journalism « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

journalism

… Any road will take you there

” … wants to be friends with you on Facebook” was sitting in my inbox this morning.

But they should send these with a greater nod to suspense. I’m already friends with everyone that a.) I know today who b.) wants to be my friend and c.) is on Facebook.

A new invitation is either spam, which isn’t exciting, a mistake, which may as well be spam or some new person I’ve recently met. I haven’t made any new acquaintances in the last few days.

This leaves one possibility: some old person.

Of course you know that in the first two words of the email. There’s the name, and the higher part of the brain speaks with the lower part of the brain, and they conference in the memory section and the assessment nodule for a big decision. Is this a person? The person? Shall we be friends? That is to say, make it digitally official, because permission has been sought.

Go up to the next person you meet that you like and say “I want to be your friend,” while holding up a “Confirm” button. It can’t me any more awkward an interaction, but I digress.

In the first tow words, the name of this person, you know. And I knew this name, even as it was a slightly shortened version for the man of the boy I once knew. After I pushed the little blue button and spent a few seconds looking through his profile and the first two or three pictures I was sure. Same guy. By then you know what the person is doing with their life.

Now. If you’d approached me any time within the last 10 years and told me what his job would be I would have thought “Yeah, well, that figures.”

Which makes you wonder. How often do career paths and life choices surprise you when you discover lost people online?

Most everyone I’ve stumbled upon, or sought out, seem to be doing well for themselves. There are lots of young families, successes and just a few difficult-sounding jobs. Most of them just seem to be in the places you would expect. That’s not uninteresting, for some that’s just knowing which path takes us where you need to be.

I suspect the online platforms have reshaped reunions. No one has to be surprised, anymore, about what became of anyone else, how they look and if they’re still with that dolt they wasted their time on when they were young and foolish and —

I just discovered a Facebook page about my high school. The theme is “You know you went here if.” Most of it is banal or beyond prosaic. One comment says “If you assumed school was closed on the first day of hunting season.”

Before that you can find a post for people who still live in that community alerting parent/alumni to watch out for a green truck that seems to be lurking near a truck stop. There’s also a death list. A few people have developed a master list of people that have died. A grim and valuable service, no doubt.

Ha. I love this. That community was basically two parallel roads, and in between was the school and a set of railroad tracks. Probably half of the student body had to cross the tracks to make it to school every day. There was an old gentleman who lived right next to the tracks. Just found a note about him. Once my mother insisted we take him a little fruit basket, and now I’m very glad she thought of that:

He was my grandfather. Everyone just doesn’t know what it meant to him for all of the kids to go by and wave to him. He passed away in 92.

He’d sit on his porch every morning and afternoon in his co-op cap and overalls and wave. If it rained, or he did not feel well, he would wave from one of his windows. He’s been gone 20 years. His house has been gone for almost as long, but judging by those comments generations of people think of him every time they have to slow down for those railroad tracks.

That’s enough Facebook for this month.

Class prep today. I wrote a terrific lecture on photojournalism. As an experiment I’m blending pictures I’ve taken with pictures working photojournalists have shot. We’ll see how many times I’m found out. I’m guessing: each time.

Think I’ll mention this, too:

Justin Elliott writes that The Washington Post “chose an image of a bearded protester seeming to assault a cop to illustrate a movement that has been overwhelmingly — almost without exception — nonviolent.” The image shows an Occupy Wall Street protester with his arm around a police officer’s neck. Andrew Burton, the freelance photographer who captured the image, tells Elliott that he doesn’t know what sparked the confrontation and that due to the melee he didn’t even know he had captured that image until later. The ”vast majority of the protests have been incredibly peaceful,” Burton says.

And people think confrontation is news, mostly because it is. But is it representative? The debate continues.

There’s also a current events quiz, featuring exactly no questions about Occupy Wall Street. I would pass it, says the guy who wrote the thing, but it won’t be an easy one to take if you hadn’t been reading or watching the news.

A new section of the site:

These are some of my grandfather’s books. I inherited them a few years ago, and have been scanning a few of the images inside his old texts. Figured they’d make an interesting section, so here we begin. Just a few pages a week, starting with the English literature textbook. Some are intended to be funny, others insightful. Hopefully you’ll find them all interesting, especially if you have a taste in 60 year old books.

There’s a small tidbit in this book that will come up in a few weeks that show my grandfather’s road from a young age, too.

This post was written while listening to the George Harrison documentary. There’s a moment with an archival Harrison interview were he talks about the “inward journey” of meditation and “far out” in the same sentence. There is, of course, an overwhelming discussion on the drugs, and a dire need for a razor and sharp scissors, but that’s just the period. (Hah, here’s a history of the band in hairstyles. They were so in tune with the universe back then, you know.) I recommend the documentary …

… even if Phil Spector is in it.

iPhone / journalism / memories / overwriting / photo / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
13
Oct 11

Math and rain, and also traffic

I drove through that this morning. As it was later described, by several people, as “Suddenly here” and “hurricane-like.”

That last description came from a writer, so we’ll excuse the hyperbole. Even still, it was an imposing wall of active weather.

And I drove through two of them. The second was less impressive, but no less guilty of fraying the nerves of other drivers. Apparently it has been a while since it rained here — checking the drought monitor, why, yes, severe and extreme drought — because no one remembers how to drive in this stuff.

“I seem to recall something about hazard lights and … what was that other thing? Oh, BRAKES!”

Usually, applying a little less pressure to the accelerator and coasting to a speed slightly more comfortable allows one to press on, but not these good drivers. No sir. Today was a 45-mile-per-hour rain, which is to say that’s the speed I could safely maintain on the interstate in the heart of the storm.

Old timers remember a time of a 10-mile-per-hour rain, but their grandchildren, at Thanksgiving, just sigh and roll their eyes. “Not the monsoon story again, grandpa … ”

I recall stopping more with my grandparents in the rain than I’ve done myself, and my grandfather was a truck driver. He’d know from road weather. I have stopped for rain exactly twice in my driving career. Once it was raining so hard I mildly feared for my life. The other time it was merely difficult to see. And I believe it was late in the day and all the crazies were on the road.

No problems in the storms today, though, happily. The pine tree frontier was uneventful. Made it back to civilization just as the roads dried and the traffic thinned. I was able to stop by an engraving shop and ordered gifts for this year’s inductees to the Samford JMC Wall of Fame. Two gentlemen, alumni, success stories, are going on the great wall. They also need plaques.

Visited one of my banks, where I filled out paperwork. I will not be surprised at all to receive a phone call in three weeks informing me that the paperwork was incorrectly done and will need further attention. The helpful young teller was new and she knew as much about this particular procedure as I did. And I’m sure this will cost me $6. Processing fees, you understand.

On campus I received marching orders. I marched to and fro, doing things that were asked of me. I discovered, just before class, that I’d almost duplicated a colleague’s plan, almost to the letter. This required a last minute change of plans for my afternoon lecture.

I discussed math for journalists. Everyone wins.

Here I wrote some other things, my browser crashed and the WordPress draft sequence didn’t kick in. This is frustrating, but you’re not missing much. There was a story about bumper-to-bumper traffic and how, for the first time in the history of overcrowded interstates and freeway construction, it was beneficial. There was also a whimsical anecdote about the moon, which was lovely tonight.

I made this, though, so enjoy. I’ve put a few of these up here in the past, but not for some time. Thought I’d do this one, since I shot it from the hip today and remembered how much I like raindrops on glass. Something about the focus of the droplets and the blurring of the world beyond. I want to write about rain, there’s some great meaning behind it all, but precipitation isn’t my strongest subject matter, it seems. Best leave it to the experts:

Rain more. We need it.

Auburn / Glomerata / journalism / Samford / site / Tuesday — Comments Off
11
Oct 11

Two plus too equals …

Health status: Still here. Still sickly, but there are moments of improvement. Then I make the mistake of thinking I can stop taking pills.

Twenty-two minutes later I can’t breathe again. So back to the pills. Four minutes later the chest-quaking, throat-burning, head-aching coughs return. And so there’s the Nyquil. To keep the bugs guessing, I sometimes change it up for Robitussin.

I’ve taken enough of this stuff that I’m beginning to acquire the taste. This should be a gustational impossibility, so you do what anyone would after drinking the stuff for several days: check the expiration date. Still valid, so it must be me.

I can’t taste much else just now, but the Robitussin, well, that’s just got a hint of a cherry and an undertone of oak.

Breakfast with The Yankee this morning at the local breakfast place. This is a rare treat that we’ve come to enjoy. Fresh biscuits, tasty bacon and a leisurely time to sit and chat about nothing of consequence. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, especially if there is a BLT involved.

Spent about five hours working on a math for journalists lecture. That’s always one the students love. “Math? I’m in a writing major!”

I can sympathize. Felt the same way, but then you find yourself writing a story, or a press release and there’s percent changes and per capita and then you have to mix that with things like strong verbs and now you’ve found yourself writing with numbers. It has happened before.

So that was a lot of today. The numbers have to be just so.

Returning to an old feature that hasn’t yet been completed. Here’s the resurrection of the Glomerata covers:

These are annual volumes of the Auburn University yearbook, which I collect. Here are three new additions to the Glomerata section as we begin the sometimes tumultuous 1960s.

Since this hasn’t been here in a long time, you might need a refresher. Start at the beginning, here. For a more detailed look at some select Gloms try here.

The plan is to return this to a regular weekly feature until we work our way through the full list of covers. This will take some time.

Also, the September photo gallery has been completed. And, for good measure, the October photo gallery is up and running.

And now to write a math exercise …

journalism / links / Samford / Thursday / video — Comments Off
6
Oct 11

The descent into sickliness

In retrospect I should have known last night this was going to happen. I was ready for sleep by 10 p.m. And then this morning the scratchy throat begin. A workout was unsatisfying. The day slipped into, well let’s just call it existential decline.

Hey, it sounds good.

So there was work. Messing up a spreadsheet and recovering it by chance. Finishing slides for a lecture. Lecturing. Doing research. Tabbing through more spreadsheets. Making phone calls and so on.

As the afternoon slipped into evening the scratchiness in the back of my throat turned to a full-on sore throat. There was coughing. At the end of the day there was little breathing. Sinuses, then. My mortal enemy it seems. There will be little breathing or rest or happiness until this passes.

Links, then: Steve Yelvington has 10 things we (should) have learned about mobile and tablet news. Robert Rosenthal, meanwhile, offers lessons learned on reinventing journalism. About seven of these can apply to any industry, however.

And now the fun of new immigration law, writ large in Alabama’s fields. There is so much wrong here that deserves correction:

The farmers said the some of their workers may have been in the country illegally, but they were the only ones willing to do the work.

“This law will be in effect this entire growing season,” Beason told the farmers. He said he would talk to his congressman about the need for a federal temporary worker program that would help the farmers next season.

“There won’t be no next growing season,” farmer Wayne Smith said.

“Does America know how much this is going to affect them? They’ll find out when they go to the grocery store. Prices on produce will double,” he said.

Lana Boatwright said she and her husband had used the same crews for more than a decade, but only eight of the 48 workers they needed showed up after the law took effect.

“My husband and I take them to the grocery store at night and shop for them because they are afraid they will be arrested,” she said.

Tough situation with no obvious answers. It is already impacting Alabama’s agricultural industry, small farmers, the construction industry, schools, the DMV, large groups of people who are willing to endure thankless jobs at low or average pay to try and make a better life and who knows what else.

You can’t envy anyone in this circumstance, but we’re all about to learn the rule of unintended consequences. This is, however, a federal issue that has failed and the states — Arizona, Georgia and Alabama the first among them — to try to address the issue. There seems to be an overreach.

And now, for something more fun:

Come back tomorrow for ragged coughing and sneezing. And some other things too.

journalism / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
4
Oct 11

Venus Mars household habits

The Yankee is a great wife. She’s fun and silly. She appreciates my silliness. She is very smart. We exist together well and shuffle along in a reasonably efficient manner when such frivolous things as “work” or “other plans” interfere.

We had a pretend disagreement on Twitter last night about silverware in the dishwasher. Somehow this became a discussion about brownies — she threatened that I would not get a snack, I took a picture of them in defiance, she accused me of licking them. And then two other families became involved in the Twitter conversation. One took a very clinical and precise approach of efficiency and ergonomics. (They’re architects.) Other friends contributed, and their part of the conversation became about the proper use of the toothpaste tube. We all have our pet peeves. And for those particular friends, the debate rages on at the beginning, middle and end of the day.

Personally, I’m a wherever-the-thumb-falls-on-the-tube kind of guy. I assume most people, and particularly, most guys are. That his lovely wife, a photographer, disagrees with him, an editor, only speaks to the nature of the gender difference, organizational tendencies and the way they get along. Probably it also has something to do with their professional roles.

And this is my theory that will go precisely nowhere. Your formal training inspires what you do in the most minute way, which is really probably what started you down your professional or avocational path to begin with. I submit that the chicken came first, but in a calcium carbonate format. Take this, for example. About the only thing I’ve ever naturally done well is string a bunch of words together in a way as to seem almost credible.

But I digress.

My wife is a lovely lady. And about the only thing we disagree about is the preferred method of waking up. Her alarm goes off. She hits it and wakes up. She is one of those.

I maintain that the best treatment for an alarm, if you must have one, is to pound the plastic casing in a highly ritualistic manner in precisely timed increments. Sociologists, I believe, call this hitting the snooze button.

And I wore it out this morning.

Normally this is where I would delete all of that, write “I just wrote eight paragraphs on oversleeping” and move on with my day. But I’m rather proud of those eight paragraphs, so they’re staying in.

And this was a day of a one quick meeting and signing a bunch of things. It was a day of computer disorganization, class preparation and a teaching demonstration. There was another quick meeting, this time with bubble wrap and styrofoam peanuts.

Now, I am wrapping up the evening with the newspaper. There is apparently something in tomorrow’s edition that will stir conversation, and also many faces in the photographs. Every week is a little better than the issue before, so I’m eager to see what they’ll have tomorrow. No snooze button for me.

Lots more tomorrow.