It seems unnatural to have such pitch-perfect weather just a day after such deadly storms.
Seventeen dead were killed yesterday and last night across four states. Three of the deaths were near the scene of that picture, which is from ABC 33/40 meteorologist James Spann in Autauga County, Alabama this morning. Many more were hurt there. The church is destroyed. (But they are congregating in the morning at the local high school; the human spirit can be indomitable.) Four more people died in rural Washington County.
Tornadoes are curious, scary things. My elementary school was on the top of a hill. Back then, school districts didn’t shut down a day in advance of a storm. The siren howled and we all lined up in the hallways, even in the first or second grade wondering about the usefulness of the head-between-the-knees technique. During one spring storm they told us a tornado skipped up one side of the hill, ramped over the building and down the other side. I don’t recall seeing any damage, but remember that story vividly.
It wouldn’t surprise me. I’ve had friends speak of destroyed front yards and pristine backyards. I’ve watched news reports of babies picked up and placed unharmed in dresser drawers far from home. I saw a report once of a farmer who got caught on his tractor in his field and couldn’t beat the storm back to the barn. He ran off for safety and came back to find his tractor OK, but the gas cap gone, presumably spun open by the swirling winds.
I’ve covered lots of tornadoes. Chased a few, from a safe distance, too. Having lived a great portion of my life in a volatile springtime area the closest we’ve come to being impacted is in donating to those in need. Thirteen years and two weeks ago, in 1998, we adopted an awesome little storm dog. Oak Grove, a community near my home, had been devastated by one of the largest tornadoes ever recorded. Thirty-two were killed. When they went in to clean up they couldn’t tell lot from lot in some places because there was just nothing left. Here’s a brief video from that storm:
Presented our paper today on the media participation hypothesis, which suggests that, as political involvement grows reliant on new media formats and technologies, use of interactive public affairs media will produce more satisfaction and efficacy over time as media become more interactive. The concern with this hypothesis, we argue in the paper is one reflected in current research which struggles with logistical challenges that the Internet presents.
That’s what this paper is about: this doesn’t exactly work, that doesn’t exactly work, we need a model to help with understanding new dynamics, and so on.
There were nodding heads during the presentation, which is always a good sign at these sorts of things.
We had a pizza lunch with two of our friends from Mississippi schools and another from Texas. After more sessions and meetings in the afternoon we had dinner with our colleagues at The Flying Fish.
This place was new in Little Rock when I lived here. (Almost a decade ago!) It is delicious. I went to the Flying Fish because it was one of the few places in a re-developing downtown back then; now Riverwalk is a bustling, thriving area once again, thanks to years of development and the Clinton Library. I was glad to see the place was still around. It is, I believe, the best catfish I eat — and there’s a catfish joint in my family.
And apparently it is a regional chain, so the next time I’m in Memphis it’ll be ribs and fish.
Part of the decor:
Outside they light the building with lamps made of outboard motors.
Anyway, the company was the best part. We had dinner with four exceedingly bright and funny people, two old friends and two of them new. Shame we’ll only see them at conferences, it has been a while since I’ve laughed that much, that hard.
So that’s the day: the presentation, the conference and the food. Tomorrow is the drive back home. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.
We walked into the conference this morning just in time for this session where The Yankee was chairing and I was responding to the papers being presented. The presenters were graduate students, their scholarship quality.
One wrote a piece on the rhetoric of Photovoice, which is a particular photographic methodology. I found myself agreeing and disagreeing with the paper until I heard the author present. She’d written her master’s thesis with this method, but had now changed her mind on it. And that made a lot of sense.
Another was a look at the rhetoric of Blaxploitation films. The paper was good, though it isn’t anything I’d ever consider doing myself. But I did find myself quoting some of the movies he mentioned for the rest of the day.
A third paper on the panel was an analysis of some of the political segments on Saturday Night Live.
Somehow I managed to give my response without referencing this segment:
This one did come up:
I love those bits.
Which made the schema-relational-media theory paper look smarter than all of us, really. Always nice to learn new things, and that’s what happened for me in that paper.
We took in a session featuring some of the great political academics of the region, including our old professor Dr. Larry Powell. I love to hear him hold forth. He’ll sit back, cross his arms and tell you how this most recent campaign was like something Goldwater did. And how it was different, too. He’s just a walking education and a very nice man.
I dropped in on an undergrad presentation because one panelist was talking about the rhetoric of World War II posters, an art form I really admire. She talked about this one — essentially women were hard at work, but being “protected” or “held back” by their husbands. Note, too, the form-fitting overalls. On this poster she discussed the rhetoric of mid-century race relations. More gender roles and race rhetoric is found in this poster, she argued.
And then a young woman stood up to deliver her paper on the rhetorical analysis of photojournalism on Katrina coverage. It was more gripping when she discussed how she was an evacuee of that storm.
Later in the afternoon The Yankee delivered her paper on the Kay Hagan-Elizabeth Dole North Carolina senate race. She won top paper honors for this research. (She’s very good.) And then she took a picture of me taking a picture. (She’s so meta.)
We had dinner at Famous Dave’s, a barbecue place from whom we’ve been holding onto a gift card for years. We walked in and Ray Charles started playing on the speakers, so everything was just right. Good food, we just don’t have one around us. Being Friday, which is Pie Day, we had the pecan. (I like everything about pecan pie except for the pecans.)
I drove her past my old apartment, showed off a few things in town — but not my former station because, really, when you’ve seen one building you’ve seen them all.
And then back across the river to our hotel room, where I must prepare for tomorrow’s presentation.
A few people actually asked for this on Twitter — can you believe it? — and so I’ve compiled this list in Storify. It is found elsewhere on the site, but that just isn’t good enough. Your requested material should be everywhere. It started on Twitter, of course, but the biggest problem is that Twitter has a very temporary nature. Storify will, presumably, be more permanent. And I can edit it for later. So, then, here is the famous Twilight Twitter commentaries:
The Yankee tells me the next movie is set to underwhelm everyone 17-years-and-older this fall. I’m sure she’ll go. If so, I’ll go along to make fun of the thing on Twitter (I do it for you, Internet) and then put it there.
I’m beginning to like Storify. It makes sense, though I wish it would do a few more things, which would also make sense given what it is trying to be. But that’s the nature of things. I’ll take my mile now, you charming little free service.
Follow ups to things mentioned recently: The New York Times has have no interest in competing for digital-only dollars. Did I mention that in it’s present form the paywall is hardly daunting? I get my Times from Twitter, so it is free to me under this odd scheme. Meanwhile, USA Today is revamping. There’s promise and trouble there, I’d think. Their online presence will be the best part of their recently unveiled strategies.
The story here is that a guy stills a laptop from a young computer whiz. The guy then apparently recorded this video of himself and the victim tracked it all down through the power of cheese technology.
And finally, a guy I worked with in Little Rock years ago put this on Twitter today. Apparently that’s his great-uncle cutting Elvis’ hair. He says his grandfather swept it up. No word, yet, on whether anyone stashed it for the eventual creation of e-bay.
So, there, I have three degrees of separation from Elvis and my friend Grant Merrill has a really cool family story he’s probably heard all of his life. And Elvis hair, lots of Elvis hair. He’s just waiting until his daughter goes off to college, and then he’ll sell it off for tuition money. Grant’s a multimedia mogul now. Very impressive.
One day, when I need a loan, I’ll remind him of that time he crashed on my sofa.
This got me looking for an aircheck from the late, great Ray Lincoln who was simply one of the best people any of us ever worked with in radio. I only knew him at the end of his career when his health was failing, but his mind was razor sharp. In his prime he did a show where he performed two people, Ray and Ram, at once. And he did it well, I’ve heard snippets and the thing was amazing. Later I wrote a little copy for him and pitched to him as he did horse track picks. Lincoln was one of those guys who could do a lot of things well, and he was regarded as one of the best handicappers in the country. As was typical, he did that as a character, too. Sport Jackson was a no-nonsense personality and it was just inside the man. He was a method actor without a stage.
KTHV, when Lincoln died a few years back, did the best obit piece you’ve ever read, mostly because the man was one of those people you could imagine has existed anyway:
In January of 2000, deteriorating health forced Lincoln to quit full-time radio. His condition would worsen until he was forced to enter a Dallas hospital in 2003. “They cut me open and did six bypasses. They were gonna do five and I found out if they do six, you get the cell phone and the Internet and the dish.” His condition would deteriorate until he was forced to enter a Dallas hospital in 2003. He suffered six strokes which left him incapacitated and he was in dire need of a heart transplant. Lincoln was kept alive by a machine called an l-Vad. Eventually though, his family was faced with a decision. Lincoln explained in 2005, “It was not looking good. So, we had decided on Thursday, come Sunday, we’ll just turn this machine off.” Suddenly, there was a donor heart available that was a match for Lincoln. “This kid, his name was Dwayne Compton, 26 years old. He was killed in an automobile accident December 11th and the next day, I got his heart,” Lincoln says. “And his heart is in my chest right now.”
And they included quotes that probably are more in keeping with the character Ray Lincoln conveyed on air:
“The radio business is a cruel and shallow money trench. A long, plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”
“Do I get credit for using those words? Look at my contract. I get a 50 cent bonus for large polysyllabic words that are obscure and seldom used except for people who are erudite and urbane.”
I didn’t know him especially well, but he was always a decent guy and a great talent. Sadly, there isn’t any audio of his to be found on the Internet. This is an oversight.
We’re going to Little Rock this weekend for a conference. I must resist the urge to try and remember stories to tell. I was only there for a year, after all. But I certainly met some characters.
iPhone / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off on The one problem of disappearing weeds 14 Mar 11
And the next day of your life starts with breakfast. Or it does if you’re the lucky sort, a group of whom I am most definitely included. After a long, long Sunday — eight hours or so in the car, getting back home just before 11 — we figured on sleeping in and then a hasty breakfast.
So with a baseball cap on my head we headed out just in time to get near the end of the traditional breakfast hour. We visited the Barbecue House, where I ate so much as an undergrad (thanks, Chuck) that they knew me by name. Don’t care for the barbecue (it is a preference of style) but the CoAg students know they have the best breakfast in town right across the street from all of their major buildings.
We took my in-laws there when they visited last fall. They enjoyed themselves so much the New Englanders came back for a second time during that brief trip.
But they couldn’t have visited today:
It is Spring Break in Auburn. You take the off days where you can. So we went down the street — where we learned that metered parking is free downtown this week — near the corner of College and Glenn, to try the new Waffle House at the site of the former Daylight Donuts. I eat at Waffle House once a year, Christmas, but we wanted breakfast and IHOP was the next choice, so we pulled in.
I sat facing the campus and telling stories of things I’d forgotten. Just down the street lived so and so. And right over there was where my car died that one time and I became so frustrated that I forgot my mother’s phone number while trying to call and tell her I wouldn’t be visiting that weekend. (In my defense: she’d just gotten her cell phone and I’m terrible with numbers.) Here was how she and I met. This is apparently how Daylight Donuts closed down.
So we drove home. The Yankee went to her office for a little work. I mowed the lawn. Well, the front yard. But with our lawn mower you have to hit everything six times, so really it is like everyone in the neighborhood got their grass cut.
“But now I won’t know where to spray for weeds,” she said when she got back home.
That’s the thing about weeds, though. They grow back.
We walked to the grocery store this evening. It is a mile-and-a-half from the house, with a nice, new, wide sidewalk the entire way. Bradford Pears line the first half of the walk, and they are in full bloom. We go by a golf course, a subdivision, some local businesses and a few houses. We did the walk just as the sun was going down for the night. Cars were depending on their headlights as we returned, with pasta and spaghetti.
Today I’ve just been reading. Tomorrow I’ll dive into more productive things. Later this week I have grading to do and a few phone calls to make. There’s a lot of scanning to wade through this week, too. Also, the joys of class prep.
Tomorrow I’m going to do a few of those things, and we’re going to have breakfast again, because we’re lucky enough to be able to do that. I’m going to a documentary showing tomorrow night and, who knows what else will come up. Stop by, though, to check it out. Follow along on Twitter, too.
