These were from earlier in the month, at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin:
She put together a wonderful trip.
memories
8
Jun 15
Jogging memories
Day three, jet lag levels have returned to almost normal.
Went out for a little recovery run today, got in another 5K. That’s 12 miles in three days. Figured I’d complained about walking enough, I may as well move around in some other way.
This is where I ran:
We took our engagement pictures in that park — during a nor’easter. Something like 15 inches of snow on the ground that day.
“Let’s sit on this bench and take a picture! It’ll be cute!” she said.
Snow-covered benches.
The picture is cute, but don’t tell her.
The park is near where The Yankee grew up. She probably climbed all of the trees in that park. Probably in a few nor’easters.
Here’s one of those trees now. Even for a maple this seemed like it was giving up too soon.
But that’s just the sun, come out to play.
6
May 15
End of the Crimson-year party
Two classes today. Stayed late to go over some things with a small handful of students before their final. Drove off to get the sandwiches I always buy at the end of the year: Roly Poly. Got stuck in traffic and when I got back on campus the end-of-the-year party was already underway.
We had two staffs in there this year, the outgoing and part of the incoming. It was a lively, chatty, fun affair. The has-beens told the up-and-comers secrets about the job. Some of them lingered and told stories about what it meant to them, which was lovely.
I walked them all to the door, and gave each one a little letter. Each one was different, but each said how thankful I was of the effort they’ve put in, how proud I was of the work they’ve done. I hope they are proud too.
And then there were just a few of us. And I realized that, with Sydney graduating, our newsroom lost its institutional memory of Purvis, the rock:
The short version: On our way to a conference last year, Clayton, the then-sports editor, was reading interesting facts about every town in Mississippi we passed. Our favorite was Purvis, basically because of everything he read aloud from Wikipedia.
So on the way back from Purvis, and getting a bit punchy, we stopped there for this picture, Sydney, then-news editor, Zach, then-editor-in-chief and Clayton, who was the sports editor. Because we were punchy we dug up that chunk of asphalt from off the side of the road. Clayton or Sydney one named it Purvis. It now sits in a place of honor in the Crimson newsroom.
And now they’re all off into the great wide world.
A little bit later Sydney walked out of the door. She was in the hallway looking in and three members of next year’s staff were in the newsroom were looking out. There was a joke or two and a bye and then she walked down the hall, through the fire door, down the steps and she was gone.
I closed the newsroom door. Emily, the new editor-in-chief who served so ably as the news editor this year, looked at me and we both took half-a-moment to compose ourselves.
And I thought, you get into all of this — the late nights, the too-cold office, dealing with people who don’t understand what you’re trying to do, thanking people who do understand, the good leads, bad headlines, working through stories you don’t care about, wondering each week what they left uncovered — you do all of this because you figure that you have something to offer students. It is something important, you figure, just as it was important when you learned the same things when you were in their place. It is important because the work they’ll one day do with it is important and civic and useful. And so, then, you are useful and maybe formative. And that is worth every 2 a.m. that you find yourself still in a cold office, because you are there for them. Only when you watch them go do you really realize what they did for you.
All of that was in my head as I cleared my eyes and watched Emily clear her eyes and then launched into the first meeting with the new staff.
I’ve taken to looking at this newsroom as both a laboratory and, these last two years, as a spectrum. Sydney and Zach and Katie before them started something these people will continue and improve upon. I have high hopes for that because here’s another group of young people who are sitting in the newsroom at 7 p.m. on the Wednesday of the last week of class.
That’s passion.
30
Mar 15
Things to read
The Monday update is pretty close to becoming a “Things to read” tradition. It comes about because I need something here, Mondays are usually fairly busy and, often, I have links waiting to be put somewhere. All of this is in play today, and so here we are.
Some of the historians on campus are running a blog about interesting moments in Samford history. This is a great anecdote, March Madness: Dead Cats and Burning Bulldogs:
In addition to the attempted arson of the Sherman Oak, the Birmingham News reported a few Howard girls being woken up in the middle of the night because they heard men chanting “Down with Howard, Up with Southern!” When they looked outside, there were three crosses on fire in front of the burning tree–an ominous warning and a symbol of Aryan superiority during the Civil Rights era.
By gameday, tensions had reached their boiling point. With less than four minutes left in the first half of the game, Howard was beating Southern 33-24. Chriss Doss later recalled the chaos that unfolded when a Southern player named Glen Clem took a cheap shot at Howard player Rudy Davidson.
Two private schools. The 1950s. Who knew?
This is really cool, Loachapoka High robotics team to compete in World Games:
The robotics team has been around for a few years, according to Thompson. Robert Harlan has been the head coach for two years.
Eight of the program’s 25 students will make the trip, Thompson said.
The school’s robotics program begins in third grade and goes all the way up to 12th grade, according to Thompson.
I did not know this was such a thing. I wonder, now, if this is the big threat to the brick-and-mortar car dealerships that we saw for music stores, video stores and all of the other things disrupted by the web: Online car dealership expands delivery service to Birmingham.
It takes a village … Boy’s ‘military haircut’ spurs suspension threat, outcry:
A young boy’s high and tight haircut meant to honor his soldier-stepbrother earned him the threat of suspension from an elementary school named for a Medal of Honor recipient, and the fallout from the incident has led a Tennessee school district to increase security measures.
There are educators and then there are “educators.”
Some journalism links:
HBO-Vice Deal Should Scare the S*** Out of TV News
The evolution of NPR’s picture stories
Math for journalists: Help with numbers
How news sites handle content around sensitive stories
30+ free tools for data visualization and analysis
Online Video Exploding Globally
Here’s an interesting essay on Periscope, the new livestreaming platform that Twitter recently purchased and rolled out for use. It is quickly — possibly, perhaps, who knows? — taking over the universe. Or is that still Meerkat? Maybe both. Perhaps neither. This essay is about the activity, not the branded platform. And there’s a great passage in this piece:
(T)his isn’t about money, this is about the bleeding edge. And that’s what’s so exciting about Meerkat and Periscope, it’s all brand new.
Like I watched a sunrise in New Zealand. A cove in Australia. Someone making coffee in Amsterdam and a snowy spring in Siberia. Call me a voyeur, we’re all voyeurs, and right now regular people are letting you into their lives, just for the fun of it, and it’s strangely riveting.
They do it for the love. No one wants to be alone anymore. They want hearts and comments and interaction. They’ll perform if you show up and comment.
And who are these people?
Nobodies. Those with time. Who are not reading the newspaper, who listen to the tribal drum and want to participate.
Huh? Huh?
Finally, it seems hard to believe, but it has been 10 years since Mitch Hedberg died. I saw him for the first time before anyone really knew who he was. I don’t even think he’d been on Letterman yet. I took a date to the Comedy Club and he was the attraction and the show was good. He just got better and better over the years, until his far-too-soon death. Here’s one of the many videos of his comedy you can find online.
