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Samford

journalism / links / music / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
27
Sep 11

Four more minutes of the riff, please

My office is next door to the campus radio station. My desk is oriented in such a way that there is only the one wall between their primary studio and my computer. They play smooth jazz and broadcast Samford’s sports and news programming. Occasionally, when my office is quiet and they are inspired, I can hear their broadcast, or even the people inside laughing.

This evening, I heard:

In class today we discussed more language and grammar. You haven’t embraced your day without a hearty conversation about the precise and proper placement of commas.

That’s the circle of life, though I’m sure the students would disagree.

It is, in part, a class on copy editing, and so I think often of John E. McIntyre’s speech:

This is not a gut course. Writing is difficult enough to do. It does not come to us as naturally as speech, and we have to spend years learning it. Editing is even harder. We can write intuitively, by ear, but we have to edit analytically.

Before we even get to the analytical aspect, we will have to do some work on grammar and usage, because if you are like most of the five hundred students who have preceded you here, you will be shaky on some of the fundamentals. You will have to learn some things that you ought to have been taught, and you will have to unlearn some things that you ought not to have been taught.

I should also caution you from the outset that this course is appallingly dull. A student from last term complained in the course evaluation that “he just did the same thing over and over day after day.” So will you. Editing must be done word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and we will go over texts in class, word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. No one will hear you if you scream.

I’m going to turn my back for a minute so that anyone who wants to bolt can.

Now, if you are willing to stay—and work—I can show you how it is done.

Want a heat-seeking ground-to-air missile? Libya is the place for you, apparently. Thousands have gone missing from unguarded ammo dumps and now the chase is on to try to recover, or buy them back.

If this sounds familiar, it is. The Americans had to buy back missiles from the mujahideen after the Soviet Union’s adventures in Afghanistan. After having spent between $3 to $20 billion in outfitting the Afghanis, they had to go back and try to buy back the armaments, reportedly for as much to $100,000 a piece. But that’s just the monetary perspective. The security concerns are astounding.

Sen. Barbara Boxer calls it a nightmare. Have a nice day with these little factoids, just one more note that causes one to wonder why we got involved in Libya and, more to the point, if we had to, why didn’t we do it right?

Democracy? Not that necessary:

“I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover … I really hope that someone can agree with me on that. You want people who don’t worry about the next election.”

Says the governor of North Carolina.

One of Gov. Bev Perdue’s staffers would later say she was speaking in hyperbole, which is code for “I wish my boss would shut up.”

Oh, look, newsobserver.com have posted an mp3 of the governor’s speech, so you can figure out her tone.

If you play it backward she’s clearly singing along with the Temptations.

Monday / Samford — Comments Off
26
Sep 11

A knot on my self esteem

Over the weekend I spent a little time in the yard. The lawn needed attention. Across the way a neighbor was using a high tech trimmer on various parts of his own lawn. It looked like a miniature floor wading machine, his trimmer, and he was pushing it around that way too. I was sure he was sending me a message.

So I set out to trim my own driveway and to remove a small amount of green clutter on the curb. I do not have a fancy trimmer, but I made do, grabbing the weedy green stuff and chop at it with the business end of a garden spade. This is all very effective, until I misjudged my distance from the mailbox and stood up right into the bottom of the thing. Didn’t hit it very hard, but it hurt anyway. And now I have a nice just off-center knot on my head.

Before the painful part of the pain had even subsided I thought: I should Google that. What causes a knot? Aside from the trauma, of course.

Don’t look this up.

The first thing I found was on a forum. Someone’s question was:

I’ve got a knot on my forehead (about the size of a quarter) that’s been there for almost a year. I think I got it because I worked in a kitchen at a camp last summer and I was always in a hurry (because my boss was the screaming kind and you had to be fast), so consequently, I would get bruises and bumps rather often. I’m pretty sure it’s from that. However, I am curious to see if anyone has ever had a regular knot that lasted a year long. I’ve never had one that long until now.

It’s not larger than it was or colored or anything. It’s just a slightly raised (but not really noticeable – I’ve only had one person ask me about it) surface on my forehead that’s been the same size since I first noticed it a year ago. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t move or anything wierd like that. Is this a normal thing, for a knot to last this long? Will it go away? Could it be cancerous? I don’t think it would be, but then again, I’m not an expert and I don’t know what cancer looks like.

The person who replied, who has more than 3,800 posts on that particular forum over almost seven years, God bless him, wrote a dismissive reply. If it isn’t bothering you, don’t worry about it.

He has a signature file on the forum, and it is a list of his medical condition and the medication he’s using. He may not be an expert on minor cranial accidents, but he’s qualified for a lot of other things.

And then the Mayo Clinic, who tells us not to be concerned if the little one gets a knot in a soccer game. (As a young soccer player that’s a relief, these many years later). The M.D. writes:

Head trauma resulting from play or sporting events is a common concern for parents, but few bumps on the head of this nature result in serious injury.

The forehead and scalp have an abundant blood supply and injury to these areas often results in bleeding under the skin. When the bleeding is restricted to one area, it causes bruising and swelling. Doctors refer to this as a hematoma.

Turns out I have a nice little scratch, too. Didn’t bleed, though, and I didn’t have any emergency room-type symptoms.

What I do have is a phrenologist’s dream (where you will find the clever explanation for this post’s witty title) and a general distaste for browsing medical sites. You can catch anything in those subdirectories.

About 15 miles on the bike, where I managed to catch the flugelbinder of my shoelace in the chain rings. This happened on a relatively flat spot, and I was able to quickly hope off. I stood there for a moment, trying to figure out how to free myself. A simple tug wouldn’t do the trick. So I had to take my shoe off, while straddling the bike. This requires re-thinking your normal shoe removal procedure and a few stupid looking hops. Standing in my sock, I managed to free the shoe.

I’ve learned to not tempt fate more than once per bike ride, so that experience was enough to call it a day. But, still, that’s 15 miles before breakfast.

And after breakfast I graded things. After lunch I wrote a lecture and did research.

Later I went to the DMV. Time for one of the new annual sticker. One person in line in front of me in a satellite office. There was one guy in front of me, leaving just enough time to read every sign in the place. “No cell phones. Do not put your child on the counter, for the childs (sic) safety. No talking, thinking, looking bored or frustrated at the experience. Hey, it could be worse, bub, you could be at the post office. We accept credit cards, and there will be an additional charge.”

At least the line moves fast. The woman behind the counter, and a big sheet of glass, was humorless. I wrote a check, because why pay for the convenience of using my convenient strip of plastic when I can scribble out four lines of ink from their pen? Those taxes on that little sticker — this may be the most expensive one square inch of property I own — have to pay for something, right?

She also intended that I read her mind and just sign the form already. I do this once a year, lady, I forget what is supposed to be signed. Also, there was recently a head injury.

adventures / Auburn / cycling / Friday / iPhone / photo / Samford — Comments Off
23
Sep 11

Clever and witty title

Trying something new for my bike rides. Since we live on the hilliest part of the coastal plains (despite being 180 miles from the coast and about 120 miles from the nearest mountain foothills) you can’t leave the house without pedaling up and down something.

Since I’ve noticed it takes six or eight miles for my legs to warm up, and since the hills here hurt when my legs aren’t ready, and since I’m not a very good cyclist anyway, I’m looking for somewhere flat to start.

Problem: there’s nowhere flat to start.

I have found a two-and-a-half mile loop with just two hills on it. So I’m riding that a few times before the actual ride begins. Those five miles make one of our standard routes 31 miles, which I can do without too much trouble, despite the hills. (I’m a wimp.)

All of this to say, if you have a good topographical map you can share, I’d love to borrow it for a while.

Productive day today. Did a bit of research, fired off the many important emails. Read a lot and booked hotel rooms for an upcoming conference.

The conference is in February, but it is one of those college towns where there’s not much there besides mountains and woods. The locals told us to book early, because if you aren’t in one of the two establishments in town you’re staying at a tavern 13 miles out of town. After that you’re looking at 20 and 30 mile commutes from Super 8s.

So I called the local Hampton Inn and asked for their policies and their availability for hotel rooms in February. (And felt an immediate sympathy for people working the phones at hotels. Oh the questions they must hear, over and over again.) They had something like 10 rooms left. In addition to this conference which will bring several hundred undergrads, there’s also softball, equestrian and men’s and women’s basketball in that tiny town that weekend.

Glad I booked early.

Did an interview today. I’m accustomed to conducting the interviews, but today I was the subject of one. The experience is a different one. This is in response to an idea that a lot of people had and the subsequent little essay I wrote about Unrolling Toomer’s a few weeks ago. It got re-printed on The War Eagle Reader
and picked up in one of the fan forums, too. Online this idea has taken on a life of its own. In practice it is growing a little more slowly. But there’s another interview to be done this weekend, too. So maybe we’re on to something.

So, naturally, I treated the interview like a stand-up, saying everything I could to one open-ended question. Only took two takes, but it worked out well. We’ll see the finished product next week.

Waiting for pizza.

Mellow Mushroom is the best pizza place in town, and one of the busiest places in town. I wonder how things would go if they had a second pizza oven. Maybe folks wouldn’t have to wait an hour for a table, and then the better part of another one waiting on the food.

Dining out on a Friday before a home game is tough. Life is hard, right?

Samford / Wednesday — Comments Off
21
Sep 11

Not a lot, just enough

A day of reading, writing and grading. The writing and the grading seemed to dominate.

I also worked on a lecture for class.

There were a few meetings, conversations with colleagues, drafting a student into some social media work, critiquing the newspaper, making sure the Crimson’s site looked respectable. I like the new design, and played around in the guts of it for a while today.

The only other things that happened were a morning trip to the gym — I lifted weights, brah. There was a marginally unhealthy lunch, because I’d lifted weights. I followed that up with a working dinner that a rabbit would find delicious.

A full day in four paragraphs. That’s not disconcerting at all.

I wrote that thinking “That is disconcerting, actually.” The more I think of it, though, I’m OK with that. Paragraphs are ideas and actions. Make them worthwhile, right?

iPhone / journalism / photo / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
20
Sep 11

Do not be dissuaded by the gray atmosphere

Rain today.

But it is like summer isn’t even trying anymore. Summer knows this is her last official week, and is conceding the point. The rain was just a sprinkle, a pat dropping of precipitation. There was nothing dramatic about it. It was probably even cold.

So maybe summer is slinking off. Maybe that will make way for an actual season of autumn this year. Maybe there’ll be months of the stuff, instead of days. Maybe we’ll grow weary of crispy mornings, sharp colors and the fragrant smells of the grill and evening fires. Maybe the crickets and the katydids will stick around, and the lightning bugs, too, but the mosquitos will be pushed off in an evening breeze.

It’s a pipe dream, but a good one. Summers are lovely and long. It will be mid or late October before the seasonal average high dips below 75. There may be troughs and cold fronts and odd chills in there, but there will also be the spikes. Beyond a certain point temperatures flirting with 90 are a bit demoralizing. That point is October 17th.

So we’ll see how that goes this year.

Class today. Students working on stories, some of them are quite strong. All have promise. Fifteen kids given one assignment and there are probably nine different angles they’ve explored. These can be interesting times in the development of young student-journalists.

Some of those stories will possibly be in The Samford Crimson sometime soon. That bunch of student-journalists, a bit older than those in today’s class, are working on their latest issue now. All of this is great fun.

Like sports teams, each year’s staff has their own personality. This year the Crimson has more guys on the editorial staff. There’s more talk of fantasy football teams than sorority functions. They all work hard, though, each staff going late into the night, and early into the next morning at the beginning of the year.

So far this year’s new staff has finished their paper at 5:30 a.m., just an hour before it went to press, and then 3:30 a.m. last week. At least I think that was the time last week. I find it hard to remember now. I can’t imagine why.