I bought some new lights. I wanted to backlight some books. The lights arrived Monday, hurled onto the porch from the delivery man’s truck-mounted trebuchet, for he feared my ice labyrinth (a yard of ice and snow, and a driveway still buried until yesterday.

Last night, I finally had a chance to open them. Two small LED lamps connected to one power cable. Lots of pretty colors. Looked great on the promotional website. The video and the inexpensive price sold me.

I opened the box, found the two lights and four different mounts. I also found this booklet.

And, look, light booklet copywriter, I’m glad you have that job. Those gigs aren’t easy to come by, but you should be proud of the work you did throughout. This is important, though: we’re not going on a journey. You’re going to backlight some books.

I spent some time sliding them between the bookcase that holds the Gloms and the wall. It didn’t work quite the way I wanted to. But the lights are fun. You can run them from an app, use standard schemes or develop your own, set a timer, and so on. They’re just the wrong size. But I’ve also got colorful corner laps, slender little things that stand 58 inches tall. So I took apart the frames, slid those behind the Gloms and, ya know, it mostly works. The new lights are now going behind other books. (I have a lot of books, I wonder if I need more lights.) And the look now mostly works! So I have one large bookshelf backlit. I have the top of another backlit. And my old 1930s radio is backlit.

The idea is to make it all the backdrop for video meetings. But as I tinker with the light settings and the exact locations, this could be the beginning of a nice evening setup.

I had an epiphany about the snow today.

I’m going to miss it. We have a sandy soil, but this is just a wet, spongy ground right now. And the grass is, well, brown, as you’d expect.

I found a bowl of candy at the office today. I wonder how long that’ll last. I have two colleagues that have a playful feud about peanut M&Ms and when I saw this, I thought of those guys. One of them is wrong. Peanut M&Ms are just fine. I enjoyed the peanut butter ones today.

It was a nice treat before class. In Rituals and Traditions, we broke the class into groups again. They’ve got group work to do and so group work we began. The group work is now picking up speed. I’m excited to see what they do.

I was also excited to screen this documentary in my Criticism class. I asked them all to jot down the name and impressions they had of all of the people we meet. There’s about eight of them in here.

Then we talked about all of those people. The documentary is about video game addiction. I selected this one because it is a bit shorter, but also because we could do this exercise. We could discuss the different points of view — the guy trying to overcome his problem and help others, his mother, two psychologists, a Facebook executive and a few others — and consider all of the ways that each are talking about the issue.

This could be a media effects conversation, and I pointed that out. We considered the different ways the people came about their ideas in a field of important research that is really only just getting underway. Finally, it is a study in expertise, source credibility, perspective, and authoritative voice.

I was pleased with that. And I was sure to sum it up in the right tone of voice so it sounded, you know, authoritative.

I should have set up some dramatic lighting for precisely that moment in the classroom, too. Maybe next time.

Nope, still not melting. Because it is never going to melt. Oh, they say this weekend. But this weekend will turn to next week. Just wait and see. And while we wait and see, I actually like this one, shut from the hip, but how the light comes in from the side is nice, even if I blew it on the horizon.

I always blow it on the horizon.

You shouldn’t put your horizon right in the middle, but there I was, admiring that light leaking in from the left, and there’s the horizon, right there. But this time it makes sense, see. Because I’m telling two stories in this photograph.

First, the sky, the clouds, and the light. Lovely!

Second, the snow and ice. Which will never melt.

In Rituals and Traditions we talked about fan identity and social identity. Here I make fun of Georgia fans, because they make it easy. We also talked about highly identified fans, and so I used this local TV package to introduce them to Roll Tide Willie, who is a wonderful example.

We also discussed BIRGing and CORFing — basking in reflected glory and cutting off reflected failure — and there are, of course, examples of Willie CORFing. He’s a little over-the-top as an example, but he’s funny and memorable. And, as I said, I know more than a few people like this. Fans are fans, after all.

We’ll talk about a different view of fandom next week. I’m trying to do all of this from the point of view of looking at fans as if we worked for a team, or a league, or an athletic department. A big question is, How do we help maximize the fan experience? From there, I think, this class could become quite rewarding.

In Criticism we watched the excellent documentary “Venus vs.”

It’s a 2013 piece, directed by Ana DuVernay. As she told the story of a tennis player rising to the peak of her powers and changing the sport, she was, herself, on her way to huge successes. It’s a good documentary, and we talked about it for a few minutes near the end of class. What can documentaries teach us? How, and in what ways, should we view documentaries. And how should we think about what we’re seeing?

On Tuesday, we’ll talk about some of the visuals in that documentary. Look at the way those interviews were captured. We’ll talk about media aesthetics. Why were the shots composed as they are? What do those shots say?

What does this shot say?

It says it is never going to melt. And if you think it feels like a rejected shot from Ice Station Zebra, I wouldn’t disagree.

Maybe this weekend. But probably not.