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If you drew it up, you’d want a mom to be the best person and mother she can possibly be, and then work ridiculously hard to be just a little bit better still. Moms give us all invaluable lessons and impossible standards. Good thing, too.
And many more … Especially since I am now, somehow, outpacing you in the birthday department.
One day I’m going to ask why I’m looking the wrong direction in this picture.
The weekly post that adds pictures that you haven’t seen here yet. I’m not sure why I explain that. According to this I’ve written this post for more than three years now … Anyway, to the photos.
My view of Atlanta from the ninth floor of the Ramada. This is actually by the elevators. The view from my room was more fitting: a parking lot and freeway.
These chairs didn’t look comfortable, and they weren’t comfortable. Until they were. This is hard to explain. But I’d had four hours of sleep the night before, so that may have something to do with it.
My rental van. I parallel parked this brick beast. Only because the space behind me was empty at the time.
Some of our Samford students listening in on a panel, about Ebola, I think.
No one has explained this to me yet …
This flatiron is the Hurt Building, built between 1913 and 1926 nation’s earliest skyscrapers. It was said to be the world’s 17th largest office building during construction.
Now this is a light fixture. This is in the student center at Georgia State.
So we go through all of the awards, there are about 30 of them, and finally there’s the College Journalist of the Year award. They start at number 10 and we work our way up. This was around number five, when Sydney was realizing she was still waiting to hear her name.
She placed third in the College Journalist of the Year. She’s a print person through and through and, happily, has an editorial job already lined up for after graduation. She’s going to be great. She also placed fourth in the multimedia journalist category and won the sports photojournalism onsite championship. It was, she said, her first basketball game.
Allie has been hanging out with me all day.
We are back from the conference.
The above picture is from one of the three panels I sat in today. One was, basically, on student media troubleshooting. This one was about the difficulties student media are having at Tennessee State and Delta State. At TSU they’re getting stonewalled by their administration, at DSU, the entire program has been cut. These are bad scenes. I also sat in on a sports media panel, which was a lot of fun.
I’m exhausted. I ended up judging four categories, which cuts into your sleeping time. I think I’ve had 17 hours of sleep since Wednesday morning. So when I looked at the time and thought I’ll be asleep before 9 p.m. I was fine with that.
These guys are awesome:
That was the funny pose, of course, from Friday night. We left Atlanta this afternoon after receiving awards in the Onsite Journalism Championships:
Page Layout Championship: Honorable mention – Emily Featherston
Copy Editing Championship: 3rd place – Halley Smith
Sports Photojournalism Championship: 1st place – Sydney Cromwell
Hey, I’ve got the laundry started and I’ve had dinner. If you’re not exhausted, you’re doing it wrong.
Full awards:
Best College Video News Program: 9th place – SNN
Best College Magazine: 3rd place — Exodus
Best TV Journalist: 9th place – Yvonne Gross
Best Newspaper Layout Designer: 7th place – Grace Miserocchi
Best News Graphic Design: 6th place – Amy Wilson
Best Magazine Layout Designer: 5th place – Kaitlyn Bouchillon
Best Sports Writer: 4th place – Sam Chandler
Best Arts & Entertainment Writer: 4th place — Jimmy Lichtenwalter
Best TV News Feature Reporter: 4th place – Cherie Olivier
Best Multimedia Journalist: 4th place – Sydney Cromwell
Best Magazine Writer: 3rd place – Jonathan Adams
Best News Writer: 2nd place — Emily Featherston
Journalist of the Year: 3rd place – Sydney Cromwell
Photo by Samantha Nelson.
We got snow. It started around me around 6 or 7 p.m. last night. It looked like this:
It didn’t snow very much on us, but to the north they had an actual snowfall event. The roads were dry by mid-morning. Campus opened at 11 a.m. today. The expectation was that the cold temps and melting snow could make for some dangerous roads for winter-weary travelers.
So almost as soon as campus opened I had to get ready to leave. Things must be printed and copies must be made. Department credit cards must be picked up, returned and then finding another one. The rental car people have to show up. I have to promise not to transport minors to Canada. (Seriously, there’s an Enterprise form for that.) Waivers from students must be signed. And then we get to the van. It is a giant white brick. The Enterprise people couldn’t find the gas tank. We walked around it three times before we accidentally stumbled upon it. We labored with loading the thing with luggage, which was more difficult than it needed to be.
And then we were on the road, bound for Atlanta and the Southeast Journalism Conference, hosted by Georgia State University. The trip was no problem, the roads were perfect. We checked into the hotel right on time. We checked into the conference with no problem. The Yankee came over and we all went out for dinner at Tin Lizzy’s Cantina. Some of the students brought us milkshakes. I got to see a student that was in my class a few years ago, but transferred to GSU, which made us all sad. It was a nice treat to see her and learn that she was doing very well. Also, milkshakes.
Things to read … because reading goes with your dessert.
Lessons from a 73-Year-Old World Champion:
Train and race hard. Treat your training like a job and always approach it with great focus.
Never quit. Don’t shortchange any of your workouts. Always finish what you set out to do because if you can’t accomplish goals on the micro-level, you won’t be able to shoot for those on the macro-level.
Always stay in the moment. Banish all negative thoughts from your mind and focus on the task at hand.
Here are a few local stories of note.
Undocumented immigrants: A boom or bust opportunity for Alabama economy?:
While charting the population totals for each state may be inconsistent, the amount already paid in tax dollars is not. Data from The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy , or ITEP, highlights that undocumented workers contributed $10.6 billion in state and local taxes in 2010, but this money could slowly be leaving some states who continue to fight the inclusion of undocumented immigrants.
This population is also reportedly getting smaller for Alabama — a state faced with closing a $700 million budget gap and on the verge of a tax increase.
This story is going to be huge. ALDOT director says lawmaker’s billboard went too far, kills road projects:
Alabama Department of Transportation Director John Cooper today said he has called off planned road projects in state Sen. Bill Holtzclaw’s district, which includes portions of Limestone and Madison County.
Holtzclaw, a Republican, this week put up a billboard in his district that read “Governor Bentley wants to raise your taxes. I will not let that happen.”
“I just thought the billboard was a step too far,” Cooper said today. “If Sen. Holtzclaw feels that strongly about taxes, he probably wouldn’t be comfortable with a significant amount of tax dollars being spent in his district as we had planned.”
Let’s continue with that story, where an appointee is trying to silence a representative of the governor’s own party. Alabama DOT director stops road projects because of senator’s billboard critical of Gov. Robert Bentley:
“If Sen. Holtzclaw is that concerned with taxes I think he probably would be uncomfortable with us spending tax money in his district, so I pulled the projects,” Cooper said.
Bentley announced last week that he would propose a $700 million tax increase to close a shortfall in the General Fund budget.
Bentley also said at that time, in response to questions about whether he would try to strong-arm legislators into supporting his plan by threatening to withhold project funds: “We will look more favorably on areas of the state that really do want to support our budget.”
Cooper said today that Bentley did not instruct him to stop the projects. He said he informed Bentley about his decision in a phone call but declined to say how the governor reacted.
We’re going to hear a lot about this story, I hope, in the near future.
I’ve written about this man here before. Medal of Honor recipient Bennie Adkins shares his story with Opelika High students:
According to Army records, Adkins is estimated to have killed between 135 and 175 enemy soldiers and was wounded 18 times during the incident.
“What makes it so humbling is the fact that in that time period, 30 million men and women served in our military, and there are only 79 living Medal of Honor recipients,” Adkins said. “I wear this medal today for the other 16 American soldiers with me on those days. All 17 of us were wounded, most of us suffered multiple wounds, and five paid the ultimate price for this great country. The 18 wounds I suffered are very minor compared to that.”
I wrote about his truly unbelievable Medal of Honor notice, here.
Journalism links:
Six questions journalists should ask when evaluating a rumor
SPLC project strives to empower women in student media
Firing Joey Kennedy
Tomorrow the conference begins.
