Shouldn’t this really be the scary day. The 13th is a 19th century conceit, but the Friday business goes back to The Canterbury Tales at least. So much of Chaucer is often forgotten. Friday is frequently seen as the beginning of a good thing.
Monday the 13th still offends the apostolic notion of completeness. And yet we’re all back at the office. Monday the 13th. That’s disconcerting. Imagine the marketing the Jason people could have had there.
Chaucer to Jason in under 45 words. And they said it couldn’t be done.
(The exception to this hasty Friday the 13 is a good day idea being if you are paying for a service. Think long and hard about tire rotation or a roof repair done on Friday. Those diligent and hardworking people could be distracted by thoughts of the weekend too.)
Monday the 13th is a good day here. A great day, even. They often are. Taught a class, answered a lot of questions, discussed resumes and style. Generally tried to be helpful. Wrapped up a few small projects. Got handed a few more. Great Monday. For a 13th, that is.
I love this. Some of our classrooms have old newspapers on display. Some of the newspapers are national, historical front pages. This one is from the first issue of the 1925 edition of the Howard Crimson. The paper was just 10 years old at the time when students were still studying on the old Eastlake campus. This was a front page ad. Imagine the scandal of such a notion!
They led fashion, they did not chase it. What a great ad. Someone should run a mini campaign in this still today, just to see how it stands out from the contemporary fare.
Blach’s was a family-owned department store chain founded in 1885 by German immigrant Julius Blach. At it’s peak in the 1960s and 1970s they had five stores. In 1987, Blach’s filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, but the reorganization couldn’t revive the company and they closed for good that same year. The invaluable BhamWiki records:
During the 1945 printers’ strike, which stopped the publication of all three of Birmingham’s daily newspapers, WAPI-AM posted news stories in two of Blach’s windows, organized by various categories. The resulting crowds, according to Time magazine, “all but blocked traffic past the store.”
The Blach’s building started as the Hood, built in 1890 to serve as the storefront for the Hood-Yielding General Merchandise Store. In 1910 it was converted into the 100-room Bencor Hotel and in 1935 it took the Blach name.
Here’s a view from just a few years after that ad. And this is it today:
It sat stagnant for much of the time after bankruptcy and was renovated in 2007, before the bank foreclosed in 2009. Now you can rent a loft there, apparently with the original hardwood.
Do you know what’s great about 100-year-old hardwood? No splinters! Makes every Monday better.
Some of the awards floating around in the Crimson office. We have another room in another building with quite a few awards. A lot of these honors go home with students. Even still, there’s an end table sitting here with these things, waiting to be joined by others. Every now and then I move them around, putting the ones in the back to the front. It is a good excuse to wipe a little dust away from them.
These are a bit older, so the names of the kids that won them are unrecognizable to the student-journalists working here now. One day I’ll look them all up and see what they’re doing now. These were people who were students before I came to Samford, so odds are I might have heard a name or two, but haven’t met them.
It is not unlike one of the drawers in my desk. A student signed it in the early 1990s, along with a note urging future people that sat there to save it because “it will be worth something some day.” He’s out in California and he has been at MySpace (at the right time) and at Netflix, so maybe he was on to something. There’s another name written in permanent marker within that desk drawer. It is his wife’s name.
I have a large stack of archived newspapers sitting next to my desk. One of my chairs was handed down from Maxwell Air Force Base — it still has their ID tag on the bottom — and I’ve learned a fair amount about the history of this place and a great deal about the sometimes colorful history of our department. But those two autographs in the desk are my favorite details.
And they graduated a several years before those awards were won, so really, between the autographs, the see-through trophies and today’s students we’re talking about four or five generations of students. Time does flit about prodigiously.
That picture was taking with my iPhone, which is indispensable as a snapshot tool. Of course this weekend, I’ll take a picture with my DSLR and be amazed at how much better that lens is. It should be, of course, but in tech you think of recency, and my phone is a few years old. The primary lens on my DSLR is a little more than a decade old, just a bit older than those awards. (I bought it as a replacement for one I dropped in a creek in Tennessee.) Maybe prodigious isn’t an expressive enough word.
Anyway, that picture is on the iPhone, filtered through Trey Ratcliff’s brilliant 100 Cameras app. I think the screen filter was called “When I was dirty and you laughed.” It gave the picture a certain level of cool color to an already monotone composition. I liked it, I posted it because I never use that app. Shame.
I have three folders of photography apps on my phone. I should never miss an important moment.
I did not talk about phones in class today. The “we’re all reporters now” speech will come up a bit later this semester. We did talk about Joe Paterno and the unverified night of mistaken news. I walked the class through the details and showed off the Storify I made that night to demonstrate how rapidly all of this unfolded. Looking back, only this far removed, the errors in minutes seem staggering. The lesson, friends, is verification. So we talked about that. The class was very much interested in the Onward State’s apology and resignation from the managing editor.
It is a great way to give the “We practice our craft in the public eye” speech again. I give that one a lot, it seems.
We also set up WordPress sites today. I have my tutorial on that down pat, now. “Let’s say I want to do this … but that only gives me a link and I wanted to embed the video.” In two clicks I’ve demonstrated that mistakes are possible, correctable and given students a better way of presenting information.
I’d like to thank WordPress for cooperating entirely in that effort.
It has been an adventurous day. In short order I was almost sideswiped by a car hauler, a dump truck and an 18-wheeler. It seems my car has that new invisible paint we’ve all heard so much about.
The tradeoff was hearing the DJ crack his microphone between songs and say “Monday in America in the middle of winter.” Then Etta Jones began to sing Trav’lin’ Light. Surprisingly her version, a superior take in my opinion, of the now 70-year-old Johnny Mercer song doesn’t seem to exist on the Internet.
The song played and I found myself stuck in the DJ’s aperitif. He had this husky, breathy, beatnik tone. And I thought what a remarkably obvious and obviously unremarkable series of things to say together.
Monday — we feel it
America — oh that’s where I am
Middle of winter — the trees are bare
The song wears on though, this delicate, unfolding and Etta Jones just sighs “No one to see I’m free as the breeze No one but me
And my memories.” And you think, yeah, OK, Monday, America, Winter. I see what he means. Look at that sky.
And then a song later he does it again. “February. Pitchers and catchers report in … 10 days” and a song. I’m unfamiliar with this particular DJ’s work, but I wonder if he can carry this all year long. I bet late July and August he becomes desperate for things to say. There isn’t a lot to say between the fireworks and Labor Day.
“Hot today. How’s that pool? Feels good, doesn’t it?”
“Four more weeks before the kids are back in school.”
“Hot dogs. On the grill again. Try it with some relish this time,” and then you hear Thelonious Monk.
So while there is no Etta Jones version on the Internet, there are plenty of Ella Fitzgerald renditions as you might imagine. This one is from 1964. The song was 18 years old. She’d been singing for three decades already:
Anita Day, in her prime, did it in 1963 in Tokyo, where there was apparently a big demand for big band/jazz.
But we’re skipping over that because of course there’s Billie Holiday:
And now you have your Valentine’s Day music. Push play on that album in the kitchen, or in the hallway. Louis Armstrong’s trumpet works in unexpected places.
Anyway. No one can see my car. Tonight I was in the left lane of a two-lane, one way street. Sitting at the red light waiting for the change of the signal and a woman from the side street turns right, which is almost into me. She bites the corner instead, dragging her exhaust probably saying a few things under her breath about the problem. Several, I am sure, were aimed at me. But then again I was in the right lane, which in this case was the left lane.
Do they make blaze orange vests for cars? It might be the season.
Today, I decided, would be the day that I would fix a few things that need fixing.
I should have picked a different day.
So I set out to Walmart, where they have many things I don’t need, but exactly one of the things I do need. (One thing I need but could not get at the store: batteries. This should have been the signal to go do something else, anything else.)
But I did find a specific headlight bulb. The gentleman working in automotive had to unlock the bulb — which cost $7.88 — from the display hook. The cardboard, he said “has some sort of security device in it.”
They’re like currency on the inside.
He did not laugh, and so we know he doesn’t watch movies set in prisons. He was a very nice guy. I’d picked the wrong bulb and he patiently explained the difference between the two and then had to unlock the proper bulb. I learned more about halogen in one box store conversation than I’d ever thought possible.
They did not have the other things I needed, so I returned home to improve my headlight situation. Only I can’t, because I drive a Nissan, which means to get to the headlight you have to go through the wheel well.
There are three rivets that must be removed from the wheel well — and, truly, if you find instructions for headlights beginning with “Turn the wheel all the well to the right” just stop. When you’ve removed the rivets you must pull out a screw that attaches the wheel well from the bumper.
I’m changing a headlight.
You peel back the wheel well. From there you crane your neck, turn your flashlight to anti-gravity mode so it floats in just the right spot and, well, good luck.
This is where the directions diverged from my car’s reality. And I can’t take the entire plastic light globe off. This is important because I have some fancy 24th century headlight that requires a perfectly dry operating environment — because they are more efficient — or it kills the bulb. And my globe has moisture in it. So I have to take it to someone to fix.
I called a dealership about this, and the polite word for this procedure is extortion.
So I put the wheel well back inside the bumper, reapply the screw holding the two together and then insert the three rivets to their mounted position. I turned the wheel back to the standard position and went to the hardware store.
Imagine walking into a place with saws and drills and drywall putty with this playing over the speakers:
I did find the sink repair kit. We have a slow drip in the kitchen. If you hop on one foot and the wind is blowing out of the northwest you can find a sweet spot and stop the leak. Otherwise you’re going to hear a drop of water every so often.
I pick up the set of springs, washers and other things. Having watched a video, and read the instructions, I’m confident this is a quick fix, somewhere in the easy category.
I find the batteries I need that Walmart did not have. I check out.
I return home to the dripping sink and assemble my tools. The first step is to remove the handle from the rest of the apparatus. One allen wrench later and the handle is in the sink. Success! Now the cap assembly must come off so that we can find the parts that need to be replaced.
The cap assembly will not come off. It seems that the water has fused one piece of metal to another. Twisting, turning, banging, spinning, muttering, nothing would set the thing free. I torqued it so hard that I could turn the entire faucet assembly from the sink. This is where you hear your parents voices in your head: Don’t force it.
So the repair kit is going back to the store and I’ll just blame my impressively hard water and the curse of whatever spirits we’ve angered that live on this property. If you’re keeping score:
Thermostat
Shower head
Refrigerator
Dishwasher
Dishwasher again
Cable, multiple times
Garage door button
Air conditioner contact
Two separate minor plumbing issues
The sink of doom
We’ve lived here 17 months.
Finally, I replaced the battery in the key fob to my car. There’s a telltale in the dash that tells you when the battery is low. This is a precise operation. In fact, operation is a good term, because you need to work in a completely sterile environment and operate your Fulcrumbot 6000 with a precise caliper measurement to remove and replace the batter. And, I guess also because my car is a Nissan, it requires a battery that merely glancing at with human eyes “significantly reduces the battery’s charge.”
Having separated the fob, prying free the dying battery and maneuvering the new battery into place with a complex series of electromagnetic acrobatics, I have gotten at least one item off the list. Go out to the car, crank the engine and … the low battery telltale is still on.
Also, I received my third piece of correspondence telling me that I wouldn’t be paid for an article I wrote last year. For a publisher that is apparently shirking their responsibilities while going out of business they certainly are prolific.
The tornado ripped the roof and wall off of half of the the Snider’s home, including their baby’s room. He credits the siren with saving their lives, particularly his daughter’s life.
“If that siren had not gone off, my baby would have been gone,” he said. “The crib was still there, but it sucked the sheets off of it.”
Lucky guy. You aren’t supposed to depend on those outdoor sirens as a warning — they aren’t designed for indoor alarms or to wake up people in the middle of the night, but are rather intended to get people back inside to safety — but Charles Snider will never live out of earshot of one.
Went downtown to take pictures of a building today. It was a darkly overcast and muggy 69 degrees.
There was a rumor that the name of a restaurant was changing. It would have been one of those generational, epochal turning moments. One crowd would understand the now 40-year-old reference, but it didn’t stick with the younger set in quiet the same way. Institutions can only be institutions until the paying crowd asks for an explanation. And that’s a chilling moment for a merchant. If you have a clever spelling but it is misinterpreted, people may start going across the street.
Or that would have been the thinking. And thinking like that in a college town is important, especially when you’re dealing with timely cultural references. But this particular restaurant was not changing their name. They were just painting their facade. And, also, they’d hung a new sign referencing another, newer cultural touchstone. But they were not renaming the place.
You could see the confusion, however. New paint, new temporary sign, updated context.
“We may,” the guy said “name the porch that though.”
No you won’t, because that makes even less sense.
So there was that.
Got to play with a friend’s two daughters. The youngest is just a smile machine. She also likes her jumper contraption, the lowest setting of which she has outgrown as of today. His oldest daughter is in elementary school and is a budding entrepreneur. She planned out a lemonade standing, a hot chocolate stand and a petting sitting service all in on conversation. Meanwhile her younger sister was chattering and banging plastic things together and always bouncing. The older girl never missed a beat. It was remarkable, and just a little bit exhausting.
Otherwise just computer things and housework, which interrupted the computer things. Did some laundry. Discovered a hazard.
It seems the vent from the dryer had come disconnected. It was a little too hot and dryer-like standing in the laundry room. Look behind the thing and, yep, there’s a great big silver hose going nowhere while the dryer is happily spinning away.
So I turn it off. Pull out the washer and dryer. Unplug it. The outlet is covered in condensation.
If there’s one place you don’t want condensation it is on your fine wood furniture. But if there are two places you don’t want condensation it is on your fine wood furniture and glass tabletops. And if there are three places you don’t want condensation it your fine wood furniture, glass tabletops and electrical outlets.
Dry that off, clean the floor, connect the vent and count my blessings. Only thing could I get back to the laundry.
And the rest of the day was tinkering on the computer, Chinese food and the big game, which was only slightly riveting. But, hey, that’s a Monday for ya.
