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cycling

Art off the bike

I managed to get on the bike just in time for a quick 20-mile evening ride. When I got home there was about 15 minutes of daylight left, so that was well-timed.

I rode my bike to the bank. (I’m doing errands! On a bicycle! So ecologically sound!) I did the local time trial route and then climbed up one side of the town’s biggest hill. (Big is relative. It is actually fairly small.) At the top of that hill I changed my plan and turned left instead of right. And, before long, I saw this:

What is that? And where is that? You can almost make it out in the pond’s reflection. The building behind the art is the local art museum. It is now 10 years old. It is a fine museum. It has this weird, rusted, house.

And the house seems to have thrusters attached. Which explains the satellite dish on the side.

But not the spare tire or the cinder block on the front porch of the rusted house space ship.

Or the chicken wire and large (for scale) water valve:

The medium is, in part, called Found Objects. Which means the artist, professor Robbie Barber had this stuff in his or his neighbors’ yard or an abandoned lot, repurposed it, or recycled, or re-used it to earn an honorable mention in this juried art contest. And we’ll get to see it for a year.

About the art, called Dreams of Flying:

Influenced by science fiction, toy design, both folk and outsider art, and found objects in general, Barber fuses these influences to create hybrid objects of fantasy, the results of which are often humorous, ironic or visually poetic in nature. Dreams of Flying depicts a shotgun shack that is transformed into a spacecraft of dubious reliability. While reminding us of the inherent dangers of space travel, this sculpture also depicts the ultimate escapist dream of flying.

What did you get out of it? I perceived the inherent dangers of going into space in a poorly conceived home. (This was Prince Lonestar’s other spaceship, I guess.) I liked the curved display stand best of all.

Earlier this week Lileks said:

I was going to say something broad and silly like “every type of modern art has failed, except architecture,” but that sounds simplistic. Except it’s true. Atonal music? No one cares. Abstract painting? It had its vogue, reduced everything down to a canvas consisting of one color (Red #3 – a title of a Great Work, or an FDA additive designation?) Modern literature flirted with styles that required no particular aptitude – automatic writing, cutting up bits of newsprint and rearranging them – but words require structure, or it’s phoneme salad. Modern sculpture masked its irrelevance by substituting size for detail, so you’d be overwhelmed into thinking this enormous hunk of metal that looked like the Hulk broke out of a boxcar had significance, but eventually it turned into “installations” and “assemblages” that relied on the artist’s ability to recombine instead of create.

And you nod in understanding, even if you don’t agree. But most of us do. And the rest of us are just too good to acknowledge it, maybe, or smarter than others. You may not know what art is, but you know that an assemblage of pipes, siding and shingles and rust. You know that stuff when you see it. And now you know it can remind you of the perils of interstellar travel

Other works are on display outside the museum. I’m going to show them off on Sunday.

We ran into the owner of our local bike shop out and about tonight. It was every bit one of those situations where your mind recognizes some facial aspect in an encoded memory file. But the file is locked away because you are actually in the next town over. It is night. He’s in a nice shirt. This is a Chinese restaurant (I wanted soup) and he belongs in a polo behind a counter tapping keys and turning wrenches and talking about races.

Context means so much, but you’re relieved because you can see the neurons in his head scrambling to make the exact same connections.

We’re all constructs to one another, in some ways. We were at a dinner party last week and talking about this very thing. When was the first time you saw a school teacher of yours in some place that didn’t have “School” at the end of the name? Mine was at a movie theater. Changed my relationship with that lady forever. She was suddenly more than the person with a classroom at the end of the hall. Now she had interests, great passionate pursuits and a crystalline sense of humor.

I was young. It took a lot to overcome that teachers-exist-only-at-school construct, but only a little to prove the point.

Then earlier today we saw one of the other guests at that dinner party walking down the street. “She looks familiar … Oh that’s … ”

I wonder if she knows Danny, who runs the bike shop.

I wonder if either of them have seen the art at the museum. Probably the woman has. She was an art professor.

Things to read, which I found interesting today … One of our students wrote this about another student. It is a moving piece on a challenging topic. I’m pretty proud for her. Breast health: sophomore’s high risk leads to tough choices.

Matt Waite flies his drone at a journalism conference, and he makes a keen observation.

Here is Waite’s drone journalism manual, if you are interested.

Three tremendous paragraphs, in Life Magazine, written about one of the most contemporaneously important photographs published in the middle of the 20th century. Still important, too.

Why print this picture, anyway, of three American boys dead upon an alien shore? Is it to hurt people? To be morbid?

Those are not the reasons.

The reason is that words are never enough. The eye sees. The mind knows. The heart feels. But the words do not exist to make us see, or know, or feel what it is like, what actually happens. The words are never right. . . .

Quick hits:

Hard numbers, chilling facts: What the government does with your data

Teaching media entrepreneurship: What works, and what gets in the way

And one from the multimedia blog. You saw that one here, first.

Hope you have a great weekend! Come back here tomorrow for football. More in between, of course, on Twitter.

cycling / friends / iPhone / journalism / links / things to read / Wednesday — Comments Off
16
Oct 13

I found a new photo tool

This is from some recent ride. Certainly not the one I had this evening. I know where the side roads on tonight’s ride go. I did not know where this road went.

I’m going to post that photo again as a test of a new tool I’ve just discovered, an immersive, interactive photo sharing tool called ThingLink.

There’s something of an unwritten rule (and we have many rules) about the unknown road. You don’t look on a map. You don’t ask a fellow rider. If you want to know where that road goes, you travel that road. And before you do that you stand at the head of it, take a photo and then run it through a filter. Then you ride down the road.

It was a dead end.

If you please, put your mouse over that photo. See those little circles? They are all interactive. Most are just notes. There’s one link and one video. And so it is apparent to me right away, this is a useful tool.

Anyway, I rode 20 miles today, I discovered a new tool there and did some other things, all less interesting than those.

Things to read, which I found interesting today …

Speaking of useful tools, this is a link to save: New Google site highlights journalism tools on offer

Smart people doing amazing things, right up the road. Here’s how Alabama scientists helped prove that Voyager 1 has left the Solar System

Also in Alabama: Nearly 200,000 Alabamians will fall into Affordable Care Act ‘coverage gap’. It seems the Kaiser people have cornered the market on this research.

I’ve been wondering lately, if you were building from the ground up, what would your marketing/newsroom/studio/entity’s goal be? Or, what era are you building to? Online TV/video market to be worth $35BN by 2018

You find a century-old film in a barn. What do you do? Restoring Mary Pickford’s Lost Film.

The government is “back”? The government is back. $174,000 to a Senator’s Widow and Other Surprises in the Fiscal Compromise Bill. Not that it ever left.

I had a terrific conversation this weekend, one of those where the other person really crystalizes your thinking in a spare sentence or two. That conversation, with an Army major of strong personal convictions, had to do with standing up for the smaller, weaker, more vulnerable person, and it applies to this terrible story, a sad tale where that did not happen. Felony Counts for 2 in Suicide of Bullied 12-Year-Old:

Brimming with outrage and incredulity, the sheriff said in a news conference on Tuesday that he was stunned by the older girl’s Saturday Facebook posting. But he reserved his harshest words for the girl’s parents for failing to monitor her behavior, after she had been questioned by the police, and for allowing her to keep her cellphone.

“I’m aggravated that the parents are not doing what parents should do: after she is questioned and involved in this, why does she even have a device?” Sheriff Judd said. “Parents, who instead of taking that device and smashing it into a thousand pieces in front of that child, say her account was hacked.”

[…]

“Watch what your children do online,” Sheriff Judd said. “Pay attention. Quit being their best friend and be their best parent. That’s important.”

And, finally one post on the multimedia blog.

We had deer burgers on the grill tonight. First time I’ve had deer that way. Adam came and prepared the patties, an animal he’d taken himself. The Yankee made fries and sauteed onions. I started the fire, easily the weakest part of the meal. But the burgers were incredible.

We watched Game of Thrones. He is now through the end of the second season. Don’t spoil it for him.

It was a good day.

adventures / cycling / history / iPhone / journalism / links / Samford / things to read / Tuesday — Comments Off
15
Oct 13

A learned man says things to us, let’s listen

This morning we heard historian David McCullough speak. He filled up a little under one-half of the Arena, which demonstrated that there’s not a good mid-sized venue on campus:

I’ve read McCullough since I was in college, Truman was his first work I bought. He read letters from Mary Jane Truman, complaining to her brother, the president, about how much of an imposition all of this president business had become, his point being “History is about life, not about boring textbooks. It shouldn’t be taught with boring textbooks. It is about humans.”

McCullough also discussed John Adams, the subject of his other Pulitzer winning book. Adams was brilliant, even though most of what you learn about him in school — if even this — were the alien and sedition acts. An unfortunate series of legislation, for certain, but not all the man was by a long stretch. Perhaps you’ve heard about him on HBO. But that wasn’t the extent of the second president, either. McCullough mentioned reading the works of his subjects, and discovering that in his diary Adams would often write one line, “At home thinking.”

“Oh to know what was going on in that wonderful mind,” which gave his audience a little insight into the romantic notion of knowing the people he’s writing about better than he knows anyone else.

History is the best trainer, he said, no matter your field. It was a tough speech, in a way, because there were plenty of older folks in the audience, a few college students and a large group of high schoolers. The landscape was far and wide, then, but he had some universal lessons. I liked this one, which he directed at the large group of high school students who were there, “What a delight to be caught up in the love of learning.”

I use a similar line from time to time. Learning the joy of learning is the true education.

“History is an anecdote to the hubris of the present. It is an aid to navigation in difficult times.”

And then he got chipper. He’d already talked about how we are soft compared to our ancestors, comparing our troubles with previous generations. Think of any medical example and you’ll be on the same page. Everyone with any age on them in the crowd knew what he was getting at. (Meaning people who’ve never used the #FirstWorldProblems configuration before.)

“A lot of people feel our country is in decline. I don’t think so. Our history shows when we have problems we solve them … I am an optimist. I feel the best is yet to come. And on we go,” he said, wrapping up a nice little 40 minute talk.

(Some other good McCullough books I’ve read: 1776, The Great Bridge and The Path Between the Seas.)

Got in a quick 20 mile ride in the evening, suffering the entire way. It has been too long since I’ve been in the saddle and it felt like it, especially in my knee. What does it mean when there’s a numbed, hollow feeling where you’d expect a ligament to be?

But it was a nice ride, out through the neighborhood, past the state park and down the waterfall hill. That let’s you cost for almost a mile. But then you have to ride back up another side of that hill, which is about two miles of gentle climbing which is topped by church where there is frequently lots of praying: Please let this hill end. Another turn and then you fall down to the creek bed, over a new bridge and then back out again. A few more miles puts you back in the neighborhood and then you’re just racing daylight.

Tonight I made recruiting calls, which I am convinced are one of those things that make the world go ’round. Think of it. The world is a big place. It takes a lot of things to move the world around. Me calling students and singing praises about our beautiful campus and all of the potential in our program is one of them.

Twice tonight I called, got the voicemail, started leaving a message and then had that person return my call before I’d completed the voicemail. I do not understand this. I prefer to allow a moment to pass, discover what, if anything, the person on the other end of the call would like to share with me. After which, of course, I can turn to the mediated correspondence of choice and contribute my portion, as necessary. Otherwise I’m just making people repeat themselves.

Things to read which I found interesting today … Someone found an 18-foot-long creature in the sea and thought “I must physically haul this monster to the surface and shore, so that others might note its splendor.” So, naturally, you run the smallest version of the photo possible. The monster is big, the photo is tiny and that dog has no camera sense.

It all makes sense if you click the link. And squint.

This is a bit old, but … House members forced to reuse gym towels. I do not think they realize how these quotes play at home, or with the people that are currently out of work — and, thus, at home — because of the shutdown. Politics aside, there’s something to be said about thinking about the quotes you offer media. Skim some of the comments, by the way.

This fellow, hopefully this hale fellow, is shocked by what he’s lately learned. Obamacare will double my monthly premium (according to Kaiser):

My wife and I just got our updates from Kaiser telling us what our 2014 rates will be. Her monthly has been $168 this year, mine $150. We have a high deductible. We are generally healthy people who don’t go to the doctor often. I barely ever go. The insurance is in case of a major catastrophe.

Well, now, because of Obamacare, my wife’s rate is gong to $302 per month and mine is jumping to $284.

[…]

I never felt too good about how this was passed and what it entailed, but I figured if it saved Americans money, I could go along with it.

I don’t know what to think now. This appears, in my experience, to not be a reform for the people.

Lot of that going around these days.

Me? Still haven’t been told, which is nice. (Is anyone running a Tumblr on these then and now prices? Someone should.)

Most important: Syrup Sopping is this weekend. Grab some biscuits, get to Loachapoka.

Can’t wait.

cycling / Friday / journalism / links / music / things to read / video / YouTube Cover Theater — Comments Off
4
Oct 13

The bike, the media, the music — pretty much everything you expect in one post

Today we learned that yesterday’s problems with my bike were all about the index shifting, and almost entirely human error. That last part is not surprising, but it allowed me to receive a free education today, and probably, when I left the bike shop, they talked for an hour about how they could sucker me into any deal at this point.

So I got to ride around a bit on one of what will surely be the last really warm days of the year. Tomorrow will be splendid, and rain will come in over the weekend, even if Karen is breaking up in the gulf. That’s fine. No big storms necessary, just the rain. And behind that some drier, cooler air. Soon after will be the time the maple leaves will abandon ship, pushing aside the women and the children to fall from their sturdy branches, only to look up and realize they could have stayed around three or four more weeks.

I’m of mixed emotions about the whole thing this year.

But it was sunny and warm and I saw one other person on a bike late this afternoon. That was a kid on the side of the road, straddling his 26er with his right foot propped up on the curb and looking back behind him. I asked if he was OK, he nodded, and I dodged more traffic at the light. From the bike store I decided to find out where this side road, Longleaf, goes — because neither asking nor consulting a map will do. And about halfway down the road I remembered where I’d once before noticed this street name: on some other hilly road I’d rather not think about. Curiously I recalled that just as I got to the one big hill on Longleaf.

Then back into civilization, carefully denoted by the Shell station in the middle of nowhere, then a trailer park and then a few odd and end service businesses. Back up to campus, past the vet school where people walk across the four lane road without a care in the world these days, and then beyond the frat houses and through the athletics side of the campus.

Now I’m in a weird part of the day where to be in the shade is to be in a spot too dark for sunglasses, but it is still fairly bright when there are no trees, so I had a lot of one-hand eye practice today. There was a small, slow climb, I discovered another road on which it isn’t the last roller, but the next-to-last one that really hurts. Finally, back down toward home, through the growing intersection, into the neighborhood and so on. It was an easy and quick 20 miles, except for that one hill.

The Yankee said she saw me. She was going to the grocery store from somewhere just as I passed through that area. Said I looked good. Didn’t want to honk at me. Everyone else does. Usually it is the “You’re going too slow!” variety.

Otherwise there was school work, reading papers, grading things, dreaming up class possibilities, following the news, and so on.

Speaking of which …

Things to read, which I found interesting today …

A year after daily publication ceased in Alabama and New Orleans, media market is ‘fractured’ is about Advance’s moves in New Orleans, Huntsville, Birmingham, Mobile and Pascagoula, Miss. New Orleans has seen a Baton Rouge paper move in to give some competition and a daily publication outlet, so that dynamic market is interesting in different ways. Along the I-65 corridor …

The past year has been “a black hole for news in this city,” says Doug Jones, a Birmingham attorney who rose to national prominence for reopening and successfully prosecuting the infamous 1963 16th Street Church bombing case while serving as U.S. Attorney for the Northern Alabama district.

Jones said he and his wife are contemplating dropping their Birmingham News subscription in favor of the still-daily Tuscaloosa News, based some 60 miles south, which is testing the competitive waters by offering subscriptions in some Birmingham neighborhoods.

[…]

Combined average Sunday circulation at Advance’s three Alabama newspapers declined about 8 percent during the same period, with then-nascent digital edition circulation having little effect there.

[…]

“What I’ve seen, at least in this first year, is because of the reduction in resources committed to local reporting, we’ve experienced a dramatic decrease in quality news available to the community,” said Jim Aucoin, professor and chair of the Communications Department at the University of South Alabama in Mobile. “Investigative and enterprise coverage just isn’t there anymore.”

Birmingham lawyer Jones specifically criticized al.com and what he characterized as its generally superficial coverage. “You go online and there are all these teasers, but when you click on them, there are just two or three paragraphs,” he said. “And there’s no decent national coverage. Hell, we can’t even get good coverage of University of Alabama football anymore.”

I’ve never known Doug Jones to lie to me, but that as an absolute twist, stretch and tearing of the truth. As they say, ‘Bama gonna Bama.’

If they don’t say that, they should. Anyway, one more blurb:

Readers in highly technologically savvy Huntsville may be less troubled. “I think al.com has responded reasonably well to the increased [digital] demand by providing convenient and free online access to the state’s major newspapers,” said Eletra Gilchrist-Petty, associate professor of Communication Studies at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. “Overall, there do appear to be more strengths than limitations associated with al.com.”

Disclosure: I used to work for Advance. It is a private company, so the financial figures quoted in the Poynter piece are more of a learned guess from industry analysts. I can say this, which is relevant to my time there which ended with my return to academia several years ago, Advance’s al.com property is an impressive financial performer — largely on behalf of all of that Alabama football coverage. They know their audience, even when they should know better. So the point about looking at last year’s move by Advance as “not something that was done for an immediate payoff” is a good one.

I have faith in their numbers and in their revenue stream. I’m concerned, as others noted in the excerpts above, the link in the previous paragraph and some other material that has previously landed in this space about some of the content quality. I hope, and suspect, that will get worked it in the near future.

In our state Birmingham, Huntsville and Mobile, the three cities most directly effected by the shift last year, are the three biggest metros, boasting about half the state’s population. Clearly, there are a lot of people impacted by the daily miracle. (More than just the ones who read it, I’d argue.) Birmingham, if I recall correctly, is now the nation’s largest city without a daily newspaper. I’m not at all concerned about the medium. I’d rather we focused on the journalism. The more investigations and deep reporting, the better. The more people asking pointed questions of politicians, the better. The less time spent analyzing the quarterback and his girlfriend, the better. That’s not so much about the viability of the company as the company’s role in many communities.

Here’s a re-write from al.com, now: Alabama Theatre named one of America’s favorite vintage movie theaters by nostalgia magazine. (Back to the earlier point: It would be nice if they’d do some original reporting. Or got their own photograph. They are literally four blocks up and one block over from the theater.)

The Alabama is one of the great success stories of Birmingham. It is a beautiful and historic facility that went from near demolition to once again becoming an event destination. You can’t see enough movies or concerts there. The last one I watched was The Godfather, which was the first time a digital print was ever played in that now almost 90-year-old theater. Also, the famous marquee was once a background of my blog:

And if that isn’t something to celebrate, I don’t know what is.

WE INTERRUPT THIS POST FOR A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE FROM CNBC.

The president is … walking.

OK, then.

And, finally, Carlow University Student Kicked Out Of Class, Arrested For Dressing As ‘The Joker’. I’m assuming his crime was misreading the calendar as it pertains to Halloween?

He was charged with aggravated assault, resisting arrest, terroristic threats and disorderly conduct because someone got alarmed, called the police and then, according to police, got a little belligerent. (His lawyer says the cops have it wrong and went to the First Amendment in his public airing of grievances.) He was also suspended from campus. He’s due in court later this month. It should be an interesting one to watch.

And now, YouTube Cover Theater the sometimes occasional Friday feature which allows people using their cameras, computers and their musical instruments as a demonstration of how much talent is hiding out there in the world. We do this by picking one original artist and finding a small handful of people covering the (usually) popular tunes.

This week’s featured performers are Hall and Oates. I selected them because I saw this video, one of the van sessions, from Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers. What’s a van session? You’ll see. Press play:

Also, there is a kazoo. A kazoo, people.

They sound so nice, don’t you agree? That band is touring, which stretches the purposes of YouTube Cover Theater, but there’s something intriguingly hypnotic about watching a full band play in a moving van.

Here are the Miller Brothers, who could be playing in a Ramada Inn Airport near you with that sound:

Take two young guys, a Korg and some bad hairpieces and … well, these guys just need more views. Help ’em out:

Apparently they recorded that for Hall-Oates-Ween last year. Fitting.

You know that frame YouTube displays before you play the video? The one on this video doesn’t do the performance justice:

Hall and Oates are still out there rocking in America, this performance was from this spring:

And now you can feel old: She’s Gone was on an album released 40 years ago next month.

Hope you have a great weekend!

collarbone / cycling / journalism / links / things to read / Thursday — Comments Off
3
Oct 13

I played the waiting game

My doctor’s appointment almost made me late for physical therapy. That’s what you get for scheduling those three hours a part.

The receptionist at the doctor’s office kindly explained that they only had two doctors working. This, after you’ve been there 82 minutes, suggests a scheduling error and not a problem on the patient’s part.

That this has happened twice here, well, that suggests I’ll try not to come back.

Curiously, as soon as you say “I don’t want to be that guy” while proceeding to be that guy, they manage to find a room to put you in. And then, of course, the extra waiting begins.

Eventually the doctor shows up. Nice guy. He’s intent. He listens. He’s happy for your successes. He’s a shoulder expert. He does things to my shoulder, is proud of our progress and then, without thinking, claps me three times, right on the trapezius. Thanks, doc.

So I barely made it to physical therapy in time, where today they gave me a series of weights and we swapped up a few stretches. Everyone is pleased with the progress, me most of all. The doctor rightly noted that what we’ve done so far is basically with a month of new therapy work. In three or four more months, he said, I’ll be good as new.

And the equally good news is that I didn’t have to schedule another doctor’s appointment in the near future.

Picked up my bike from the bike shop this evening, where it has been held since last Friday. It needed a new front derailleur. They were so excited to give it back to me that they called twice yesterday.

When I picked it up tonight I was happy to have it back, too. I set out for a quick twilight ride … and the chain is rubbing the new derailleur cage. So I guess I’ll take it back to the bike shop, because one visit begets three.

But I rode the time trial route, and then climbed up two of the ‘biggest’ hills we have. They are tiny, really, but they are in a sequence. The second one is the largest. Today it was the easiest.

I turned left instead of right. Right was home, but the thing was already clicking and there was a little descent to take and then weaving through some easy road construction, past the museum, through a park and then back up the other side of that earlier big hill. There’s a side road there that takes you down into the neighborhood, and for a minute or two it makes you feel like a real rider. There’s a curve, a right turn that falls immediately into a curve and then a switchback to the left. Then there are houses, kids on bikes and adults unloading their cars with groceries and old men walking dogs. It keeps swooping down until it has to go back up and that’s the point where the darkness started to seep in under the tree canopy.

I met a cyclist going the other way. I only do that when I’m soft pedaling. So I had to stand up out of the saddle and finish the last bit of the neighborhood route home.

Can’t believe I have to take my bike back again.

We had dinner tonight, pizza, with our friends Adam and Jessica. Mellow Mushroom put us in the very back of the restaurant. We had pretzels, of course, and pizza, of course. And we had a fine time with friends.

They’re getting married next weekend. We were there when they got engaged. I get to be in the wedding.

Tonight I told him that I’d contemplated backing out as I paid to rent the tuxedo.

He joyfully threatened me with physical harm.

Things to read which I found interesting today …

This will only get worse. And more incorrect. Doing drone journalism in Texas? You could be fined $10,000 or more:

As of the first of this month, taking aerial photographs of someone’s land in the state of Texas, without the landowner’s permission, is punishable by up to $2,000 and 180 days in jail, each time such a photo is distributed. Journalists are not exempt from this law.

[…]

The law also applies to photos taken in public places, at an altitude greater than eight feet above ground level (AGL)

That’s a good site about drones, by the way. (I want one.)

I remember the first time this happened to me. Rep. Todd Rokita To CNN’s Carol Costello: ‘You’re Beautiful But You Have To Be Honest’ OK, maybe it wasn’t that. But a senator told me I asked too many questions. The nerve of a reporter to do such a thing. When an interview subject says things like this, the odds are good that you’re taking them somewhere they don’t want to go. Keep at them, I say.

A followup from yesterday: 2 of 4 found shot to death in car in Winston County faced child molestation, pornography charges in Tennessee, sheriff says

Mice and fungi and skin scrapings are on the line: How the Shutdown Is Devastating Biomedical Scientists and Killing Their Research. This is actually an interesting perspective and a necessary story. There are many of them. None of them come with easy answers. You wonder how many times we can cut research budgets and stay on the forefront of science.

Some things shouldn’t be made to wait.