Stayed busy enough today that I didn’t even have the chance to enjoy my afternoon oranges.
Philip Poole, the director of Samford’s office of marketing and communication stopped by our class today. He’s a very nice guy, helpful with students, always ready for a friendly chat.
He told the students about “Phantom Week” of 2008. In May of that year a campus safety officer reported he saw a gunman on campus. They locked everything down, searched for the guy for hours. After a while they opened the campus, declared it safe and started asking the campus safety guy a few more questions.
Eight days later, Poole says, was graduation. A woman fell and hit her head and was going to miss graduation. Her family was naturally upset because she was also supposed to be the student speaker. As Poole heard more and more of the story less and less of it made sense.
Turns out she wasn’t even a student at Samford, but her brother had been sending her tuition money for years. So everyone figures out pretty quickly where that story goes.
He talks about working for the university, dealing out public relations here and journalism there. He’s a good person to know on campus, and he has a great rapport with students and I’m always happy to have him visit.
Elsewhere, graded papers all morning. Read the paper, critiqued the paper. Graded more papers.
It is remarkable I don’t get paper cuts, he said, dooming himself to a horrible series of them in the near future.
I was finally able to eat my banana on the drive home. That kind of day. But a good day, a beautiful day. The thermometer said 59, but the sun made it warmer, the cheer in the air made it brighter and the feeling of the coming spring just intensified everything.
I drove in that, trotted across a parking lot in that and then watched it from indoors fall on the quad at Samford. It is a rainy day. That’s about an inch of rain, apparently. I question our precipitation measuring methods. This was a lot of rain.
Hard to conceive that yesterday looked like this:
That was about 20 miles into my ride yesterday evening, about halfway back down the home road. It gives the impression in this stretch of riding on a ridge line. I’m not sure why, there’s no real drop off and houses dot the right side. But the pastures on the left tend to slope down a tiny bit, so you feel like you’re riding high and on top of everything. Only the hill you just crested isn’t that much of a hill, really, but everything is relative and when you are surrounded by rollers you can be King of the Molehill.
In a few more weeks, and a little to the right of that shot, there will be the most amazing wildflowers. A few days after that, and back down the hill to the left, there will be a yard filled with eight-foot-tall flowering bushes. This is a fragrant area.
Anyway. Being a rainy Monday, I made today Copeland Cookie Day in my class.
Dr. Gary Copeland was one of our grad school professors. He died last January, just after his retirement which was doubly sad in that he was so very much looking forward to spending more time with his grandchildren.
He was the kind of man that people just don’t stop missing, I think. I had the honor of being invited to a Facebook page in his memory that remains active even today.
And so I wrote there that it was Copeland Cookie Day in class. In honor of the great man and his epistemology and ontology class I pick a day each semester, put a picture of his on the board, tell them about this colorful character, feed the students cookies and, most importantly, talk about things that aren’t on the syllabus.
It is one of everyone’s favorite classes. Mostly because of the cookies.
Dr. Copeland was the instructor of my first class at Alabama and was on my comps committee. He was one of the good ones, and I like telling students about him, and his Copeland fests and taking students out to eat and his general kind and giving nature.
When I wrote about it this afternoon on Facebook 16 people liked it, most of them his former students. At least one professor said he was going to make his own Copeland Cookie Day and word is getting around our department that I do this. He would laugh at the silliness of it. But he was a giver and would have enjoyed it, too, I think.
So we talked in class about trips we’d taken so far and how some people who have similar majors from elsewhere are waiting tables or how someone read a survey about how it was a tough career. And those things are important to hear, but for freshmen and sophomores there are a lot of positives too. At the end of the day its not unlike most other things: work hard at it and good things can come to you. Dodge raindrops where you can, look fondly back on sunny days and forward to even nicer ones.
It is that time of year, where the weather always seems on on the cusp of ever nicer days, and we’re all looking forward. The oncoming Spring Break isn’t a bad excuse, either. Not that anyone is counting the days, the number of which is four.
The Samford Crimson launched a new look this week for the last quarter of their academic year’s publication run. Looks pretty sharp:
Also there’s a new Target now open just down the street.
Here are two more quick shot of the inside layout. They worked hard, had extra meetings, were excited and it shows. This section is designed by our Society of Professional Journalists award-winner features editor Megan Thomspon:
The sports section is designed by SEJC award winner and sports editor Clayton Hurdle
I tinkered with that page in InDesign last night after they’d finished it. It is solid.
I left a meeting discussing the Crimson to drive over to a television station. CBS 42’s Bill Payer was giving my class a tour. Here he is showing off their mobile production unit:
They built that from the ground up two years ago. They didn’t copy anyone, just built what they thought they needed. They got everything right, except they forgot a kitchen and restroom. Payer tells me that the station could burn down around them and they could go on the air from this truck and cover the news.
Being at CBS meant a chance to see the always welcoming Mark Prater. We sat in the studio and pitched around ideas while, downstairs in the studio, the students were hearing a bit of breaking news. Seems some officers were out serving a warrant on a woman and she sliced them up with a box cutter.
Three officers were taken to the hospital for treatment. Another was treated on the scene. Samford grad Kaitlin McCulley reports:
There was also a big fire leading the news cast, and as I told the news director, the days I really miss it are the days when I am watching a newsroom buzz. He invited me to join in, but I figured they had it covered. Kaitlin was reporting, after all.
Still sick. The good news is that I’m now convinced this is only sinuses or something of that nature. Anything more serious would have surely developed by now. My throat actually feels a bit better. But while there is improvement there, I now have a persistent cough. And I’m achy. And also, the joyous non-breathing that comes with sinuses.
So a few days of that, then.
Pulled out the red pen today, and then I used it on things:
That pen is simply resting on a copy of today’s Samford Crimson which is now going online despite two separate site issues this week. Because when you’re coughing and can’t breathe, you want plugin glitches and database issues to deal with, too. But those are resolved, everything is back up and working now, and so I spent this afternoon pouring over the print version, hence the pen.
That image was treated in an iPhone app called Big Lens which I got for free. It does a decent job of what you’d ask of it, which is to give the illusion of depth of field with a free app.
I love my phone, but every time I make one of these app-tweaked pictures I just want to go grab my real camera and apologize to it.
Took a field trip with a class to Intermark Group today. The students learned a bit more about public relations, advertising, how social media ties in, account executives, the creative design, media buying and so on. This is a great tour and I’m proud every spring when they invite us back. The folks at Intermark have always been very welcoming and friendly and share a lot of information.
We also got a tour of the ever-impressive Vazda Studios. Want to work in video production, audio engineering or CGI? That’s a tour to take. The students always enjoy their day at Intermark, and this year was, happily, no exception.
The city looked like this when I left the firm:
That’s the City Federal building rising in the center. Not a bad view on the north side.
One thing I wanted to share on Monday: the president at Samford, Dr. Andy Westmoreland, sends out an email to everyone on campus each Monday highlighting the success, impact and value of a Samford student, alum, program or faculty member. It is usually the best Monday morning email I receive. This week’s was especially nice.
Just in case you missed this news a few days ago, here’s the inspirational account of the impact of one of our graduates from the McWhorter School of Pharmacy:
What started as a concern for an abducted child turned into a social media phenomenon that has drawn national media attention and will send the rescued child and his family to Disney World. And, it was the simple idea of a Samford University alumna that set it all in motion.
Carrie Kreps of Vestavia Hills, Ala., a 2002 McWhorter School of Pharmacy graduate, said she was “deeply affected” by the Jan. 29 abduction of a 5-year-old named Ethan from his school bus in Midland City, Ala. Ethan ended up being held hostage for 7 days before his dramatic rescue. While following news reports of the situation, Kreps suggested to her Facebook community that when Ethan was released, she wanted to send him to Disney World to help create happy memories that might replace the terror-filled memories of his abduction. After Ethan was rescued and a friend of Kreps got approval from Ethan’s family, she began an online fundraiser called “Send Ethan to Disney World”. In one day, the goal of $7,000 was met, and as of Feb. 9, more than $10,600 had been pledged by nearly 300 donors. Gifts ranged from $5 to $500 and averaged about $20 per donor. Kreps is working with a Dothan, Ala., travel agency to arrange for the trip. Any remaining funds will be added to a trust fund that has been established for Ethan.
Kreps’ efforts drew national media attention from NBC’s”Today Show,” CNN, ESPN and other media outlets.
Dr. Westmoreland has a traditional conclusion for these emails, “The world is better because of Carrie Kreps.”
Much like Phil Collins, I can feel it coming in the air, particularly through the mouth and down into the throat where it is manifesting itself as a persistent, burning little itch. I’m getting sick.
In matters of personal health I blame everyone until I find the right person to blame. This is of course an overreaction, but the pretend-angst is a sort of self-soothing, self-medicating technique I’ve been working on these last several years. Besides, it is more proactive than saying “Sinuses” or “Allergies.” Which is hopefully all this amounts too.
But I’m just saying now that this week is going to be Coughy, Achy, Watery, Fatiguey and a few more of the dwarfs that were never cool enough to hang out with Snow White. Fire Marshall ordinance or not, she could have spent some time with those other characters. There were parks they could have visited together!
Anyway, class today, where we heard fine presentations on public relations and advertising. We’ll go visit our friends over at Intermark Group on Wednesday. The rest of today was spent making recruiting phone calls and doing various other things which will no doubt yield small results in big matters.
So I’ll just pass the time with various links I’ve been hoarding with some of the lesser dwarves and sinus symptoms these last few days.
One of my students shared this one, and it is awesome. 8 New Punctuation Marks We Desperately Need. These include the sinceroid and sarcastises, which I would use every day.
Incidentally, punctuation or grammar humor is always welcome from a student. Makes us think our passion for this stuff is contagious.
A standard or goal – Ask yourself, “What would good look like?” For example, what would good GDP growth look like?
Historical numbers – Is there a golden period to which current numbers can be compared? Perhaps in the economy that might be the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Portion of whole – For example, at the time of the Million Man March in 1995, a turnout of 1 million black men would have represented 1/12th of all the black men in the country at the time.
Other places – How do other similar towns or companies compare?
The National Archives is sitting on massive amounts of information — from specs for NASA projects to geological surveys to letters from presidents. But there’s a problem: “These records are held hostage,” said Bill Mayer, executive for research services for the National Archives and Records Administration.
“Hostage” might be a strong word for a organization responsible for 4.5 million cubic feet of physical documents and more than 500 terabytes of data, most which can be accessed online or by walking into one of their facilities around the country. But the challenge, Mayer explains, is making NARA’s vast stockpile more open and more discoverable. “They’re held hostage in a number of centers around the country — they’re held hostage by format,” Mayer said.
Fascinating stuff, but I’m glad that’s someone else’s challenge.
Soon after the photo’s publication, a story began to percolate that Rosenthal had staged the famous scene, that he had posed the men just so. The story followed Rosenthal to his death in 2006. It is whispered in various forms to this day.
Hatch can set you straight on this, just as he has been setting people straight for nearly 70 years.
Hatch enlisted in the Marines in 1939 and worked his way into its photographic unit. In late 1943, some 15 months before Iwo Jima, Hatch had waded ashore with the American invaders at Tarawa, carrying a hand-cranked 16mm camera.
[…]
Hatch came in with the first wave at Iwo Jima, a battle that killed nearly 6,000 Marines.
From that day to this one, he insists there was nothing posed about the flag photo. Though the events occurred a lifetime ago, Hatch speaks about them as if they were fresh in his memory. Hatch can swear like, well, a Marine, and he brooks no argument about what happened that day and thereafter.
The photographs taken by masters such as Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner have done much for the public’s perception of the Civil War. But all of their work is in black and white. The battlefield of Gettysburg is remembered as a shade of grey and the soldiers as ghostly daguerreotype images. Photography was in its infancy during the time and colorizing photographs was rare and often lacked the detail of modern imagery.
John C. Guntzelman is changing that.
Not quite right, but gripping, spooky stuff. There are four pictures there for you to see.
And that’s all for today, but there will be more for you to see here tomorrow. Do come back.
