Cards and letters in the mail — with Charlton Heston stamps, mind you. Old newspapers recycled. The newsroom is clean(er). My office is clean(er). Next week’s student work schedule has been set. Locks have been changed. Some things have been graded. It was a productive day.
And, why yes, I would like a piece of pie, good sir.
This was at the department picnic, which is now held indoors after a few blistering thunderstorms in previous years. This should have been held last week — also indoors, but there was enough bad weather to close campus, and so here we are, dining in a classroom. Barbecue. Pie. And we’re giving out awards and scholarships and honors to students who are among the highest GPAs on campus. We’re presenting items to people who are student-leaders and acknowledging the honors they’ve been getting all year.
There is a program and about two dozen of the names inside of it are people I’ve had in class or worked with on some media project or another. All of that just means I’m lucky to work with talented young people.
And, at the end of the year, I get pie. And more grading.
But there wasn’t room for everyone. The volunteer firefighters, led by Mary’s husband, Fire Chief Jesse Rager, let local residents use the safe room while they hunkered down beneath the fire engines parked in bays inside the cinder-block station on U.S. Highway 72 in western Limestone County.
Chief Rager, on his way from work in Huntsville, was attempting to reach the station but didn’t arrive before the violent EF3 tornado struck not long before 5 p.m. It touched down at Bay Hill Marina and cut a path up the highway, killing two people, downing at least 100 utility poles and cutting power to 16,000 residents, overturning and smashing dozens of mobile homes and ripping roofs from others.
Jesse Rager said as many as a dozen people sought refuge beneath fire trucks.
“We had 10 or 12 people, some crew members, some members of the public, who took shelter under trucks,” he said. As they huddled beneath the engines, firefighters, including Davy and Dawn Hill whose house next door to the department was damaged, could hear the station roof being lifted and set back down. Two metal bay doors were bowed and a fluorescent light fixture was torn from the ceiling.
When the storm had passed, firefighters could see light in places where they believed the roof was separated from the building.
Odierno said the cutbacks would cause a “significant” level of risk and force the services to assume any conflict would be short-lived and backed by allied support.
“If any of those assumptions are wrong, then our risk goes much higher than it is today,” Odierno said. “And so I think we’re on a dangerous path if we have to go to full sequestration, in our ability to what I consider to do is protect our national security interests.”
“We’re headed down the road to decimating our armed forces, aren’t we?” Shelby asked.
“I think it’s going to be difficult,” Odierno replied.
That story touches on multiple campaigns and missile defense. Let’s talk about carriers and the navy, though.
He told officers that he was pedaling north on Narcoossee Road in a bicycle lane about 7:35 a.m. when a police car turned right at Dowden Road and hit him. The car’s turn signal was not on, he told investigators.
Two other drivers said they saw the police car hit the bicyclist, then take off. One of the drivers said the cruiser left the scene at “a fast rate of speed,” the report states. The other said the police car’s turn signal was not on.
(Days later update: They have two witnesses and all manner of ways to ascertain the whereabouts and possible routes of police officers, yet there seems to be no indication that Orlando authorities have figured this out, which is mystifying.)
A train derailed in Virginia. There is compelling drone footage. I need a drone.
The very definition of incongruity: a pink Yellow Cab.
I’ve been wondering about this since the last breast cancer awareness month. Is there a more successful awareness campaign in the western world? You’d be hard pressed to find one that has enjoyed greater reach or more significant corporate partnerships in the last few years.
Things to read … because reading always brings about successful partnerships.
I just happened to walk outside the office this morning as the sun hit it just right. The little errand I was running was minor, in the scheme of things, but it worked out nicely, don’t you agree?
Had a five mile run this evening. I find it interesting how this is sometimes easier than others. I am bemused when I am not sure which is which.
I do not know what is happening.
Things to read … and the headlines should do the trick.
This is a part of the Louisiana Supreme Court, which sits in Judge Fred Cassibry Square.
The square is more interesting, as it is named after Fred James Cassibry, who served as a judge for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana from 1966 until 1987. The Mississippi native attended Tulane during World War II and was a star athlete there before law school. He cruised on a destroyer in the Pacific during the war. When he came home he got a job with the NLRB and then created a private law practice. He served as a city councilman in the 1950s. His obit says:
With little support from his colleagues, Mr. Cassibry fought Morrison for an investigation of the scandal-ridden Police Department, which was later found to have an organized system of payoffs from illegal lottery operators, horse-racing bookies and houses of prostitution.
In a recent interview, Mr. Cassibry recalled how he was criticized at the time for discussing what he called the police chief’s “intimate relationship” with whorehouse madams. “He sued me,” Mr. Cassibry said. “But when I called him for a deposition, he dropped the suit.”
He was a district judge, too:
After he was elected to a Civil District Court judgeship in 1960, Mr. Cassibry continued to make waves, warning lawyers who tried to talk with him about cases they had in his court. “When they called me, I told them if they mentioned the name of the suit, I was going to go over and beat hell out of them,” he said. “They stopped calling.”
President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Cassibry to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. He sat there from 1966 until 1987. He returned to private practice and was appointed to the Louisiana gaming commission “where his outspoken style saw him clash repeatedly with the rising gaming interests.
Given what you’ve already learned about him from those three paragraphs of his obituary, what do you think has to happen for people to make note of your outspoken style in Louisiana?
The historic marker on the square reads:
Fred J. Cassibry (1918-1996), U.S. Navy WWII veteran, served on the New Orleans City Council, Orleans Civil District Court, U.S. District Court, E.D. La., and the Louisiana Economic Development and Gaming Corporation. Throughout his 40 years of public life, Judge Cassibry personified the definition of a dedicated public official. He never forgot he was a servant of the people. Square dedicated by 1999 La. Acts 708.
