photo « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

photo

photo / Samford / Wednesday — Comments Off
13
Mar 13

Working through Wednesday

Stayed busy enough today that I didn’t even have the chance to enjoy my afternoon oranges.

Philip Poole, the director of Samford’s office of marketing and communication stopped by our class today. He’s a very nice guy, helpful with students, always ready for a friendly chat.

He told the students about “Phantom Week” of 2008. In May of that year a campus safety officer reported he saw a gunman on campus. They locked everything down, searched for the guy for hours. After a while they opened the campus, declared it safe and started asking the campus safety guy a few more questions.

Turns out he made the entire story up.

Eight days later, Poole says, was graduation. A woman fell and hit her head and was going to miss graduation. Her family was naturally upset because she was also supposed to be the student speaker. As Poole heard more and more of the story less and less of it made sense.

Turns out she wasn’t even a student at Samford, but her brother had been sending her tuition money for years. So everyone figures out pretty quickly where that story goes.

He talks about working for the university, dealing out public relations here and journalism there. He’s a good person to know on campus, and he has a great rapport with students and I’m always happy to have him visit.

Elsewhere, graded papers all morning. Read the paper, critiqued the paper. Graded more papers.

It is remarkable I don’t get paper cuts, he said, dooming himself to a horrible series of them in the near future.

I was finally able to eat my banana on the drive home. That kind of day. But a good day, a beautiful day. The thermometer said 59, but the sun made it warmer, the cheer in the air made it brighter and the feeling of the coming spring just intensified everything.

Except the oranges.

Alabama / cycling / memories / Monday / photo / Samford — Comments Off
11
Mar 13

A very rainy Monday

This is today:

I drove in that, trotted across a parking lot in that and then watched it from indoors fall on the quad at Samford. It is a rainy day. That’s about an inch of rain, apparently. I question our precipitation measuring methods. This was a lot of rain.

Hard to conceive that yesterday looked like this:

That was about 20 miles into my ride yesterday evening, about halfway back down the home road. It gives the impression in this stretch of riding on a ridge line. I’m not sure why, there’s no real drop off and houses dot the right side. But the pastures on the left tend to slope down a tiny bit, so you feel like you’re riding high and on top of everything. Only the hill you just crested isn’t that much of a hill, really, but everything is relative and when you are surrounded by rollers you can be King of the Molehill.

In a few more weeks, and a little to the right of that shot, there will be the most amazing wildflowers. A few days after that, and back down the hill to the left, there will be a yard filled with eight-foot-tall flowering bushes. This is a fragrant area.

Anyway. Being a rainy Monday, I made today Copeland Cookie Day in my class.

Dr. Gary Copeland was one of our grad school professors. He died last January, just after his retirement which was doubly sad in that he was so very much looking forward to spending more time with his grandchildren.

He was the kind of man that people just don’t stop missing, I think. I had the honor of being invited to a Facebook page in his memory that remains active even today.

And so I wrote there that it was Copeland Cookie Day in class. In honor of the great man and his epistemology and ontology class I pick a day each semester, put a picture of his on the board, tell them about this colorful character, feed the students cookies and, most importantly, talk about things that aren’t on the syllabus.

It is one of everyone’s favorite classes. Mostly because of the cookies.

Dr. Copeland was the instructor of my first class at Alabama and was on my comps committee. He was one of the good ones, and I like telling students about him, and his Copeland fests and taking students out to eat and his general kind and giving nature.

When I wrote about it this afternoon on Facebook 16 people liked it, most of them his former students. At least one professor said he was going to make his own Copeland Cookie Day and word is getting around our department that I do this. He would laugh at the silliness of it. But he was a giver and would have enjoyed it, too, I think.

So we talked in class about trips we’d taken so far and how some people who have similar majors from elsewhere are waiting tables or how someone read a survey about how it was a tough career. And those things are important to hear, but for freshmen and sophomores there are a lot of positives too. At the end of the day its not unlike most other things: work hard at it and good things can come to you. Dodge raindrops where you can, look fondly back on sunny days and forward to even nicer ones.

It is that time of year, where the weather always seems on on the cusp of ever nicer days, and we’re all looking forward. The oncoming Spring Break isn’t a bad excuse, either. Not that anyone is counting the days, the number of which is four.

Auburn / baseball / friends / photo / weekend — Comments Off
10
Mar 13

Catching up

The one day of the week when you can count on even less being here. So we make up with it with pretty pictures. More often than not, though, they are very average. They often have reasonably interesting stories though, so let’s stick with that.

From the swimming and diving meet last Thursday. Did I mention The Yankee was a diver? She’s twisting here, and she probably doesn’t like that, but it looked cool:

Did I mention she won? This guy, meanwhile … As I suggested to the judges, a diving coach and whomever else was standing nearby, if you make a sound, you earned extra points. Have a heart, judges of America:

Those dives were off the one-meter board. And, yes, you can spring high enough to generate enough velocity to land with a resounding smack that catches the attention of everyone in the natatorium. It happened.

Here’s The Yankee swimming:

She was warming up for her three races. She won one of them, a 4×200 relay:

And they aren’t just out there for giggles. There were some serious competitors on that pool deck:

I am disqualified as I can’t swim in a straight line. We all have our burdens in life.

To the baseball! This is a fan from Brown. He’d come all the way down from Rhode Island, avoiding winter and enjoying our beautiful pre-spring weather and walked over to tell the hecklers in Section 111 that he’d enjoyed listening to them all weekend. That was pretty awesome.

Here are a few more crowd shots from Plainsman Park. There’s a story below, too, so keep scrolling.

Auburn claimed a sweep of Brown with today’s 6-3 win behind Rocky McCord’s 6 2/3 innings and eight strikeouts. This is his last pitch of the day:

Here are the game highlights.

But the man of the hour was Brown head coach Marek Drabinski. He’s also coaching third when Brown is at bat, and that brought him a weekend’s worth of good-natured ribbing from the hecklers.

By late Saturday he was even talking back to that section of the crowd a bit. Hecklers were trying to get him to stand in his box, but he refused:

Fans were chatting with him and ultimately trying to bribe him. At one point we invited him to sit in the stands. It is hard to imagine Skip Bertman or Jim Wells getting that offer. Appealing to Drabinski’s northeastern tastes the offer became “Dunkin Donuts if you’ll only get in the box!” On Sunday afternoon he asked where his Dunkin was. We had to sadly tell him that our Dunkin Donuts wasn’t running yet. But it would be built by next season, if only he’d bring his team back down.

He teased us all with the box. He’d walk over to the edge, look down and walk away. He’d slink over and put one foot in. He’d come back later and but one foot inside the box and just over the other foot above the box. On Sunday he promised he’d get in the box later.

And at the end of the game, with his team down, but rallying to try and avoid the sweep, Drabinkski walked over to the box in the last at bat.

He’d disarmed us all with his charm by then. The guy was enjoying himself with the hecklers, and they were enjoying his good spirits.

Coach of the year? Coach of the year. And a great reminder of what college sports is supposed to be. We all kind of hope he brings his Bears back down this way next year, so we can treat him to Dunkin. And make him get in the box.

That was the most fun we’ve ever had with a coach, easily, including when you can see the hecklers getting into their heads.

Finally, here’s a picture of my friend, Stephen’s, daughter. It was her first Auburn game, but she loves baseball:

I took a picture of their family together at the park, four generations. What a great way to wrap up a weekend at the park.

Then I went out for a bike ride. I’ll talk about that tomorrow.

Auburn / baseball / photo / video / weekend — Comments Off
9
Mar 13

Hey, it is Saturday

Slept in, late breakfast. Enjoyed the beautiful day, with the late afternoon spent entirely at the baseball park. There’s the hint of spring into things again now. The pear trees are blooming. The Japanese maples have exploded. We have roses. The mysterious flowering bush we can’t identify has tried twice to impress us with its yellows. The dogwoods will be next, and several of the trees have buds on them.

The days are getting longer, and there’s the overwhelming sense that you’ll make it to another spring. Love that feeling.

Auburn hosted Brown for game two of the weekend series. JUCO transfer Michael O’Neal commanded a complete game shutout as the Tigers beat the Bears 6-0.

Brown’s head coach is a character, and he’s been entertained by the people on the third base side of the field, but perhaps not as much as he’s amused us. I’ll write more about him tomorrow.

I saw this nice lady walking her dogs as we headed home. I snapped a shot just because the disparity of the dogs amused me. And then I got home and realized I caught her in mid-expression:

I like to think she’s saying “Dude. Not when I have a doggie bag in my hand.”

Later: The officially sanctioned baseball highlights:

adventures / Auburn / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
7
Mar 13

Swimming and diving

At the intramural swim meet, it was the Auburn Master’s, of which The Yankee is a part of, versus all the various fraternities, sororities and any other group that heard there was pool time available.

The Yankee took part in the diving competition and swam in three events. She was a diver in college, so maybe she’s a ringer. She won on the one-meter board:

Not everyone’s dive was as nice or innovative as hers. I have a great unfortunate dive to share later in the week. Here’s the tease: I said to the judges “Give that guy extra credit for volume! You heard the smack! He earned those points!”

She also swam in three races, the 50-free, the 100-free and the 4×200 relay.

She placed fourth in the first two races. She cleaned up in the relay, though, swimming the best time on her team and, perhaps, the entire pool. If she could apply that 50 as an individual race she would have qualified for nationals. Not bad considering she’s been on the swim team for less than a year. She’s pretty fast.

Also, she made faces at me:

We had dinner with friends at a Mexican restaurant, where the chips flowed with abandon. At home we caught up on a bit of television. It was pretty much the best kind of night.