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Friday

Auburn / Friday / Glomerata / history / photo — Comments Off
23
Feb 24

The 1946 Glomerata, part one

I recently purchased a new desktop document camera. It arrived and, today, I began playing around with it. There is a lot to learn, namely consistency of production values and efficiency. But, even in this learning curve part of this new toy’s workflow is already better. When I take a photo, it is already on my computer. Struggling with this camera, then, is already better than struggling with the phone.

Anyway, the first project is taking pictures of some of the photos in this beautiful book.

That’s the 1946 edition of The Glomerata, the yearbook of my alma mater. I collect the yearbooks. For one, they look great. For another, it’s a unique and contained hobby. I like that it was a finite thing. The first Glom was published in 1897. (I don’t have that one, so if you run across it … ) and the last, latest one I’ll collect was the 2016 book. There are 120 in between. (One year they published two books.) I now have 112 of them.

I’m sharing these images here as I digitize them, but just in case anyone else is interested, you can find them all here.

In the 1990s I ate at The Grille, the same restaurant where the English staff, are eating. I may have eaten in this same booth.

We ate there weekly. Spaghetti, with a free second plate. Every week. It wasn’t enough. The restaurant closed while I was in school, and it is one of those things you can’t not be sad about.

But that’s not what we’re about. We’re going to see how students lived in the 1940s.

Kirtley Brown was the director of student affairs. He’d been in PR. Sometime soon after this he and his wife, the now-famed author Mary Ward Brown moved back to the family farm. He died in 1970, and she passed away in 2013. Their son became a criminal justice instructor at the nearby Marion Military Institute. Kirtley Brown, the son, retired in 2023.

And we’ll probably share every photograph of people on bikes.

Mildred Woodham was the editor of The Glomerata. From Geneva, Alabama, she studied art, graduated in 1946 and moved to New York to become a fabulously successful sculptor.

Known professionally as Jean Woodham, she had prominent shows and won prestigious awards for almost 70 years.

Her last show was at the art museum at her alma mater, in 2013. She passed away in 2021.

I don’t plan on including a lot of the posed posed shots in this collection, but she was the editor of The Glom and all of this was worth mentioning.

This is a scene from the campus newspaper, The Auburn Plainsman. I worked there in school, of course.

I’ve no idea where this room is or was. The paper was in a different building when I was in school, a building that wasn’t even on blueprints when this photo was taken. It is housed in still another building today.

Here’s another surely staged scene from The Plainsman. The careful viewer will note it is the same room, with a slightly wider angle, panned to the right, with all new people.

It was a twice-a-week publication until the late 1940s. It was a weekly, the largest weekly in the state, when I was in school. They went primarily online in 2011.

In between, they’ve won 25 National Pacemaker Awards — basically the collegiate Pulitzer — including two when I was on the staff.

Yes, I have plaques.

Mimi Simms was the editor of The Plainsman. She was the second woman to sit in the big chair. She comes from Auburn royalty.

One of her brothers played football for the university, and was recorded as the best tennis player on campus. That many became a veterinarian, much like their father did. Their young brother is Jack Simms, the legendary founding faculty member of the journalism department.

Mimi did her graduate work at the University of Alabama, but we don’t hold that sort of thing against people. It seems she never married. She died in 2000, and is buried in Tennessee with her parents.

This handsome fellow is Greg Allen, president of the veterans’ organization, and yes, there are a lot of coat and tie photos in this yearbook.

Maria Duchac’s nickname was Skippy and that’s the best possible name. Also, this was apparently a family nickname, she’s heard it her whole life. She studied chemical engineering.

I love everything about this. Her major, her nickname and that door.

And as of this writing she is apparently still with us. War Eagle, Skippy.

The cutline simply says “Folk dancing class.”

I’m assuming there’s some rule that there’s a reason they were all women. But look how some of them were so intently having fun!

But there was plenty of dancing, elsewhere, of course.

The caption here reads “Winners of Jitterbug Contest.”

White leather shoes are about due a comeback, right?

And that’s 10 photos, and 800 words on the subject. That seems like a good stopping point for now.

More from the 1946 Glom next Friday. You can see all of the book covers I’ve collected, here. And if you just like old photographs, I’ve digitized selections from a few of the other old books here.

And just so where we remember where they are, all of the 1946 photos are landing right here.

Auburn / Cozumel / Friday / Glomerata / history / photo / SCUBA / site — Comments Off
16
Feb 24

A nice package arrived today

On the front porch, and a day earlier than anticipated, was a box with two books inside. I found these online, on e-Bay, actually, in one of the more fruitful examples of late night insomnia. The prices were low and right and the end of the auctions were listed during the Super Bowl.

No one was paying attention to e-Bay. But I have a particular set of skills, and so I was paying attention to e-Bay and watching the game and silently wondering, for about the sixth year in a row, why we still get worked up about the commercials which were — not exactly pedestrian — but standard fare for the most part. Many commercials are well done these days, so you have to really stand out with celebrities, but they’re in spots all the time. Many commercials are good. And so even the good commercials debuted during the Super Bowl didn’t stand out too much, except for the ones that were obviously going to be controversial in some corner of the web. And that wretched Temu ad.

But I digress. I won both auctions. The nice lady who sold me the books offered to combine shipping and, today, they have arrived.

I opened the box, and inside were two large Ziploc bags. Inside each bag was a book. That book was wrapped in guerilla-resistance strength cling wrap. And, beneath, that a two layer roll of bubble wrap.

The woman who sold me these books really understands me.

Inside the first bubble wrapped, shrink wrapped, Ziploc bag was this.

That’s the 1912 Glomerata, the yearbook from my alma mater. This book is 102 years old, and the cover is showing that age. Even if it does need rebinding, the pages inside are basically perfect. The cover, particularly of the older books, is where the fun is.

Longtime readers know I collect the Glomeratas. It seemed like a good thing to get. They make a handsome bookcase. And it’s a unique thing to acquire. I know of two other people who dabbled in this. And, importantly, it is a finite thing. The first Glom was published in 1897. (I don’t have that one, so if you get a lead … ) and the last, latest one I’ll collect was the 2016 book. There are 120 in between. (One year they published two books.) I have 112 of them.

As I said, it’s a handsome bookcase.

The other book was the 1907 Glomerata. It has been rebound. It’s a generic black cover. No need to show you that, but what’s inside is also where the fun is.

I just spent a few minutes flipping through the 1907 book. The highest quality photos are the studio head shots and the posed group photos. There are a few candid action shots, but they are all small. It was a limitation of cameras 117 years ago. There are some cool drawings inside the older books. This one was on the page introducing the students who put the yearbook together.

That was done by a guy named F. Roy Duncan, a senior. His blurb in the yearbook says he learned to draw in an English class there, and I’m not sold on his proficiency as an artist, or as an English student. But he becomes a talented engineer and architect. Born in Columbus, Georgia, educated at Auburn. He worked in Pittsburgh, and then on the Panama Canal. It seems he stayed down there for about three years, contributing to electrical, mechanical and structural engineering projects. And then he returned to Columbus.

Some six years after that photo was taken at school, he became an architect. Among his achievements are more than a half-dozen homes still standing in various historical districts (here’s one), the Taylor County (Georgia) courthouse and parts of this Columbus church. They all survive him, as did his wife, and this art. He had a heart attack while fishing and died, at 61, in 1947.

And so we’re going to have to look at these books. And all of the rest of the collection, over time. Because I also recently picked up a nice desktop document camera. These were the first three photos I took with it, and I’m pleased. It’s a little slow and awkward as I figure out the workflow, but it seems much better than trying to take a photo on my phone, emailing it to myself and then editing thing. At the very least I’ve got out two steps in the process. And so, next week, I’ll open a book and point it at the camera.

I think I’ll probably start in the 1940s.

But first, I have to add these two covers to the Glomerata collection on the site.

(Four minutes elapse.)

There, now the 1907 and 1912 volumes have been added to my Gloms cover collection. I’ve just noticed four or five other covers which haven’t been digitized, but I’ll get to them soon. And, as of this writing, these are the only ones I need to add to the collection: 1899, 1900, 1902, 1905, 1906, 1909, 1911, 1913, 1915, 1916.

Beyond a certain point, as you can imagine, they are difficult to find.

I just wrote 800-plus words about things that are only of interest to me! Let’s show you some diving photos, which I know you’ve been waiting for, patiently, and get you in to your weekend.

There is absolutely positively nothing like just … hanging there in the water. It’s so captivating that I spend time on most dives just watching other people do it. Like my dive buddy!

This is a shot-from-the-hip of a woman that was on one of our dive boats with us. She just happened to float over, or I swam under, or whatever it was, and I looked up. I love these shots, and I include it here as a reminder to myself to take more of them, which can only be done by more diving.

Dive boat dynamics are interesting. Unless you go as a big unruly group you’re surrounded by strangers. These are two-tank dives, which means you go out, take the first dive, and then enjoy another, all without having to return to land. For safety reasons that have to do with the chemistry of your blood under the mild pressures involved with reef diving, you take a surface interval. So you wind up talking to people. And they’re often just fascinating. This dive had a bishop from Miami, a high powered business man from Denver, this woman, who is in pediatric medicine and, of course, us. Plus there’s the captain and the divemaster, who is an underwater welder doing this in his free time. That’s an awesome amount of brain power on one little vessel, and also me.

So you wind up having some interesting chats. Usually it’s about equipment, things you just saw, how your diving has been, something innocuous from back home. It’s small talk. And you’re all the best of friends.

Except now I can’t remember anyone’s names.

I don’t know if she got to see this turtle. Not everyone on that dive did. But that’s the breaks. Sometimes you see the high profile sea life, and other times you hear about it and appreciate what you were able to find. But we found this giant turtle.

That’s easily a three-foot shell. Easily.

OK, that’s enough for now. Enjoy your weekend! (We’re getting snow.)

Cozumel / Friday / photo / SCUBA — Comments Off
9
Feb 24

It went to 11

Today I finished a 10-page document — or was it 11? — that I’ve been working on this week. There’s nothing quite like the joy of the final Final-Save clicks. And then you have to send it off. Fair well, my little document friend. I hope you do well, and that is why I saved you as a PDF, so that your formatting will stay consistent across 10 pages. Or was it 11?

And then, of course, you have to upload the thing. At which time you must complete your jump through the rest of our modern day hoops. Computers can be amazing. What we’ve tasked them to do can sometimes seem silly. Near-instantaneous communication and large batch data transfer is still impressive. The amount of Captcha buttons and Verify You Read This boxes you have to click, not so much. The price we pay, one supposes.

Or perhaps it’s like the very small meme. A person from pick-a-century would not be impressed by your cell phone. They would marvel at your spice cabinet.

The accuracy of that meme insured it would stay small. People that take everything in that cabinet for granted might not be the best people to depend on for establishing the zeitgeist.

Anyway, that project is done. And now I will repay myself with more free time. Which I will start to calculate on Tuesday. But first, the weekend. And, then on Monday, some work. But after that, look out, To Do List.

I return to the yard, because the weather was nice and the sunlight demanded it. And, in the backyard, we see another promising signal.

Ponder with me, for a moment, the lateral bud scales here.

Buds are the embryonic branches or, in this case, I think, flowers in a dormant state. They’re just waiting for a few more degrees of mercury. But aren’t we all?

I’ll have to remember to sit under this branch when they start offering some real shade. It might be a nice place to spend part of an afternoon reading.

As I walked back around to the front door I saw this out of the corner of my eye. It was one of those instances where it took a half of a beat for it to register. I backed up, stood still and let my eyes lose focus until my brain caught back up. The flash of color, the difference between the grass and the golden hour, that’s what caught my eye, surely. And it couldn’t be growth on this shrub already, surely. It was not.

Merely the remnants of last fall’s pruning. We all take a bit of that with us, I think.

Finally, I am getting used to seeing things in their naked and trimmed condition. The landscaping was overdue, and so this felt not only radical, but radical for a long time. Now, it is no longer startling, but it took a good long while to adjust.

Which means, I hope, that I’ll be able to see the green march of the seasons coming along just any day now.

He said, knowing that’s not yet the case, but rather trying to will it into being nonetheless.

Back under water, then. Best fish in the sea!

I know, I can’t believe I got a shot of her with bubbles in it, either.

A version of this one is eventually going on the front page of the website. (The SCUBA theme will return there next week!)

And I invite you to enjoy a few lovely sponge photos.

If that one wasn’t cool enough, I know you’ll be impressed by this larger specimen.

And when we come back to the diving section on Monday, we’ll have another great series of video clips to enjoy. But, first, enjoy that weekend!

Cozumel / Friday / photo / SCUBA — Comments Off
2
Feb 24

Let’s get you to the weekend

Today I started the last test group of the first granola experiment. I began with four brands, have tried three and, after two rounds of this one I’ll start combining varieties. But, first, we’ll try Cascadian Farms. It started in Washington, was acquired by General Mills and now is managed by Rodale, a legacy organic research and production concern based in Pennsylvania.

I wonder where the blueberries came from.

These aren’t bad, though the blueberry is a fruit that I don’t automatically think of as a breakfast offering. Or, really much at all. But they work pretty well here.

Tomorrow, we’ll see how blueberries and raisins mix. I suspect it’ll be just fine, but I am looking forward to mixing these different brands and flavors. And then, in a week or so, trying some new versions of granola.

Yes, my skin is positively growing from all of these healthy breakfasts.

It’s probably the raisins.

I had to do some writing today. This writing had to be similar to something I wrote last week, but different. Also, I had to answer student questions. Similar, but different. And I also began prep for a Monday night class, where we’ll be talking, among other things, about Marshall McLuhan. You know the one, the scholar famous for “the media is the message.” Different, but similar.

Also a bit different, I’ll do a late night bike ride this evening because I just couldn’t muster up the energy to do it this afternoon.

Besides, I had to find a few new SCUBA diving photos to share from our recent trip to Cozumel.

Dosing these out was the best idea I had, I think. There could have been a post with dozens of photos and videos. But, instead, I’m getting weeks and weeks of material, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of the videos.

I’ll add another one Monday, but, first.

I’d mentioned the coral restoration projects that are underway. That’s happening in a lot of places, including in Mexico’s beautiful waters. Here’s a staghorn coral site, now.

And there’s my dive buddy! I’m pretty sure this was after her ascent on the conclusion of a dive.

She probably still has about 1,500 PSI in her tank there.

Who doesn’t like a nice wide shot, now and again? This one is definitely going on the front page of the site, which is a project I’ll get around to updating in a week or so.

Sometimes I get lucky and almost get the colors just right. I’m sure this was at a shallow spot and the sun was at precisely the right angle because I never get this right. It’s a lot more colorful than my point-and-shoot photography oftentimes suggests.

And, here, I’m not sure which parts are healthy and which parts are in trouble. But, usually, when you see two different colors on the corals or sponges, one of them is less desirable.

All three of those might show up on the front page. But you should really see what we have for this space next Monday. It’s almost enough to make you want to skip ahead into the next work week.

Almost.

But not quite.

But close.

Cozumel / Friday / photo / SCUBA — Comments Off
26
Jan 24

Let’s ease your way into the weekend

We had pancakes this morning, so there is no granola update for you. But Monday, there will be a granola update. I’ll be sure to have plenty of things to update you with, in fact. Because I’ll have a good two, three days of opportunities to do things that can fill this space.

Today I worked outside a bit, and rode my bike downstairs for a bit and did some work upstairs for a bit. And that was it, really.

Also in the basement is where the plants are growing. I brought in eight plants when the weather turned. I put in two grow lights. Water them lightly every other day and mist them on the alternates. All of them are doing quite well.

Two of them are flowering. This guy, in fact, is doing better in the basement than he did all summer on the back step.

I wonder how many of them will need to be replanted in the spring. I wonder when I can take them back upstairs and outside. March, probably. Maybe April. Though the long-term forecasts are contributing to this unshakeable feeling that spring is just around the corner. Unshakeable. And entirely mistaken.

Let’s wrap up this week with some more beautiful underwater scenes from Cozumel. (Man, I want to go diving right now.)

Behold, this aquarium shot, which will soon be on the front page of the site.

I was able to sneak up on another boxfish.

And here’s a beautiful stoplight parrotfish.

We saw a little spread of coral nurseries. One of our divemasters was also a biologist, and we were talking with him about these sorts of cultivation efforts. Turns out they aren’t always easy. I think working on a program like this, or a seagrass restoration project would be a terrific vacation.

“Blue carbon” is the name for carbon captured by the world’s ocean and coastal ecosystems. Seagrass meadows play a massive part in this.

Often referred to as the ‘lungs of the sea,’ seagrasses are capable of capturing and storing large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. And, although seagrass accounts for less than 1% of our ocean, seagrass is responsible for up to 11% of the carbon intake! In fact, oceanographers estimate seagrass can be up to 35 times more effective than rainforests in terms of carbon uptake and storage abilities.

Projects like these are wildly successful.

Coral reefs, meanwhile …

Coral reefs are complex and ancient habitats. They have been a feature of life on Earth for around 500 million years.

They are a critical component of life in the ocean. Often referred to as “rainforests of the sea,” coral reef ecosystems are one of the most biodiverse in the world.

Around 25% of all marine species rely on coral reefs, including sharks and sea turtles, crustaceans, and schooling fish.

And cute, shy little guys like this grunt live around the coral.

And my favorite fish swims around coral, too!

Have a great weekend. We’ll hear from the kitties, talk books, see more fish and much, much more.