Monday

Monday / photo — Comments Off on My lovely weekend
5
Mar 18

My lovely weekend

We went for a run on Saturday, it was a perfect spring day in the south. I do miss it.

I did 3.1 miles out.

The middle of the dam, just a few yards farther up, was my turnaround point, after which I retraced my shuffling, jogging steps and called it an honest 10K. I had good splits, but that rainbow was the best part. The government started building that dam in 1918; it took a century to make that rainbow.

The spillways were wide open, and apparently have been for days. The region has been overwhelmed with rain and apparently right now there more water is coming through the dam than what goes over Niagara Falls. (We did a little research and math on that. If the TVA numbers are right, then

Anyway, the company was lovely, a birthday was quietly and then we had to drive all the way back yesterday.

It was worth it to see the spring.

IU / Monday / photo / running / video — Comments Off on The Monday that was, and the weekend before it
26
Feb 18

The Monday that was, and the weekend before it

I worked on Saturday. Two Saturdays in a row! Last week it was a pre-admissions program for incoming students. Today it was a video program for current students producing short stories on local businesses and programs. Good turnout:

And outside, things are beginning to sprout!

… but after a rainy four-mile run I can definitively say it isn’t yet springtime:

Nor will it be for some time yet, I’m afraid.

Putting up some clean clothes, which Allie doesn’t like, because she likes a big pile and she sat there staring at me as this one got smaller and smaller:

So, of course, I left the last little bit on the bed for her, and then surrounded her in more clothes. This might sound unreasonable, but she stayed like that for a few hours last night. She was happy.

Here’s a monologue I recorded this morning:

And, finally, a program we produced today. Skip beyond the first little bit …

And now we’re on to Tuesday, where we should get up to about 60 degrees, but it still won’t be spring, though it should be.

IU / Monday / photo / podcast — Comments Off on They got away with it too, I’m no meddling kid
19
Feb 18

They got away with it too, I’m no meddling kid

Indianapolis Star sports writer Zak Keefer came into the studio today and talked about a fine story about Jim Crow-era high school basketball. It started with a jumpshot, one of the first, in fact, and Keefer takes us through a bit of a great old story:

From the weekend, at the pre-admit event on campus:

She took that one, just before she went and talked about the sports media program and I went and talked about the television studio. And, later, at home I put on the mask and started sanding on a project:

I cut up some lumber on Friday night and then today I got to know the many pieces. Sometime soon I’ll try putting them all together and make something of it.

Hanging out with Allie, The Black Cat:

I found myself exploring in a mostly empty warehouse this evening:

I walked in, looking for a local company. I ran across three people, and none of them paid any attention to me — a confident stride and a neutral expression will get you into a lot of places — and a fourth person who was busily working on some sort of project and never noticed I was there.

It isn’t at all clear what they are doing there:

This was the point where, simultaneously remembering all of the episodes of Scooby Doo, I left the warehouse. I’ll find the folks I need by phone.

Monday / photo / podcast / Twitter — Comments Off on There’s a cat pic, funny tweets and a podcast in this one
12
Feb 18

There’s a cat pic, funny tweets and a podcast in this one

Saturday:

And the Olympics are on, of course, which, in our house, means two weeks of Olympics. Also it means a two-week quixotic attempt to understand NBC’s programming strategy. That’s the true Olympic sport around these parts.

Also, this, from last night:

Actual tears.

And then we got criticized:

I really enjoyed this episode of the podcast. I saw this story a few days back and thought I’d like to find an expert and talk about this with them. You know, localize what is, honestly, an incredible news story:

In what’s being hailed as a “major breakthrough” in Maya archaeology, researchers have identified the ruins of more than 60,000 houses, palaces, elevated highways, and other human-made features that have been hidden for centuries under the jungles of northern Guatemala.

Using a revolutionary technology known as LiDAR (short for “Light Detection And Ranging”), scholars digitally removed the tree canopy from aerial images of the now-unpopulated landscape, revealing the ruins of a sprawling pre-Columbian civilization that was far more complex and interconnected than most Maya specialists had supposed.

The story goes on at great length, and one of the many cool tidbits is that this research is going to force archeologists to revise their old population estimates from about five million people to 10 or 15 million. That’s no blip.

So of course I wanted to talk about this. I looked around and it turns out there are at least two experts on Mayan culture on campus. One is on sabbatical, but the other is here and she was incredibly gracious with her time. Anne Pyburn is the provost professor of anthropology, which is a university honor acknowledging her national reputation for scholarship, research and teaching. And wouldn’t you know it, she has spent more than a little time in these same jungles, working on this same sort of thing, with a Mayan specialty.

She talks about it all in the very measured way that experts often do, but she has some great ideas about what it all means. If I could just spend a few days a week following up on some significant story with a campus expert and examine why it all matters it would be an excellent use of my time.

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adventures / Monday / photo / podcast — Comments Off on On the origins of nothing, and dogs
5
Feb 18

On the origins of nothing, and dogs

I tried an experiment this afternoon:

I also taught a class. I’m not sure which of the two worked out better, but I hope it was the class. I’ll go back and visit those students on Wednesday, though, and maybe the technical problems we had today will prove outweighed by the abundance of knowledge I attempted to bestow.

Bestow is an almost 800-year-old word. I bet you didn’t know that. In old English stow was a place. Then there was a “be” prefix and stow got an en on the end, somehow. And that’s probably a fascinating tale, but I don’t know it. I think it had something to do with a verb tense, though. You had “stow” as in a place, and then “to place,” it seems. And then someone misheard and miswrote and misread or found a better use and said “BESTOW!”

I had a professor who was a serious and legitimate etymologist. It was amazing the things he knew, the work he’d done or read. I wonder what he thinks of my ability to just Google that these days. I hope they’re all just glad we can look at things because the ease just, you know, might entice us to do so. Those etymology conferences, though, you just never know which way a committee is going to go. They could come out of those rooms at the Ramada and take an entirely different approach.

You know what’s hard? Googling things about the art and craft of etymology. You just get etymology links to the words you are co-searching. But I digress.

Digress is of 16th century latin origins, just so you know.

Anyway, that was a little experiment above, because John Curley was nice enough to talk to me last Friday. Funny story about that, I sent his station’s main account a note on Twitter and they sent me an email address and so I wrote to them. And then Curley wrote me right back as he was about to go on the air. He was very gracious with his time when we talked, and it was a most pleasant little conversation. The end of that piece is my favorite part, and the whole premise is sublimely funny anyway.

Pet poses from the weekend:

Sometimes you just have to reach out and touch someone’s big toe. That’s not my toe, of course, and here is a 90-degree angle.

We went to a Super Bowl party to not watch the game or commercials — there was something funny about Tide, and then Eli Manning did a thing and Dilly Dilly was disappointing and probably some other things, but I find it hard to follow along with the game or the spots in a crowd. Some people did seem to enjoy the halftime show and, for some reason, there was a single yelp when Jimmy Fallon appeared on the TV. But that’s small group dynamics for you. Nevertheless, a good time was had by all, as they say. And I got to play with a dog:

That is the preferred photographic style for the canine, a technique I settled on some 11 years ago now. (Time zooms.) That pose isn’t quite the perfect angle, but it was as close as this golden was going to let me get. He is a playful and loving dog, as just about ever golden ever gifted to humanity. And the outtakes are almost as fun as that pose:

More interesting material here tomorrow. I think the books section is going to finally make a comeback. There, I’ve said it out loud. Now it almost has to happen, maybe.

More on Twitter, check me out on Instagram and more podcasts on Podbean as well.

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