Samford « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Samford

Just a Wednesday

Tulane is here. They’ve taken refuge 250 miles inland so they can continue their last week of preseason preparation without worrying about Hurricane Isaac. They did this a few years ago, too.

We see them around in the hallways and in the cafeteria. These are big guys. I mean, the football players Pat Sullivan brings into Samford these days are large men — one almost accidentally knocked me over with a blind swat of his hand and I’m not a shrimp — but that’s Samford. Tulane is another thing altogether. Every one of their guys are hosses. And that’s only Tulane.

But it is nice to have them here — I don’t know what they are doing with the rest of their day, presumably studying and resting in a hotel somewhere — but they are going about the business of football practice in the morning.

There’s a guy down there, somewhere in that picture, who is calling out the stretches. He sounds exactly like Farmer Fran in Waterboy:

Anyway, a lot of meetings today. We had a lunch meeting with the office of communication and some of the student journalists. It has become an annual tradition, the pros getting to know the students. They talk about what they do, beg the students to call them at all hours of the night rather than get something wrong, and so on. They give them tips and feed them lunch. They, so kindly, offer to let the students copy and paste their press releases.

Later I explain why they won’t ever do that.

There was a meeting with a few of the editors, and then a sales meeting with the new ad managers.

I had to catch up with some faculty and do staff things. Then there was another meeting that didn’t happen, but will take place next week. I’m not sure, but I might have had a meeting about a meeting. And so on.

Dinner at Dreamland with Stephen. It had been so long since I’ve been there that I almost forgot where to make the turns. I ended up in a residential area and rolled down my window, thinking I would sniff my way to the ribs. This was not a good idea.

Naturally we had banana pudding.

Football season is upon us and I’m posting photographs we found last week while sifting through archives in Auburn University’s collection in honor of this most festive time of the year. This is Ralph “Shug” Jordan who was the beloved Auburn coach from 1951 to 1971. The back of the photograph says he’s posing with “a special fan.”

It could be Aubie. He finally came to life during the basketball season in 1979 and Jordan died in the summer of 1980. And the print of Aubie’s coat looks familiar to his original look. So we’ll call it Aubie. That’s Rep. Barry Mask, then.

collarbone / iPhone / journalism / photo / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
28
Aug 12

Back to class

My first class of the semester was this afternoon. This was the sky over the Samford campus later in the evening. We did the syllabus thing, and the let’s-all-get-to-know-one-another thing. This time I just asked them what was the most interesting things they did this some. Some stayed home and worked. A few took road trips. Others did work with their churches. One did a mission in Kenya.

Our students are always doing cool things like that.

Like a mean teacher, I lectured for a while. No time like the present to start in on AP Style, I always say. So we worked through a bit of that. I let them go a few minutes early, first day of classes and all that. It won’t happen often.

They had such bright eyes and took good notes today. They laughed at my jokes.

I promised them a quiz next week. They might laugh a bit less then.

Saw some faculty I haven’t seen in a while. Got to tell my collarbone story one more time. Usually these tales get better with each telling, but this one is good enough. Besides, my shoulder needs all the karma it can get just now.

Missed a meeting with a student because of my class. There will be plenty of meetings with students this week.

Football season is upon us and I’m posting photographs we found last week while sifting through archives in Auburn University’s collection in honor of this most festive time of the year. This is from some undated game. There are tons of photographs in the archives without names and dates. A shame, really. But I love this boater hat.

We were just having a conversation about the Tigers/War Eagles thing. No one wants to admit it, but War Eagles was used as a noun as recently as the 70s around here. I’m pretty sure that is what the rest of this guy’s hat says.

The guy on the left, he’s clearly seen something he didn’t care for on the field. I wonder if he’d remember this game today. That guy’s got some good hair, too. I wonder what he’s coating it in.

Everyone in the stands seemed to well dressed. These were clearly different times.

Auburn / collarbone / football / history / Monday / Samford — Comments Off
27
Aug 12

School is back in session

You write out notes to yourself, little promises on what you’ll say and do and make them think. You rehearse the first class or two. You try, mercy how you try, to get over that painfully awkward business of name and hometown and major. And then you realize you still have to redo this and polish that and so on and on.

I decided to ask what was the most exciting thing about their individual summers. That’s how I’m going to start my first class tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes.

So I did physical therapy this morning, an exceedingly lonely exercise. The ladies that walk me through each individual thing generally leave me alone. They only seem to glance my way when I happen to be doing something wrong, which is good. They are very polite about those corrections, but you know what they are thinking: You will do this right in Hercules’ name!

Last week at some point I sat on a pull down machine backward. You would have thought I’d sacked her groceries wrong.

Everything is small talk because they know for how long everyone will be there. I walked in a short timer. No need to get attached to me. They are all very good and nice people who surely know their jobs. Today I saw one of the gentlemen there adjust his colleague. This happened while I was trapped in a chair doing a stretch that involves rope and pulley and counting and he just crunched the guy on a table that sounded like it was falling apart and I could not look away.

I get a massage and it takes two-thirds of the experience just to unclench. This guy did that like he was slinging a coat over his shoulder. It was almost jaunty.

Horribly, horribly jaunty.

So one of the ladies is beating up my bicep this morning for reasons that weren’t immediately obvious. I’ve complained about it there before, but not today as far as I recall. It seems that everything I complain about — and I try to tell them a different thing each visit, just to keep them hopping — is very standard. My neck is sore, that muscle connects here. My shoulder is sore, there are two muscles that attach right back there. My bicep aches, that is a pain radiating down … and so on. Today she ground it down like I broke in front of line to get tickets to the big concert.

“I know you’re only doing it because you care,” I laughed.

“I’m doing it because it is good for you,” was her immediate response.

Wow. And whoa. I appreciate professional detachment, but I know how to parse words too. And it was not me who dinged your car door. (I park way far away, just so I don’t give these people ammunition. They can hurt me.)

I’m kidding, of course. They are all very kind. I have a few more visits with them and then, hopefully, I won’t take up a spot in their calendar anymore. Also, I’m sneaking extra reps on the weights, because I think I am strong.

So that was the morning. The rest of the day was wrapped up in syllabi and emails and PowerPoint shows and old notes. What worked in that lecture? Which things did not? Can I get all this in an hour and change? This can all go on for a while, but the nice thing is that I’ve taught the class before. It gets better every time.

Oh, and also arranging meetings. I have meetings left and right. And then left again. Remarkably every meeting I’ll have this week will be one you wouldn’t mind attending. That’s how you know you have a great job, I think.

Football season is upon us. And since we went archive diving this weekend I thought I’d add a few photographs from Auburn University’s collection — everything on display peters out around 1983 for some odd reason — in honor of this most festive time of the year. We’ll have one each day. This kid is not me:

There was no name with the photograph, but I still wonder what has become of him. Where is he saying War Eagle from this week?

food / iPhone / journalism / photo / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
21
Aug 12

Photo week – Tuesday

A photo (or two) a day meant to express everything that needs to be said. Don’t over extrapolate or strain yourself making too many inferences. They are just pictures.

Time to get ready for another great school year. I’ve been getting ready — email and strategies and studying up — for some time. But I bought two copies of the newest version of the AP Stylebook today, that somehow made it more real.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town:

journalism / links / Monday / Samford — Comments Off
18
Jun 12

I have nothing for this lovely Monday

Just reading and trying to write today. Nothing exciting happening on my end whatsoever. How’s your Monday? Grand I hope. We all hope that for one another’s Monday, right? Do we worry about such a thing by Friday? We all have a Monday, but I bet we tend to hold Friday afternoon as our own. And we’re not too concerned about your Saturday prospects either. Unless we need your help moving or something. Otherwise we’re too busy thinking of our own Saturday at the pool or the beach or park or wherever the weekend is taking place.

But Mondays, oh we find we can all relate to that.

The misery of Mondays is overrated to me, but I don’t doubt others experience the phenomenon. Because, one day, I might need a little sypathy about that. We’re desperate to know you can relate to ours.

Some stuff I’ve read today: Jeff Jarvis on Disrupting journalism education, too:

Yes, there will still be classes in writing, editing, and reporting — boot camp with beats ramping up to specialization and expertise — and yes, as I said above, there should still be classes and seminars in law, ethics, theory, and judgment. I’m not trying to blow everything up, not yet. I’m trying to find more ways to teach more and make it fit students’ outcomes better. If we make the teaching of tools and use practical experience better, I wonder whether we’ll be able to devote more resources to more study.

What I’m also trying to do is imagine scaling journalism education so that much, or most, of it could be taught to some — no, to many more — people online, including not just undergrad and graduate students but also professionals who obviously need to learn new skills as their industry convulses around them. I want to have the means to bring training in journalism, media skills, and business to the entrepreneurs and hyperlocal, hyperinterest journalists — and technologists — I continue to hope will populate a growing news ecosystem.

Howard Finberg on Journalism education cannot teach its way to the future:

The future of journalism education will be a very different and difficult future, a future that is full of innovation and creative disruption. And, I believe, we will see an evolution and uncoupling between the value of a journalism education and a journalism degree.

When we think about the future, there’s not a single future. The future for a 20-year-old is clearly very different than the future of a 60-year-old. Each will bring a very different perspective.

The future of journalism education is linked to the future of journalism itself. Each is caught within the other’s vortex, both spinning within today’s turmoil of change.

I find I’ve been thinking and talking along these lines for a good while now. Fine piece, though.

A Samford colleague wrote an open letter to the TSA, and the people said “Amen”:

The TSA should not be streamlined. Administrators should not “review screening procedures.” Screeners don’t need additional training. The TSA doesn’t need to be tweaked. It didn’t “go too far” in these specific instances. Its very existence goes too far. The TSA never should have been created in the first place, and it should be abolished now. Immediately. Without hesitation.

The TSA’s existence is an assault on American liberty and simple human dignity, as anyone who has had his or her genitals touched during an “enhanced pat-down” can tell you. Some still say we should be willing to trade off a little bit of liberty in order to get security, but this is a false trade-off. The TSA does not provide security. It provides what security expert Bruce Schneier calls “security theater.” The TSA only exists in order to give people the illusion of safety. Someone in an airport somewhere in the U.S. is being subjected to an unreasonable search by a gloved TSA screener right this minute. The cruel irony is that he or she is being stripped of liberty and dignity and is being made no safer for it.

As security experts John Mueller and Mark Stewart have estimated, the entire Homeland Security Department infrastructure fails on cost-benefit grounds. In order to justify the costs, Homeland Security would have to stop about four and a half attacks on the scale of the failed 2010 Times Square bombing every day.

WSB Radio, the famed White Columns of Atlanta, are doing something really cool with their Facebook page. Like radio or history or both? Scroll to the bottom, starting in 1922, and work your way up.

So, really, how is your Monday?