’m sure it is a case of the untouchable mythology of some previous period when compared to the high water marks of Newt Gingrich and Tip O’Neill.

(O’Neill, by the way, served for the second longest period as House speaker, behind only Texas’ Sam Rayburn. The pictures of Mr. Sam, as they called him, don’t look right. To me he’ll always be James Gammon (at 34:08) or, in a pinch, James Gammon. That’s what you get watching made-for-television movies before you read about the real people. But reading about them is always more interesting than the screen version.)

Maybe I’m ready to move on to the next book, which was a gift so promising I moved it right to the top of the list. Maybe next week.

Which is Spring Break. Which is already booked solid. And that’s lovely, too.

That’s all for now. Check out the LOMO blog, which features a new update that dates back to the 1950s. I’ll have something else there tomorrow. Look for at least one thing on Tumblr tomorrow, too. And, of course, I’ll see you on Twitter as always.

Hope you have a great, productive, busy and dry Thursday!

books / history / Monday / Samford / video — Comments Off
24
Jan 11

The Monday mess

I mis-dated my last post and only just now caught it. No one else seemed to notice, but the knowing is the thing. There is one strip of paint that needs attention in our kitchen. No one else has noticed it yet, but I can’t walk by it without noticing. I’m fairly certain there’s a picture frame that I’ve put on the wall that isn’t level with the one next to it or another across the room.

And on Friday I re-alphabetized the DVDs. They sit in a closet and no one would ever know except The Yankee — and she makes fun of me — but I see the need to know precisely where My Blue Heaven is, but not have to scan through Sixteen Candles and Bulworth to find it.

Could be worse. Could be autobiographical.

“If I want to find the movie Labyrinth I have to remember that I bought it for someone in the fall of 1986 pile, but didn’t give it to them for personal reasons.”

“That sounds — “

“Comforting.”

Pounded a little pavement this morning. Ran into a friend this afternoon. Everything else was class preparation. Or preparing for class. The new semester starts tomorrow.

I haven’t taught this class before and I’ve been laboring to get the handouts down to something that doesn’t seem too intimidating. Right now, on the first day, the students are getting nine pages. These are younger students and I’d like them to come back for the second meeting.

The text for this class, which is a mass media introduction, is Media / Impact by Shirley Biagi. The front cover features the facade of the David Letterman studio, a cellist, advertising, newspapers, magazine collages, books, satellite trucks, storm troopers and an iPhone.

The first page of real text quotes Dr. Edward Hallowell. “What we’re seeing, we’ve never seen in human history before. It’s just the extraordinary availability and magnetism of electronic communication devices, whether it’s cell phones or Blackberries or the Internet. People tend to — without knowing it or meaning to — spend a lot of time doing what I call screen sucking.”

Try to get that image out of your head.

Hallowell is a psychiatrist who formerly sat on the faculty of Harvard Medical — I love that usage, imagine this man sitting on top of a bunch of professors — and wrote the book CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap!. The quote, as it is included in a later essay reprinted from The Boston Globe, relates to the idea that too much screen time is working to the detriment of interpersonal time at home.

The second page, and this is genius, manages to work 5,500 years of communication history onto one page.

My how far we’ve come, just in a century. Where do you think things will stand in another half-century, when this class’ students are retiring? (Happy coincidence: It doesn’t appear on that list, for reasons of simplicity, but it just happens that on this day in 1984 Apple’s Macintosh first went on sale.)

Well? Was it like “1984”?

adventures / Alabama / Auburn / books / iPhone / photo / Samford — 1 Comment
6
Jan 11

The part where I tell you I dislike libraries

In college the running joke is that if someone called you told them you were at the library. Better than a parent hearing you were on a date or taking some road trip when you should have been pulling an all-night. When I was in undergrad I told my roommate to never tell my mother that if she called. She’d see right through it. I don’t care for libraries.

Books. I love books. I love to read. I’m writing this in our personal library at home. It needs a name, and we’re working our way toward one, but I feel the name of your private library should be carefully considered and evolved naturally. Unless you have a benefactor. And if someone gives you money for more shelves and books, then you name your library in their honor, send them cards every Thanksgiving and Christmas and let them borrow books whenever they want.

Anyway. I dislike libraries. Mostly because you go there with the idea of getting something done. A student goes to study. A reader goes to pick up a new book. I never checked out a great deal of books, but I’ve had to study once or twice in my academic career. And the library, I’ve found, is built for opposite purposes. There are so many books there! So much to read! So many things to learn! And, also, there’s this stuff I have to learn. I’ve come to accept this as one of the complex contradictions that make me the inscrutable individual I am.

But I had to visit the library today. There was a book or two I wished to pick up for my studies. I found them in the online catalog, made note of their numbers in the Library of Congress system and then set out for a visit.

I walked in, pulled out my spouse card and said “My wife is on the faculty here. Can I check out books with this?” The young lady deferred to her colleague. Again, then. The new person asks about fees. We’ve discussed them. I think I’ve paid something. The card works for other scanners on the campus. She makes a phone call to the department from whence the card was assigned. They’ve decided I should pay for the pleasure of checking out books.

Fine.

“How about this card?” I produce my faculty card at Samford. No.

“How about this card?” I produce my student card from Alabama. No.

This is a friendly chat, but frustrating. I’m an alum. My wife is on the faculty. I have two cards from other research institutions. But yet it will still require $20 to check out books. “That’s $20, annually, not $20 each time.” And thanks for that.

The supreme irony being that were I at Samford or Alabama today I could check out these same books from this library via the Interlibrary Loan agreements. They’d ship them across the better part of the state. Someone would even bring them to my department. This would all be done for free.

I have a better idea. The Yankee can come help. But the very nice lady quickly sends me an Email. Turns out I can check out books, as a graduate student from Alabama. So I grab a stack of books and visit one desk, the very nice lady, upon hearing all of this agrees, “Oh that’s bad.” She sends me to the first desk, who brings out the second woman. So, after five pleasant conversations and two phone calls, I have a stack of books.

And they are good, helpful books, so it all worked out.

I include this picture because there’s nothing else to tell you about but reading and writing and breaking a plate in the kitchen and starting a very small fire on the stove. I dropped a cup on the cracked plate and the little bits of paper met a warm stove eye. So there you go. So this picture, then. (Click to embiggen.)

The picture is from our New Year’s Eve Pie Day and I’ve been saving it for a slow day such as this. We were at Jim ‘N’ Nicks, where the light is a little low. In the shot with The Yankee she’s moving from menu to glance at the waiter as I took the picture. That’s why her shoulder somehow disappears. Despite all of that, this is fairly promising.

I’ve been searching for a good (and by good I mean usable and free) panoramic app for the iPhone. This one is that. The picture above was my first experiment.

For some reason it didn’t include the last photograph on the right. The app handles the stitching by itself. It isn’t perfect — but this is on a phone. If I were doing panoramas as I did on our honeymoon I would use my SLR and stitch them together the old fashioned way, by hand at 1400 percent magnification.

The big problem is that the shutter button isn’t exactly sensitive. On the upside, it makes the composite for you and saves it directly to the photo album. And it is free.

Also, I’ve picked up two other photo apps. I’ll let you know.

books / history / journalism / memories / photo / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
21
Sep 10

Teeming Tuesday

I’d like to try putting a few more things into a Tuesday, just to see if it is possible. Tuesdays are the fullest of days. Met with the boss. Tried, and failed, to install a new printer on my new iMac.

Called the tech guy who, happily, could not install it the first time. If it takes him two attempts I don’t feel so bad.

Had lunch. Met with the WVSU news director. We talked about Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift, who is on campus this week. She’s been in classes and student meetings and will deliver a big lecture tomorrow night. She’s got such a great story, really. But more on that tomorrow.

Tried to meet with a student, but missed. Made copies of everything for my class. Held class, delivering a spelling test, talking about news leads and doing wholesale news rewrites.

We made fun of typos. There were two on the most recent cover of Soap Opera Digest. I can’t find a link and can’t bring myself to upload it here, but the designer has forgotten their rules on apostrophes.

And then there was the paper. The students have worked on it all night. I get a question here, make a joke there and listen and tell stories. Now, around midnight, they’ve announced they’re going it alone. I offer to copy edit the first few editions with them, but they rightly want to remove me from that process. This is the moment where they pedal away, around the block and you’re just so proud to see them go.

Tomorrow they make it back from their circuit around the block. We’ll critique the whole paper. We’ll talk about how to improve their technique, steady lines, standing, brakes and falling. Hey, I might keep this bike metaphor. You’re just so proud.

I decorated a wall in my office.

Those are Stars and Stripes announcing the end of World War II. The one on the right is the Paris Edition announcing the Germany surrender. I found that paper purely by accident at a place called The Deal in an artsy Louisville, Ky. That was the same day, incidentally, when I decided to build the half-hearted black and white section of the site.

It was a nice day. I’d spent a long weekend visiting the folks. They took me to a local funky, artisan restaurant and just down the road we found that store. It doesn’t deal in antiques. Or in things that feel like antiques. Everything is from that frozen moment when your grandparents stopped trying to be contemporary. Much of it was familiar, but vague. You could understand the function of all the merchandise, but if you weren’t from the period the why could be lost on you.

We ate at that restaurant and used bookstores and a record store and that shop. It was a great day.

They were stored in a desk pretty close together, the pictures and the newspaper, and they might have once belonged to the same family. There was also a Red Cross map of Paris. The woman sold it all to me for next to nothing, just glad to get it out of her way. She’d much rather sell mid-century modern furniture and clothes.

My step-father bought me a little bookholder there, too. It is sitting on top of one of my bookshelves and holds Winston Churchill’s history of the war. A friend sold me all six volumes for $20. He bought them from a library and realized he’d never read them. I Hope to one day. Maybe I’ll bring that newspaper home next summer and read the books underneath the authentic newsprint.

The paper announcing the Japanese surrender is also from Stars and Stripes, the Mediterranean edition of the military paper. It is a bracing headline, but that too will be a teaching moment. What is contemporary and acceptable today might not be a name that people approve of years from now.

I don’t have a great story for that paper, though. I bought it from e-bay. I wish I’d asked the seller to try and explain that particular issue’s history. Someone thought enough to bring it home from Italy, or thereabouts, but now we’ll never know the details.