memories

Covid-19 / IU / memories / television / Thursday / video — Comments Off on Tonight’s shoot
12
Mar 20

Tonight’s shoot

I worked from home today, which we’ll all be saying a lot in the weeks to come. I did go in this evening for a television taping. The sports crew was up tonight. They wandered in, wondering if this was the end of their year on campus. Our last in-person classes are tomorrow, and then there’s spring break and at least a few weeks of virtual classrooms.

Students are being encouraged to return home. We’re now well into the plans of how we work with 46,000 students on this campus, the 100,000-plus at all of the statewide IU institutions and the countless projects that go on at each and every one of them. Unprecedented is a word you’ll hear a lot. We’re making this work as we go, or some variation, is a theme everyone will hear a lot.

Grace and patience is something I imagine I’ll be saying a lot.

Sports kept it simple tonight. This was a sink in moment for a lot of us.

Michael Tilka, a senior, and IUSTV’s sports director for 2019-2020 signed off. It is surprisingly typical that he was talking about everyone else. That’s what he’s done throughout. He was, this semester, the longest-serving member at IUSTV. I hope that wasn’t the final sign off of his four-year run at IUSTV, where he’s won awards and helped others win awards. I hope it wasn’t the last time, because I would miss his demeanor and what he’s still capable of doing here.

What he saw his freshman year and what he’s leaving his senior year are remarkably different things. He, and the sports directors that came just before him, righted the ship. They developed the right kind of culture in the sports department. It is one of those things I’m always telling the student leaders will come up in a job interview. One of those questions that will give them an advantage, if they distill these experiences into an anecdote.

I sat in a post-production meeting with all the younger sports students tonight. I wanted to thank and congratulate them, as I so often want to do. They each went around the room and shared their favorite moment of the year — and I hope this is not the end of their year together, but it has that feeling. Some of the stories I knew. Some I heard for the first time. All of the memories got laughed at. They had a great time with it. Real bonding is taking place there. Michael, I think, realizes it’s a lasting culture he’s helped establish. Along the way, most importantly, he’s found his own mature voice.

I’m glad they didn’t ask me to take part in that favorite moment exercise. It’s hard to explain my favorite moment of a year when my favorite moment, each year, is always the same. It is gratifying to see the progress the students make, collectively and individually. Sometimes it is downright tangible.

I am proud of my friend Michael Tilka. I hope this wasn’t his last time on air at IUSTV, but if we don’t get these last few weeks back for him, and all of our other seniors, I am excited to see him go out into the world and continue his success.

#LEO

food / Friday / memories / photo — Comments Off on We are leaving the week behind
21
Feb 20

We are leaving the week behind

Quite a few years ago we impulsively pulled into a Sonic. I feel silly saying that because, really, how often does one pull into Sonic as part of a plan? We’re coming back from the beach and decided we wanted blizzards. We parked, the guy’s voice came over the little speaker and we placed our order, feeling a little like we were in a different era. Maybe they’d skate our snacks out to the car. Maybe it would be just like you imagine.

We aren’t Boomers and the guy wasn’t a carhop. He shuffled slowly, painfully, aimlessly, like there was nowhere to go. Like he didn’t know which of the other empty spaces this order was supposed to go. Like he didn’t know what to say.

“We’re out of spoons. Can I interest you in a fork?”

The blizzard is an ice cream with a thick viscosity, but, no, you can’t interest me in a fork. (We went to the drive-thru at the McDonald’s next door and said they’d forgotten our spoons and they, of course, gave us two.)

That was the precise wording, though. “Can I interest you in a fork?” So polite and, yet, absurd, that we committed to memory, added it to the lexicon and turned it into a perma-punchline.

The Sonic orbited a grocery store. I just measured the distance on Google Maps. It is 618 feet away. So my near-incredulous “Walk across the parking lot, walk into that Publix and buy a box of plastic spoons,” remains on point.

Today I got to make the joke again. Because we went to Chipotle (again) and they were out of forks.

Chipotle on Kirkwood, I observed, should join forces with the Sonic on Whitemarsh Island. Between them, they could maybe they could put together a full set of plasticware.

Have you ever tried to eat rice with a plastic spoon? It can be done, but you shouldn’t try to do it if you can help it.

Also, that same out of order note has moved down the line.

Gerald, the fictional third shift leader in charge of liquid refreshments, really is the worst.

Here’s the classic Friday evening photo. See ya, work week:

There’s not much better than putting it all in the mirror, is there? And sometimes if the car is pointed in the right direction you get lucky with the sideview.

One of the few things better? Terrific pizza:

We went to Indianapolis for the night, which meant we went to nearby Carmel for a decent pie. Because, again, in a college town with 46,000 students, you can’t get a superlative slice. Mellow Mushroom should always be closer. We’d be there every week.

memories / photo / SCUBA / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off on The great thing in the grate
12
Feb 20

The great thing in the grate

I made a little animated photo as my new pinned tweet. I mention it because I know you are deeply invested in this sort of thing. You are. All of you. Deeply invested. Profoundly so.

My last pinned tweet had been around for quite some time. Summer of 2015 I took that picture. London. Everything was different then, everything was the same.

We took the above picture in Roatan, Honduras last summer. Everything is the same.

It is about time for another dive. We’ll do some later this year. The problem with being so land locked is that you can’t do it readily. This is an obvious issue. The other side of that coin is that when you do get the chance, you maximize your dives, to the extent that your body can handle it. (There are some fatigue issues arising from oxygen and nitrogen at depth, eventually, and the eventually of that chemistry does catch up to you. Unless you dive nitrox, which I do not, as yet, do.) We did 20 dives over six days in Roatan, for example, knowing that was it for the year. If you could just get into the water (of the sort that you wanted to be in) more readily then we’d do so. I’d sit on the bottom of a pool for hours, if you’d let me.

Oh, look, here I am doing just that last May.

It was a peaceful experience, no currents to fight, no corral to avoid, no depth considerations to consider. Just sit and breathe. It was, then, a contemplative non-dive. Many things were considered in that high school pool, the first high school pool I’ve ever been in. (It was a Saturday.) The first one I’ve ever seen, I think.

A lot of profound thinking is going on in that photo, as you can tell. Mostly about all of the things that find their way to the bottom of a public pool.

Instagram / IU / memories / Tuesday / Twitter / video — Comments Off on Caucus captaincy for sale
4
Feb 20

Caucus captaincy for sale

It’s turned cold again. And these are the days of our lives. Probably for the best. If you start having enjoyable weather for three days in a row you’d come to expect it, and you really should know better to do that here until mid-April.

Which is depressing.

Sunday’s and, to a lesser degree, yesterday’s weather, were nothing more than an aberration.

Which is also disconcerting.

There’s a lot going on here:

The carefully selected handwriting. This is the sort of thing that’s discussed before it’s done, right? “No one could read my handwriting,” and so on. Then there’s the frowny face. And the first-person. It has grown self-aware. And is sad. Now, is the sadness brought about by the existential dilemma of being a soda dispenser? Is the sadness because the dispenser knows this isn’t her fault, but is rather a faulty hose somewhere between here and the syrup? Maybe the grief comes because it knows a manager — the third shift leader in charge of liquid refreshments — forgot to fill that order.

Or maybe there’s a legal issue. It wouldn’t be the first time. Forty-some years ago Barqs was sold outside of the family, but the heirs, the Robinsons still had some companies with the Barq’s name and so the trademark battles began. The 5th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the family, so it was the root beer’s new owners that were out of order and … here we are.

I just learned that some of the fountain drink versions of Barq’s has no caffeine, which, as I understand it, is the point. But is it any good? I mean relative to other root beers? You’ll have to let me know.

It is the beginning of the other Super Bowl season. Iowa is caucusing and it’s simultaneously a silly demonstrating of nominating candidates and fascinating for journalists. The election is like the Super Bowl, so I suppose this is the first of several weeks of wildcard playoffs or something.

I slept in my car on the night of the 2000 general election, and that was just covering the local stuff. I dozed off listening to the networks being fed to AM radio and went back inside the studio (they didn’t let us sleep in there, for some reason) for my first hit of the morning and saw the same national network guys still plodding through. I’m not sure which of us had a better night, but I know they looked better than I did. And we, somehow, have convinced ourselves this is a good thing.

I don’t have any strong memories from election night, 2004. I sat in a newsroom in shivered in 2008 and convinced a bunch of student-journalists that, maybe, they should go get some reactions. In 2012, more shivering. In 2016 I watched everyone else do things. But I digress.

Tonight, I’m going to sleep long before anything is decided in the confusion that is Iowa. Iowa is confusing in a good cycle, and it is given outsized weight relative to its importance. That’s the media’s fault, really. And everything else is from a bunch of people gathering in gyms and people’s homes and wherever else and using what is, apparently, a poorly designed app.

What could possibly go wrong? Everything tonight, it seems. But I’m not staying up to watch it all. I’m not convinced that is a good thing.

We did television tonight. I recorded a little bit of it. Sure, I’m standing in a studio with five high-definition cameras, four of them controlled remotely from the adjacent control room (there was also a sixth high def camera working at this moment, as well, as we’d gone meta) and I’m holding my phone up at eye level …

This is one of the podcast series I want to do: New things shape ongoing disciplines. Think anyone will want to not want to do this one with me, too?

More on Twitter and check me out on Instagram as well.

adventures / family / memories / photo / Thursday — Comments Off on The day-after-Christmas party
26
Dec 19

The day-after-Christmas party

My in-laws have this perpetual calendar by their kitchen door. It’s the sort of thing where you swap out the month tiles and move the numbers to get right under the days of the week. It’s the sort of thing that a lot of people have, but let it quickly fall out of sequence within a month or three. But, in all the years I’ve known them this calendar has always been up-to-date. Even when you come downstairs into the kitchen on the first day of the month, it is ready to go. I imagine that appeals to my mother-in-law’s sense of order. It’s a thing she can keep nice and tidy, and keep her organized for the days ahead.

It was a gift, many years ago, from a beloved family friend, and that probably plays into it, too. And they have custom tiles for important events, which is another added feature she surely looks forward to every month. And, look! This year I got my own tile!

The Yankee’s god-brother-in-law’s mother made that one for me. And, the joke this year, is that it only took 14 years for me to earn it. I suppose they think I’m going to stick. Time, as the cliche says, will tell.

Anyway, today we had New Jersey Christmas. Every year we drive down to spend a day with the family folks. The Yankee’s god parents are lifelong friends of my in-laws. It’s a cute story, really. Bob and Nancy met a year after she finished nursing school. Her best friend in school was Marge. And when Bob and Nancy got married, Marge met Clem at their wedding. Bob and Clem have been friends since before they were in school. They’re all lovely and wonderful and it’s really neat to see people who’ve been in each other’s lives for so many decades. They all raised their daughters together, and they vacation together, just this summer taking an amazing trip through Canada. And they let us all invade their house at Christmas time.

We opened presents:

And dinner, which was homemade lasagna (so, if you’re keeping track, that’s ravioli on Christmas Eve, shrimp cocktail and prime rib for Christmas and shrimp cocktail and lasagna at New Jersey Christmas) and we had homemade poppers to go with it. My mother-in-law made these:

They had little prizes and puns inside. Here was mine:

And before the night was over the girls, the ladies, recreated their traditional pyramid picture:

Isn’t that awesome? Aren’t they beautiful? They’ve been doing this all their lives, literally. There are teeny tiny kid pyramid pictures at the beach, and one from every time they get together as adults, including each of the weddings, and one from from the shore this summer. So, of course, they also do them every Christmas. Someday we’ll have to guess how many there actually are.

We’re trying to get all the kids trained to do a super pyramid. It didn’t quite work out today. Maybe next year.

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