Did something a bit different this morning, and it worked out well.
It’s National Clean Energy Week, and so I talked with a guy who researches bioenergy and land-use and the impact of changing vehicle fleets and we talked about some of these things and a whole lot more, like ethanol, switchgrass, private use, government programs and so on. It’s delightfully nerdy, so please press that little orange play button in the top left corner.
We did that one over Zoom, which is the part that was different. I (finally) discovered an ingenious setting for my computer, Zoom and mixer. So, on my end, it sounds like a studio. On Dr. Jerome Dumortier’s end, it sounds like he was in his home office in Indianapolis. You can hear the sound of his voice bouncing off the drywall, but it’s much better than the typical compression you experience when I record these as a phone call.
So I am pleased both by the outcome of the interview, and the aural quality. I’m only kicking myself, a little, for not doing that interview earlier, and discovering how I could integrate Zoom audio much sooner into these episodes.
The daily duds: Pictures of clothes I put here to, hopefully, help avoid embarrassing scheme repeats.
Today’s was not the best look, I think. I like the pocket square. It works with the jacket and the shirt.
And I like the cufflinks, which worked well as a contrasting splash of color on the shirt.
But I think three points of contrast are too many for my limited style.
They can’t all be the best combinations, I tell myself. And I was a bit rushed this morning, I keep telling myself.
But my mother-in-law said she liked the cufflinks, so I’ve nothing to worry about on the day, right?
Studio tonight. News time, and so we go the desk …
Here are just a few photos to get us started on the week. May yours be productive, but not overly busy!
We had a nice long walk this weekend. Here we are walking on the path to be paved later.
There’s a nice wide asphalt pedestrian/cycling path on either side of that section, and the connection would be logical, if not inevitable. The paths are one of the more attractive local features, but, sometimes, when we’re on this section, I wonder if maybe we’d all prefer to leave the occasional stretch in this well-maintained condition.
Some of the hardwoods are getting ready to go.
It’s both beautiful and distressing, really.
Equally distressing, I just noticed that we did not check in on the cats last Monday. It’s only our most important weekly feature! Shame on me.
Phoebe didn’t remind me to put up the pictures. That was the problem. She was too busy relaxing around the fireplace.
And Poseidon didn’t point out the oversight after the fact, either. He was too busy hiding out under the stove cover.
I built this when Phoebe and Poe came into the house because they are young and all over everything — Poseidon in particular. We were concerned they would walk over the stove top and singe their pads. I built it a little high, so heat could escape, but also so the top would be level with bar behind the stove. Both cats love to lay on it, which we allow. Poseidon especially loves it after a meal has been made. He enjoys the warm.
And now he’s figured out how to get under the thing.
He’s a toddler who will never grow out of it, I’m convinced.
But they’re both going to have a great week, and we all hope you do, too.
Catch ya tomorrow. Until then, did you know that Phoebe and Poe have an Instagram account? Also, don’t forget my Instagram. And keep up with me on Twitter. There are also some very interesting On Topic with IU podcasts for you, as well.
Another Tuesday, another Olympian comes into the studio to take part in an IUSTV shoot. Just another day at the office.
That’s Andrew Capobianco, who won the silver in the 3-meter synchronized diving in Tokyo, and he goes to school at IU.
Capobianco tells us about a cool tradition you don’t hear about all that often.
He’s talking about his Olympic diver partner Michael Hixon, and Hixon’s former dive partner Sam Dorman.
The full interview will be in a program you can see online a bit later this week.
The daily duds: Pictures of clothes I put here to, hopefully, help avoid embarrassing scheme repeats.
Today’s pocket square combo:
Also, here are a pair of my new, bespoke cufflinks I made this summer.
Pretty snazy, huh?
More videos and fashion and such tomorrow.
If you have some more time to kill right now, though, there’s always more on Twitter and check me out on Instagram, too. Speaking of On Topic with IU podcasts, and, oh hey, did you know that Phoebe and Poseidon have an Instagram account? They do. Check them out.
Just a few shots from weekend walks outdoors. And there’s also a video down below. But, first, the pretty things.
The sun silhouetted the trees and I further polarized the lens with a pair of cheap sunglasses.
The photos of which are never as cool, somehow, as what you’re seeing through the glasses themselves, but still fun nonetheless.
I thought this was a bit of toadflax, or hairy skullcap (that’s actually a wildflower name, yes) but now I think it could be any number of other things. I’m going with downy lobelia (Lobelia puberula).
And that is why when I did the last wildflower post I made the joke about failing hilariously at plant identification.
I’m not even going to try, here. Let’s just admire the contrasting colors.
I’m guessing this is some genus of Persicaria, or smartweed. There are 30-some species in that group. One of them has to be this color, right?
I feel comfortable with this one, it’s white snakeroot (Ageratina altissima):
I was rather surprised to find honeysuckle blooming this late in the year. I was pleased. It should bloom more. And, if not, this should be a sign of the new spring. It is almost springtime, right?
Look at this Yellow wingstem (Verbesina alternifolia), so full of life and promise:
Your standard issue bunch of goldenrod.
On our Sunday walk I heard this doe before I saw her. I don’t think that happens very often. She stood and stared for a long time, and let me get within about 15 feet before she calmly walked off.
I did not see the deer that was with her, which had stayed very still, until they both walked away.
We had a big video chat this evening with a Pulitzer Prize winner. Elizabeth Kolbert joined us via Zoom as part of the fall 2021 Themester, “Resilience.” Her Prize-winning book — The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, covers mass extinctions She has a new book, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future, which was released a bit earlier this year.
The interview went well, after it got started. I’ve queued it to the beginning.
It’s always fun working on someone else’s projects.
The old Southwest Airlines slogan was in my head when I woke up this morning. The alarm on my phone went off, some pleasantly disarming 1940s radio jingle I clipped many years ago, and for some reason my brain said “Ding! You’re now free to move about the country.” I don’t know why it was there. No travel planned. Though the idea of going somewhere is appealing. No air travel on the radar for a good long while. But ding!
It was the place on words that always worked well in that slogan. Sure, you have the pilot’s announcement bell, so Pavlovian. But that concept “You are now free to move about the country.”
Of course it wasn’t free. But you were free, conceptually speaking. Though the whole thing violated some law of thermodynamics, I’m sure, because on Southwest, at least, you were flying dirt cheap. When that slogan was in use I could go from Birmingham to Louisville, to see my folks, for $29. I was there in an hour. It would have cost me more in gas for the car and the drive would take much more time, even after you figured in the airport waits. If I stayed longer than a weekend the parking deck cost more than the flight.
“You are now free to move about the country.”
But that wasn’t the real case. Not really. We know this to be true because Southwest did not go broke their first year in business.
None of this explains why the old saying was in my head this morning, except that random thoughts such as these are the truest freedom we enjoy. And there never seems to be enough free floating thoughts around. We should daydream more. Or, in my guess, I guess, hit the snooze button more frequently.
I pedaled my bike to work this morning. The Yankee has my car because she had a weirder schedule for the day and needed to make a trip to Indy and my commute is only 4.5 miles, or so, one way. So it seemed obvious that I would glide through two neighborhoods and over the creek trail and through a few more neighborhoods and onto campus. I wore my too-heavy backpack, and tried to keep the heart rate down, thinking a nice and leisurely ride would be pleasant, and wouldn’t work up much of a sweat.
On the way, along the creek trail, I met some new neighbors.
I had a meeting this morning, which was happily on Zoom. I say happily because, while the assembled group is charming enough, I’m just not keen on the idea of being in a room with 50-some other people when it can be so easily avoided.
And this afternoon I had a meeting with two students from Black Voices about studios and how they could use them this semester. That was after another small meeting about studios and what is going to be used, and how, this semester. It all has a certain flow to it, if you’re surrounded by the concepts, but perhaps arcane, otherwise. Suffice it to say, Media School students have a lot of studios and a lot of options and at least two more are due to come online in the next few days and weeks.
The people that put them together — I know them, but I’m not one of them — do terrific work to set it all up, sometimes building them out of the very air. And the students use them well. By the end of this semester you could be working in a studio with five cameras, two different rooms with four cameras each, or another brand new space that’ll have two or three cameras and a motion-capture studio with unlimited potential. Oh, and up the hill, in our other building, a giant studio, about three times larger. We have two distinctly different kind of showpiece studios. That’s how spoiled we are. Students will use them all, and use them well, and we show them off to prospective students and donors and it will continue to grow and grow into we know not what.
Two years ago the two studios being built today weren’t even ideas.
Anyway, another show from the Wednesday night sports productions. They were talking college football.
That’s a straight up murder’s row of young sports media talent, by the way. As overrun as we are with studios, we have even more incredibly gifted students.
At the end of the day, the end of the shortened week, I pedaled my bike home. It was mild this morning, but much warmer this evening. So I’d brought along a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and spent much of my downtime trying to imagine a route that was all downhill.
There is no route that is all downhill.
So I went the normal way, which has three short hills and some easy rollers. I also had my heavy backpack, and it all felt like I haven’t ridden in years. In reality: three weeks, tomorrow. As I struggled up the longest, easiest hill I wondered how I would fare on tomorrow’s ride, which will not feature an extra 20-some pounds of luggage. It was most dispiriting.
(Edit: It also turned out to be a false reading. My Saturday afternoon bike ride was short, punchy and fun. Even in the headwind, my legs were much better. Blaming the too-heavy backpack is clearly the right choice.)
As ever, I need to find more time to ride. And more time to do all of the other things I enjoy.
There never seems enough of the free stuff, does there?
