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Thursday

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9
Nov 17

The beautiful trouble of autumn, Part V

Two weeks ago I wrote:

It seems like that time of year where you try to catalog the changing of the leaves, because they’re pretty, but because you want them to stay.

So we’re filling the week here with autumn, and some of the pretty scenes on the IU campus. This is around the Mighty Jordan River, in Dunn Meadow.

It’s a creek:

Below the topsoil is limestone, non-draining, flood-prone limestone. When it sprinkles hard, the levels rise. When it rains, water is coming over the banks.That’s when it is mighty. On calmer days, it reminds one of its original name: Spanker’s Branch.

IU / photo / television / Thursday — Comments Off
2
Nov 17

The wig that split

Well, this is just about the oddest thing you can expect on a one-block walk between the parking deck and the office:

This evening we were shooting sports shows. It is that time of year when we’re still talking about college football, the start of the wrestling season, the beginning of basketball, the men’s soccer team’s postseason run and more. Lydia and Austin are holding it all down:

After the night in the studio, I walked back by that hydrant. It seemed weird, but not really weird, the wig was gone when I walked back by.

Who picks up that wig? Was it the original owner? Why did they leave it to start with? Who needed a new wig, and happened upon this one? What if they didn’t have the right complexion?

Indiana / IU / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
26
Oct 17

The beautiful trouble of autumn

It seems like that time of year where you try to catalog the changing of the leaves, because they’re pretty, but because you want them to stay. So we’ll do that. Here are a few pictures from campus today:

You can never really capture and preserve and share autumn. That’s the trouble, but it doesn’t keep us from trying. And I’ll keep trying.

IU / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
19
Oct 17

Let’s get autumnal

It is suddenly starting to feel like fall around here. You can even sense it indoors, in the studio. Probably not, not really anyway. Studios exist in their own time without time. We have a half dozen windows in that studio, but three of them face a building and you have to be standing in one section of the room to see the real outdoors from the other three windows. Studios aren’t hermetically perfect, but we’d like it more if they were. You can feel the fall, because your mind has been processing all of the sensory perceptions and that’s not the easiest thing to dismiss. So you can be in a studio and think it is autumn, because that’s what you saw and smelled and felt before you walked into the building. But in here, the season is always: studio.

Up in the offices, definitely:

In the parking deck, sure:

And throughout the evening, it is becoming clear, the seasons are changing:

memories / photo / Southern / Thursday — Comments Off
12
Oct 17

It’s a Southern thing

I was at the IGA, which is smaller and less clean and more homely and more like home than the ridiculous Kroger — which is too large and not at all convenient and full of thoughtful staff members. You can get some things at the IGA that you can’t get at Kroger. Things from home. And sometimes that’s important. It is a few extra miles away, but for a few things, it is worth it. And I’d rather spend 15 more minutes in the car than 10 minutes in the Kroger.

This is a sophisticated mathematical formula, the IGA ratio. I’m honing in on the proper number, but it is at least 33 percent.

Anyway, I was talking with a lady in the checkout line and it turns out that she had just discovered the joys of Moon Pies. See? Things from home. I told her to pair it with an RC Cola. I hope she takes me up on it.

Sadly, grocery store checkout lines being what they are, I’ll probably never see that lady again, which is a shame. I’d like to know if she remembers that conversation at a place and time when she can get the delicious pride of Chattanooga, Tennessee and the tasty pride of Columbus, Georgia and pair them together. I’d like to know if she takes the advice of a stranger, who might have just put a little more southern in his tone when he talked about it. And I wonder what she might think of the experience.

It’s a Southern thing. Try it.

(RC Cola was owned by Snapple, but was acquired by Cadbury in 2000. So now the pride of Columbus, Georgia is now one small part of a UK portfolio. Cadbury’s parent company is Mondelez International, which is a multinational based in Chicago, which is closer to that particular IGA than Columbus, by about five hours.)