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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.

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Friday / IU / photo / podcast — Comments Off on Welcome to your weekend
2
Feb 18

Welcome to your weekend

I went into the studio first thing this morning and recorded this.

And I walked out of the audio booth and down the hall some 75 feet, let’s say and immediately into the television studio, where I produced an oral history. And that somehow ran until about lunch.

So I had a quick bowl of noodles at a place called Noodles, with The Yankee, which has the benefit of being right across the street and, usually, pretty good lunch fare. And they are quick, which is good.

After lunch it was right back into the studio where I worked with some students from the newspaper who are wanting to do movie reviews. This reporter is creating some no-doubt award-winning content and I am watching her in the viewfinder and trying not to giggle at her movie review:

She did two takes and decided she had what she wanted for this trial run episode. And after that I was down to the little this and that parts of the day, the tidying up the desk for the weekend, part of the day, and the answering all of the many emails part of the day.

On Fridays you can get all of that into one part of your day, if you are suitably motivated.

And then it was home, home to sit and read and pet the cat and enjoy doing nothing for a little while. The problem is, you could get used to that, so I ended up straightening up my office a tiny bit and doing some laundry and thinking up new projects and plotting out the weekend and, now, here we are. I’m sort of caught up on things, for a change. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do about that. Any thoughts?

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friends / photo / podcast / Wednesday — Comments Off on This update only seems skimpy
31
Jan 18

This update only seems skimpy

We placed second in a restaurant-wide trivia contest tonight. We were in fifth-place after the first two rounds, but then our table, The Yankee and two more sports media scholar friends — one a German visited the U.S. for the semester – rallied late. The final question was ranking four actors from oldest to youngest. We nailed it, finished just points behind the winner and claimed a $20 gift card.

That’s two times in a row we’ve finished as the runner-up. We’re just not going to acknowledge that it was a bunch of students that beat us – like, a bunch. We did alright despite our weaknesses in pop culture. I decided we should recruit experts in various fields from across the university and see how we did. If you can build a big enough team, you’re liable to get enough experts, right?

I had a burger, because the only thing I like at that place are the fries. They somehow manage to make a moist burger with no flavor. This is disguised

I did a monologue, of sorts, because I read this guy’s story in the local paper and it is a good one. This will take you about four minutes.

And I think I have finally run out of photos I took last weekend. So enjoy these, while I go think up some additional fresh content for the next few days.

Here’s a sunset picture with a dark, foreboding tree line in the foreground. You just don’t see those sorts of photos anywhere, do you?

Frost on things can make for some dramatic photography. I did these with my phone, which doesn’t exactly excel at macro photographs:

And, finally, here’s an accidental selfie. We’d been throwing rocks into the lake, or onto the lake, trying to bust the ice. My fingers got muddy, which is why I was holding my hand

Just kidding about the content thing, there’s always something new. Especially when the bar is a photo of muddy fingers. You’ll just have to come back to find it all.

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photo / podcast / Tuesday — Comments Off on The day’s efforts and progress
30
Jan 18

The day’s efforts and progress

Yes, we love technology. We still love technology, always and forever.

Chris Pollone, who you’ll see on all your quality NBC newscasts across the country, joined our little podcast once more to talk about a big moment in the communication sector. We’re going 5G and that phrase is going on to take a ride on the hype train. Why, one day, we’ll look back at this message, and that you read it over LTE or wifi and have a great big laugh. And just think about what it will do for your industry, dear reader. It could do a lot. Pollone tells us more:

On the podcast we have now gotten the good news that the show has been picked up for syndication at Google Play. And you can also find the show among the many other quality programs on Stitcher, as well. Next, iTunes, then, if I survive that bit of silliness, the world!

But, tonight, the television studio, where I have studios making television shows that cover and discuss things generally related to news. I’m sure the online versions will be live tomorrow, and I can share them with you. Watch, as they say, this space.

Meantime, here are four more photos I took this weekend, including this guy, a peregrine falcon, which is the fastest species on the planet:

It was a lovely little sunset on Saturday, clearly, which is why I’m goosing this well into the next week.

I may have a few more pictures for tomorrow too. Then we can get to some really interesting stuff around here, he said, hoping that would be a tease sufficient to bring you back. So do come back.

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adventures / friends / hobby / Instagram / Monday / photo / podcast / video — Comments Off on A podcast, a video and 11 photos in between
29
Jan 18

A podcast, a video and 11 photos in between

There’s a lot here, owing to catching up from a full weekend. And it doesn’t at all get into the three-hour tin whistle concert we performed on Saturday. There’s a lot here.

We’re all from somewhere is the general theme of the show we produced today. It’s about a reporter who is using public records to look up the immigration histories of people who are lately very much anti-immigration. But most of us have family that started somewhere else. My old friend and former co-worker Justin Thurman of the USA Today Network told us about the story:

What’s funny is that Justin and his wife, when they tell me stories about their families, they sound exactly like my family. Just good old fashioned country folks, salt of the earth types. So much so that I have made a joke with them that we will one day find out we are related. And then as I learned more about my family history, it turns out that at one point my family was just a town or two over from theirs.

My family has some English and some Dutch and a few other things. One branch can be traced back to the War of the Roses, another apparently back to the Mayflower and still another group seems to know its way back to the 16th century. We’re all from somewhere.

Here are some photos I took of a walk we took yesterday.

A duck out at a frozen Monroe Lake:

Ice on scrubby brush:

I like photos of people at a distance, in silhouette. Sometimes the angles are such that you can’t see what they are doing, and so I wonder. I wonder what they are thinking, where they were before they got there, and where they might be heading after this. And I wonder about my wondering from a distance:

You don’t often see fog hang around until afternoon on a sunny day:

And then the sun turns the frost to droplets:

I think the birds like that a bit better. Warmer feet:

Here’s a picture of a vine holding a stick:

And a video I made:

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