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“That’s definitely your problem.”

I had a great tale to tell you about today. It was going to be so exciting and wonderful. It would have left you smiling all day, that’s how good this story is. The stuff of dreams and laughter and happy children with puppy dogs. Just joyous stuff.

Instead I’ll tell you about the refrigerator.

Yesterday we broke it.

To be more precise it broke on us. Yay. Something else broke. Finally, however, something broke on its own. That’s a first. It was the same old story though, boy meets girl, girl goes into kitchen. Girl wonders why her feet are wet. Girl discovers the water is coming from the freezer. Girl mutters under her breath. Boy walks in and discovers what the girl’s already discovered.

Everything is melting. The good news is that at the end of the month there is precious little in our fridge and freezer. A few drinks, a door full of condiments, a couple of cheeses and pasta. In the freezer there was chicken, pork and a few containers of ice cream.

And ice. Lots of ice. Though we found it on the floor in its more playful physical form.

To Google. And then to the Whirlpool site. And to the phone, where the helpful voice helpfully points out that the helpful help line isn’t exactly helpful on Sundays. Everything breaks on Sundays.

If that’s not the name of an emo album within the next year I’ll be disappointed.

I discovered the downside to cultivating so many friends who prefer sarcastic humor. I asked for advice on Facebook and Twitter and none of you were any help. Punchlines, sure. Advice, nothing. (You should all be ashamed!)

Because learning is sometimes retroactive, I learned that there isn’t much you can do for a refrigerator as a consumer. We consulted manuals, both hard copy and digital. We surfed the forums. The refrigerator is only eight years old. It worked Friday night. It is plugged in and still humming. The lights work, no breakers have been tripped. None of this made sense.

We called the nice, patient and thoroughly sensible home warranty people. They find a local company. They are, as one might reasonably expect, closed on Sundays. They like emo music.

So, the warranty people tell us …

Hey, that’s the name of the band. “Check out the new album from The Warranty People: Everything breaks on Sundays!”

The warranty people tell us the repair man would be out tomorrow, which is today. The company’s name is a set of initials. Their voicemail is a chipper young woman who’s just proud, proud, proud to be recording this outgoing message. I liked my chances.

The repairman, our new best friend, came out today. His name is Rambo. He looks like what might have happened if John Rambo had, instead of being a West Coast drifter, turned into an HVAC, refrigerator guy who preferred a gray jumpsuit.

He walked right in and identified the kitchen area, tipped off no doubt by the counters and various kitchen accoutrement and paraphernalia. We really should disguise the room a bit more. Also the ice coolers stacked with our hopefully still chilled foodstuffs are a good hint.

We’d moved the surrounding clutter. I’ve already inspected the back of the refrigerator, which is much like my inspection under the hood of a modern car. Everything is … there. Few pieces sneak out under cover of darkness. (I lock up, and the parts lack the height and opposing thumbs required to negotiate the door.)

Rambo pulled off that little piece of cardboard at the bottom of the refrigerator. Yours probably has one too. It is dusty in there. And I hope yours is as well, otherwise this is just embarrassing. He looked and he poked and he turned on his flashlight. He removed a piece. He shook it. It rattled.

“That’s definitely your problem,” he declares.

Turns out this is the starting whatsits on the compressor and it has burned up, hence the rattle, which is apparently the part that is broken. It is a common piece, he said, and he looked to see if there is one in his truck.

There is not.

He must order the part. Hopefully, he says, it will be here this week.

Now look, Stallone, I understand you can’t control FedEx. I appreciate that you’re only covering your bases. But don’t you think it would be a little odd that a common piece can’t be identified, located, put on a truck and shipped here before the week is out?

Can I just go down to the local hardware shop, show them this thing — taking care to rattle it, so they know it is broken — and ask them for a replacement part?

I paid Rambo, who is a very nice guy. He said he’ll make sure the part gets ordered today, which is good, because I have three coolers of food and ice sitting on the floor. He promised to come back as soon as the part is in to make everything nice and frosty.

We bought dry ice at the local dry ice distribution center. (They also offer groceries, it turns out.) And I learned why you don’t touch dry ice. You can get an exposure burn in just a few seconds. Fortunately everything is cooling, because I have solid carbon dioxide in my kitchen.

Of course we had an extra refrigerator before we moved. We just had to sell it. For some reason it was agreed that an extra set of every appliance was being just a bit too overcautious. We regret that decision today. We let the old one go cheap too, according to my hasty and desperate searching this weekend. But we let it go to a couple who were in a similar situation. Hopefully the karma will be repaid in the form of a quick repair.

We ate freshly thawed chicken tonight. No one is ill or dead. (The long awaited second album from The Warranty People … )

So let’s keep count: air conditioner (in August, which has to be worth two points), the shower and the refrigerator.

To cheer us up, the best part of the Internet today is here:

This is a news website article about a scientific paper

In the standfirst I will make a fairly obvious pun about the subject matter before posing an inane question I have no intention of really answering: is this an important scientific finding?

In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of “scare quotes” to ensure that it’s clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever.

In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research “challenges”.

If the research is about a potential cure, or a solution to a problem, this paragraph will describe how it will raise hopes for a group of sufferers or victims.

The entire piece is worth your time. I can only assume that the author had a few minutes before his deadline, but none of the things in the press release folder or quick searches on Google inspired him. We are the better for it.

Monday history: First, check out this video from 1970. Unfortunately I can not embed it, because the site is from 1972.

That road, quiet and peaceful and uninteresting as the clip is, is now a big road in Birmingham. It was quiet in that shot in large part because the corridor was brand new. Construction started in 1962 with the first blast through the mountain. The cut was completed in 1967, the highway opened in 1970.

In part this corridor helped boost development in the southern suburbs. Homewood, Vestavia and Mountain Brook and even Hoover were there (though Hoover was brand new), but they hadn’t yet realized their full potential.

Driving through the mountain you can see about 150 million years of history, including a vein of the red ore that was so vital in the city’s early prosperity. The roadwork yielded a new species of trilobite. Not a computer measurement, Acaste birminghamensis was an ancient marine anthropod. The area, because of the geology lesson it provides, is one of seven Alabama National Natural Landmarks.

So that was then, 1970. This is now:

Note the changes. Note the similarities. Should have driven it during rush hour instead of mid-morning.

That’s enough for one day. if you have a little plastic cube (that doesn’t rattle) which can be somehow magically plugged into my refrigerator, please leave a comment.

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.

history — Comments Off
30
Aug 10

Monday history

And now for the Monday history lesson.

Cliff Hare

Cliff Hare was an Auburn graduate. He was on the first football team, in 1892. He graduated from Auburn, went north for his graduate studies and soon returned to the university where he served out the rest of his career. He eventually dean of the chemistry school and bank president. He was the president of the Southern Athletic Conference, the predecessor of the modern SEC. He was a city council member, a mayor and helped build a city health clinic. He did all of this during a time when it wasn’t inconceivable to be so much to so many.

Cliff Hare

Here he is, in a picture from my 1931 Glomerata. He’d just been named the dean of the school of chemistry. He’s one of those people who’s quiet, steady influence was felt throughout the region for years, even after his death. The football stadium is co-named in his honor.

George Petrie

George Petrie was the coach of that first football team. He was a professor and spent a lifetime at Auburn. He was a professor of history and Latin, head of the History Department and dean of the Graduate School. Wikipedia says he was the first Alabamian to earn a Ph.D.

The former football field house, long ago converted into offices and classrooms, is named in his honor.

George Petrie

That’s Petrie from the 1925 Glomerata, which is dedicated in his honor. He is perhaps best known for penning the Auburn Creed.

Words to live by, there.

And thus concludes this week’s history lesson. Be sure to visit again next Monday when we’ll learn about … something that comes to mind between now and then.

Auburn / history / Monday / photo — Comments Off
23
Aug 10

Monday is now history day

Beach volleyball, anyone?

Bump set spike

No? OK, then. I agree. It is too hot, still, for all of that. I spent a little time in the evening — when it wasn’t 1,000 degrees, but rather 997 — taking a few pictures to give us something else to chat about on the site. You didn’t demand it, but I knew you were thinking about it, so here are a few bits of local history.

Drake

Drake was still listed as the university surgeon in 1927, so he must have worked right until the end. They named a building after him, the medical clinic. It was still in operation when I was in school, but by then had earned an unfortunate reputation. The students joked you were only diagnosed with strep throat or pregnancy if you went in for a visit. I served as the official photographer of a renovation project at Drake while I was still a student.

These days, the clinic is gone. The new medical facility is across campus, the old spot now home to a sparkling new engineering facility.

As for Drake’s military service, noted on the original marker, he rode with the 53rd Calvary during the Civil War.

The 53rd Alabama Cavalry Regiment, Partisan Rangers, was organized by increasing the 1st Cavalry Battalion to regimental size at Montgomery on 5 November 1862. Recruits were from Autauga, Coffee, Coosa, Dale, Dallas, Lauderdale, Lowndes, Macon, Monroe, Montgomery, Pike, Tallapoosa and Wilcox counties. It proceeded in a few weeks to Mississippi. In moving from Columbus to Decatur, in Lawrence, a portion of the regiment was there equipped and proceeded to join Gen’l Earl Van Dorn. This battalion was in the fighting at Thompson’s Station, and at Brentwood. The regiment was engaged in the fight with Union Gen’l Grenville Dodge at Town Creek and in the pursuit of Union Col. Abel Streight. Soon after, the 53rd joined the main army at Dalton as part of Gen’l Moses W. Hannon’s Brigade, Gen’l John Kelly’s Division. It operated on the right of the army as it fell back towards Atlanta and was engaged in constant duty. When Union Gen’l William T. Sherman reached Atlanta, the 53rd was the principal force engaged in the daring raid in his rear, whereby a valuable train was destroyed. It was then at the heels of Sherman as he devastated Georgia and the Carolinas, and it took part in the last operations of the war in that quarter. It surrendered a small number with Gen’l Joseph E. Johnston at Durham Station, Orange County, NC, on 26 April 1865.

I’m sure it was miserable.

Incidentally, to ride with cavalry you had to weigh less than 165 pounds.

There doesn’t seem to be a good picture of Dr. Drake, but if you look here you’ll find him third from the right, on the front row, at or around 69 years of age.

Here’s one more:

Thach

Dr. Charles Thach, who’s marker reads:

Guided by a humble faith in the Christian religion he dedicated his life to the education of the youth of the South. The lives of Auburn men made larger by his influence and the institution to which he gave forty years of loving service, and of which he was president from 1902 to 1921 are his real memorials.

“And whosoever of you will be the chiefest shall be servant of all.”

Not a bad thing to have said about you. The University’s historians continue:

Following (API President Leroy) Broun’s (1902) death, the board elected Thach, an API graduate who had spent his entire career at the school, to succeed to the president’s office … Thach immediately launched a campaign to bring the school’s financial needs to the attention of the state legislature at its upcoming session.

[…]

In June, 1906, Thach began preparing the board of trustees for the upcoming legislative session. He called their attention to the higher costs of scientific education over that of classical education and warned that they faced a choice: either support scientific education and thus allow Alabama’s natural resources to be developed by Alabamians or ignore it and the state’s resources would be developed by outsiders, a euphemism for Yankees.

It goes on like this for a while, the first 1o years of Thach’s tenure as president focusing a great deal on raising money. This did not sit well the University of Alabama. If you keep reading the link you see the good old fashioned classism at play. There were promises of money from the legislature that never came to fruition and they haunted Thach’s administration for the second decade of his tenure. He needed buildings, he got empty words and stalls. Those issues were somewhat resolved after World War I and the end of Thach’s time in office, but there were many ramifications to the funding problems from the Progressive Era.

Here’s the only picture of Thach I have, from the 1918 Glomerata:

Thach

He’s probably writing an alumni there, probably asking for money, the two things for which he’s generally remembered. Today, he has a building and a street named after him.

Tomorrow: meetings, and the 1939 World’s Fair.