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8
Apr 14

My advice: Don’t

Sitting at lunch I ran my thumb over the inside of my ring finger. There was nothing there. This is a good way to ruin a reasonably decent barbecue chicken lunch.

So I looked through the napkins on my plate. I looked on the floor. I looked all around my seat. I did all of this several times. I took my plate up to the magic belt that transports the dirty dishes into the kitchen in the back of the cafeteria. I searched my dining area again.

There was no ring anywhere.

So I began to retrace my steps. That meant two restrooms, my office, my desk, my car and multiple bags, backpacks and garbage cans.

But the ring was gone.

So there’s desperation and misery and nausea. And that was all before I texted The Yankee to tell her the bad news. I started searching several of these places for a second and third and fourth time. I was wondering how far I should go into thinking about diving through the garbage coming out of the cafeteria. I had looked in my napkins, but had I looked enough? Vigorous napkin use because of barbecue sauce seems a good a way to lose a ring as any. Did I look in those napkins enough?

Meanwhile, I’m in this text conversation. Looked here, looked there. Did you look there? Yes. How about in –?. Yep. I walked over to the locker room I use at the pool. That was the last place I knew I had it because I’d taken it off to swim last night. Maybe it was still on the top of that locker, but that seemed unlikely and it was not to be.

Finally, The Yankee said What about in the trunk of your car? Clothes go there after you swim. I had not looked in the trunk. And in tearing that apart I found my ring, just sitting on top of a pair of blue jeans. Waiting. Apparently it had slipped off last night when I was putting things away after my swim.

Took hours to unwind from that anxiety. But, hey, the good news is my fingers must be getting skinny. On the other hand, I’m checking my ring finger every few minutes now.

Alabama / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off
7
Apr 14

Copeland Cookie Day

Today was Copeland Cookie Day in my class. This is Dr. Copeland:

He was my first professor in the doctoral program at Alabama. He served on my comps committee and was always full of great jokes and good advice. Not too long after he was on my committee, and just after his retirement, he died. Dr. Copeland was a giant sweet-hearted man. There’s a group on Facebook that is still growing long after his death, which probably says a lot in the modern context.

He always did a lot for his grad students. He’d take them out one night for drinks. He gave them tickets to the pancake breakfast his Kiwanis chapter ran. He’d take one class and bring cookies and put away the syllabus. He’d just talk about whatever seemed important: conferences, papers, dealing with colleagues. You could have viewed it as a night the guy didn’t want to teach. In time, I think, we came to realize that a lot of the most important things we learned came from there.

So that’s why I have a Copeland Cookie Day every semester. I bring in snacks, put aside the plans and just talk about industry, courses, war stories, whatever. Today was Copeland Cookie Day. These are all that remain:

The students always agree, after I tell about the man, that Dr. Copeland must have been a good man. They are right. His students knew it too. That Emmy was won by one of his former students. Instead of displaying that in his home or office, or giving it to his parents, he brought it to Dr. Copeland. There are at least a half dozen Copeland Cookie Days going on around the region this semester. I just thought you should know.

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6
Apr 14

Catching up

Just a bunch of pictures I haven’t found a good place for this week. Of course these are all from New Orleans, from which we returned this evening.

Leading off, here’s a great old ghost sign on Decatur Street. It was a product that was the brainchild of Isaac Emerson (1859-1931). He was a chemist, invented a headache powder, was a captain of the Maryland Naval Reserves and served as a lieutenant in the Spanish-American War. He ran a drug company, a chemical company and built a hotel. Bromo-Seltzer, his headache powder, is still available today. It is marketed as an antacid. This seems to be the sum of the surviving common knowledge of the drink in the ghost sign. Here’s someone trying to recreate the drink.

Gaston, the gator, outside of Huck Finn’s Cafe:

Our hotel, the Sheraton on Canal Street, is home to a Steinway ‘Blue Dog Piano,’ honoring the late George Rodrigue. The hotel also has a gallery of some of his other Blue Dog prints and there’s one original on loan there as well. The 1913 Steinway Model A grand piano, is on display at the Sheraton for the next two years. So it was weird when we came down one morning and the piano was gone. It goes on tour with some of the LSU musical performers.

This statue of Louis Armstrong is also in that hotel. I wonder what notes he is about to play:

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4
Apr 14

Where I pretend to say smart things among smart people

I had the good fortune to take part in two panels today, the first one was titled The Ethics and Political Implications of the Edward Snowden Document Leaks. The description in the conference program was:

This panel will explore the ethical and political implications of the classified United States documents made public by Edward Snowden. Many of the released documents indicate that government agencies have spied on Americans and foreigners, and the revelations have sparked sharp criticism and anger from several foreign leaders. Reflecting the conference them, panelists will discuss the ethical considerations of Snowden’s and the government’s actions and envision how these revelations might impact both future domestic and foreign affairs.

For my part I recalled what Lenin said about useful idiots. That’s pretty much where we are with Snowden at this point, I think. I talked about how all of this is going over with the American public in surveys, including one I found just this morning about how the security revelations are apparently changing people’s online habits.

Here’s the scene from the second panel, which featured some of the region’s finest political scholars — and me!

The title of the panel was Envisioning the Future: A Roundtable on Themes of the 2014 U.S. Midterm Elections. The description read

Panelists will discuss emerging themes of the 2014 U.S. midterm elections. Among the topics that will be addressed are: political issues facing the electorate this election cycle, political communication strategies in light of changes in campaign-finance regulation, and technological shifts in campaigning. Reflecting the conference theme, panelists will look forward to the upcoming elections based on analyses of recent campaigns and issues.

The word of the day was “Obamacare.” No one will run on anything else in the midterms. We talked about Scott Brown, since he was topical today. It was also important to bring up the Supreme Court’s finding on aggregate limits.

We had a late lunch at a place called Red Gravy, a high end Italian joint nearby. It was tasty. We had dinner at the House of Blues, which was a continuation of last year’s Hard Rock Cafe misadventures. I’m not sure I’ve ever laughed more than at those two tables. This is always a fun conference, no matter the city. It is the people, not the restaurants or the burgers or the panels and papers, but the fun and funny folks we get to visit with for a few days.

adventures / food / friends / photo / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
3
Apr 14

A day at the conference

Took part in a panel this morning. It was titled The Future of Campus Journalism. The description:

What are we teaching our journalism students? What should we be teaching our journalism students? Given the prolonged state of flux of the journalism industry, it is more important than ever for educators to be conscious of the ever-changing nature of the skills that our students will need to be able to adapt in today’s job market. Panelists will share their experiences with and suggestions for journalism education, both in the classroom and in the newsroom.

I talked about entrepreneurship, partnering with other entities on campus — Samford’s JMC teams with the business school and the law school for combined degrees — and initiative.

Other conference things took place. We attended sessions and other sessions. We visited the welcome mixer and then had dinner across the street at the Palace Cafe:

It was one of those places that was widely suggested to us by friends. (Tell people you are going to New Orleans and everyone has a restaurant list.) I had the braised pork shank:

It only needed to be bigger. And there was banana’s foster, which was prepared and fired in front of us. All the people infatuated by fire recorded the moment. The maitre d made a note of it and called the fire marshal, I’m sure. There was also cheesecake:

Tomorrow I’ll get to take part in two panels at the conference. Also, Wrestlemania is being held in New Orleans. The fans are starting to filter in. And some of the wrestlers. I think Mark Henry is staying in our hotel. That guy is massive.