The Yankee came to campus today. I’d planned to give an extra credit quiz in my writing and editing class and she asked if she could do it. I’ve been telling my students how strict a teacher she was and today introduced them to Dr. Smith.
She picked out a bunch of spelling words from their list. The first three were easy, “See, I’m not so bad” and then she started giving them much more challenging words.
At the end of it all they decided they liked her quizzes more than mine.
That’s only because they know who’s grading them.
Speaking of the JMC department, check out the new promotional video:
I didn’t have anything to do with making that — the office of communication created that — so I can safely brag about it. Looks slick.
We visited Surin West for Thai tonight, which we haven’t been able to do in quite some time. It was a cold night and a big helping of chicken noodle bowl would have been wonderful, but that is only a lunch item. They will not make it in the evening for some reason. I’m guessing it has something to do with how they have to age the sprouts.
So I found a new dish: the pad woon sen. Sometimes you just have to grin, cringe and go with what the helpful waiter suggests. He did not disappoint tonight.
Tonight, the students are working on their last paper of the semester. I am grading. Always, always grading. Started this morning grading press releases. I’ll end the day grading broadcast scripts.
At least the stacks of papers are growing more manageable.
Just for fun, ABC 33/40’s Brenda Ladun, who is all kinds of awesome, struggled through this little story the other night:
Having not been on my bike in a few days I set out for a 45 mile ride today. And I realized, somewhere around mile 15, the purpose of this activity: This is an exercise with a primary purpose of allowing a far-off part of the body to explain unique pains to the central nervous system.
I do like it. And though they should arrive earlier and stay longer, the endorphins that kicked in at mile 36 were glorious.
There is an easy five mile route near home and, for a moment, I considered hanging on to make a nice round number. But I realized I was mostly freewheeling from mile 40 on. I’m blaming the red lights.
Grading today. I’m going to say this, and almost exclusively this, for the better part of the next week. May as well get used to it.
This is a part of that roof project I wrote about earlier this week.
They’ve roped off two-thirds of the front of the University Center, to the left, for safety purposes. To the right of that is this crane. Behind the crane, and obstructed from view here, is a sidewalk that leads to a small dining courtyard and to the University Center Annex.
So that area to the left of this picture has security tape. They let me walk right through those arches in the background, right under that load of — I don’t know what they are lifting, but let’s call it steaming hot tar — as they were moving into onto that section of the roof.
I half-jogged, for safety, always with an eye on that big sled of steaming hot tar. Or cotton balls, or whatever it was.
Pedaled 15 miles today. I’m so far behind I’m backtracking on the bike. The next few weeks should be a lot of fun on my legs as I try to catch back up. The good news is that one of the hills in town that vexes me is starting to crack. Oh it still killed me today, but I am developing a strategy on it. I’m going to conquer it. Soon.
I say that in the hopes that you will think of it as some ominous peak that is forever covered in low clouds. It feels like it when I try to ride over it. One day I measured it on the map. That was disappointing. And by disappointing I mean I am not a very good rider.
That’s OK, though. It is Friday. I grilled us steaks. We had a delicious dinner and a nice evening and both pretended to not be sore from our respective rides. All is right in the world.
Yes, I realize all of the weekly features did not return after the holiday. I only noticed yesterday. Next week they’ll be back, I promise.
He was president of Samford University, some 143 years ago, two campuses and one name ago, when the place was still known as Howard College. The statue, seven feet tall and tipping the scales at a metric tonne, was delivered to Samford two years ago after a long tour in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol.
He was replaced there by Helen Keller, and so now he’s back on campus. Not that he’d know this place. Birmingham wasn’t even a town then.
Curry, was a Mexican War veteran, Alabama lawyer and member of the state legislature, the U.S. Congress, the Confederate Congress and an officer in the Confederate Army. Later he would become a Baptist preacher.
He was also a Horace Mann universal education disciple. Booker T. Washington proclaimed “There was no man in the country more deeply interested in the higher welfare of the Negro than Dr. Curry.”
Curry was appointed president of Howard College in 1865, where he served for three years. Later he was an ambassador to Spain.
The sculpture had been stained by tobacco smoke and marked by generations of U.S. Capitol visitors with pens, proving people are stupid. But he was cleaned for his return to Samford, where he is on display in the Beeson University Center. He has a (presumably) unauthorized and sadly dormant Twitter account. And, now, is wearing what is presumably a university sanctioned Christmas hat.
Had a nice conversation with the fiancee of a former student today. (She is designing at Oxmoor House here in town.) He is a storyteller. Check out some of his recent work.
Among other things, he’s also working as a research assistant on the first authorized biography on Jerry Lee Lewis. Those will be interesting interviews.
That would be the tale you told at every gathering, if it happened to you. It was just another day in Jerry Lee’s world.
Just another fine day on campus for me as well. I taught about broadcast writing today, and focused on radio scripts. We’ll do television next week.
So I did the spiel, told some of my own war stories and showed written examples. We talked about the active voice and visual structure and actualities.
I gave them two stories from the paper to re-write as an exercise. “This one,” I said, “is probably a 30 second story. This one is probably 45 or 50 seconds. Write them out and read and time them.”
I wrote a version of the longer story. It was 42 seconds.
It has been almost eight years, but I’ve still got that clock in my head.
He sees you when you’re sleeping.
He knows when you’re awake.
He knows when you’ve been bad or good
so shop the endcap for goodness sake.
Those are foam stickers, Santas, presents, stockings and trees. They have the thin white peel-back paper and will stick pleasingly onto some clean surface for exactly four days, three if there is any curvature of the stuck upon surface, 36 hours if you do it more than a week before Christmas.
There’s something about that Santa Claus’ face that is unnerving. How can he see me? How can he knows? His eyes are closed. And yet he still has that wan smile. Maybe it is the economy. The strain of it all is probably getting to him too. Like in this story:
The result is a Christmas season in which Santas — including the 115 of them in this year’s graduating class of the Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School — must learn to swiftly size up families’ financial circumstances, gently scale back children’s Christmas gift requests and even how to answer the wish some say they have been hearing with more frequency — “Can you bring my parent a job?”
Santas here tell of children who appear on their laps with lists that include the latest, most expensive toys and their parents, standing off to the side, stealthily but imploringly shaking their heads no. On the flip side, some, like Fred Honerkamp, have been visited by children whose expectations seem to have sunk to match the gloom; not long ago, a boy asked him for only one item — a pair of sneakers that actually fit.
“In the end, Santas have to be sure to never promise anything,” said Mr. Honerkamp, an alumnus of the school who also lectures here. He has devised his own tale about a wayward elf and slowed toy production at the North Pole for children who are requesting a gift clearly beyond their family’s price range. “It’s hard to watch sometimes because the children are like little barometers, mirrors on what the country has been through.”
And if that story doesn’t tug on your heartstrings, I present to you the Press-Register’s Neediest Families, like the Colemans:
The 33-year-old Prichard native says that it takes a lot to keep them smiling. And even as she battles sickle cell anemia and struggles to support Ashley, 7, and Michael, 14, she believes that with a few key breaks, her household will come out OK.
Cooking, for example, is an issue since Coleman has only a microwave and hot plate, but no regular stove.
In June, 51-year-old Norman Hodges saw a doctor for what he thought was a pulled muscle. Testing revealed lung cancer.
The five months that followed were filled with chemotherapy and radiation treatments, sudden paralysis, long hospital stays and severe complications from infection. The father of two passed away at home on Nov. 2.
It’s not even December yet, and those stories just grow more and more heart-rending. I read them all when I worked at al.com. I’ve read them all every year since.
The building in which I work, the best I know, is now 54 years old.
Not much has changed over the years. This shot was from last fall:
There’s probably no way of knowing how many roofs have been on the building in those decades, but there’s no getting around the need to fix at least portions of it now.
The layout is a bit unusual. As the building stretches back out of the frame there are second-floor wings on both sides. Those roofs are flat, which does not promote drainage. And water freezes nicely on it too, as you might have noticed if you were on the site last February:
My office, on the third floor, commands a view of the second-floor wing roof on one side. Walking to the stairs on the front end of the building shows the other side, where the leaks are.
Today they’ve been destroying the old roof coating, which appeared to be a tar-based material. There’s been precisely rhythmic hammering — you could gesture, like a conductor, and keep perfect time with the worker — and some sort of mechanized tool. If anyone on that side of the building got any work done this morning you should be impressed.
But we worked anyway.
Later. The promotional sticker on the CD case calls it the “greatest Muppets soundtrack ever.” Track 11 is “We Built This City,” so I doubt that claim.
To your everlasting amusement, however, the Muppets Barbershop Quartet covers “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
You should be singing that for a day or two. You’re welcome.
