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Some of these children are our future

Some friends and I have a little joke on Twitter we call Why I Love The Internet This Week or #WILITW. Usually the subject matter is a video, but the premise is always “Without this amazing tool, we would have never had the opportunity to enjoy this.”

But for the Internet. I gave you this week’s entry:

Isn’t that adorable? Two cheers for the Wallkill Mighty Mites from Wallkill, New York. But now let’s watch it again and analyze some of the constituent parts. The first thing you notice, while keeping in mind this is in slow motion, that the entire team was running through that sign no matter what. That’s an admirable esprit de corps from such a young team so early in their season.

The second thing is the cheerleaders. Those girls never gave up the fight, and that’s a great demonstration of boosterism and support.

Which brings us to the mom in the foreground. She held her end of the sign for several waves of the team to break through. That’s dedication. That’s belief. That’s probably a mom who thought her son could get through the thing.

As opposed to the woman holding the other end of the sign. She literally turned her back on the pile up.

Meanwhile, the cheerleaders are cheering and clapping and jumping. And a half dozen kids will always remember this, all through their football careers, and they’ll never feel the need to be at the front of the team to break the paper on the high school gridiron.

The good news is they brushed it off and, apparently, won the game.

I got in a 43-mile ride yesterday evening. I was hoping for about 46, but I had to cut it short because of darkness. So I came home the slightly shorter way, with the big hill, which I was in no condition to deal with after 43 miles, thinking I need to start my rides earlier in the day.

My route was an amalgamation of two that I’m familiar with. It took me through a modern residential area, a shopping mecca, a historic part of town and then out through the countryside. I sailed by the old union headquarters that is now apparently a church and another old plant that will probably never have a new tenant. I was almost clipped by a pickup and the trailer he was hauling. And I worked my way back out into the countryside, where I turned off of a road with a name onto another with just a number.

The road bottoms out at a creek bed and you’re surrounded by judgmental cows and someone shooting a nail gun nearby. I went by a man sitting on his porch and another working on his roof. I cruised by the brand new post office that is shiny and new for a community that consists of a church, one store and a volunteer fire department. Just past that is a stop sign and that store, a junk store, where I years ago discovered my love for junk stores. If you go straight you find yourself on about a mile of the worst chip/seal pavement you can find in the rural South. But then you go under some trees, round a curve, pass a pasture and you find yourself on a brand new and nearly pristine asphalt and large rollers.

I did about five or six miles on that, surrounded by red clay and pine trees and only the most occasional house, before I turned around for home. I stopped there and took a few of the pictures that were shared here yesterday, where I was talking about the lumber yard and old wood. I also took this picture there:

What is in those woods? The whole road which, again, has always been eerily empty, is covered with various posted and no trespassing signs. But a human silhouette target sign? I didn’t previously care about that gravel path, but now I’m curious.

Things to read … because reading keeps us curious.

These first two are about the opposite of transparency … City of Anniston institutes policy change for media interaction

8 ways the Obama administration is blocking information

And a few more quick journalism links … How 5 news orgs have updated their apps for Apple’s new operating system

News for the Minecraft generation: Gannett experiments with virtual reality

This is amazing work … Photographer Captures Tens of Thousands Fleeing ISIS, Entering Turkey

We’ve been banging this drum for a few years now … Brace For The Corporate Journalism Wave:

In short, while the journalistic staffing is shrinking dramatically in every mature market (US, Europe), the public relation crowd is rising in a spectacular fashion. It grows in two dimensions: the spinning aspect, with more highly capable people, most often former seasoned writers willing to become spin-surgeons. These are both disappointed by the evolution of their noble trade and attracted by higher compensation. The second dimension is the growing inclination for PR firms, communication agencies and corporations themselves to build fully-staffed newsrooms with editor-in-chief, writers, photo and video editors.

That’s the first issue.

The second trend is the evolution of corporate communication. Slowly but steadily, it departs from the traditional advertising codes that ruled the profession for decades. It shifts toward a more subtle and mature approach based on storytelling. Like it or not, that’s exactly what branded content is about: telling great stories about a company in a more intelligent way versus simply extolling a product’s merits.

The invasion of corporate news:

With the president-felling image of Woodward and Bernstein still hanging over the profession, and a geekily hip narrative of data-driven analysis pointing to a new future, few journalists like to acknowledge the role PRs play in their stories. Many are well-informed, professional, clever, helpful and fun. Some are former colleagues. Some become friends. But for most journalists, it is an involvement we put up with warily. PRs are spinners of favourable stories, glossers-over of unfavourable facts and gatekeepers standing between us and the people we want to get to.

But as journalists bemoan such PR obstacles, they rarely admit an important fact: the PRs are winning. Employment in US newsrooms has fallen by a third since 2006, according to the American Society of News Editors, but PR is growing. Global PR revenues increased 11 per cent last year to almost $12.5bn, according to an industry study entitled The Holmes Report. For every working journalist in America, there are now 4.6 PR people, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, up from 3.2 a decade ago. And those journalists earn on average 65 per cent of what their PR peers are paid.

More sad news in Africa … Lockdown Begins in Sierra Leone to Battle Ebola

And happy news … Marine severely wounded in Afghanistan marries the woman who helped him hold on

Grand Prairie Homecoming Queen Shares Her Crown:

On Friday night, in front of thousands of friends, family members and fans at the Gopher-Warrior Bowl, that is exactly what happened.

Principal Lorimer Arendse, now in his fourth week at the helm of Grand Prairie High School, was let in on the plan shortly before halftime and the planned announcement of the homecoming winners.

“In all my time in school, this is probably the greatest moment I’ve ever experienced as a principal,” said Arendse, who has five years of prior experience in school administration.

Kids these days, eh?

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21
Sep 14

Catching up

The weekly post of extra stuff, full of extras that haven’t advanced beyond the lovely level of stuff. Here’s the stuff, then.

Scary thought I had the other night in the parking lot, “Is it possible that I’m getting tired of Whataburger? Is that the reason I stood beneath that sign, watching it like it was flying away?”

A few not-quite-wild brown-eyed Susans:

I believe this may be a thin-leaved sunflower that had just popped up in a walking path and was hanging on to the end of the season. Life finds a way:

Oh, just the most perfect pine cone in the world. At least this side of it was:

I put new handlebar wrap on my bike. Looks great, was very frustrating to get on and will be dirty instantly. But, finally, my handlebars match the saddle. I pulled some of it out of place on my first ride with it this afternoon, but it rewrapped easily enough:

I call this one, The Colors of My Day:

I wonder what is down that path. Through the woods there is a saw mill. You could smell them chopping up old lumber this afternoon. Old lumber, I decided, has a more dull smell on a calm afternoon. The new, green, good stuff has that crisp bite in the nose. What was floating around today just made you want to sneeze. But what is down there?

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20
Sep 14

Wooten 5K

My first thought was that the light at 6:30 is lovely. My second thought was that there shouldn’t be a 6:30 on a Saturday morning.

And if there must be a 6:30 on a Saturday morning, I should remain blissfully unaware of it.

Nevertheless, there we were. And by we I mean me and my running shoes:

We did the Marie Wooten Memorial Run today, a scholarship fundraiser. There were bananas:

And other snacks:

We saw our friend, the theater director, and another guy The Yankee knows from the pool, who is a librarian. The woman who was running with Dean Wooten the day she was killed was there to run, as were a lot of dogs. They need fuel too:

While we didn’t win place on the podium — we weren’t racing, though — The Yankee did win a hat as a door prize:

And we posed with our friend, Emily, who ran with us.

I ran home, another two miles and change, because why not? Yesterday I had a rambling ride through campus and town and the suburbs to put a simple 22 miles into my bike. Tomorrow I’ll have a longer ride. Now I’m going to watch football. This will involve a great deal of sitting. I’m OK with it.

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15
Sep 14

The man on the wall has no comment

It occurred to me that I’ve never noticed the bas-reliefs of any other governors in Alabama. Perhaps I’m overlooking them or am drawing a mental blank. Maybe this is a lasting affection for George Wallace. Perhaps part of it is that George Wallace was governor for so long, from 1963 to 1967 and then from 1971 until 1979 and again from 1983 to 1987.

Here he’s standing in front of the restroom door:

That rest area was built during the 1970s. Maybe it was a boom period.

A bit ambitious, wouldn’t you think?

I had a nice, easy 30-mile ride yesterday. It should have been longer. I climbed more than 1,200 feet and rode for under two hours. I topped out at 37.7 miles per hour. Twenty percent of the ride was over 20 miles per hour. (Which is slow for most, but pretty nice for me.) Most importantly, it didn’t all fall apart in the last few minutes. It reminds me that I should ride more.

Things to read … to remind you that I should ride more.

I’m always circumspect about a small thing, like a small sport, playing big social roles. But we all have our roles to play and we all have our spheres of influence, I suppose … Biking Toward Women’s Rights in Afghanistan:

The Women’s National Cycling Team of Afghanistan is only a few years old. Its 10 members, most between the ages of 17 and 22, have yet to finish a race. But they are determined to persevere in their chosen sport despite multiple barriers, and are aiming to ride in the 2020 Olympics.

Men driving by insult them. Boys along the road throw rocks at them. Sometimes they don’t have enough money to buy adequate food to fuel their rides. Every day, they are reminded that it is taboo in Afghan society for a woman to get on a bicycle. And still they ride.

“They tell us that it is not our right to ride our bikes in the streets and such,” says Marjan Sidiqqi, one of the young women on the team. “We tell them that this is our right and that they are taking our right away. Then we speed off.”

[…]

Galpin says that for the generation of girls coming of age in a post-Taliban Afghanistan, bicycling is another manifestation of the freedom to be an educated person in the society. “Young women who are in university and high school, young women who are educated, their families have promoted that and helped that happen,” she says. “These young women look at it very cut and dry: ‘My brother can ride a bike, why can’t I?’ They’re cognizant that they have this right.”

“We cannot become a hero by sitting at home,” she said.

This is called neuroplasticity, or the amazing things the human body can do … An adult woman was found to be missing her cerebellum:

So essentially, it took less than a decade of life for the rest of her brain to pick up the missing cerebellum’s slack. The fact that the patient is alive and thriving is incredible. This is only the ninth time that doctors have found someone to be missing a whole cerebellum, and most of the others have only been discovered after their early deaths.

She was given a photograph after 9/11. Every year at the anniversary she’s tried to find the people in the picture. This year, the mystery was solved … Mystery Solved: The People in the 9/11 Wedding Photo

I saw the first part of this story yesterday in the paper, and it is worth reading today … Beulah’s David Eastridge battling back from life-threatening accident:

Balance has been one of the toughest parts for David since the traumatic brain injury. His depth perception in his left eye is still affected, which in turn makes it difficult to maintain balance at times. It’s why he wears that soft helmet whenever he does anything that requires movement.

He climbs stairs, but only to show off. Sutlive has shifted focus away from that because of the progress David has made. Now
they spend time on the treadmill. David has to hold the railings, but he gradually begins to pick up the pace.

Sutlive asks him: “What’s the fastest you can go?”

“Let’s show them,” David enthusiastically responds.

He reaches 3.1 mph on a slight grade; a brisk jog. Five weeks earlier, he couldn’t walk on his own.

Tough kid, that.

If you watched the Georgia game this weekend you might have noticed when the announcers mentioned this story. It is a pretty nice, quick little news package:

And, finally, here’s a little feature on Birmingham’s historic Rickwood Field … Recapturing a Game and Days Gone By. The story is told through the eyes of the author’s 77-year-old mother-in-law and is understandably precious.

If you like baseball history, I did a decent podcast about Rickwood several years ago. I’ve also sold photos of the nation’s oldest active baseball part to ESPN.

The good old days. Today was different than all of that. All of my days are though, that was eight years ago, after all. Instead of interviewing David Brewer, I was discussing tips of interviewing with students in a classroom.

I always find myself bringing up the time I was asked to interview the congressman who’s best hunting dog had just died, or the times I annoyed governors, or that a newly elected (and still sitting) senator tried to insult me. Grieving interviews, funny interviews, boring interviews, the ones where you know the person is lying to you, and all of the different ways to get answers from your sources. Good stuff, good times.

I wonder what it was like to interview George Wallace. (He died in 1998, but I met his son once, in passing.) Maybe I should stop back by that bas-relief.

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12
Sep 14

The dangers of barbecue

We spent Monday and Wednesday talking about story ideas in my writing and editing class. Today we shifted to research tools. The conversation was all about primary sources. So I got a state accident report form from the police folks. I showed off health department forms from the restaurant inspectors. I downloaded the university’s Form 990 from Guidestar. The form is an annual reporting return that has to be filed with the government, listing programs and finances.

I started out asking “Who wants to know what the president of the university makes?”

People always want to know about the boss, don’t they?

This may be my favorite stretch of classes. Next week we’ll talk about online sources and research. It isn’t for everyone, but I’m going to try and make it interesting in the “yes, you have access to this sort of thing and there are millions of stories that can come from it” vein. We’ll see how many people are intrigued.

I got in a short ride before darkness fell, about an hour’s worth. I wimped out, taking a standard, easy route with only 700 feet of climbing. I topped out at 38.1 miles per hour. There’s a section of my cycling app that allows me to add notes about the ride. This evening I typed in “Perfectly forgettable.”

Sometimes those are the best rides. Nothing remarkable on the two little climbs, nor the one long sprint. The hills close to home slow and manageable. I caught all the lights and worked back through the neighborhood just in time to see the headlights shining. It was mindless and a great wind down from the week. It also wasn’t long enough. But, I’ll ride again in the morning and we’ll find out if I like morning rides. There might be an appeal there. But will it be more appealing than the snooze bar?

This is the best story you’ll read today. It defies excerpting, but we’ll try. This young woman found herself homeless when her lost her job. They bounced from shelter to shelter before things turned back around a bit …

‘I didn’t want to just be average.’

Koen’s family got back on its feet and found a new house her senior year of high school, but she was living in homeless shelters for most of her high school education, which made school work a little difficult.

“At the shelter you have to work and take hours and have to do chores,” she said. “Or if volunteers come to hold events or programs, it would be rude to not go. I studied when I could. I didn’t want to just be average. I had made it a goal my freshman year I wanted to be in the Top 20 every year.”

And that’s exactly where she finished—as one of about 20 students who had such high GPAs the computers named them all No. 1. She graduated high school with honors and an advanced academic diploma.

Koen just started her first year at the University of Montevallo, where she plans to join the honors program and continue to volunteer.

She is one of five young people in a scholarship competition. She’s local and remarkable, so I’m voting for Rebecca Koen.

They’re all moving stories, should you feel the need to be moved this lovely day.

Things to read … because reading makes every day more lovely.

Birmingham exports down 20 percent from 2011:

According to numbers from the U.S. Department of Commerce, in 2013 Birmingham exported $1.8 billion in goods from industries such as transportation equipment, machinery and primary metals. But that number is down 20 percent from 2011, when the city exported $2.3 billion.

That dovetails nicely with certain economic events.

You can’t see it and you can’t know why … Court won’t release costs of Gitmo camp:

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the Pentagon need not make public a document detailing the costs associated with a Guantanamo Bay prison camp used to house so-called high-value detainees.

In a ten-page opinion (posted here), U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell rejected the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg brought seeking records of the costs of creating or maintaining the camp.

The Defense Department said it found only one record, a single page, responsive to Rosenberg’s request. That page was classified in its entirety.

The court filing describing the reason for the classification and level of classification is itself classified

Don’t you just want to know why you can’t know how much it cost?

This happened to me in Birmingham … Visitor’s barbecue from Joe’s Kansas City gets confiscated at KCI:

Bob Porter wasn’t about to leave Kansas City without tasting our world famous barbecue.

Porter, a government affairs consultant from Washington, D.C., flew in over the weekend to attend the Chiefs game with a group of friends. Before catching his return flight at Kansas City International Airport, he stopped by the Leawood Joe’s Kansas City for a pound of brisket, a pound of smoked sausage and a small condiment cup of sauce.

Porter says he assumed the barbecue would be fine in his checked suitcase because it was wrapped in butcher paper and, for good measure, a plastic laundry bag from his hotel room. But when he arrived home in D.C. Monday and opened his suitcase, the barbecue was gone. In its place, he says, was an empty plastic laundry bag and a note from the Transportation Security Administration that said it had gone through his luggage.

“Really? That’s what you’re taking? My barbecue?” Porter says. “I’ve traveled all over the world, and I’ve never had anything like this happen before.”

I had some very dangerous banana pudding confiscated by the heroic blue shirts at the Birmingham airport. It all came down to an idiotic argument about whether it was a solid or a gel. The hungry TSA worker thought it was a gel. If it was frozen, he said, that wouldn’t be a problem. Consider that. If it were a solid quart I’d have a brick, much more dangerous than your regular batch of bananas, pudding and vanilla wafers. Porter, meanwhile, was trying to smuggle dangerous brisket from here to there. Or maybe it was the artery clogging sauce.

So you can now feel much safer the next time you fly.