Another Sunday, more fine extra photographs. Let’s get to it, then.
It was military appreciation night at the football game last night, which was moving and touching in many ways. Gameday for Heroes, an organization I’ve had the opportunity to work with, had some 900 tickets donated. There were families of soldiers and Marines recognized at the game. Servicemen and women were acknowledged left, right and center. There was the flyover and the para-commandos. It was all great.
But Spirit’s flight was the best part of the night, otherwise:
Trick or treat? I guess? I hope?
Aubie, the most interesting mascot in the world, flies F-22s.
Some Samford shots, first, the big spooky oak that is spookily lit, but somehow seems even spookier in October:
Well, that was historic. On a sunny day that turned into a cloudy afternoon you could feel the cold front move in, acutely aware each time the mercury fell on every third breeze. Auburn welcomed Texas A&M in their first meeting as conference rivals. It was the Aggies first trip to Jordan-Hare Stadium.
Auburn allowed more points than they have since 1917. (1917! The Kaiser was running things in Germany. Woodrow Wilson was still in his first administration in the White House. This historic campus photograph was still six months in the future.) They also allowed 671 yards, the most by Auburn since records began being kept in 1967. The previous mark was Florida’s 625 in 1996. That stat could have been worse. The Aggies rolled up 464 yards by the half.
The final score was 63-21, and take it from someone who stayed until the bitted end, it wasn’t even that close.
The players were doing their best, but the coaching has become more than questionable in a short period of time.
People were heading for the exits before the first quarter was over. The student body found better things to do by halftime and was a ghost town to start the fourth quarter. Even the media relations crew gave up. The official release is just six paragraphs.
Really, for anyone that cared, it felt like this:
Also, Texas A&M is pretty good. Glad they’re in the SEC. Nice people, good athletics program, great university, and a terrific and enthusiastic fanbase. They fit in immediately.
Here’s the pregame flyover of four F-16 jets. One was piloted by Auburn graduate Drew “Snapper” Lehman and Texas A&M graduate Mike “Midnight” Rose. The pilots and their ground crew are based at McEntire Joint National Guard Base in South Carolina in the 15th Fighter Squadron.
And the U.S. Special Operations Command Parachute Demonstration Team, the Para-Commandos, jumping from 12,500 feet:
We had Chinese for dinner tonight. We’d ventured out to watch major league baseball players take some batting practice for a good cause. It was a home run derby and some of these guys needed the cuts.
The Atlanta Braves’ Tim Hudson does this every year for his foundation, which provides financial help to children and their families living with a life-altering or terminal disease. He put pitchers against field position players this year. The pitchers had a shorter fence, and that brought the entire event down to the last at bat, by Hudson, a pitcher, who happened to be an excellent batter in college.
And so he won the thing. The fix was in, surely. But probably not. No one cared. They raised almost $15,000 tonight.
So we had Chinese after, because nothing sounded good to anyone and I thought Chinese would be convenient and everyone likes Chinese and the place we go would still be open for takeout.
Only they were still open for dine in, so we ate there and got fortune cookies and everything.
We held a panel at Samford today for the journalism students. Publishers and editors from papers across the state came in to visit as part of a visit with the Alabama Press Association. Pictured here are Dee Ann Campbell from the Choctaw Sun-Advocate, a weekly in southwest Alabama, and Leada Gore, who just left the editor’s desk in Hartselle to join Alabama Media Group as the statewide military reporter:
Hopefully it was very insightful for the students. If nothing else they heard the industry leaders telling them the same sort of things we in the faculty tell them. Stuff like:
The secret to getting an internship: keep bugging the person in charge without being a pest.
Learn the skills that you’re taught in school. Then expect to learn many more different skills on the job.
There is a story everywhere. You just have to listen and watch for it.
Bring ideas. Don’t wait for your editor to give you leads.
Get ready to work hard and do a bit of everything.
Don’t think you’ll get to go home at 5.
Writing is writing, but design, photography and videography are important. No one just writes.
Don’t limit yourself (to a style or beat).
Write wherever you have the opportunity to write.
If you don’t read, read, read, you can’t write at all.
Look at the way things are designed. It is having an eye that you can only develop over time if you pay attention.
There is a degree of flexibility that you won’t find in other jobs. This is different every day.
For a young reporter to have a sense of news judgement, you’ve got to develop that, and you do that by reading, meeting people, talking and listening.
Start looking for a job now. Don’t wait until April.
Read their (newspaper’s) copy. Get familiar with the publication, style and coverage.
You can’t have enough internships.
Student newspapers are great, but you need to treat that like a job.
It was a fine panel. We hope to put another one together for the public relations students in the spring.
Had dinner at Chick-fil-A tonight. Took a piece of paper to give to one of the guys I often see working there. He always asks me what I’m reading. We’ve talked about the various things we enjoy. I read a lot of history. He said he reads a lot about the Revolutionary War period.
So I’d promised I’d bring him a list of things that I’ve read. I spent a few minutes in my library one day last week writing down names and titles. I pulled images from Amazon to put over the names of the books. I gave it to him tonight. He was happy, smiling, pleased, thanked me.
But then I wondered: Maybe he doesn’t really read about this period. Maybe he was just being nice. Now, maybe, he’s wondering why some guy brings him this piece of paper.
So I got my food, found a table and continued reading Jonathan Alter’s The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope — which is good, if you like Alter or Roosevelt. Alter is a fine writer, but he’s a Roosevelt apologist and, really, there’s been enough of that. But I did learn about Roosevelt’s role in contributing re-writes to Gabriel Over the White House, a movie meant to “prepare” the American constituency for a dictator who, ultimately, executes his enemies in the shadows of the Statue of Liberty. This was actually produced and put in theaters. There’s some of that about 62 minutes in and then you’ll see a Star Chamber immediately thereafter. Roosevelt wrote to William Randolph Hearst, who produced the film, that he thought it would be “helpful.”
You can watch the full movie here:
The Library of Congress says about the film, “The good news: he reduces unemployment, lifts the country out of the Depression, battles gangsters and Congress, and brings about world peace. The bad news: he’s Mussolini.”
Happily we didn’t go down those roads, but then again, in 1933 with the Depression on, people in the U.S. thought a lot about Mussolini. Il Duce was in the midst of his successful years. He was winning people over as a dictator with public works, improved jobs, public transport and more. It’d be a few more years until everyone turned on the guy. In 1933 desperate people looked at him and thought, Why not?
So anyway, I’m sitting there, trying to wrap up this book so I can move on to the next thing, and these two ladies sitting nearby are discussing the music they’ll perform in their church choir’s Christmas performance.
They’re flipping through three-ring binders. As it often happens when music people discuss music things there was a bit of singing. The lady on the right was pointing out parts to the one on the left.
A guy comes up, a contractor of some sort based on his clothes, and he says “You sure make that beautiful song beautiful.”
