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I’ve been quite busy today, so there’s not a lot to share here.
You won’t need anything after this, though:
That’s from my friend Victoria Cumbow.
Three new pictures on Tumblr, here and here and here. There are other things on Twitter. There is nothing else here.
Until tomorrow.
We have half the grapes that we started the day with. And one less navel orange. Also, the leftover spaghetti from last night disappeared. And then I was full for about an hour. But white grapes only last so long and I had to talk myself out of an extra lunch. Miles on the bike speed up the metabolism, or so I tell myself, and I want to eat everything.
Strange since my energy was all over the place yesterday. I chased The Yankee around town, counting my second, third and fourth wind. These things should be more predictable, but yesterday I was left amazed at how I couldn’t find my legs to get over this hill, but soft-pedaled over the next one, with my legs feeling bored with it all. The body is an amazing thing, and a body on a bicycle is a curious miracle, all balance and whirring and swaying and moving forward. I’m not a good cyclist. Usually I do well just to stay upright. Balance and whirring and all that. At my best moments I’m either trying to make nice little circles with my feet or, if I’ve given up on that, I just try to make it all look casual. That’s also impossible.
But, 30 more miles yesterday, and I really need to start putting more miles back in. We got home just as the wind picked up. She’d forecast the afternoon perfectly. Meteorologists call her for input, or they should.
And now back to work today, the cold week of spring break is over, replaced by a cold regular week.
In class today we talked about films, which means a lot of clips of special effects. One of the students found a five minute EXPLOSIONGANZA of CGI that just melted everyone’s brains. Oh, for a few scenes of expository. Or even a Stallone quote.
When they talk about film they also talk about awards, which everyone loves except me, apparently. I’m fine with it. I did enjoy the Oscars poster someone showed off. It had the statue in the foreground surrounded by floating lines from memorable award winners. I saw this famous line and thought about adding in some running commentary — we’d recently talked about civil rights, the 50th anniversary of various events in Birmingham and across the south, how critical a time that was and how there is such a great museum just over the mountain — so bringing up In the Heat of the Night would have been perfect.
I decided against it. I’m not sure kids born in the 1990s would understand 1960s Mississippi and why all of this was so important. Even the television show was off the air by the time my oldest student was born. Sidney Poitier, though, he just gives you more every time you watch that quiet moment.
Everyone always remembers this, perhaps a cinematic first:
They filmed most of In the Heat of the Night in Illinois because of conditions in Mississippi. The country’s come a long way in those two generations.
There are two new things on Tumblr today. One is here. This is the other one.
I call that Tumblr page “Extra stuff in an extra place.” That is, perhaps, the most apt thing I’ve ever written.
And, finally, I’ve watched this twice now. It will be the best five minutes of your day on the web.
If you’ve never read the Wikipedia entry on Ode to Joy, you should.
Back to work for me, have a lovely evening you. See you tomorrow, when there will be more on Tumblr, more here, always more on Twitter, another Glomerata and who knows what else we can find.
I got a rental van. It arrived a bit later than it should, so we left precisely 14 minutes after I wanted to. But, still, getting on the road at 3:46 when you were hoping for 3:32 isn’t bad when you consider you’re pulling in six people’s schedules and the general We’ll be there at 2:30 or 3:15-ness of the rental car guy.
We live in an amazing time if you think of it. I looked at glowing words on this flat screen, picked up a hunk of plastic and called a hotel, booked four rooms, found more words on the screen and made arrangements for a rental van. (Of course they called me in return three times, but that’s trivial.) I arranged all of the paperwork, procured the department’s blessing, recruited four students and a colleague, made them all sign the inevitable waivers and now we are bouncing all over western Alabama, Mississippi and western Tennessee.
Here we’d stopped for gas in Tupelo:
Brother, if your tank is low you better stop in Tupelo. It is a long walk in either direction if it purrs, conks and dies.
Our rental performed admirably, even with a distinct twang in Tennessee as we drove on the Rockabilly Highway, a 55-mile stretch of Highway 45, from Mississippi to Interstate 40. Look, I’m the guy who always wonders about the stories behind the names we put on roads, who regularly rides the actual Lost Highway and still does it with wonderment. So believe me, being on something called the Rockabilly Highway was pretty great.
Apparently there are Rockabilly murals here and there along the Rockabilly Highway, but it was dark and raining — which sounds like a song in of itself — so we didn’t see any. Shame that highway doesn’t stretch into Mississippi, though. Jumpin’ Gene Simmons was from Tupelo:
That video is understated and terrific, except our disc jockey didn’t walk it all the way up to the post. Everything else is perfect.
Anyway, we made it to beautiful and cosmopolitan Jackson, Tenn. around 8 p.m., just in time to register for the Southeast Journalism Conference. It runs tomorrow and Saturday and is a good trip for the undergraduates. They hear inspirational messages from talented professionals, met peers, eat free food, win awards and so on.
We had dinner at a place called Redbone’s right across from our hotel. They made a nice Casear Salad, and one of the students complimented their ribs. The band was good, if loud. And then they did a Beatles’ song that might have been a bit ambitious for two guys running their percussion through a keyboard. But they did enjoy themselves, and seemed to know they did Sweet Baby James just right.
Checked into the hotel mostly uneventfully. Everyone crashed into their rooms. I ironed in mine. Very exciting night, really. But tomorrow will be a busy day.
Stayed cloudy and gray and dim all day. Never topped 55 degrees, according to the local weather station. Though it never really felt like that warm. I had a few minutes that I could have pedaled around on my bicycle, but I did not. Too cold. Presently my baseline is 52 degrees.
So I stayed inside and did other things. And I counted the minutes until dinnertime, when we could enjoy the rest of last night’s delicious gumbo. Homemade and good stuff. You should be so lucky!
Every so often you see stories about social media fatigue. On the other hand, here is a piece discussing Innovative uses for social media:
(W)e predict that in 2013 social media intelligence will become much more commonplace as businesses, government agencies and not-for-profit organisations seek to leverage this new, unparalleled wealth of information.
There’s a list. It should include things like tracking illness, moving money, wide scale gaming, collaborative art and more.
To aggregate or not to aggregate. The debate continues:
aggregation or curation is a fact of life in the digital age — just as record companies have had to learn to live with rampant downloading and sharing of music, publishers of all kinds are trying to get used to the idea that their content is no longer under their control.
… which is fine as a philosophical point. The reality is you can’t put it back in the box.
Here’s a new show to watch:
The Weather Channel’s latest reality show, and coastal Alabama’s latest taste of reality-show exposure, “Reef Wranglers” makes its premiere at 8 p.m. Central time on Tuesday, Feb. 12. It’s a limited four-episode series focusing on the adventures of the crew at Reefmaker, a business based at Walter Marine in Orange Beach.
Should be worth it for the underwater scenes. Ignore the stereotypes, if the producers allow you.
I got a new Glomerata today. Actually I have a few new ones to add to the site, so I’ll do that in the next few weeks. But this one is especially special, one of the earliest editions. Inside was this:
There are two pages of sheet music to this diddy. This book is so old that it is entirely possible that no one alive has ever heard this tune. Can’t wait to know what it sounds like.
Come play it for me?
I made dinner last night, a new recipe for us, and very occasionally I share those here. So here’s the recipe.
My dinner started off with a chickpea salad with a homemade dressing. Make the dressing first:
1/2 cup – fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup – generic mild red wine vinegar
3 cloves – garlic
1 teaspoon – kosher salt
fresh black pepper
Mince the garlic cloves. Mix the liquids with the garlic. Add the salt and pepper. While that rests, put together your salad:
1 can – chickpeas/garbanzo beans
1 – large cucumber
1 tray – of grape tomatoes
1/4 cup – Athenos Garlic and Herb Feta cheese
1/4 cup – red onion
Fresh pepper
Quarter the cucumber. You should get around three cups. Halve the tomatoes, which should turn into about two cups. Rinse and add the chickpeas. Pour in the crumbled feta and diced onions. When ready to serve, strain any stray bits of garlic from the dressing and then pour into the salad, tossing to cover everything.
The main dish was ravioli with arugula and romano cheese:
1 pound – fresh or frozen cheese ravioli
1 clove of garlic
1/2 teaspoon – kosher salt
1/4 cup – extra-virgin olive oil
2 – shallots
3 tablespoons – red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon – honey Dijon mustard
3 cups – arugula (It’s a vegetable.)
Pepper to taste
Boil a pot of water while mashing your garlic (over salt) into smithereens, making a nice past-like substance. Drop the ravioli in your pot and stir. Let them boil until they float.
Pour your oil into a small skillet over medium. Add in your new garlic paste and diced shallots. Brown that mixture, which should be about two or three minutes. Then pour over it your vinegar, mustard and fresh pepper. Remove quickly from the heat.
Your ravioli is probably done by now. Drain that. Put it in a bowl, pour in the skillet’s contents and toss with your arugula. This is where your pecorino or parmesan goes. Serve hot. Enjoy a reasonably healthy meal.
Every so often I find something online and think “This, beyond the obvious military and financial and communication purposes, is what the web was made for.”
This is not that, but APAAWWWLLLLO 13 is worth seeing.
As has been correctly pointed out in the comments at SB Nation, Ken Mattingly, so ably played by Gary Sinise, is an Auburn man, and thus should not be cheering. Everything else feels wholly correct, however.
Naturally Forrest Gump is driving the thing.
YouTube Cover Theater: We find covers online and allow the talent of undiscovered folks playing music in their bedrooms and living rooms and kitchens to shine through. It is like every third show on network television, but without the more annoying parts.
Today’s featured covered artist(s) are the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. If you don’t understand their relative importance, open another tab in your browser and do a bit of Googling as these videos play.
First, here’s an older gentleman playing through a ceramic tunnel into the most acoustically vibrant church designed in the galaxy singing American Dream:
Mr. Bojangles:
OK, so this guy is singing this to his grandmother on her 80th birthday at her request. Automatic entry:
Two of these songs were written by Rodney Crowell, so I guess next week we’ll have to feature covers of songs he performed.
I like, even more than covers, on-stage collaboration. Here’s Nitty Gritty Dirty Band, Allison Kraus and others covering a Johnny Russell classic:
This became way more country-folk than I’d intended when I started. Enjoy the arugula!
