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Friday / IU / overwriting / photo / video — Comments Off
27
Oct 17

The winter squash whodunit

One of our students was carrying around a pumpkin today. I think it was a home economics exercise. He’s toting around a child cucurbita, or a grandbaby gourd.

(I suppose it could be for Halloween.)

Anyway, he left the pumpkin at the television studio this morning. I could have offered to take good care of the squash plant, but it seemed more fun to hold it for ransom. Pay up, or get him back in (pumpkin pie) slices. Give me what I want or the jack-o-lantern-to-be doesn’t get an ear. Call the veggie cops, and he gets crooked eyes.

I couldn’t even work through all of these puns — and they get even worse pretty quickly — before the student swooped in and picked him up. The cultivar custody caper was resolved.

Some shows the students produced last night. A sports desk show:

And a talk show that they’ll put on the air on Sunday night:

But let’s not get that far ahead of ourselves. There’s still a whole weekend to enjoy.

Indiana / IU / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
26
Oct 17

The beautiful trouble of autumn

It seems like that time of year where you try to catalog the changing of the leaves, because they’re pretty, but because you want them to stay. So we’ll do that. Here are a few pictures from campus today:

You can never really capture and preserve and share autumn. That’s the trouble, but it doesn’t keep us from trying. And I’ll keep trying.

history / IU / photo / podcast / running / Wednesday — Comments Off
25
Oct 17

“Have you seen any . . . Martians?”

I produced a podcast today. Actually I just ran the board for it, but some people use those words interchangeably. They shouldn’t — and I’m on a mission to civilize! — but they do. I simply sat behind an Axia console and made sure the levels were consistent and the computer was recording. I did this because the students who normally do it couldn’t join the production today, so I sat with the dean and his two guests from another part of the university:

And they talked about Orson Welles — Indiana University possesses what is believed to be the most extensive collection of Welles performances — and, specifically, the War of the Worlds. You can hear the show here:

And you can find the whole collection here.

After work there was just time enough for a cold evening run:

I’ve found it takes about three-quarters of a mile to run off the initial chill. I’ve found that there’s a particular dip in the path behind the house where the cold air coming off the creek pushes up out of the trees and drops the temperature by about five degrees. And I’ve found that I can run in shorts and a t-shirt, but I’m going to be using gloves a lot.

photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
24
Oct 17

Our domestic hierarchy of cold temperatures

We keep three blankets in the living room. Since there are two of us, two of them, the shaggy brown one and the shaggy white one, get used. Used to be that the cat wouldn’t touch them. We’d cover up, and she’d walk or stretch out on whatever parts of you that weren’t covered up. When it got cold last winter she found it in her heart to tolerate the brown blanket. And now she lays on it frequently. But she wouldn’t tolerate the white one in any way. And I think she came to ultimately like the brown blanket a bit.

As this winter draws near, I think she’s rethinking the white blanket:

But when it is cold, you get under any blanket you can and watch YouTube videos. Here are some now. These are shows my students shot tonight, the talk show:

And the news:

IU / Monday / photo / running / video — Comments Off
23
Oct 17

And how was your weekend?

We went to a soccer game on Saturday night. It was the last game of the regular season for the Hoosiers, who are looking to make a postseason run to their ninth national championship. And on this last night Indiana and the Spartans played shutout soccer for 90 minutes.

And then they played 10 minutes of a tense overtime.

And then they played nine more minutes of a second overtime. In the final moment, IU looked to capitalize on another set piece with the freshman Mason Toye lined up a direct kick:

I knew he was going to put the game-winner in and run right to my camera. It’s a skill.

We went for a run on Saturday, this was The Yankee’s first run since her Ironman. (She’s ahead of a mere mortal’s schedule.) It was short, but it was fast. She’s passing me and blurry!

So I mentioned fall is here. Just in case it disappears in 15 mintues, here are a few photographs:

You can never really capture autumn:

It never keeps us from trying. It’s a vain attempt to forestall winter, a desperate ego, that wants more sunshine and warmth.

Or is that just me?

Today, it was raining, and this evening was a perfect time for a 2.65 mile neighborhood run.‬ I’m documenting this because it won’t be long, now, before I’ll be missing days like this: