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overwriting

Friday / overwriting — Comments Off
11
Nov 11

Veteran’s Day

Two years ago, we returned from a conference in Canada later than we’d expected. It had flurried on us in Canada, because we had the good fortune to be in Ottawa in November. We got stuck in Chicago for four hours, weathering two broken planes and all manner of other very minor absurdities.

When we arrived in Birmingham it was just before 9 p.m. and our plans to be home and make dinner and all of that were ruined. Also, it had snowed in Birmingham in November. And a tiny little bit of it had stuck to the ground. In Birmingham in November.

So we went to the wonderful DeVinci’s Pizza, possibly for some sort of pasta. And at the end of the evening Mr. Day was standing at the counter, standing over a portrait of his confident, determined son. He thanked me for wearing the poppy on my lapel that I’d picked up in Canada because he’d lost his boy in the service.

And so I think of him, and my uncle who lost a leg in Vietnam, and my great-grandfather who saved mens lives as a medic in the ETO in World War II, and the two ladies of my generation who shipped off for Iraq and people known to me and unknown. They’ve all done far braver things and endured far more than most of us can conceive, because they have a sense of duty, a love of place, an understanding of comradeship that insisted they stand by the people next to them, standing in front of the rest of us, for the rest of us.

Perhaps the highest honors we can give someone willing to do that are gratitude and peace. They deserve both in short order and in abundant supply.

Math and rain, and also traffic

I drove through that this morning. As it was later described, by several people, as “Suddenly here” and “hurricane-like.”

That last description came from a writer, so we’ll excuse the hyperbole. Even still, it was an imposing wall of active weather.

And I drove through two of them. The second was less impressive, but no less guilty of fraying the nerves of other drivers. Apparently it has been a while since it rained here — checking the drought monitor, why, yes, severe and extreme drought — because no one remembers how to drive in this stuff.

“I seem to recall something about hazard lights and … what was that other thing? Oh, BRAKES!”

Usually, applying a little less pressure to the accelerator and coasting to a speed slightly more comfortable allows one to press on, but not these good drivers. No sir. Today was a 45-mile-per-hour rain, which is to say that’s the speed I could safely maintain on the interstate in the heart of the storm.

Old timers remember a time of a 10-mile-per-hour rain, but their grandchildren, at Thanksgiving, just sigh and roll their eyes. “Not the monsoon story again, grandpa … ”

I recall stopping more with my grandparents in the rain than I’ve done myself, and my grandfather was a truck driver. He’d know from road weather. I have stopped for rain exactly twice in my driving career. Once it was raining so hard I mildly feared for my life. The other time it was merely difficult to see. And I believe it was late in the day and all the crazies were on the road.

No problems in the storms today, though, happily. The pine tree frontier was uneventful. Made it back to civilization just as the roads dried and the traffic thinned. I was able to stop by an engraving shop and ordered gifts for this year’s inductees to the Samford JMC Wall of Fame. Two gentlemen, alumni, success stories, are going on the great wall. They also need plaques.

Visited one of my banks, where I filled out paperwork. I will not be surprised at all to receive a phone call in three weeks informing me that the paperwork was incorrectly done and will need further attention. The helpful young teller was new and she knew as much about this particular procedure as I did. And I’m sure this will cost me $6. Processing fees, you understand.

On campus I received marching orders. I marched to and fro, doing things that were asked of me. I discovered, just before class, that I’d almost duplicated a colleague’s plan, almost to the letter. This required a last minute change of plans for my afternoon lecture.

I discussed math for journalists. Everyone wins.

Here I wrote some other things, my browser crashed and the WordPress draft sequence didn’t kick in. This is frustrating, but you’re not missing much. There was a story about bumper-to-bumper traffic and how, for the first time in the history of overcrowded interstates and freeway construction, it was beneficial. There was also a whimsical anecdote about the moon, which was lovely tonight.

I made this, though, so enjoy. I’ve put a few of these up here in the past, but not for some time. Thought I’d do this one, since I shot it from the hip today and remembered how much I like raindrops on glass. Something about the focus of the droplets and the blurring of the world beyond. I want to write about rain, there’s some great meaning behind it all, but precipitation isn’t my strongest subject matter, it seems. Best leave it to the experts:

Rain more. We need it.

iPhone / overwriting / Thursday — Comments Off
22
Sep 11

Driving is a good thing

After a long day holed up in the office and a perfectly acceptable afternoon in the classroom, this was my first view of the evening.

That gave way to a little storm, which turned into the lightning cloud that managed to stay just off in the distance. As dusk turned to night the electrons lit up the clouds into eerily serene spectres of yellow. And when all of the light was gone from the sky the lightning stood out in pale white sheets in the far off clouds.

It was a terrific show, a starkly beautiful piece of nature that felt like it lasted forever.

When I finally stopped admiring it and decided I should try to capture this somehow, it was too late. I set up the camera to do a little video, but what I captured was a cloud that had all but exhausted its energy. So there’s not much to see, beyond the dying gasps of a ferocious energy.

So I won’t show it to you. The video isn’t very good, even though I want it to be.

Now I just have to find the right mixture of conditions. A storm off in the distance that I’m continually chasing. Lightning. The proper lighting conditions at just the right time of day. Who knows? All of these things may never happen with me behind them. And there’s the eternal question: will I have the wherewithal to record it if I am there?

Truly it was beautiful. Sometimes, there are things about your commute that are worth remembering.

adventures / Friday / iPhone / overwriting / video — Comments Off
12
Aug 11

Back at home

Caught a two more sessions, had lunch with a friend, listened to my adviser give some tips on a panel and then we rushed to the airport.

And these are my parting thoughts about St. Louis. The cynical consensus seemed to be that people would have preferred a different conference location, but that could be that folks found little to do downtown, diagnosed the WiFi as lousy and had already experienced a 6 a.m. fire alarm.

I’ve only been there twice, and the first visit to St. Louis was on a long layover that let us discover the cross-town trip on the MetroLink to the arch, an eye-opener for many in our little group, and a few minutes at the arch. I’m no expert. There might not be a lot to do, as some people claimed, after you’ve seen the arch and the Cardinals and gone to either Six Flags or Budweiser, or for the hearty, both. But we didn’t come to do those things. St. Louis has seen some hard times, like most everyone else along the Mississippi, even when it wasn’t the Big Muddy that brought those times downstream. But the people we met this trip have all been friendly and kind. If you so much as walk around with a curious look on your face people were willing to stop and offer directions, even if you didn’t need it. People were chatting with strangers in the “We’re all in this together” sense, even if you didn’t know what you were in.

We’re long on hospitality where I’m from, but they have no shortage of it in St. Louis, either.

I did not get to try the barbecue steak sandwich, but maybe next time.

Our hotel was nice. We crashed with a friend, and the pullout sofa could have been much worse.

The airport, is another tragic matter. It took 52 minutes to join the security line and make it through the other side of the metal detectors. A careless TSA guy almost crushed The Yankee with a tall stack of those ubiquitous gray tubs. He did not notice or care. The people working there know they are in a bad spot, the passengers let them hear it, and there’s not much they can do.

They have five detector screening stations. Three were opened. And this was not, we’re told, an unusual crush at the checkpoint. “We don’t have enough people” muttered the second ID checking person. Really? There’s only 20 percent of the country unemployed or underemployed, and most of them would look good in blue. St. Louis County was at an unadjusted 8.8 percent earlier this summer, and everyone is convinced these numbers have been depressed. It doesn’t get much more shovel-ready than a small government job, and yet here we are.

This isn’t about jobs in St. Louis, though, that nightmare is about staffing. This is being two waiters short on Valentine’s Day, only Valentine’s Day is every day.

So we’d arrived at the airport with just over an hour to spare and barely made it to the plane in time. That was nice, but at least my shoes and toiletries are safe. Oh, and the people in line, the poor regulars that fly through this airport frequently, they secretly loathe the place. I’m sure the feeling is mutual. This is what air travel has become.

Oh, and this:

Home, after an inordinate pause to get a jetway in Atlanta. That narrowed and closed our window for barbecue in Newnan, where we learned about the town’s two Medal of Honor winners, Col. Joe M. Jackson and Maj. Steven W. Pless. They received their medals on the same day, and the legend goes that LBJ said something like “There must be something in the water down in Newnan.”

Read the details about what those two great men did and you’ll realize: he was right.

Dinner in town, pizza at Mellow Mushroom, marveling at the suddenly full streets. Everyone is back in town, marking the almost-end of summer.

It could go on a bit longer; I wouldn’t mind.

cycling / iPhone / journalism / links / overwriting / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
3
Aug 11

The bike, rhetoric, the economy, journalism, politicians, link bait

Twenty miles this morning, which was the rough equivalent to midday on Venus. The heat index was 102 and I learned a very important thing on this ride across an eternal purgatory: shade is important.

Can you tell I’m an intellectual?

It has been a while since I’ve been on my bike. My legs felt like goopy clay, churning sometimes, freewheeling at other moments and never answering the call as they should. When the heat kicked in I think my brain went beyond non-autonomous functions like shifting gears and concentrated on things more important like perspiration and demanding I take a drink.

We had here, though, a type of asphalt cement that was being baked again. The county, should they feel compelled, could do road work for half price this month because much of their equipment could be left at the office. The sun is baking everything, including the brains of the road workers. And people foolhardy enough to be riding their bike at the you-should-know-better hour of 8 a.m.

I noticed that the sun was killing me, but when I got under trees, everything felt significantly better. Like a good scientist, I continued observing this phenomenon until I could state for certain that a pattern had emerged. Of course my brain was a hunk of melted chocolate by then, but I had my answer: shade = good. Problem: this road has little shade.

And so I called it a ride, because how much of this do you need, really? (I did get a new picture for the front page, though, so that’s something.)

Which is when I decided to stop at a gas station for a Gatorade where something unusual and unexpected happen. And I will tell you that story below, but I must say this first: I live in a lovely town. Counting the years I attended undergrad here I’ve spent six years in residence. It is a fine college town. The people are friendly, generally decent and helpful and, I think, it is because we all know we’re lucky to live in a nice place. So that’s six years, and aside from the occasional town versus gown thing, and whatever condescension — which was never much, mind you — I received as a student by the locals, I don’t recall having ever experienced a truly snooty moment from anyone. (At least when I didn’t deserve it.)

So the story: I go into this gas station, who’s initials shall remain nameless, but the acronym stands for Quick Trip. There’s an older lady and a younger man working there. I’m going to say they were related, but I have no idea. This is a nice clean place. Good location, all of that. They have two full walls of beverages. I wander in and in my dazed, sizzling brain state look for the Gatorade that will hopefully give me the electrolytes of life.

The young guy walks the length of the store and starts eyeballing me. Not in a subtle way, but in a serious and obvious looking me over way. Like he’s going to ask me if I have any needles, drugs or weapons on me before he pats me down sort of way. I grab my drinks and start navigating up to the counter to pay for my beverages. This takes a little effort because I have my bike with me and don’t want to knock anything off their shelves.

Now, I took my bike inside because I don’t ride with a lock, there’s no place to tie it down anyway and I’m not interested in watching my expensive machine disappear with someone else. Also my phone and other important things were on board today. So I take my bike inside. I’m trying to line the front wheel and the handlebars off so I don’t knock off a can of Dinty Moore with the drops and this requires a pause, a steer and a come-on-brain-work moment. My shadow over here has noticed I’ve stopped, has turned and walked back to study me again.

I get it. And, look dude, I’m wearing bike shorts and a bike shirt. You think I’m stuffing a sleeve of crackers somewhere on my person?

I make my way to the front and my conversation with the lady staffing the register goes like this:

“Ain’t never seen that before.”

What’s that?

“Someone bringing their bike in the store.”

Well, it is expensive and I’m cheap and I don’t want to lose it.

“This is a good neighborhood …”

I know, it is. I live just down the road.

A fine neighborhood, to be sure. And yet you’ve got your boy giving me long hard looks. Lady, don’t judge me. I’m riding a bike. I have on a helmet and an iPod. I’m sweating like Zeus being confronted by Hera. I feel for the hard-working African-American man who kindly held the door for me as I exited and he entered. I can’t imagine what she thought of the young Hispanic male who walked in after that.

“This place is just going to Hades.”

Yes, I’m sure she thinks this, is scared of it and can blame the heat on the confluence of so many undesirable things, sweaty white guy and two men who do not fit into her expectation of a nice neighborhood.

I stood there thinking, I should go clean myself up and come shop here in a more respectable manner, just to see if they recall this visit. But then I thought, No. You’ve been judged and found unworthy. By a gas station attendant. You need not spend any more money here.

I refer you to Smith’s First Rule of Commerce, Marketing and Entrepreneurship: Do not make it hard for me to spend my money with you.

At home I got cleaned up, stretched out, denied aloud that I was going to sleep and then promptly took a three hour nap. My body ran hot the rest of the day, it does that some time, and I took on the task of the daily reading.

The message for politicians who now find themselves adept at the art of brinkmanship: your upcoming vacation may not be as pleasant as you’d like. Even for Congress, people are displeased:

Nor has the spotlight in the past few weeks helped Congress: Nearly one in five independents say they think less of both congressional Democrats and Republicans as a result of the budget negotiations. Not a single one of the independents interviewed now thinks more highly of both sides.

Every now and then the electorate pays attention. And on some of those occasions they peer beyond the soundbites, dismiss the rhetoric, look to their children and they form opinions on you. And that must give you cause to tremble. I’ve had some very interesting conversations and heard still more from several demographics talking about elected representatives lately; there’s a lot of displeasure that can’t solely be blamed on unemployment rates.

My representative’s office did send out a Cut, Cap and Balance email about a week after the legislation was dead. You can imagine what the replies must have been like.

Want an electric car from Chevrolet? No one does, it seems. Sadly Weekly Standard is not allowing comments there. They would no doubt be an entertaining read.

Look. I know who Maureen Dowd is. I know what she does and why she has the pulpit she does. Hasty, red meat rhetoric doesn’t bother me because it is easily dismissed. Curdles the moment you write it and leaves the author with the worst sort of legacy. If that’s what you’re after, good for you. I’ve read this stuff for years, studied it studiously and written about it professionally. But, really:

Most of the audience staggered away from this slasher flick still shuddering. We continue to be paranoid, gripped by fear of the unknown, shocked by our own helplessness, stunned by how swiftly one world can turn into a darker one where everything can seem familiar yet foreign.

“Rosemary’s Tea Party,” an online commenter called it.

If the scariest thing in the world is something you can’t understand, then Americans are scared out of their minds about what is happening in America.

Every view is fine, and every semi-organized group needs yipping attack dogs, too. It gives people a role to play, and maybe a nice seat at a correspondents dinner. That’s great. My visceral problem with op-eds such as these are that, 80 years from now, someone is going to pull this up off that old dusty — What did they call it back then? Interweb? Worldtubes? — and see things like this in the paper of record during a period supposedly beyond yellow journalism, written by those flush in the glow of those would do good with their pen, comfort the afflicted with their FTP and afflict the comfortable with their retweets. And instead of some good copy, or even a nice argument, you get:

Tea Party budget-slashers didn’t sport the black capes with blood-red lining beloved by the campy Vincent Price or wield the tinglers deployed by William Castle. But in their feral attack on Washington, in their talent for raising goose bumps from Wall Street to Westminster, this strange, compelling and uncompromising new force epitomized “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and evoked comparisons to our most mythic creatures of the night.

They were like cannibals, eating their own party and leaders alive. They were like vampires, draining the country’s reputation, credit rating and compassion. They were like zombies, relentlessly and mindlessly coming back again and again to assault their unnerved victims, Boehner and President Obama. They were like the metallic beasts in “Alien” flashing mouths of teeth inside other mouths of teeth, bursting out of Boehner’s stomach every time he came to a bouquet of microphones. (Conjuring that last image on Monday, Vladimir Putin described America as “a parasite.”)

Remember: The New York Times created something called Times Select because they thought all of America would plunk down $50 to read such gems from Maureen Dowd et al. That lasted exactly two years, and was successful for almost none of that time.

And so, because we need perspective, we must once again turn to a comedian:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

Dealageddon! – A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Compromise – The Super Committee

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

No matter how you feel about it, there’s a reason people trust the guy. It doesn’t take a day on hot asphalt to realize that. Well, maybe it does.

And now we must go buy birthday cards. Because we have a host of people to recognize in August and nothing says “We respect and love your kind and generous contributions to what make us who we are” like a midnight trip to Walmart. More on that tomorrow.