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You’ll be jealous of my errands, and these ads

Finals day today. My students feverishly were emailing in the last of the work I’ve challenged them with and made them endure this term. Well, some raced. One student turned in the final work on Friday.

The rest, well, they knew they had until 3 p.m., the end of our scheduled final block.

“Three p.m.,” I said, “does not mean 3:01. One minute after means that’s one less I have to grade.”

They’re going to live in a deadline-driven world.

The last paper came in at about 2:28, so the message was received. Also, I must now grade them all.

Want to see an amazing story?

“Why do it?”

“It makes me feel normal and whole.”

Watch this video. But you have to watch the entire thing. And it is absolutely worth watching the whole thing.

I ran errands today. Here are the three least exciting parts of that: I visited an eye doctor’s office to make an appointment for later in the week. A nice young lady answered all of my questions with a laugh an assuring assurance. They booked me for Thursday.

Are you riveted?

I washed my car. And then I took the floor mats out and dropped them through this shaker machine that gets 98 percent of the grass and leaves and crumbs off of them. And then I vacuumed the rest of the trash off of the mats and the floor boards. I noticed that my car wasn’t completely clean, but it was closer to clean than it has been in a while. I’d been enjoying an industrial grade of autumn dust lately.

I got gas. I dropped my card at the pump twice.

The other thing I did was slightly more interesting than that, somehow, and it will be the subject of Wednesday’s post.

To wrap up today, and in honor of finals — and because these are two of the last four clips I have at the moment, here are two old ads from mid-1980s Crimson issues. Two things you don’t think about so much any more, I’d bet:

John’s is closed now, but it has a special place in history. It was opened in 1959, the first color film processing lab in the state. John was 24. There used to be at least four locations. Two were in strip malls. One building is now vacant. The other now has either a hotel or a car dealership on the old lot. Based on some canceled trademarks registered to the owner, I’m assuming the stores closed about two years after this ad ran. He died just over six years ago.

Bet you haven’t said “I need to run to Kinko’s!” in a good long while:

There are apparently still over 2,000 FedEx stores, which is the brand now, of course. It is the seventh largest printing chain in the country and Kinko’s is nothing but a memory. And it was so close to becoming a proprietary eponym, too.

family / history / maps — Comments Off
8
Dec 14

70th anniv – My great-grandfather’s war

This is the 70th anniversary of my great-grandfather’s service in Europe, so I’m bringing back this map I put together two years ago. Tonice was a combat medic, but he never talked about his service, so it was always a mystery to most of his family for decades. Key help from the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs and further research helped bring to light what we know, but even that is somewhat vague. He was attached to some element of the 137th Infantry Regiment, which fought in the famed 35th Division. We don’t know which company, or even which battalion, so this is only a regimental overview with some movements down to the company level.**

So, then, for Dec. 8:

The 137th Infantry Regiment moved by foot to approximately nine miles east, in the direction of Sarreguemines.

Regimental Headquarters, Anti-tank Company, and the 1st Battalion located themselves in Hambach. The 2nd Battalion moved into the Foret de Sarreguemines, just south of Siltzheim The 3rd Battalion closed into Neufgrange and the Service Company was located in Gueblange. The 1st Battalion then moved to Sarreguemines, to occupy the town and patrol the south bank of the Saar River.

All was quiet in the towns occupied.

View Tonice in the Bulge in a larger map
View Tonice in the Bulge in a larger map

Because my great-grandfather always changed the subject about his time in the war the entire family learned as much about his experience in the war at his funeral — and later, through this project — as anytime in his life. This information is derived from the unit history, found here and here and from this unit overview. His quiet choice means that these markers are rough estimates and are meant only to be illustrative. Any errors are mine alone.

family / history / maps — Comments Off
6
Dec 14

70th anniv – My great-grandfather’s war

I pulled this map together two years ago, but given that this is the 70th anniversary of my great-grandfather’s service in Europe it seemed like a good time to bring it back with daily updates. Tonice was a combat medic, but he never talked about his service, so this was all something of a mystery to most of his family for decades. Key help, after he passed away, came from the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs and further research brought to light what we know, but even that is somewhat vague. He was attached to some element of the 137th Infantry Regiment, which fought in the famed 35th Division. We don’t know which company, or even which battalion, so this is only a regimental overview with some movements down to the company level.**

So, then, for Dec. 6 and 7:

The 137th Regimental Headquarters opened in Hirbach with the 1st Battalion in Helving and 2nd Battalion in Bettring. No enemy artillery fire was received during the day.

View Tonice in the Bulge in a larger map
View Tonice in the Bulge in a larger map

Auburn / football / Friday / history / iPhone / photo / Samford — Comments Off
5
Dec 14

The end of the semester

Last day of class today, and so we wrapped it up with broadcast scripts. I gave them a Christmas tree story, a real lean-in piece about how it isn’t trees that give some people an allergic reaction, but the mold sometimes found in live trees that irritate people’s sinuses.

We’ve all been there, covering strange non-stories and trying to make it feel important trying to feel like it isn’t a waste of our time. I certainly did my share in this newsroom or that. Not every story can be a triple homicide, thank heavens, so then every example shouldn’t be such a thing.

At the end of the class we went over the ground rules of the Monday final again. I crossed the lowercase Js on the last details of the class, wished them a happy holidays and, as always, thanked them for suffering through the class with me.

And then back to the office to finish up this and that, a host of emails, the required moment of listening to Van Morrison, traditionally marking the last day of class for reasons I’ve already forgotten. Ordering this, checking off that, phone calls and the details, details, details that always mark the end of a week, the sigh of a Friday, combined with the exhalation of the term.

I got out of the office a little later than I wanted, but still beat the traffic, for the most part.

I found these in that archive folder I’ve been working through. These aren’t from the Crimson, but rather from the Birmingham News, which was still a daily newspaper back then. This first one blows out the site’s template a little bit — I don’t regularly publish squares — but this was an important story, the fight over changing the area was underway:

Basically, when the university’s board purchased, for a song, the Lakeshore property and moved from Eastlake in the 1950s they got the land on both sides of Lakeshore. On the one side is the campus proper. (There are a few things across Lakeshore now.) But they also go the land on the other side, which was a swampy lake undeveloped and, of course, back then the atmosphere through the area was a lot more quiet.

Now there’s the high school, a business park, some retail development down the road and so on. Also, a lovely recreational area. Of course the residents weren’t keen on all of that once upon a time. I don’t remember the area as they were fighting over it, but the building up over the years has been quite nice. There is more traffic, yes, and the road feels too slow while the traffic simultaneously feels too fast. They were concerned about flooding, but that has always seemed minimal in my experience. At the end of the day, if you’ve never been through there, you’d think it was a charming area, because it is.

There is so, so much local and campus history built up in all of those events of the last 60 years, and specifically since the development really kicked in during the 1980s.

This clipping, also from the Birmingham News, is from 1987 and it details the sell of some of that property to Southern Progress. They would ultimately build three nice buildings and a handsome campus for their various publications. But Southern Progress, which has been based in Birmingham since 1911, has fallen on hard times like many publishers in recent years. Time has owned them since the 1980s, one magazine was sold off a few years ago. There have been cutbacks and rollbacks and all sorts of restructuring.

Last month, Samford started the process of purchasing the property once again. Today, the university’s board approved the 28-acre purchase. The three buildings and parking on the Southern Progress campus will be shared by the pub pros and university units. Everything comes full circle.

This photo was on the back of one of those stories. I can’t now recall if I remember this name or if my searching my memory is giving me the wrong impression. Johnny Imani Harris pled guilty in the 1970s to a string of robberies and a rape. Apparently, his representation wasn’t very good and they convinced him to pled guilty or face the death penalty. He did. He got five life terms. He took part, or was caught up in, a 1974 protest of prison conditions that turned into a riot where a guard died. No one said in court that Harris stabbed the corrections officer, but nevertheless Harris was found guilty and given the death penalty.

When you dive into the entire Johnny Imani Harris tale, things quickly seem itchy. A circuit judge in 1987 agreed and overturned the death penalty. Somewhere in that part of the story is where we find this photo. The build up to that ruling and the finding itself brought up more demonstrations. He was paroled in 1991 on the rape and robbery. As far as I can tell he hasn’t showed up in the media since then.

Went to the last high school state football championship game at Jordan-Hare tonight. Sat in a booth with some folks from Clay-Chalkville. Two of them were on the last state championship team from that school. They both wore their letterman’s jacket from 2001. In the next booth was the grandmother of one of the Clay-Chalkville running backs. She said she’s raised him and we cheered for him because she was adorable and she kept bringing food over to our booth. Better, she said, than carrying it back downstairs. So go number 6, we said. Clay-Chalkville won in a blowout. Everyone we saw, then, was very pleased.

As we left the stadium from the nice little luxury boxes we poked our heads in the even-nicer president’s suite. Right by there is the elevator. Good to see Gene Chizik still hanging around:

I guess they figure “We’re still paying him, we may as well take advantage of the photograph.” He’s getting $209,457.84 a month, through the 2015-2016 fiscal year. Maybe he has pictures of key university players hanging in his home, too.

history / photo / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
4
Dec 14

“I’m punching my card”

Busy day on campus and in the office, today. I’ve been making some adjustments to the new website we rolled out this week. It is starting to look pretty nice. Now to teach the quirks to others. That will mean meetings after the first of the year and, until then, a lot of detailed emails to people who would probably wish I’d find another hobby. Anyway, you can check it out at samfordcrimson.com.

I also watched the volleyball team, which has two of our majors, play in the first round of the NCAA tournament. They took an early exit today, but they’ve nevertheless had a great season. Southern Conference champs! And we heard about the coaching search for a new head football coach taking shape. And also there was plenty of things to grade as things wind down.

The key, as ever, is to put yourself ahead of the curve by standing as close to it as you can, because you are always behind.

What’s fun, though, is to look at where your students are now in their writing compared to where they were at the beginning of the term. Some make great strides. Others have made strong refinements. There’s a lot of pride in that sort of evolution. Good for them.

Tonight was the Hanging of the Green and the Lighting of the Way, a late season highlight and a lovely way to spend part of your evening. The Hanging of the Green in Reid Chapel has been marking the Advent at Samford since 1980. The program is based off the traditional Lessons and Carols Service in Cambridge at King’s College. The Lighting of the Way has been taking place on campus since 2001, it usually features a bit of singing or a concert and some impromptu messages and, always, the Christmas story. Dr. Jeanna Westmoreland read the message tonight:

A few hundred students piled out of Reid Chapel, in the background, to the middle of the quad to hear the story and countdown the lights and then hear a show.

The first song started “The weather outside is frightful … ” except it was sunny and 74 here today.

This is the administration building, and I thought the light treated it pretty well this evening:

You remember the movie Footloose, the tale of a young man who taught a rural town how to love and laugh and dance. That movie came out in 1984. I’m going to assume I saw that on cable a year or two later and I remember thinking, as a child, that the premise was a little flimsy.

Can’t dance? In this day in age?

Well. Let me show you what I’ve found in this Crimson drawer I’ve been slowly working through. Note the date, 1988:

Seems the Greeks got a mandate about dancing and guests in their houses and so they pulled out of the big spring show and that caused quite the stir. The story continues:

He got something of a sidebar in the same issue, which traced the contentious issue of dancing on campus back to the 19th century:

Two weeks later, the same reporter is back with an update, the president of the university, the late Thomas Corts, had signaled a formal sea change on the issue:

This was a long time ago. Right? Well, 28 years is ancient to some, and just around the corner for others. Nevertheless, history was made in early February of 1988 at Samford, everybody cut footloose:

In that same issue the Crimson published the results of a phone survey they ran on campus, where they learned that 82 percent of students were in favor of dancing.

I wonder if we’d do a text or an Instagram survey these days.