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IU / journalism / photo / Thursday / Twitter — Comments Off on Talking about the cyber
23
Feb 17

Talking about the cyber

Among the other parts of my day, editing a big document, watching students produce a sports show, handling the various comings and goings of emailing and scheduling and so on, I had the opportunity to hang out at an important panel this evening. And I took notes.

Also, even if you aren’t interested in cybersecurity as a journalist or in your own professional role, this slideshow that gets mentioned people is accessible and worth your while. Check that out. Anyway, on to the tweets …

books / IU / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on I’m editing, this will be brief
22
Feb 17

I’m editing, this will be brief

I started a new memoir today. It isn’t really a memoir, or an autobiography. The blurbs may be right, it is a first-person account. But pretty quickly, this one suggested it would stand apart:

That’s Robert Leckie in his first book, Helmet For My Pillow. I generally find memoirs interesting, though often the writing isn’t of a high quality. Leckie is writing about his time in the Pacific in World War II — so far he’s just made it out of boot camp — but he’s not just a Marine, he started out as a sports writer and became a reporter, a family man and the author of more than 20 books. The guy has chops.

Makes me wonder why I waited this long to read it. As a Marine of the First Division he fought in two of the bloodiest island campaigns of the war, and he kept those stories alive here. This book, his first, was published in 1957 and again in 2010. If you remember the HBO miniseries, The Pacific, you met Leckie. This was one of the pieces of source material for the production. Leckie died in 2001.

Here’s the news show the students shot last night:

And here’s the entertainment show, where you can learn all about what to wear in this season’s fashions and various other goings on:

I liked the sunglasses myself.

A talk show tonight, and then a late night dinner and early to rise to do it all again tomorrow!

IU / photo / running / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on Live! From earlier tonight … and also this morning …
21
Feb 17

Live! From earlier tonight … and also this morning …

I ran five miles this morning before work. I’m not a morning runner. Wait. Let me start over.

I jogged five miles this morning before work. I’m not a morning jogger. I’m barely a jogger, but it certainly isn’t the thing I wake up and think “Oh, boy! Let’s get out there and pound some pavement!”

I’m much more of a pound the snooze button sort. I mean, sure, I can stretch, get in five miles and walk a cool down back home in an hour, or I could sleep for another hour in nine-minute increments. That’s what I am, a morning snoozer.

Nevertheless, I jogged.

There is a walking path out back of our house, and if you do the full length and go up and down the access paths to the road in front of the house you can almost get in a full mile in just over one complete trip. So I did that twice and then jogged out of the neighborhood and up the hill to the big intersection and then back down hill for a mile and a third. Then I turned and jogged back uphill to finish my course, five miles, just entering the neighborhood. It was damp and chilly and foggy and I had a full sweat. Some people were walking dogs and I found a few more signs of spring:

Of course the temperatures will fall through the floor by the weekend again, and you can’t see any sky for the clouds therein just now, but we’re in the 60s. We’ll hit the 70s on Thursday, for a day. And spring:

Anyway, in the studio tonight, I thought I’d take a picture to show you what the on-camera folks see. This is the corner where our interview area is. We have four red chairs for a more casual sit-down segment or, as seen here, the prep for one of entertainment shows.

What is weird, to me, is that I should show up in the monitors attached to the cameras. I’m standing right behind both of the hosts. And yet, you can’t really see me. I zoomed in to the original, just to be sure.

Funny, I don’t feel any different.

After What’s Up Weekly they taped their news show. I stood in between the cameras and did a brief video of my own, because I suddenly remembered I could do that.

Status: getting ready for another installment of Hoosier News Source on @iustv.

A post shared by Kenny Smith (@kennydsmith) on

I should plan those things better.

adventures / Friday / history / Indiana / IU / photo — Comments Off on You can decide which parenthetical note is best
17
Feb 17

You can decide which parenthetical note is best

Yesterday I wrote, for too long, about a blue jean jacket. (“Rosebud … “) I also learned that they were back in style. As if they should have ever left …

I looked for a picture of me in the jacket, but I don’t have one. I’m sure they exist though. And then, this morning, we saw definitive proof that they were back. This is a morning show our students shoot:

On the left is one host. On the far right is another. Obstructed from this angle is a fashion columnist from the campus paper. And she is talking about the outfit being worn by the young woman on the middle right. Denim on denim.

Different colors, she intoned seriously, so that each stands out from the other.

We had a name for that once upon a time, and, as I recall, it was a look to be avoided. But everything changes.

We were setting up cameras before that. This has a name, but I forget what it is. So let’s just call it cool:

I did some of the other things that make up a normal day at the office. I helped some folks practice weather presentations on the green screen. I had lunch. At 2:30 I finally got caught up on the day’s email. I talked to students. I also gave a tour of the building today. And after work we went over to Nashville, the little artists’ colony about 20 miles away, for dinner.

We had a date! The Yankee found Hobnob Corner, which has been around since just after the Civil War as a dry goods store and then a restaurant. It felt like a cracker barrel. The people were friendly. The decor was rustic. The walls were covered with photos of the history of the little town. (White settlers came in after an 1809 treaty. Farming and forestry ran the isolated area. By the time the 20th century rolled around deforestation ruined the agriculture because of poor practices leading to wide scale erosion. Roads, the Depression and the CCC, then the artists showed up. The town has three traffic lights, which is all of the lights in the county. They enjoy tourism as a big part of their economy.) My favorite photo was of a parade from 1900. I thought it might have been a prohibition parade, or a women’s suffrage march. But I just found a site with a similar photo that might be of the same parade, and it is labeled there as Decoration Day.

But they have some pretty nice dining there. Try the Duck Breast with Orange Maple Glaze with butternut squash risotto and sauteed kale. (This is the only acceptable way to eat kale.)

We’ve been over to Nashville once before, in the daylight, in the summer time, when things were open. I’m sure we’ll go back. There are always new shops to see and 24 restaurants to try and dates to be had.

IU / journalism / memories / photo / running / things to read / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on A little something for a lot of people
15
Feb 17

A little something for a lot of people

Here’s your mid-week upside down motivation, brought to you by Allie The Black Cat:

She’s always concerned about morale, now if only she could read, so she’d know the words were upside down.

She spends enough time staring at screens and books and paper. Maybe she thinks she can read. Maybe she just looked at that upside down. Maybe I’m the one that is wrong. Maybe she actually can read. Anything is possible, it says.

We went for a run late this evening, before it was time to head back into the studio. I thought we would be running indoors, so I just had shorts and a t-shirt. But we ran outside, where the windchill was 34 degrees. I am smart. So I got in five miles before I had to cut it short to go back to work. I didn’t get my full eight, but I did get this view after I showered and set out to walk back to my building:

That’s going to be a banner on the site one day soon, I think.

These two pictures are from last night. The news show I oversee now has a weather segment. This was from last night, when we finally broke in the green screen. Pretty cool opportunity for the folks studying the weather:

I spent some time in the control room last night, too. Mostly because there are a lot of lights and cool buttons in there:

Things to read … Here by the owl:

CADIZ, Ohio — Don Jones supports students as an FFA adviser, represented by the owl during FFA meetings.

In FFA tradition, the owl is a time-honored emblem of knowledge and wisdom, and Jones has served in the adviser’s role for 22 years. Some of his students jokingly refer to him as the “wise old owl.”

In his classroom at Harrison Central Junior and Senior High School, he provides real lessons for real life as the agricultural education teacher. He sees 140 students a day, in grades 7-12.

Being the only educator in the program, with just one classroom, he has to turn away students from his program, which is an elective for the nearly 650 youth at Harrison Central.

That headline is no accident. That’s actually part of the opening ceremony the FFA uses at levels ranging from school meetings to the national convention. The teacher, or the adviser, is represented by the owl.

Last year I wrote about my advisors:

I had many valuable experiences, and this could go on and on, but the most important thing the FFA gave to me was the leadership of two good men. Mr. Swaffield and Mr. Caddell were battle-tested teachers. They are two solid, stand up, good, decent, morally upright father figures I benefitted from as a teenager, when a boy needs them most.

Scott Pelley, Lester Holt, David Muir: The Unprecedented Joint Interview:

And, finally: Lost songs of Holocaust found in University of Akron archives:

In the summer of 1946, the psychologist interviewed at least 130 Jewish survivors in nine languages in refugee camps in France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany. With a wire recorder — then considered state-of-the-art equipment — and 200 spools of steel wire, Boder preserved some of the first oral histories of concentration camp survivors. He also recorded song sessions and religious services.

A portion of Boder’s work has been archived at The University of Akron’s Drs. Nicholas and Dorothy Cummings Center for the History of Psychology since 1967. But it wasn’t until a recent project to digitize the recordings got under way that a spool containing the “Henonville Songs,” performed in Yiddish and German and long thought lost, was discovered in a mislabeled canister.

As I’ve said before: A significant portion of the 21st century is going to go toward the preservation of the works of the 20th.

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