The slideshow experiment continues. Plenty of things not to like, plenty of things to enjoy.
And look at that sunset!
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5
Nov 14
Sigh is a 13th century word — and other noises you didn’t expect
This entire day has felt like that moment just before you release the sigh, he said, not fully knowing what that means.
Or … I could try that again.
This entire day has felt like that moment just before you release the sigh, he sighed, knowing exactly what that meant.
Each time I went outside the sky was this light, slate gray. Even the grays couldn’t be bothered to bring a full palette. Like the sky said “Ya know … forget about it.”
So it was that I found myself bending over to study the leaves on the ground, where there was some actual color. I picked up a few to bring inside for a picture, but I’m not sure why.
All of this probably sounds like I am in a mood, but I am not. Well, I am in a mood, but it can safely be categorized as “good.” I’ve just not been especially impressed by the day.
There was a class though, and there was a newspaper meeting and then some time signing things and copying things and marking up papers. Last night I solved a networking problem. One computer wouldn’t reach anything, a student said. The ethernet cable had been removed. Broken clips sink ships. Today I’m dealing with a scanner problem. Bad software helps the enemy everywhere. Technical support is not my job, but I suppose it is really all of our jobs these days, not unlike wartime security and the old propaganda posters.
I love those old posters. At the Churchill Museum in London I was confronted with an entire room of them I could purchase. My wife and her mother, who were also in the museum, knew I was a lost cause and left me there to go do something else. A friend and former boss owns the poster printing company linked above, with tons of great old art. I’ve spent a lot of time pouring through those as well. In both cases I’ve never managed to buy anything. The next one is always better. There’s that moment before the sigh again, I guess.
Anyway, I can’t make the scanner work with the new computer. I’ve downloaded the things and read all of the forums and installed, changed, rebooted and all of that. I know how to have a good time, boy. Ultimately, though, I’ll need the actual tech folks — the real heroes in any business — come and get this situated.
So I may as well go back to looking through ancient posters — here’s one with a guy in an arm cast and sling in the background with text that says “Don’t get hurt.” In the foreground there’s a GI sprawled out, dead. “It may cost his life.” What a crazy poster to have hanging in the factory —
Suddenly, there’s a big squealing sound. Not the speakers, not the phone, but the scanner, which is in between them. Unplug the scanner, the squeal goes away. Try to scan again, it still will not initialize. There will be no beaming of data this day. We’ll have to send the shuttlecraft, keptin.
This can only mean that later, or some time tomorrow, that random squeal will start again.
Things to read … because reading is never random. (You’ll see. One day.)
Now the posturing sound of people trying to tell you what it all means … Recapping the GOP’s Historic Night:
If Democrats were going to hold off a Republican tsunami, they needed their base voters to come out to the polls and pull the lever for the president’s party. That didn’t happen where Democrats needed it to. Especially with young voters. Nationally, Democratic base groups — young voters, single women, African-Americans and Latinos — posted numbers that looked more like the Democrats’ 2010 midterm “shellacking” than Obama’s 2012 re-election victory. Most strikingly, voters 18-29 nationwide were only 13% of the electorate in 2014 (compared with 22% for GOP-leaning seniors.) In the 2010 midterms, young voters made up 12% of the voting public. In contrast, during Obama’s re-election victory in 2012, 19% of the electorate was under 30.
Locally, it was an uninspired turnout. Alabama voter turnout lower than normal:
Nearly complete election results indicate that about 41 percent of Alabama’s nearly 2.9 million active registered voters participated. A gubernatorial election traditionally attracts more than half of Alabama’s voters.
Maybe if the Democrats would put someone on the statewide ballots …
What did you do freshman year? West Virginia Elects America’s Youngest State Lawmaker:
A West Virginia University freshman who did most of her campaigning out of her dorm room became the youngest state lawmaker in the nation Tuesday.
Republican Saira Blair, a fiscally conservative 18-year-old, will represent a small district in West Virginia’s eastern panhandle, about 1½ hours outside Washington, D.C., after defeating her Democratic opponent 63% to 30%, according to the Associated Press. A third candidate got 7% of the vote.
In a statement, Ms. Blair thanked her supporters and family, as well as her opponents for running a positive campaign. “History has been made tonight in West Virginia, and while I am proud of all that we have accomplished together, it is the future of this state that is now my singular focus,” she said.
Ms. Blair campaigned on a pledge to work to reduce certain taxes on businesses, and she also holds antiabortion and pro-gun positions. She defeated Democrat Layne Diehl, a 44-year-old Martinsburg attorney, whose top priorities included improving secondary education and solving the state’s drug epidemic.
Maybe I share that story with students. No pressure, folks.
CBS to Launch Digital News Channel Tomorrow:
CBS plans to launch its new digital news channel tomorrow, an effort to get the broadcast network into 24-hour news. CBS Interactive head Jim Lanzone confirmed the company’s plans for the news video site during an onstage interview with me at the Web Summit in Dublin, Ireland
If they do something different with that, they could find some success. If the plan is simply to be a 24-hour news channel online … CNN or MSNBC awaits.
And, finally, one I shared with my class today, Social media, journalism and wars: ‘Authenticity has replaced authority’:
The panel stressed that not all of the old values have been swept away. “It’s really old-fashioned: can I find it out, is it true, can I stand by it? That level of trust is really important,” said Sutcliffe. “I’ve got a story, but does it stand up, is it true, what are my sources?”
“There will be two types of parallel journalism going on – the facts on the ground from people who are there, foreign correspondents, and people like us who filter,” said Little.
Some of the filters will be the same media organisations who employ on-the-ground correspondents, though. Time, for example, has a division focused on breaking news, which is deliberately kept separate from its foreign correspondents.
“We’ve hired a bunch of very young people in New York and Hong Kong and they’re essentially aggregating as a breaking news service: when anything appears from a reliable news organisation, quickly write two or three paragraphs and get it out there,“ he said.
Every quote in that piece is worth reading. I hope the students will give it a glance. You should too.
And then let go of that sigh. Tomorrow is Thursday, and yours is going to be great.
3
Nov 14
What happens below didn’t actually happen
New rule: When you see the Pig on the move, it is going to be a good day:
And so it was a good day, even though I didn’t see an actual Piggly Wiggly. (The amount of sleep I had this weekend might have something to do with the former.) I think I could only drive to one or two strictly by memory any more. How many Piggly Wiggly stores remain? Pigapedia says there are more than 600 stores in 17 states, with a distribution center still in Alabama. There are apparently 103 here, many in small towns most people have never heard of. Some in small towns I’ve barely heard of.
I remember the last time I was in a Piggly Wiggly, mostly because the opportunity was so rare as to be memorable. Nothing else about the place was. The mascot is great, and the store has a place in history, but otherwise they just feel undersized — compared to most suburban America grocery store experiences.
There’s something we don’t think about a lot, I’d bet. In fact, that exact phrase has never been crawled by a Google spider before.
One day, somebody will be at a Piggly Wiggly with their parents or grandparents and Google something about the place and this post might show up.
(Hi kid, check out the cereal selection on aisle 4. Some of it was probably shipped on that truck above.)
Today in class the chief of the Public Safety department came to give the students a faux-press conference. He was even kind enough to put on his badge, which I don’t always notice him wearing.
Every year or so the Public Safety crew and local emergency teams run an on-campus emergency situation. When I asked the director to visit my class he simply recycled this scenario. It was great. He walked in and tells the students there’s been an explosion. They have four phone calls reporting a suspicious person. The campus is on lockdown. There are injuries. These and those people are responding. “Are there any questions?”
The students ask some questions and he answers them and then he thanks them for coming and promises them another briefing. He goes outside and the students and I talk about what just happened. What did we learn and what is still confusing? What questions did we like and not like?
He comes back in and there’s an update to this part of the story and that. More questions. He leaves again. I give them a little primer on this aspect of the process, some “Have you thought about that?” business. He comes back in and does another briefing and takes more questions.
This goes on through about four or five press conference sessions and the faux-news (because this is all hypothetical, no need to worry) is real grim. There’s a chlorine leak. They found another explosive. Dozens of people injured, a bunch of people killed. The shooter is dead. If this scenario had played out in reality with these details, you’d have something similar to the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting.
Some of the students start sweating. I’m not sure if that’s the details or the rapid fire nature of what the director is telling them. That’s a lot to write down and they’ll have to do a story on it. They did a fine job in the press conference, though. I started a list of questions that should have been asked and by the end they’d gotten answers to most of those. It was a good experience then, I hope, and it was because of the guy with the badge. He certainly made it a memorable day, and that makes it a good one.
He’s definitely going to be called upon again to do that in my classes in the future.
2
Nov 14
Catching up
The weekly post of extra pictures. There are always extras. There are extras still, but I shot these yesterday while running, they fit the season and the mood and the others can wait. On with it, then!
This is Hummingbird Lake at Callaway Gardens. And I remembered the time I took my grandmother to Callaway to see the flowers when she visited me in college. Registering for this run or the countless times I’ve passed this exit or even getting there yesterday didn’t do it, but Hummingbird Lake made me think about that trip. Now there are just hummingbirds everywhere in my life. That’s starting to make me happy a little, but just about every other emotion is there too.
The next two shots are of Mountain Creek Lake, which is the largest body of water at Callaway. The Callaway family started digging this out in 1949.
Bluebirds are an important part of the local wildlife, so naturally there’s a Bluebird Lake.
Most of the trees are pines — this is Pine Mountain, Georgia after all — but some of the deciduous leaves are starting to go. Here’s another example at Whippoorwill Lake. There’s a half-mile nature trail here, and ducks during the right season. There probably all gone south for the winter by now, I’d bet:
Here’s one last shot of Mountain Creek Lake, which is the largest body of water in the park. There’s a 1.5 mile unpaved trail around Mountain Creek that drops you down to the water’s edge where you can see turtles, ducks, herons, a richly diverse floral scene and scarred trunks marked up by beavers.
This is part of the beach recreation area at Robin Lake, which, among other things, boasts the annual Masters Water Ski & Wakeboard Tournament. I did not know there was such a thing, but next year they’ll have the 56th annual event tournament:
Running the trail:
1
Nov 14
Callaway Twilight 10K
I got to hug my lovely bride today, and it was the most wonderful feeling in the world.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
As is now apparently our way, we find things to do online and then convince each other to do them. That’s how we started doing triathlons and that’s why we did a half ironman relay recently and that’s why we ran a 10K today.
There’s a 5K we did on campus a month or two ago with a friend. She said she liked it. The Yankee liked it. So I looked around for other races, being wary of how far I’m wiling to drive a car to run a distance I can do in my neighborhood. There it was, the Callaway Gardens Twilight 10K, held just over the border into Georgia.
The premise is you get to run around the pretty place and see the Fantasy In Lights Christmas show before it is open to the public. Twilight is a misnomer, but who cares. So we signed up, our friend bailed out because “Brrr it is cold and I’m from New Jersey.” So it was just the two of us, which was fine.
We made our way to Callaway after lunch today — and by after lunch I mean I ate in the car.
We got there just in time. Here’s the scene at the race start:
And here we are, probably less than a mile in, looking strong and having a nice time:
We’re not winning anything, this is just an excuse to exercise some new, pretty place. And, also, to have roadside support like this guy:
We ran through a lot of interesting light decorations that I’m sure pop nicely in the dark. There were speakers blaring thing from the trees — and of course the 12 Days of Christmas section was the one that wouldn’t end. We ran under giant decorations like snowflakes and wreaths and barns and this Santa’s Workshop kind of thing:
And then after six miles you found yourself trotting up the last little hill, turning right and running with Robin Lake on your left and the finish line ahead of you. We pronounced the course is relatively flat and fast. I’d like to really run it and see how slow I am. Ren did really well. It was her first 10K, ever, and she was very pleased with her performance and her time, as she should be. After the run:
It was windy and a little chilly, Somewhere between there and the finish line I got a full, complete, laughing, joyful hug of pride and pleasure and accomplishment. I could write a lot more about that, what that means or what it felt like, but the most important part is this: Don’t ever let go of those too early.
