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17
Nov 10
Danger: Below are TWO Wikipedia links
My office window faces the north, so I have to go outside for views like this. There’s a nice green lot below my windows and I can see when the sun hits that perfect golden angle. It just so happened I had to make a trip today from my building to another part of campus and I just managed to catch the sun exploding through that tree through the lomo filter.
Students were throwing a frisbee on the quad, the hammocks were empty, young ladies were teaching one another an exciting new cheer that involved a lot of screaming. The sun was peeking between the chapel and the theater. I was carrying a handful of books and binders and things and it was just a marvelous scene. I took more pictures for later.
We had baked apples at lunch, which I only mention because I’ve never noticed them in the cafeteria before. Naturally I tried them. Baked apples are very subjective, of course. No two recipes are the same and no one’s are as good as those made by the person that you’re now thinking of.
My grandmother makes the best apples. She would cut up fruit from the Granny Smith tree in her yard — I never called her Granny, but given that her name was Smith it was a long time before I realized that the variety wasn’t named after her. I don’t know all of her secrets, but I know that my cousin and I would beg her to make them. She’d fill up one of those square casserole dishes, the apples, the sauce and a bunch of mini-marshmallows. We could eat them all in one sitting.
These apples weren’t my grandmother’s apples. They weren’t bad. They had a nice cinnamon taste with a mild bleach finish. My grandmother has never had to make apples for hundreds of people, so there’s that. And it got me into the
spirit of fall, so I’ve no complaints.
Journalism links: It still boggles the mind that publishers, who were slow to accept the changes brought about by the world wide web because they were fundamentally losing control of their ability to be one of a few unique voices, have made their bed with Apple where they have willingly handed over control. Poynter reports:
(T)he November issue of Esquire, its second to be made available as an iPad app, has been held up by Apple’s app review process since mid-October.
The November cover story features actress Minka Kelly, who the magazine named the “sexiest woman alive,” and that apparently is the sticking point in the app being approved.
The Gazette Extra, like everyone else, is trying to find the proper way to deal with comment trolls. Because, as the editor says, “some people can’t behave” his paper won’t allow comments on stories about crimes, courts, accidents, race or sex. That particular paper, it seems, has exceeded that point of critical mass where comments are no longer constructive or dialogical. Even in that thread, on a note from the editor about curtailing vicious comments, the conversation veers wildly out of control. Most every big site has this problem.
Cooks Source — the New England cooking magazine that became suddenly infamous for infringing upon the works of online writers, and then snottily claiming that everything online was public domain — has another petulant letter from the editor on their website. Both Facebook pages they’ve set up have been overwhelmed by critics. And now, at their most popular, the little magazine that copies and pastes is closing shop.
And I wish I could give you a link, but the Samford Crimson is unfortunately not putting it online. The sports section has been running a football pick chart this fall. The university president, the starting quarterback, sports writers and other student leaders have been participating. A math professor has led all season.
Videos: Last Saturday when Georgia visited Auburn for their beat down in the South’s Oldest Rivalry freshman running back Mike Dyer broke the great Bo Jackson’s freshman rushing record. Jackson was there, celebrating the 25th anniversary of his Heisman, and had a nice moment on the sideline with Dyer.
This is the video that aired on AUHD, so imagine seeing this on the big screen at the game, and the audio is the crew’s behind-the-scenes chatter. It makes a nice moment even more entertaining:
I love that last line: Memories. That was just perfect, in so many respects. The guy who produces the the big screen programming, Bo Cordle, is leaving. In fact that was his last game. what a way to go out.
This wasn’t quite as entertaining, but I watched The Red Baron tonight. It is a modern adaptation on the career of Manfred Von Richthofen. Like all movies of legendary war heroes, it is told as a love story. Only this particular love story didn’t actually happen. Because the story of perhaps the greatest ace of World War I needed to be glossed over and fictionalized. I hate when that happens.
Meanwhile, here’s actual funeral footage:
Everyone in that footage is also in the ground now. World War I was a long time ago, said obvious guy, obviously. I just started reading this week R.A.C. Parker‘s history of Europe between the wars. The first handful of chapters are about the treaties that ended World War I. This book was published in the 1960s, so everyone knew where this story was headed. Even still, in the first few pages, it is already heartbreaking because of what even then, just months after that funeral, was something of an inevitability.
As is this stack of things I must grade. So, to my red pen I must now go.
16
Nov 10
The wisdom of pancakes
There were a great many low, dramatic looking clouds today. You’ll see some more here and here. In ancient times this would mean the gods were angry, and that the late crops had to come in, pronto. You knew that to be true whenever the gods brought those orange barrels overnight.
(Most think those are about traffic, but actually that’s just a cultural nod, the departments of transportation have a think for old mythologies.)
This cloud formation means nothing today, except that a storm system is blowing out and a higher pressure system is moving in.
Taught today, spent the evening with the newspaper bunch. Took some time working over a survey and playing with QR codes.
Very cool stuff, turning any flat surface into a link. I suspect there’s a better QR reader than the free one I found tonight. (Any tips? Mine isn’t as fancy as the one in that CSI clip.) They’re just begging to become more of a multimedia tool. (But maybe no one will get around to doing that for a while and I can.) If they were a bit more aesthetically pleasing they’d grow bigger, faster, but sometimes the look of things is a slow growth.
Links, upon which journalism was practiced: Staff Sgt. Salvatora Giunta was formally presented with his Medal of Honor:
Obama said Giunta “charged headlong into the wall of bullets.” The sergeant at first pulled a soldier who had been struck in the helmet to safety, then sprinted ahead to find two Taliban fighters dragging away the stricken Sgt. Joshua C. Brennan.
“Sal never broke stride,” Obama said. “He leapt forward. He took aim. He killed one of the insurgents and wounded the other, who ran off.”
As bullets rained, Giunta dragged Brennan by his vest to cover and worked feverishly to stop the bleeding until the wounded Americans were flown from the ridge.
Giunta’s is the first Medal of Honor that hasn’t been a posthumous award since Vietnam. That most surely is a terrible oversight.
I let NPR’s Most Popular box dig up the rest of my reading. These two were interesting to see right next to one another. One suggesting this conversation about sexuality is a good conversation to have, the other suggesting that talking about it can be a bit precarious. These are conflicting times.
Dave Barry has been felt up at the airport: “Well, I would say whoever wrote that it’s not punitive was not having his or her groin fondled at the time.”
So I’m adding this to my list of unorthodox public policies. First, there’s the Nixon rule: If a president’s approval number ever falls to Nixonian levels you should retire from office, extending arms in a large motion with fingers stabbing the sky in a V, escaping the public eye for a decade or two before trying to rehabilitate your image. (Neither Bush made it there, but Truman did, predating Nixon of course.)
Now, the second of my unorthodox public policies goes like this: If Dave Barry can’t make a joke about what you’re doing, you’ve gone woefully astray and things need to change.
Read this. It will only take a moment. And then flip through the slideshow, enlarging the pictures. What a terrific project. I’m being vague because you should read it.
And now, to IHOP, for a late dinner. I have a craving for pancakes. It was there that I learned the all-important lesson “It isn’t whether you win or lose, but where you eat afterward.”
One night, during a particularly bad semi-pro volleyball game where nothing went right the coach called a time out. We gathered together and tried our best not to bicker. The jokester of the team picked his spot perfectly. In between the “What are you doings?” and the “Pass the ball better!” he said “Where are we going to eat later?”
And then we all went out for chocolate chip pancakes.
15
Nov 10
Giorno intero di pioggia
Woke up to rain. Considered taking a nap during the rain. I’m probably going to fall asleep to rain. All day weather like this is rare for our part of the world, but we could certainly use it. And normally at this time of year a rain system like this might be pushed through on the shoulders of some seriously colder weather, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
Winter is not sharpening up the knives just yet, this is the historic and cultural part of the confrontation where the players hop around, throw back their shoulders, puff out their chests and serve notice. The real cold is coming, but there’s going to be another opportunity for a sane patch of warmth to break up this little tussle. Like all people who find themselves in a fight (or a metaphor) in which they don’t want to participate, we’ll cling to that warmth with gusto.
It has already been snowing in Minnesota. But, then, this time last year we had already nice dose of flurries in the Deep South. It’s a mystery.
So I’m back to feeling behind on everything. I’m down to the point of having a mental To Do list rather than a written one, this begins when the list is sufficiently decreased, but in some respects that might even be worse. Now perception is absolutely my reality. One paper to go for the term, three newspapers left in the semester, a small handful of classes left to teach, Thanksgiving, holidays, New Year’s, not forgetting to breathe, etc.
It isn’t that much, really. Or so I keep telling myself. I deliberately left off the Christmas shopping. Who needs real pressure like that?
14
Nov 10
Catching up
He came around for three passes, low enough to fertilize, but not spreading anything. You’re just glad he seemed sane enough and competent enough to negotiate tree lines, fallow fields, rivers and interstates simultaneously.
When I think of the South — the second-half of the 20th Century South, that is, what might unartfully be called the Dukes of Hazard period — I think of kudzu, gravel, quiet creeks, rusted signs and places not unlike this. They still exist. They are everywhere if you get out of the cities.
I forgot to note where this particular scene was. Indeed, I just “drove” the entire route on Google Maps twice and was ready to say it doesn’t exist on a map, but on the third bird’s eye view of the map I found it.
It is just outside of Maplesville, a town of under 700 people (at the 2000 Census) had boomed to more than 2,500 before the end of the decade. They are commuters. The town is named after a store owner. Maplesville has a Main Street, but you can’t see it on Google’s Street View.
You can see, on other roads, they’ve got everything you need: post office, bank, closed storefronts, plenty of churches and a pool and spa supply store. I believe I’ve been lost there before. (If you haven’t been lost in every town in your state you haven’t been driving enough, really. If you don’t stop the car and meet some of the people there you really haven’t been lost yet.)
It is not far from where my college roommate was raised. He’d playfully sneer when he said the town’s name, but it seems a delightful enough place.
The thought hadn’t entered into my mind. But how many people felt the urge before the dump truck people had to take action. I’ve been on some boring stretches of highway, and I’ve spent my time behind some unfortunate drivers who were working for a living, but I’ve never thought “Maybe if I just nudge him.”
Then again, this might be a good bumper sticker for the NASCAR set.
