At the end of the day, as I was walking out of the office, I ran into the guy who locks the doors. He’s a fine fellow and we always have a good laugh. He was doing his last task of the day, slamming that bolt home, as I was leaving the building.
Did you just lock me in?
“Yep, you’re stuck.”
I will take that personally, then, for two days.
He laughed, and I instructed him to have a good weekend. Just, you know, in case that was somehow helpful, as if the man hadn’t yet thought of that possibility.
But the best part, aside from sending him home with a chuckle, was that I got to use the sincere expression, Have a good weekend, pal.
I once had a friend who used that pal to great effect. Sometimes I use it, and it makes me smile, thinking of him. You never heard the comma, because you were so busy being touched by the sincerity that came with that “pal.” He is a park ranger these days. I bet he’s great at that.
Anyway, there was a lot of bright sunlight to enjoy today. I am cold, but happy.
This was the second time this week I’d seen the actual sunlight and blue skies. It did not disappoint. I will accept the cold — this being January and all — but I will need some sun in exchange. That’s not asking too much. Otherwise it is just the usual, relentless, gray.
As if I needed to see it again, and from another perspective, to verify it, here’s the mid-afternoon view up through the giant skylight in the commons.
It’s gray 165 days a year here, and we have this giant window set up. This time of year I’m always amazed people don’t just sit there and stare up in wonder when the skies are blue.
Part of that is because there’s no one here right now. No students, anyway. Some of the professional types were in the office, getting ready. Classes start on Monday. This, then, is the last deep breath in. The normal rhythms will return. And, sometime in mid- or late-April, spring will finally show up. May it get here soon.
Got back on the bike this evening, and had a nice 27.7 mile ride. Should have gone longer, but there are dinner considerations to consider.
I considered I normally like dinner.
But, after the semi-impressive bonk on Wednesday, sitting up after 80 minutes and feeling as if I could ride all night was an encouraging sign.
Also, I was underwater at one point. Look to the left of that graphic. Biggest ray I’ve ever seen.
So I made a spreadsheet to chart my bike riding progress this year. I wanted to create a graphic that would illustrate how I did against specific daily averages over the year. One line will represent improving last year’s totals by 21 percent. The other will be a line that, if I can keep up with it, would mean a 42 percent increase over my record-setting 2022.
It’s ambitious, but it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. Right now, at least, I am well ahead of the blue and green trend lines, as you can see by that purple line. I’m wondering if/when the more ambitious goal will slip away from me.
Oh look, this mountain has its own weather system.
I’ve probably shared a version of that before, but it amuses me, which is the point.
Don’t worry, though, I won’t share that chart again for quite some time.
Feeling better today, thanks. Dinner, sleep, a light snack for breakfast and some lunch made it everything better. Still a bit fatigued, for some reason I can’t explain, but that’s made the decision for me. Taking it easy today, going to bed early.
The highlight, then, was … laundry. Wow. Can someone punch that up in re-write? (No. — ed.)
We haven’t looked at an old newspaper in a while. (OK, it has been almost a month.) Let’s go back to campus and read the alma mater’s classic rag.
This is from 94 years ago, January, 6, 1929. (I wrote for this same publication many decades later.) These guys have no ideas what’s coming for them the next fall, and I don’t mean the 1929 football season, which would prove dreadful in its own right.
The lead story is to the right, and it goes with this art, though you wouldn’t know it to look at the page, “Thousands greet opening new radio station WAPI.”
I worked at WAPI after college. I was proud to be on that air. It is the direct descendant of WMAV, which is the fourth oldest radio station in Alabama. (Alabama Power launched it, when they got out of the entertainment business, well, that time, they donated the gear to Auburn, which was Alabama Polytechnic Institute, hence WAPI. When it went back up to Birmingham in 1929 the station was co-owned by Auburn, the University of Alabama and the Alabama College for Women — now the University of Alabama. New owners bought it in the 1930s, and they launched the state’s first television station, the modern NBC affiliate in Birmingham, in 1949. Soon after, the company that owns the newspaper, another company I worked for, purchased the broadcast properties.) Today, WAPI is still the most powerful transmitter in that state, and it started right here.
Auburn’s new, powerful radio station WAPI went on the air New Year’s Eve from the studios in Birmingham with its formal opening program, which was heard by thousands of listeners throughout Alabama and the nation. Telegrams and telephone calls from 21 states began to pour in immediately after the new station took the air at eight o’clock, with a magnificent program lasting until four o’clock the next morning. The number of calls and messages amounted to over 900 before the station’s second program was presented.
Promptly at 7:55 KVOO at Tulsa, the station with which WAPI divides time on the same wave length, made an announcement that the air was being turned over to WAPI, and promptly at 8 p. m. the Boy’s Industrial Band of Birmingham opened the program with bugle calls and “The Star Spangled Banner.”
Addresses were made by Gov. Bibb Graves, J. M. Jones, president of the Birmingham city commission; President Bradford Knapp; Dr. L. N. Duncan, director of the extension service, Victor H. Hanson, publisher of the Birmingham News and Age-Herald; Sam F. Claxbaugh, president of the Protective Life Insurance Company; P. O. Davis, director Department of Public Information, and H. C. Smith of the Department of Agriculture at Montgomery.
Three guest radio announcers assisted Walter N. Campbell, manager, and W .A. “Bill” Young, assistant manager, in staging the huge opening program. The visiting announcers were George Dewey Hay, “the solemn old judge” from WSM, of Nashville; G. C. Arnoux, “the man with the musical voice,” of KTHS, Hot Springs, Ark.; Luke Lee Roberts, of WLAC, Nashville, and J. C. “Dud” Connelly of WBRC, Birmingham.
Through the new station, which is among the most powerful of any in the South, Auburn’s influence and instruction may be carried to thousands upon thousands of homes in every section of the State and the South. Reception reports from programs already broadcast indicate that WAPI may be heard clearly in every portion of Alabama. No college in the land has more desirable facilities.
With the abundance of talent available in the city of Birmingham, programs of the highest type will be given over WAPI.
The installation job complete is said to be one of the best and most modern. The power is 5,000 watts. With recent improvements in broadcasting apparatus the actual signal strength is said to be at least ten times as powerful as the old 1,000-watt station at Auburn which was discontinued and sold.
The new station occupies the entire 14th floor of the Protective Life Insurance Company building. Three studios, a control room, reception room, and office space are included. The outlay is ideal and up-to-date for radio purposes.
The transmitter—or broadcasting apparatus—is located seven miles from the downtown district of Birmingham. It is on a mountain overlooking the village of Sandusky, which is on the Bankhead highway between Birmingham and Jasper. A building 32 by 48 feet houses the transmitter and other apparatus. Only the input equipment is located at the studios in the Protective Life Building. At an early date regular broadcasting from Montgomery and Auburn will begin. It will be done by remote control. Modern studios and modern input equipment, are being installed at the state capital in Montgomery. It is in the building occupied by the department of agricultural industries. At Auburn the old studio in Comer Hall will be used.
Comer Hall, home of the College of Agriculture, was one of my main buildings in undergrad. I was on WAPI’s air for about a year, and later worked for the newspaper company that (from 1953 to 1981) owned the station. One of the hosts on the debut programming was from WBRC, which is where The Yankee worked when we met. I’ve been on the air in all of the other markets mentioned here, I think. Broadcasting is full of small world callbacks.
If you look at that photo again, the round microphones were an innovation just a year or so before. The shape and the innards did a lot to remove vocal disruption and clean up the transmitted signal. It looks old to us, of course, but this stuff was top-end.
Similarly, this little story puts the lie to the black-and-white images we sometimes get of history. Or maybe that’s just me.
Blakey was from Birmingham, he was senior, studying architecture. Marty was a junior, and he was also studying architecture. Renneker would become a named partner in an architectural firm, and there’s a scholarship in his name today.
Bill Streit lettered in three sports in college. Made sense that he’d work in athletics professionally, and he made a great career of it.
Streit also officiated track and field meets, managed the U.S. Olympic track team in Paris (1924), Amsterdam (1928), Los Angeles (1932) and Berlin (1936). In ’24 he was also the chairman U.S. Olympic wrestling committee — they won four golds. He also did a bunch of other big time things, maybe the Rose Bowl was just for fun. He became a member of the Executive Committee of the U.S. Olympics from 1948 to 1952. He’s a 1971 inductee into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.
Here’s that Rose Bowl, which is famous for a guy returning a fumble the wrong direction. Streit is in here, somewhere.
And in the 1950s, Streit was the subject of a nice little speech in Congress.
Back on campus, there had been another flu endemic. The local government briefly shut things down as a precautionary measure.
After that small stretch, when the numbers seemed to be easing up, life got back to 1929 normal.
There was this column inside the paper, filled with some prosaic advice. But the remarkable thing is the tone. It is written so matter-of-factly: wash your hands; well, obviously masks work; oh, and stay away from others if you are sick. They knew this back then. Why is some of it contentious for their great-great-great grandchildren?
I know the answer, and you do, too.
Again, 1929. People seeing the first talkie had a better grasp of common understandings of medicine than some of our peers do today. Weird.
Back then, the college kids had to drive across the state line, to Columbus, to see this picture. You can watch it, right now, on your computer or phone.
So glad they resolved all of this in 1929, so it wouldn’t crop up every few years as a silly political debate. This saved us so much time and energy, when you think about it.
No idea what becomes of Benjamin Provost. I halfway suspect it is a nom de plume.
This cartoon is supposed to be funny. Maybe the joke gets lost down through the generations.
I get to the “dog with the plush ears” line and get distracted, thinking of Cassius Marcellus Coolidge’s dogs playing poker (1894) painting.
One more radio tidbit. If you look at that WAPI copy again, you see where the station was sharing 1140 on the AM dial with KVOO. (That persisted until 1942.) Both sets of call letters are on the FM dial today. WAPI is talk. KVOO, the Tulsa, Oklahoma station, is today a country heritage format. And their morning show is co-hosted by Tige Daniel. I did a morning show with him in college.
We return to the Re-Listening Project, where I am forever trying to keep up with what is in my car’s CD player. What’s in my car’s CD player is the entirety of my CD collection. Well, not all at once, that’d be a spectacular device. We’re surely decades away from having the technology to put hundred and hundreds and a few more hundred CDs on one simple machine.
But I can load several at a time in my car, and what I’m currently doing is listening to all of these old circles of plastic, in order. It’s a fun thing to do. And some of it is fun to write about. These aren’t reviews, but fun of memories, and a few good licks.
And this is the first record that, on this go around of the Re-Listening Project, that I’ve listened to twice. It got dismissed as mediocre at the time, but “Friction, Baby” has aged well as Better Than Ezra’s sophomore effort.
I listen to Tom Drummond’s bass line as much as anything.
But, first, Kevin Griffin’s post-alternative lyrics. This is 1996. I was 19 and, true to pop form, there’s a little something in there for most everyone or most any mood.
But that rhythm section, man, that still demands your attention a quarter century later.
I worked with someone during high school and college and the album title became a salutation and a closing because we both liked the record. She was from Vestavia, and, yes, this album is that suburban. I don’t know if I ever asked her what her favorite song on this was.
Do you ever wonder when the last time someone listened to something was? And how, after a long time away from it, if their impression had gone in some different way than your own? Perceptions are funny, inconsistent and perfectly valid that way. Anyway, there’s a nice mandolin on here, too. As I said, a little something for every mood.
Perhaps, in the long reach of life, you wonder why you did a thing, or spent so much time around a person or people. Maybe that’s why she’s unfriended me. (A fate worse than meh!) Maybe that’s why you stopped listening to a record you used to enjoy. That and other albums and other priorities. But it’s nice to go back and see what still works, and what you hear differently. Somewhere in all of that you get to decide what to lean into, and what deserves a cringe.
Anyway, we used this track on my college radio morning show. (Speaking of cringe!) Open mics, talking to the post and signing off for the day.
Top of the world, I guess.
I’m certain that I picked up this next album as a station giveaway. Probably it was the cover art that intrigued me. If anything, I’d heard one song on the thing. Probably something we played at the campus station. I don’t remember this getting a lot of commercial airplay, but as another sophomore album it got a lot of play from me in late 1996 and definitely 1997.
It’s Melissa Ferrick’s “Willing to Wait.” Ferrick is still touring. Still making music, and also teaching the craft, these days at Northeastern University. And while this is Ferrick’s second record, consider this. This is a career that started as a 21-year-old woman, opening for Morrisey. That’s ridiculous, but none too big for the Cracker Jack Kid. It’s honest, simple, complex, ragged, truthful, vulnerable, aggressive, and not at all a radio-friendly record. Which is probably how I came to see it on the giveaway table. But critics, and Ferrick’s fans, liked it. If any of those adjectives appeal to you, there’s something for you here.
This is the “Cracker Jack Kid” song, for the reference above.
I had this idea, listening to this record this time: what would this song, and it’s specific themes, feel like if a male did it?
Oh, and we didn’t cover this, but this album is full of intriguing instrumentation.
And some yodeling, or at least a fun little run of scat.
There was a girl — I was in college, so of course there was a girl — and this isn’t the song that I attached to that breakup, but this record was in heavy rotation at the time, and there’s this lyric here, about remembering the color of a doorknob, it sticks with you.
I lived in a two-floor apartment during the time I was listening to this a lot and also feeling that particular breakup. (I was the wrong religion, basically.) The downstairs was a cinderblock building. But the upstairs was simply two sheets of wood paneling. I could hear when my neighbor signed on to AOL. I could hear when she had mail. And, perhaps worse, when she didn’t.
Only now, thinking of how I sat on my stairs and learned one of the louder songs on this CD, have I thought about what music my neighbor heard for three years on her side of the wall.
Oh, look! A live version of one of the songs!
Someone played the stripped down version of their work is always so interesting.
And, just for perspective, that girl? The cheerleader grew into a woman who became a teacher, pretty perfect for her, I think. Her oldest kid is older, today, than we were back then. The last song on Ferrick’s record is titled “Time Flies.”
This is a filler post, as we spent most of the day traveling today. We woke up in Savannah, picked up our last little shopping treats, had breakfast, sat in the park and then got an Uber to the airport. It was after 9 p.m. when we got back to the house in Indiana. So, you can imagine.
I don’t know if Tom Hanks or David Moscow is still looking, but I found the Zoltar machine.
No one was as excited about seeing this banner as I was. Most things that interest me don’t seem to appeal to anyone else, which is weird. I’m sure it’s them, and not at all me. Anyway, Repurpose Savannah “is a women+ led 501(c)3 nonprofit establishing a sustainable future through the deconstruction and reuse of historic buildings.”
This is a movie prop poster. It is currently displayed in the window of an appliance story that’s set up to look like a 1960s retail shop. I want the actual poster, and some of the bakelite that was inside.
On the same block, the SCAD theater is also going to be a part of that movie. The parking spaces are also currently filled with period cars. For a time, this part of Savannah is pretending to be Cocoa Beach, Florida.
This is the Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist, home of the Diocese of Savannah, which covers 90 counties.
The bumpy, yet smooth, bricked road that is River Street, the primary tourist trap of Savannah.
Another version of this will become a banner on the blog.
If you go down there, though, you get great views of the vessels moving up and down the river.
I don’t care that there’s a tugboat in the foreground for scale, there’s not really a way to accurately convey the size of this thing, which started its voyage in Japan, made ports of call in Tacoma and Long Beach, then crossed the Panama Canal to visit Savannah. Four years ago, that ship rescued 11 Tunisian fishermen who were victims of a hit and run by another large vessel.
Here’s one more shot of our tree at Forsyth Park. Just on the other side, and trending a bit to the right of the trunk, 14 years ago, almost to the day.
Finally, here’s The Yankee, who planned this trip — which is why it was excellent — hanging out with Santa Claus. (She planned a really nice trip. She should have just made it longer.)
Another picture of her with a slight less authentic, but more lifelike, Santa is going on the Christmas cards this year.
