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Alabama / Auburn / memories / site / Tuesday — Comments Off
17
Aug 10

The last of it

The final hours of summer are upon us. I had a meeting at Alabama Monday, and a class there Thursday. I have a workshop to attend at Samford that afternoon. We’re jumping right into the fall.

You forget how much you appreciate the summers when adulthood turns you into a 40 hour a week, 50 or more weeks a year person. That happened to me. Summer wasn’t a time to be off, but rather a time to work some more. So it was just more time. It was time out of time, which is what summer is, for children, but only different.

Two years ago when I returned to campus professionally I looked forward to the summer. All that happened during those three months was marriage, a promotion, a move and the busiest nine hours of my graduate school career. It didn’t feel especially like summer. Which was fine. I’d been used to that for years. Long years, in fact. It has been 20 summers since I’ve had either no classes or no job.

And so this summer, I’ve looked forward to it for some long time. All we did was go to Europe, buy a house and move. I did the tiniest bit of research, the smallest bit of work and otherwise enjoyed the summer. And got spoiled by it.

Now we return to reality. I have class and work and they are wonderful and I’m blessed that this is my career and my daily experience, truly. (But wanting a little more summer is only natural, right?) Next summer — not that I’m looking that far ahead — I’ll be finishing my dissertation. I’m guessing that won’t feel like much of a break, but this one has had a very nice feel.

One of those many signs of the return of campus obligations is the dreadful Beloit list. This was, once upon a time, a more entertaining collection. It is aimed at professors, to try and give them some humor and insight into the cultural positioning of incoming freshmen. I suppose it also makes some professors feel old. It also stretches the bonds of credulity:

9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend.

12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.

65. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.

72. One way or another, “It’s the economy, stupid” and always has been.

9. But probably not, since Hal was a robot. In space. And also because the Cyrus family is only going to one campus this fall. Odds are it isn’t yours, no matter what that girl in freshman bio said about seeing Hannah Montana in the quad.

12. This presupposes that every student stays away from cable television and has no fathers, grandfathers or other family members with a predisposition to westerns.

65. Is just insulting, really.

72. A humanities professor is tied to this list, but he should have spoken with his political science colleagues. Surely they speak here of Clinton, but in reality it has forever, and shall always be, about the economy.

The list also stretches the boundaries of chronology:

1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.

19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.

28. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.

1. I know that they are teaching to the test at elementary and grade schools now, but surely there is an itinerant English teacher who insisted they could pull off a cursive lowercase F if need be.

19. Really? The timing of these just looks at things like market penetration of wireless and cell phones, but doesn’t consider the ubiquity of former tools. Some people still even have these phones, which mean the class of 2020, even, will know that plastic, rubbery feel.

28. I’m testing this on my students and will let you know the results.

Others are there to indulge the righteousness of the professoriate:

21. Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what it wanted, has always been with Soon-Yi Previn.

41. American companies have always done business in Vietnam.

42. Potato has always ended in an “e” in New Jersey per vice presidential edict.

21. While I’m betting the wrist gesture still works, I’m certain Woody Allen is far removed from the students’ minds, to say nothing of Soon-Yi. But he’s important to some film prof.

41. Because the political nuance must be attended.

42. That Dan Quayle sure was dumb.

Now let us do the math. By comparison of years, the Beloit Mindset list — had it existed when I was a freshman, would have referenced something Walter Mondale did in office. None of us would have understood the reference, either. Which is the point of the list, I suppose.

Usually, this is a better instrument of enlightenment, of whoa and wow. Perhaps, though, we’ve reached a point where the changes over the course of a generation are less earth shaking. Maybe we’ve reached the post of post-modernity. For example, “The historic bridge at Mostar in Bosnia has always been a copy” isn’t keeping kids up nights. Today’s students, their peers nor their peers likely sit to reflect on annus horribilis.

“Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.” But, then, REM was creeping onto the classic rock station when I was in undergrad. And “The dominance of television news by the three networks passed while they were still in their cribs.”

Have I told you the story of last year’s freshmen? I did a presentation with this picture:

I asked “Who knows who this man is?”

Nothing.

Crickets.

The man had been off the air for only five years.

See the entire Beloit list here. Enjoy more cogent thoughts on the subject from the always impressive James Lileks.

Elsewhere I used today productively. I struggled with and tried three different ways to build the websites The Yankee wanted. She had one lapse on her a while back and since her classes are starting these things must be restored. I experimented, about a month ago, actually, with the WordPress MU platform. I have a small handful of photo blogs I’m running off of MU. I figured it out in an hour or two.

And so, naturally, when I settled in to do this for her I found that WordPress has incorporated the MU into their basic platform now. Somehow the changes and how to make it work escaped me. We came up with a workaround, however. This was my afternoon. I tinkered with code and listened to hours of TiVoed television. Lovely afternoon.

Tomorrow you’ll see the beginning of the 1939 World’s Fair project. You can hardly wait.

Tomorrow I’ll get a hair cut. I can hardly wait.

adventures / errands / hobby / memories / photo / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
12
Aug 10

Part of a day in pictures

Pretty bird

The cardinals in our neighborhood are very shy. I’ve been patiently chasing them, and finally got a picture or two of the male. We played this circling, chase game around the trees in the backyard. After a bit I changed the rules and went under the tree. He didn’t expect that.

Pretty bird

Tried to get some work done on the car today, but the shop I visited had a slight problem with a key machine this morning. The guy said the repair man was coming at noon. I left my number and asked him to call me when the machine was fixed so that he may hoist my car onto it.

Because, if there’s one thing we’ve learned from amusement parks and forgotten to extrapolate to the rest of our lives, you’d rather not be the first person up on the freshly repaired equipment.

So I went to a giant antique store. I’m saving that story for the weekend. I walked the whole place, no phone call. After an amount of time that is surely beyond what it should take to fix one machine, the mechanics of which I know nothing about, I returned to the shop. The repair guy hadn’t yet showed up. So I called it an afternoon.

Time and temp

That was the temperature when we went out for dinner. In other news, this is August, but still. We had dinner at Cheeburger Cheeburger, which is a place that The Yankee and I have never enjoyed together. There were two in Birmingham, for a time, but we have no memory of a mutual visit. So this is a new experience. This is also new:

Cheeburger

Cheeburger has always displayed the Polaroids of the hungry people who’ve eaten their one-pound burger (I’ve never tried). Previously the pictures covered the walls like a wallpaper, which was an interesting expression of growth, much like a celluloid bacteria. Haven’t visited in a while? Oh the pictures have expanded around the corner and down the baseboard. That sort of thing.

The last time I was here they were moving up to the ceiling. The surrounded-by-people-promoting-their-new-metabolic-problem atmosphere was a terrific exhibition. You couldn’t help but staring at the faces and the little notes people left behind. I understand why they went to the stacks, for space concerns, but this new display method ruins the point. You don’t want to look through pictures in stacks like that. It would feel like too much work, or feel too intrusive. So you just see the stacks on the wall and go about your meal.

I wonder when they finally make the decision to throw away some of the old pictures. Maybe they have a little ceremony.

We drove around until we found a field on a quiet country road where we could see the night’s festivities. I always oversell the Perseids in my mind. One of the astronomers on the Samford faculty sent us a note where he mentioned that some experts were expecting up to 100 visible meteorites per hour if you got in a good spot. I’ve learned to temper my expectations — I want 100 a minute, like some sort of movie theater intro film — but still haven’t learned to forget taking pictures of the event. This is the one I got.

Perseids

The background are actually stars I shot tonight. I caught no Perseid meteorites on my camera (The Yankee got TWO!) but we saw several and had a great time, sitting in the dark and quiet and heat of the evening. My best picture of the night:

A plane

The plane! The plane!@

Auburn / iPhone / memories / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
3
Aug 10

And now for something slightly different

We had lunch at the original Momma Goldberg’s today. You’re jealous, I can feel it from here. And I understand.

For the first time in a long time I did not hear Dave Matthews while we dined. Same slanted floors. Same newspapers covering the walls. Though, while waiting for our sandwiches I did hear two guys talking about the wall they were going to move and the expansion they were going to make.

I’m not sure how comfortable I am with that.

Momma G’s, if you are unaware, is one of those older, funky with time and dirt and graffiti places you have to experience. The food isn’t bad either. The place opened in 1976, still sits on the same choice corner lot and, despite a recent amount of franchise expansion, has remained perfect in its timelessness. It was the first place I ever ate, here, some now 15 years ago. Little has changed in that time.

C&A 4ever Aug. 1987

They’d still recognize it. You wonder if they made it to 4ever. They could be celebrating the 23rd anniversary of this little scrawl on the wall any day now. Maybe they’ve brought their kids to see it. Maybe they’ve been here with their eventual partner and sheepishly sat at some table, any other table than this one. We may never know.

But if you know, let me know.

I took a picture of the sign out front:

Momma G's

And then I ran it through an iPhone app, HDRforFree that I picked up last week:

Momma G's

Makes rust and distressed wood look great, but what do you think?

While sweating in the attic once again (this will never end, I fear) the police came by to visit. The Yankee did it.

I heard a voice at the door and walked back through the mudroom to investigate. Two nice young officers had knocked to deliver Official Literature. They want us to Do Something. (Seems The Yankee got away with whatever she did. And, just to throw the police off of her trail, she made some joke about how this and that had caught up to me. The police officers weren’t terribly concerned by this.)

This was National Night Out or National Get to Know Your Neighbors or National Get Bitten By Mosquitoes Night or something.

On the homefront: We are to that stage of unpacking, I believe, where we are trying to hide all of the things we need only occasionally. The attic situation is under control, the garage storage situation has been revamped twice more — but we’ve advanced now beyond that point and are merely focusing on emptying and removing the boxes. Progress continues apace.

friends / memories / photo / Pie Day / Thursday — Comments Off
29
Jul 10

The pre-move

The heat index only made it up to 99 degrees today. And I did my part, I tried, to get that last extra degree so I could say “Hey, I moved furniture in triple-digit temperatures today.”

Because 99, somehow, doesn’t sound impressive.

And that’s when you know sunstroke has set in.

So the recliner went downstairs to the garage. One of the rocking chairs joined its mate. The living room chair found its way safely into the garage. Numerous boxes, all of our books all made it downstairs. The plan, since the move is tomorrow, is to sling everything from the garage onto the truck and call it a day.

This evening we packed up the kitchen. All of our clothes have been dutifully stored in wardrobe boxes. Later I’ll tear down the network and pack up the televisions.

Even still, I managed to do three voiceovers this morning. But the place looks entirely different from that, even 12 hours later. Now it looks like a cardboard factory explosion.

Pie Day

We had our last regular Pie Day with Ward tonight. (Incidentally, that’s the banana cream pie, which is new to Jim ‘N’ Nicks, and quite tasty.)

Ward

I’m a fairly sappy and sentimental person, and waxing on about it is possible, and would be silly. Ward, there, has looked after us for a long time. We’ve been coming here for five-and-a-half years. This is as much a part of our history and social culture as anything else we do. And we’ll still make it here when we are in town visiting, but this was our last regular visit.

Yes, barbecue means that much. Pie means that much. That it was the first excuse I had to get my eventual wife to have a bite to eat with me means even more. (As I’ve mentioned before, it was a competitor’s waitress’ line about how “Friday is Pie Day” that cinched the deal. When The Yankee and I were standing in a parking lot one afternoon I impulsively invited her for a barbecue sandwich. She hedged. And then I invited her for pie. Friday, I said, is Pie Day. You just can’t argue with logic like that, friends.)

We’ve had untold celebrations here. Birthdays, graduations, quiet nights of dinner for two, loud nights of dinner for a dozen. This has always been our date night and we’ve always incorporated everyone that wanted to come. I used to keep count of the people, stopping somewhere around four dozen, that joined us for Pie Day.

And now when I mention it — or even when I don’t mention it — on Twitter people respond to it even people I haven’t yet met in person.

Sure, The Yankee and I will still have Pie Day. Yes, I’m looking forward to finding the new home for the event. But, still, I hold onto things, tightly and closely. And this has been a wonderful event worth holding onto for a long time now.

We managed to sit in the same table where we ate there the first time.

And now, so I don’t waste any more of your time on it, cute cat pictures:

She's helping.

She’s helping.

She stopped helping ...

She stopped helping.

And now for a late night and early morning of last minute panic packing…

friends / memories / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
22
Jul 10

Remembering radio

Of the many things that have recently floated to the surface in the cleaning and packing are stacks and stacks of cassette tapes from my years in radio. I broadcast for eight years, what seems like a lifetime ago. When I consolidated the tapes in the cleaning of the garage it turned into one impressive box full of old material.

I’ve been hanging onto them because I’ve promised myself (for years, now) that I’d one day listen to them and digitize the good stuff. Somewhere in all those many tapes there has to be two or three good air checks. The world needs, I figure, dated jokes, aging soundbites and hard news leads delivered in a young man’s voice.

Mostly I keep the tapes to keep me humble. Putting one in and pressing play would crack me up, or make me grimace, for hours.

While I learned early on I was no disc jockey, thank goodness, I did turn into a strong news anchor and sports reporter. I had another dip into that memory today, when I had dinner with my radio mentor Chadd Scott. He taught me a lot, because he learned from a great one, who learned from two greats. We learned a lot together because when we worked together Chadd and I found ourselves in a position where the bosses left us alone to make mistakes. We created more successes than failures, though.

He’s in town from Atlanta for SEC Media Days. Since he made the trip, we’d asked him to pick us up a bookshelf from Ikea. He drug it across the state line, crammed into his car with his colleague and intern. I think he made his intern go fetch the bookshelf from the store, which would be the silliest thing I’ve ever had an intern do.

My own internship at ACES, once upon a long time ago, was an excellent experience. There were three communication specialists and me doing the job of six or eight people. I built web pages, produced television, practiced photography and dark room skills, wrote for newspapers, cut audio for radio and more. The least consequential thing I ever did was to collate photo copies, and that was a necessary thing for my projects. My internship was so useful I’ve always been conscientious to help interns have the opportunity to receive a similar experience.

And now some young man has been sent to Ikea to pick up a bookshelf in my name.

We had dinner with Chadd and Chuck Oliver and others tonight. We talked Internet, where just maybe I returned the favor and gave Chadd a little practiced advice.They are working on a big project, one I’m looking forward to seeing this fall.

The Yankee and I each enjoyed a frosty for dessert. I recorded two voiceovers. (Anybody need voice work? I used to be in radio, you know … ) We watched a bit of television and packed more. We’ve only a week more of this to go!