Three years ago today we started this adventure:
And of our adventures — we went to Europe for our honeymoon, for example — I’ve always felt the small ones were the best of all.
Love ya, Ren.
Wednesday
13
Jun 12
The newspapers cover themselves
The job cuts started at Advance newspapers in Alabama and Louisiana yesterday. This is all the beginning of the creation of two new companies in each state with a more digital focus. The future is here, and that future involves some job cuts. Here is the front page of each of the four papers most directly impacted.
Each image is linked to the story, so feel free to click through for the rest of their coverage.
6
Jun 12
Travel day
Heading home today. On the one hand it is amazing that you can travel across something like 1,000 miles and nine states in an evening. On the other hand it is amazing that it takes the better part of a day to get home.
Also, I got my first freedom rub today. I passed the time humming Lee Greenwood. Not sure the security guard federal agent got the joke.
We had lunch at Overton’s, where you can get four fried shrimp on a bun for $4.75.
The sunny, stormy view:
And now he’s playing coy:
But, really, they are after your french fries:
Flying out of White Plains:
I have the best travel companion:
She just reads and reads:
Sunset over … let’s call it Tennessee:
On the descent into Atlanta:
We got home around 11 p.m.
30
May 12
A video to watch and links to read
I love this road. Good quality asphalt, a bike lane basically the entire way from beginning to end. It is quiet because the business of this road is down near the other end. Up here, for the time being at least, it is still undeveloped. It is the victory lap of some of my routes. A fair amount of it is downhill.
I did an easy 20-miler this evening. I’m looking forward to longer rides, which will start back next week.
And if you need a bit of inspiration for, well, just about anything, here’s a video destined to go big. Only 250,000 views so far, but that will change. Tune out the music, and wade through the first two-and-a-half minutes. The reward comes soon after that:
Things to read: Local boy is a good speller. Samford and UAB baseball both make the NCAA regionals. Auburn and Alabama did not.
New York tries to cut down on soft drinks:
New York City plans to enact a far-reaching ban on the sale of large sodas and other sugary drinks at restaurants, movie theaters and street carts, in the most ambitious effort yet by the Bloomberg administration to combat rising obesity.
The proposed ban would affect virtually the entire menu of popular sugary drinks found in delis, fast-food franchises and even sports arenas, from energy drinks to pre-sweetened iced teas. The sale of any cup or bottle of sweetened drink larger than 16 fluid ounces — about the size of a medium coffee, and smaller than a common soda bottle — would be prohibited under the first-in-the-nation plan, which could take effect as soon as next March.
That’s a sticky slope, friends.
Two years after the oil spill, the fishing is bad down on the Gulf:
The long-term prognosis for the Gulf’s health remains uncertain.
Recent studies have found higher numbers of sick fish close to where BP’s well blew out and genome studies of bait fish in Barataria have identified abnormalities. Meanwhile, vast areas of the cold and dark Gulf seafloor are oiled, scientists say.
And many fishermen are convinced something’s amiss.
[…]
“We was there to work, but couldn’t,” said Lawrence Salvato, 49, as he stopped for lunch on a dock where he moors a shrimp skiff he runs his wife, Lisa. “Usually people are excited and they can’t wait to get out there. This year, there’s no real incentive.”
He said he made about $10,000 in seafood sales last year compared to $75,000 in 2009. He said his family made do with a $40,000 interim payment they got from BP. Fishermen who haven’t settled legally yet with BP over damages continue to survive on periodic payments from a $20 billion trust fund set up by BP.
“We’re afraid,” Salvato said. “A lot of people are getting out of fishing. They’re afraid.”
Meanwhile, up in Chicago:
“We are no longer a newspaper company,” Sun-Times Media Holdings LLC Editor-in-chief Jim Kirk said in a memo to staff. “We are a technology company that happens to publish a newspaper. We deliver content. And we will deliver content on many platforms and in ways that we haven’t yet fully considered.”
The times, they have already changed.
