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Pink and purple

Yesterday was something of a trying day. We were holding vigil with friends all over the country as their little girl fought for her life. This adorable little 3-year-old suddenly got ill. It seems the first hospital missed something big and by the time the next morning rolled around bad had gone to worse and now tragic.

It has shown the best of us, though. People who are hurting for their friends now suddenly dealing with this huge hole in their world. And strangers who are generous because they read a good appeal and they saw a few beautiful photographs. Folks who empathized, maybe, because it could have been their child. In two days the Internet has helped raise almost $50,000 for that family’s hospital bills. You people are quite remarkable.

We’d ordered some things on Amazon to have shipped to them at the hospital. And then suddenly the facts on the ground made the shipment seem inappropriate, so we tried to cancel them. Four items were in the pipeline. I called Amazon, and Rachel told me that they have a half-hour cancellation policy. However, she was able to cancel three of the orders while we were on the phone. This, I thought, was great. The fourth item, though, had already passed Go. She contacted the merchant and the shippers this morning and got that item stopped. Amazon and Rachel didn’t have to do that, but they did. And she called to tell me about it this afternoon.

(Also, we spend so much time complaining about customer service, we should compliment the good examples, too.)

We ran today. I got in 4.25 miles, chasing The Yankee around the local running trail and down an adjoining road. I outran two horses. Of course they were being walked, slowly, but let’s not concentrate on that.

Also, at the pool yesterday, I swam 1.29 miles. Swimming is supposed to be mentioned in yards. I count it in laps. My online tracker uses miles. It was 2,250 yards if you’re interested.

Most important was that I did half of that freestyle. That’s 1,125 yards. My shoulder isn’t limiting me. Muscle fatigue, that’s a different story. Also, there was an Olympic swimmer on the pool deck. And I was told that my stroke looked good.

The Olympian didn’t say that, but it is pretty awesome when it reads that way, right?

Things to read … which even Olympians care about.

Alabama looks for next generation of farmers:

Farming and forestry are big business in Alabama. Combined, they account for nearly 12 percent of all of the state’s economic activity.

But after generations of change, the state’s bell cow industries may need some nurturing.

Over the past half century, the number of Alabama farms has dwindled from about 250,000 to around 60,000. Large farming operations have thrived but many medium-sized, family farms died away, said Alabama Cooperative Extension System Director Gary Lemme.

Department of Justice finds conditions at Julia Tutwiler Prison to be unconstitutional:

The U.S. Department of Justice said today that conditions at Julia Tutwiler Prison violate the Constitution, citing what it called “a history of unabated staff-on-prisoner sexual abuses and harassment.”

DOJ sent investigators to Tutwiler last April and reported their findings in a 36-page letter to Gov. Robert Bentley.
“The women at Tutwiler universally fear for their safety,” the report stated.

The New York Times’ Most Popular Story of 2013 Was Not an Article:

Think about that. A news app, a piece of software about the news made by in-house developers, generated more clicks than any article. And it did this in a tiny amount of time: The app only came out on December 21, 2013. That means that in the 11 days it was online in 2013, it generated more visits than any other piece.

I’ll repeat: It took a news app only 11 days to “beat” every other story the Times published in 2013. It’s staggering.

You don’t know them, but do a little dance — or a few burpees, she liked burpees — for ZB and her parents. Pink and purple were her favorite colors. Wearing those might be a nice touch.

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13
Jan 14

Do not do math underwater

Swimming again this morning. I got in 1650 yards, which apparently used to be measured as a mile in the pool. That’s weird because, when you swim as slowly as I do, you have plenty of time to do multiplication and division in your head — several times — and realize, Hey, that math isn’t right.

Don’t do math in the pool. Because the sequence of events that follows is not unlike those Directv ads. And the inevitable “What lap am I on?” is only the beginning.

Don’t do math in the pool.

This evening I went for a run. It seems that if I get a route in my head some part of me feels obligated to do the entire thing, if possible. And there I was, wondering how this felt and why that ached, and enjoying that it was cold, but I was sweating. Wondering how my hair could be wet, the temperature could be 46 and I find that I’m enjoying myself. So I ran and walked eight miles. OK, really it was 7.94 miles, but my first rule of running is to round up. I walked the hills, because of whatever is going on with my legs. The entire route was on sidewalks or bike paths, except for one little bridge. I fairly well sprinted over that.

I don’t sprint.

I do not know what is happening.

Now, as I sit resting quietly, Allie has come for a visit. I moved to take a picture of her cuddliness and my poor posture, and she does this:

I can take photos of her with my camera all day long. She’ll tolerate an iPad being shoved in her face. You pull out your phone, and that is just going to ruin her night, you filthy paparazzo.

Things to read … because reading is fundamental.

A conversation on Mobile Content Strategy with Mark Coatney, Al Jazeera America:

Mark reads books on his commute so he believes that long form is absolutely possible on mobile. In his eyes a 5-minute video is long form. Short form means anything that is a steady stream of consumption: ‘stock and flow’. When asked if he was encompassing that theory by combining into one or splitting into two apps he replied “Two, but I hadn’t really thought of it like that”. One will give the steady stream of information and be more social. The other is a second screen, a companion that will give you more information, go deeper whenever a consumer wants to.

There is a ton of stuff, in that one simple paragraph.

Enhanced fan experiences: The sportd strategy of the second screen:

Consider this: 83% of fans say they use social media during games. Sixty-nine percent prefer phones as second-screen alternatives; 48 percent check scores and 20 percent watch highlights via mobile, according to data from March 2013.

[…]

Not enough is said or written about the engagement teams are having with fans in social. I feel conversations are not genuine enough and too many teams and leagues have built a barrier, not engaging fully with those who appreciate them most.

That is because most teams are terrible at the practice. The exemplar Tom Buchheim uses are the Boston Bruins. “The team uses replies to many fan tweets, even personalizing each response with the initials of those behind the scenes.”

So someone there understands Twitter is a conversation. Good for the Bruins. Why are most professional and big-time college franchises have difficulty grasping the attendant concepts? Buchheim continues:

Game time is go time in social media, and it can be chaotic. But teams should dedicate resources to connect one-to-one with fans more. Share their content. Have conversations. Build stronger bonds. This will only drive further engagement during the off-season and help fulfill social media’s true value — breaking down barriers and connecting people in authentic ways.

[…]

A sports fan’s second-screen options are endless. So are the ways teams and leagues can reach them during live events. It’s imperative fans find value in these experiences, whether they’re watching online, on their couches or in the bleachers. As it becomes ingrained into the sports experience, the second screen must be about the fan, providing deeper engagement, better access and increasing value.

The standard if/then/so structure there is heartening. These programs will figure it out, though I’m not sure why it will take them that long.

Who’s poor in America? 50 years into the ‘War on Poverty,’ a data portrait:

Today, most poor Americans are in their prime working years: In 2012, 57% of poor Americans were ages 18 to 64, versus 41.7% in 1959.

[…]

Today’s poor families are structured differently: In 1973, the first year for which data are available, more than half (51.4%) of poor families were headed by a married couple; 45.4% were headed by women. In 2012, just over half (50.3%) of poor families were female-headed, while 38.9% were headed by married couples.

Poverty is more evenly distributed, though still heaviest in the South: In 1969, 45.9% of poor Americans lived in the South, a region that accounted for 31% of the U.S. population at the time. At 17.9%, the South’s poverty rate was far above other regions. In 2012, the South was home to 37.3% of all Americans and 41.1% of the nation’s poor people; though the South’s poverty rate, 16.5%, was the highest among the four Census-designated regions, it was only 3.2 percentage points above the lowest (the Midwest).

Pew has a chart and a map on that page which say a lot, quickly.

And a more localized view, from Kaiser Family Foundation researchers:

All 10 southeastern states have poverty rates above the national figure. Mississippi (27 percent, second-highest) and Louisiana (26 percent, third-highest) are near the top of the rankings, while North Carolina and Florida, each at 21 percent, are just slightly above the U.S. rate.

Alabama, meanwhile, sits at 22 percent, ranked 15th overall.

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11
Jan 14

Things in the air

We’re counting the days until the sun returns and the weather warms up and spring arrives. This morning we woke up to tornado watches. In the late morning the sun remembered its job and by the afternoon there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. We got into the low 60s, too, and it was a perfect day to be outside.

So we ventured over to the local exercise path, a nice two-lane asphalt topped trail that crosses two little streams on its 1.5 miles. It is named as a bike path, but the walkers and joggers and strollers have taken over. Occasionally you’ll see a bike, but anyone doing more than soft pedaling is going to be on the adjacent road. I ran up and back down the path, and then did it again, for six miles.

On the second return trip I saw this:

Which isn’t terribly sharp, perhaps, because I was panting, but we’re going to just consider this foliage as another sign of a great spring is in the air.

Things to read … because the Internet is one enormous scavenger hunt …

Speaking of in the air, 110 million Target customers and … some more stores you haven’t even heard about yet. More well-known U.S. retailers victims of cyber attacks – sources:

Target Corp and Neiman Marcus are not the only U.S. retailers whose networks were breached over the holiday shopping season last year, according to sources familiar with attacks on other merchants that have yet to be publicly disclosed.

Smaller breaches on at least three other well-known U.S. retailers took place and were conducted using similar techniques as the one on Target, according to the people familiar with the attacks. Those breaches have yet to come to light. Also, similar breaches may have occurred earlier last year.

The sources said that they involved retailers with outlets in malls, but declined to elaborate.

So it is back to cash, then.

Closer to home, there was a Lego show in Birmingham. Check out the photos.

We’ll just let the headline do the talking here: Huntsville woman reports intruder hiding behind Christmas tree.

That cold snap earlier this week was so severe that in the northern part of the state so many pipes burst that all of the water storage tanks were drained, and people are having to conserve water. First world problems, huh?

Ominous: ‘For Every One Job Added, Nearly 5 People Left the Workforce’:

Today’s jobs report underscores a deeper problem facing our economy: a large and growing block of people who are chronically jobless and completely outside the workforce. In December, the economy added only 74,000 jobs – not nearly enough to keep up with population growth –and 347,000 left the workforce.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican, says everything but “This is the new economy.” He’s not saying that because it doesn’t get votes, but people are seeing it. They’re realizing it. That’s in the air, too.

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9
Jan 14

When your legs ache, it is all about your legs

It made it up to 48 degrees today, so spring is on the way! It was overcast, so spring will never show up! It rained, so spring is on the way! It was only mist and drizzle, and who knows what that means?

I ran in that today. Got in just under six miles. I have developed this pain on the outside of each of my calves. It wraps over the shins and then goes just into the instep of my foot. No obvious stretch fixes it. The pain in my left leg is aggravated when I go downhill. The pain in my right leg says you aren’t running up a hill no way, no how.

So I’m devastating on the flats, at least.

Weirdly, at about mile four or so the things stretched themselves out, or the nerves gave up or something. You know that brief moment when the absence of pain is a pleasurable feeling? I was flying at that moment.

I also went to the grocery store today, because I decided to make extra lean turkey spaghetti. Lean turkey is about two bucks cheaper, but this extra lean stuff, when surrounded by pasta and drowned in basil sauce, tastes exactly the same! What a world.

I did not go to the store while running, because I didn’t want the meat to go bad. Sure, we live a half mile from the store, but I run slow. Also, I didn’t want to cause a sweaty scene on aisle four.

Things to read … because there are things, and some of them are worth reading.

Gone in 79 seconds: Auburn at the BCS Championship is a pretty great piece for football fans.

Close to one-third of Americans were in poverty during economic downturn says Census data. We’re at about 16 percent, even now.

Watched this video today. Mike Ditka was slated to speak to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, but he had to cancel. So the group invited Texas state representative Scott Turner, a former NFL player, who gives a pretty good speech:

How Google Glass captured two very different communities talks about putting the glasses on the people of Crown Heights in Brooklyn, which is an interesting documentary concept.

If someone gave me Google Glass and asked me to tell my own story I’d borrow a shopping cart from the grocery story, sit inside, have someone push and take long tracking shots of everything.

It would keep my calves from hurting.

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1
Jan 14

Travel day

Ran this morning, and then spent the rest of the day running. We did two miles around the track that surrounds the football and lacrosse field. Two girls outran me on every lap, and a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race kind looked better than me too. It was too cold, and my leg hurt and felt too inclined to come up with excuses.

It was about 24 degrees at the time.

After that we spent the afternoon packing. We were due to leave on Friday, but there’s a storm coming with even more cold and, most importantly, snow and ice. Neither planes nor I like to travel in snow and ice.

So we flew home this evening. The trip was great. Christmas was fine and lovely. It was a lot of travel and it was cold from time to time, but hour journey that began almost two weeks ago is over.

We stopped to see one more set of friends before catching a lull in the traffic on the way to Laguardia. We met a helpful Delta ticket agent and a pleasant TSA agent. We managed to get everything on the plane in short order. I read. A beautiful young Indian woman sat next to me and laughed a lot at whatever she was reading.

Hobbled off the plane, rode the terminal train, found our bags, caught the shuttle to the car. Packed the car, got rained on. Missed the interstate. Found the interstate. Found that the only thing still open for food was McDonald’s. Made it home in between rain clouds. Unloaded the car, got stamped on by the cat, unpacked …

That’s one way to start a new year.

How’s yours going so far?