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Stuck in the 1930s

Rode my bike today for the first time in eight days. Rode Wednesday of last week, overslept Thursday, broke the bike on Friday, got it back Tuesday, was rainish Wednesday and here we are.

So we set out and I pedaled on for about three miles. Hit a stop sign to wait for The Yankee — and make adjustments to my saddle — when a fine little wave of nausea rolled over me. The sun is shining, the heat is blaring and I’m hunched over like the guy who might have had the bad borscht. Oh I was fine, it was just the dizzies and the light headedness that got me. I’m blaming the eight days off.

Figuring the last thing anyone needed was an embarrassing blackout incident I called it a ride and, slowly, pedaled my way back home. So, after watched three days of wonderful Tour de France coverage, my triumphant return was just shy of nine miles. That’s just disappointing.

But I’m fine, thanks.

Spent a little bit of time tracking this guy down:

That’s Earle Smith, Alabama Polytechnic class of 1930. He’s a 2nd lieutenant in the University’s ROTC in this photograph. He was also a baseball player, the football team manager, a member of the literary society and other things during his time in school.

He’s important because The War Eagle Reader was running a feature on him. Seems that just before the war came to him in North Africa, he took a tour of the deserts of Egypt. His guide walked him up to the Sphinx and, as the story was retold goes, he paid the guide to look away and hand over a chisel. Smith (no relation) chiseled War Eagle into the old monument.

And then he got his nose bloodied by Rommel before ultimately defeating Hitler.

What happened to the army captain after his sandy vandalism is a modern mystery. The story made its way into the student paper in 1944, so one presumes he came home from the war. He’d majored in secondary education so I assume he taught for 10 years or so before the war got in his way. Maybe he came home and was able to easily get back to the business of raising his kids and wondering how his students got such wacky thoughts in their heads. He would have been teaching right up until the mid-1960s, after all.

But that’s just speculation. The Internet doesn’t know what became of the man.

I’ve been having this conversation with a guy out west about a relative he had who fought, and died, in the Pacific. Maj. Adam Hallmark is the modern military man. His fourth cousin was Dean Hallmark, who I wrote about earlier this year. Interesting little story.

Anyway, Adam has come across big stores of new information since we first talked and he sent me some pictures this week.

This is thought to be Auburn, possibly campus, in 1936:

Dean Hallmark would recognize just 15 buildings on campus today, not counting the president’s mansion and the chapel.

This is Glenn Avenue:

I haven’t driven the length of it yet for the express purpose of comparing it to this photograph, but I’m betting nothing in this picture remains. And it is a shame about that motorcycle.

UPDATE (Sept 13, 2011): Adam just forwarded along pictures of the ticket books athletes received to attend sporting events back in the 1930s. This is his fourth-cousin’s and, as you can see, is in excellent condition:

It was also never used:

Before magnetic strips and photo IDs they had a funny way of making sure you weren’t stealing someone else’s ticket:

General appearance? I bet you couldn’t say that today.

adventures / links / Wednesday — Comments Off
13
Jul 11

Dinner with friends

And now for your amusing miscommunication of the day: “Come over have dinner at Our Place.”

The thing you don’t hear in the conversation are the capital letters. Our Place is not “We’re making a casserole,” but rather, “There is a nice little restaurant nearby that we like to frequent and we would enjoy your company. The name of the establishment is Our Place.”

So we drive to Wetumpka, in the original Creek it meant Rumbling Waters because the river roared over waterfalls. Now it is damned. When the Creek were moved west, they named a town in Oklahoma Wetumka. Wetumka is even smaller than Wetumpka. I learned this on Wikipedia, which may be wrong, because we discussed this evening the very idea of falsifying information on Wikipedia. But let’s just go with it. Did you know there’s a full-sized replica of Olympia’s Temple of Hera? Did you know Wetumpka was once compared to Chicago and no one laughed?

Wetumpka has about 5,000 people in it today, but they’re still trying. They also lost out on being the state capital because a hotel in nearby Montgomery hired a fancy French chef. And in the middle of the 19th century that won votes.

Anyway. Our Place is a nice little joint. It gets four stars on Urban Spoon, five stars on Yahoo, four on Trip Advisor and three stars on Yelp.

I was all set to give the Yelpers grief over their average rating — why so low? — and just noticed that only one person has reviewed it. Don’t make a special trip, says Jesse the Doberman. Jesse’s profile lists Birmingham as home. If they drove down just for Our Place I see the point. For a nice quiet place, though, it is delightful.

Turns out it was a car shop back in the 1930s or so. After years of cars and, I’m guessing, little of anything else, someone bought it with the idea of making it a music-themed restaurant. This was, we were told, poorly done from the start and the Our Place people stepped in and reaped the benefits. They serve a quasi-New Orleans menu and all the plates were enjoyable. I had the Shrimp Dianne. Got a plate full of pasta and shrimp and veggies and cheese. You cannot go wrong with this formulation.

(If I’d known Our Place wasn’t our place, though, I would have worn something nicer than jeans. Sorry, guys.)

Ahh. I found some incorrect information on Wetumpka’s Wikipedia page. I know who to blame.

cycling / iPhone / links / memories / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
12
Jul 11

The heat’s fault

I learned how to swing a golf club in weather not too different from this, about three miles from here in fact, about 13 years ago. That field is now being developed for … something not involved with poor uses of a 5-iron.

That seemed more polite than saying “Someone mentioned on Twitter that their heat index was 109 today. I live in a place that makes 109 seem pleasant. The heat index here was 119 here today.”

Because that’s just obnoxious, especially since I’m not making that up.

So I was a little sad I had not yet retrieved my bike, because I would have absolutely ridden at 119, at least for a few miles, just to say I had done it. That’s the sort of thing that makes my grandparents scoff and question my decision-making.

My bike was ready. It was ready on Saturday, but they would not let me pick it up until today. I waited and waited for them to call, but they did not. So I finally went over for a visit. Paid for the two tuneups and bought new CO2 cartridges.

We had a discussion on the value of the decimal point. This particular one was worth 62 dollars, and I’m glad we talked about it as it worked out in my favor. Loaded my car up, bursting into a terrific sweat just wrestling the thing in the car. Got home, unloaded the bike, and my sweat glands proved their efficiency by again jumping into service as I put the front wheel back on. This is a quick release wheel. It takes just a few seconds to slide it into the fork, seat the hub, put the brakes over the rim, tighten the brakes and the release. It was … warm out.

Picked up The Yankee at the Atlanta Airport, home of useful signs and traffic jams.

You know that place on the curb where you drop off people and pick them up, even though the airport, police and all of us agree no one else (except you, of course) should be allowed to do so? Atlanta, in addition to the shuttles, park-n-rides, MARTA, on-site lots, cabs and so on, has a two-tiered curb system. If you were exiting the airport, you’d walk out from baggage, through a door into a sultry Georgia evening and see three lanes of cars. Then you’d see a covered pedestrian refuge island. And then you’d see three more lanes of cars. Beyond that is one of the many parking decks. It is the six lanes that draw your attention, for they are a mess.

But pedestrian pickup dynamics are interesting. My first pass through the airport the inside lanes were an unmitigated disaster. So I chose the outer route. I happened to be right on time, which really meant six minutes early, so I had to do the loop again. I texted “Go to the outside lanes.”

By the time I came around for my second pass the inside lanes were sparsely populated. The outer three lanes were wrecked. Partly because of the several Atlanta PD cruisers in violation of some still-unread section of the Patriot Act prohibiting parking within a four mile radius of airports, Republicans or George Bush. The other reason the outer lanes were wrecked was because of civilian cars parked and abandoned in the pickup area in direct violation of the Patriot Act, the 28th Amendment and common human decency.

So on my third pass I chose the inside three lanes, because the cruisers and the parked cars had not moved in the 75 seconds it took for my return pass. These were moving smoothly on my second circle, but they were gridlock this time through. All three lanes were stalled, mostly because of the double-parking, diagonal attempts at preventing door dings from someone from Gwinnett County. Atlantans know this to be true.

I finally picked up my best girl from her weekend home — there was a god-niece’s baptismal to attend — and we head for home. But not before stopping at Sprayberry’s, where I visited last week. She didn’t get to go, since I’d already dropped her off at the airport by then. Tonight we closed the place, reveling in the best 9 p.m.-is-late-night atmosphere that small town Georgia has to offer. She pronounced the barbecue very good, which it is. I had the Lewis Grizzard special — barbecue, stew and perhaps the best onion rings ever — I felt a just a little more Southern. It is possible.

There’s something on the menu there, the Houston Special, which is the stew on a barbecue sandwich. This is named after Houston Sprayberry, the founder of the place (established in 1926). I did not order it, but dipped some of my stew over the pork. If anyone ever asks me what a grandpa plate tastes, this is the answer. I can imagine every old man in the region eating this. Probably they are torturing the language as they do so, while enjoying their sandwich and looking forward to a Neehi or a Moon Pie or some other regional thing. They are imparting a lifetime of wisdom and defiance on an impressionable young person who is not interested in stew on a sandwich who is thinking Stew is a stew. It should not be on a sandwich. Ironically, dropping the extra pork into the stew tasted entirely different.

Links: This is a piece of poignancy making the rounds, father and son at the first shuttle launch, and again at the last. But if you really want to get misty eyed over pictures, Dear Photograph. Give it a try. You’ll catch the premise immediately, there’s a universal call to appeal there, and you’ll realize looking through the full site is worth the time.

Birds. On radar.

And, now, the most obvious story you’ll read this week, the one that makes you question the scruples and decency of a union which would make such ridiculous claims. (Hint: this is about teachers.) Dr. Joe Morton, the state school superintendent, is retiring. He seems a good man. I’ve interviewed him several times. The AEA recently published a hit piece on the guy. And now, on the way out the door, he’s having to defend himself. But for what?

In a recent issue of the Alabama Education Association’s Alabama School Journal, AEA Associate Executive Secretary Joe Reed said Morton has been “openly hostile” to public educators and that Morton proposed that more teachers have their certificates revoked than past superintendents.

Morton told the state school board Tuesday that Reed’s assertions are “incorrect and wrong minded.”

Morton said he takes the revocation of certificates very seriously and that most revocations he recommended involved teachers using illegal drugs, having inappropriate sexual contact with students or committing crimes.

Just a little more evidence: the union is not in it for the kids.

If you were wondering, my golf swing has never improved that much. I blame the crushing heat.

iPhone / links / Monday / photo / site — Comments Off
11
Jul 11

My numismatics stimulus plan

I seldom get change, and I long ago deleted the Currency ‘N’ You feed from my RSS reader, so I’m behind on this, but I must ask: was there something wrong with the Lincoln Memorial?

Did they lose the carving template? Have to replace the stamp heads at the mint?

Because, surely, one of the greatest monuments a society has to offer wasn’t found unworthy of including on our smallest monetary unit.

Lincoln, himself, seems a bit different. On this particular penny it looks as though he shaved his cheeks, but maintains a goatee. Some of the detail could be polished down, though, so let’s give that a pass. But the Memorial? The Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005 does us a disservice here. Marian Anderson, Martin Luther King Jr., Richard Nixon meeting the protestors, a scene for every movie that is set in Washington D.C. Best of all: did you know you can see Lincoln’s statue inside the Memorial on the penny?

No doubt the intention was to give people some reason to be excited about the currency again. (Having some always makes people enthusiastic.) Change is good, people are fickle and get bored. Sure. But, this Captain America castoff?

Seems a lot of people have this view. There are 141 comments there, and four people admitting liking the new shield theme. (A diluted version of the British pound’s redesign.) Not a good percentage, but since no one has any money …

I’ve yet to see any of the 2009 pennies. I want to like them, but everything Fast Company says about them is true:

In honor of Lincoln’s 200th birthday, the penny fell victim to an image series of four cartoony tableaus of Lincoln’s life: his famously non-descript log cabin; a hilariously buff, superhero Lincoln reading on a log; a disproportionately statuesque Lincoln standing in front of the Illinois Capitol Building (which everyone will mistake as the U.S. Capitol); and finally the U.S. Capitol Building itself, bizarrely under construction. As a set, the coins look nothing like each other–“United States of America” appears in different type sizes; “One Cent” in different sizes and arrangements–and individually, they make no sense as a timeline of Lincoln’s life.

After reading that I went through all my coins, just to be sure I didn’t have any of those offending Lincolns. Lots of the old Memorial coins, about two dollars worth, there are all of the state quarters and, somehow, 42 varieties of nickels.

Dimes will be next, then. Maybe they can sell them out to sponsorships. Now there’s an economic stimulus plan no one has considered.

Hey, buddy, can you spare a Google?

Added a Google+ button to the top of the page, moved around the icons and so on. Come visit! Catch up on Twitter. There’ll be something on Facebook. I’m everywhere!

journalism / links / Thursday / Twitter / video — Comments Off
7
Jul 11

Here’s my hypothesis

And believe me, I have plenty of them …

But this one is basic, straightforward and a bit important: Those who can’t understand Twitter, should reconsider basic communication skills.

Consider these anecdotes, though any you may find will do:

President Obama’s social media gabfest, which swamped the Twitterverse with thousands of responses yesterday, was touted as a rare chance for any citizen to put questions to the Leader of the Free World — but turned out to be just another high-tech, tightly controlled campaign stunt, experts said yesterday.

Or:

Brand new format, same old answers. Reams of hype, most of it delivered in 140-character chunks, couldn’t make President Obama’s Twitter town hall on Wednesday as exciting as promised.

The hour-long event proved to be even less interesting than the average town hall.

Further:

Associated Press journalists have tweeted opinions about the Casey Anthony trial and the New York Senate vote on gay marriage, says Tom Kent, AP Deputy Managing Editor for Standards and Production. “These [two] posts undermine the credibility of our colleagues who have been working so hard to assure balanced and unbiased coverage of these issues,” he writes in a memo. “AP staffers should not make postings there that amount to personal opinions on contentious public issues.”

These are two varied issues, to be sure, but the hypothesis applies. Understanding Twitter includes understanding the strengths and weaknesses. A 140-character format isn’t the place for diffuse, verbose language, like a candidate desperate to hit his campaign points. One must be brief, concise. (All of the things this place isn’t, come to think of it.)

Most importantly, however, one must know that Twitter is simply a conversation.

Which brings us to that last anecdote. Niki Doyle, the social media editor at The Huntsville Times, asked what I thought about the Associated Press memo. They’re chided their employees from voice opinions in social media, saying “anyone who works for AP must be mindful that opinions they express may damage the AP’s reputation as an unbiased source of news.”

Assume, for this conversation, that you find the vast Associated Press unbiased in their coverage. Perhaps you do, perhaps you don’t. But assume.

This policy doesn’t think you can differentiate between human and AP, and not transpose an individual’s opinion to the entire organization. And the policy, while admittedly starting from a difficult spot, demonstrates they don’t yet understand social media (including Twitter). This is a conversation.

The memo demonstrates they don’t trust their people. Most importantly, it suggests they don’t trust their audience to understand the human/reporter conversation-opinion/journalism dynamic.

These two just happened to come along within a few moments of one another today. As I said, find your anecdote; consider the implications. This isn’t the largest issue the White House or the Associated Press (or any other organization) has to deal with, but it is an important one.

Linky things: Atlantis, from the pad. Robert Pearlman, who took that photo, runs collectSPACE which boasts both an unfortunate caps lock issue, but great space content. Do check him out.

Speaking of space, sometimes you see the heavens just a bit differently from somewhere on our pleasant little rock. This time lapse may do it for you. It won the STARMUS astro-photography competition.

Ocean Sky from Alex Cherney on Vimeo.

Breathtaking.

Just like tomorrow’s launch, I’m sure.