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history / photo / Samford / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on A quick run through the hodge podge
21
Apr 15

A quick run through the hodge podge

They built a time machine in Manhattan. And it is fantastic. Just fantastic.

We should see to it that every elevator has this technology.

Speaking of going back in time, journalist Ernie Pyle was killed this week in 1945. He was the kind of journalist I want to be when I grow up — the traveling all over the country and meeting people and writing about them part, not the war zone part. But Pyle could write about war. He could write about loss. He could write about minutiae in the face of tragedy. And he could write about regular people. He could write about anything.

I’d never heard this story about the piece that inspired a young Pyle:

If any one thing inspired him, during this period, it was Kirke Simpson’s news story on the burial of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington Cemetery. Simpson was an Associated Press reporter.

“I cried over that,” Pyle told friends later, “and I can quote the lead or almost any part of the piece.”

Kirke Simpson, as an old AP man, won the Pulitzer for the piece Pyle was talking about, the first wire service writer to win the Prize. And that piece is an incredible piece of literature and history. The lead Pyle mentions:

Under the wide and starry skies of his own homeland America’s unknown dead from France sleeps tonight, a soldier home from the wars.

Alone, he lies in the narrow cell of stone that guards his body; but his soul has entered into the spirit that is America. Wherever liberty is held close in men’s hearts, the honor and the glory and the pledge of high endeavor poured out over this nameless one of fame will be told and sung by Americans for all time.

Toward the end:

Through the religious services that followed, and prayers, the swelling crowd sat motionless until it rose to join in the old, consoling Rock of Ages, and the last rite for the dead was at hand. Lifted by his hero-bearers from the stage, the unknown was carried in his flag-wrapped, simple coffin out to the wide sweep of the terrace. The bearers laid the sleeper down above the crypt, on which had been placed a little soil of France. The dust his blood helped redeem from alien hands will mingle with his dust as time marches by.

The simple words of the burial ritual were said by Bishop Brent; flowers from war mothers of America and England were laid in place.

In between, and after, is a journalistic tour de force. They should read that at the tomb every Veteran’s Day.

There are photographs and more AP copy from the ceremonies here.

Something fun … this is at Birmingham’s WBRC. Mickey Ferguson is the weatherman. Swell guy, lots of fun. Wonderfully comical. And this other gentleman stole the show:

And also this, which brings two of my favorite themes together: the kids are alright and we live in the future:

Finally, spring at Samford is a wonderful time to be on campus. Here’s an example from earlier this afternoon:

spring

Not bad, huh? Hope it is a lovely spring wherever you are.

photo / weekend — Comments Off on Catching up
19
Apr 15

Catching up

The weekend post with … the extras. You haven’t already seen these on the site so you can see them here now. So we’ll get right to it.

I like that someone took the time to print up a slip of paper and slide it into this little name holder. You seldom see that sort of dedication, but our friend Sally Ann is dedicated … to her recipes, it seems.

recipes

I’m also interested in the nicks on the Remington Rand sticker. Remington Rand split off of Remington Arms and made things like office equipment and electric shavers. They’d add companies that made adding machines and binders. During the war they made pistols and in the 1950s they got into the electronic computing business. Sperry Corp., a mainframe company, bought Remington Rand in 1955 and then merged in 1986 with business equipment maker Burroughs to form Unisys, which now measures their financials in billions and employs more than 22,000. Odds are you have a Unisys products in your home.

Bet you didn’t see that coming when this started with a recipe box.

Took this in the stairwell beneath my office. It was a dreary day, looked like this, felt like this and opaque windows captured it all:

recipes

Dewayne, our friend the balloon maker, made an Akbar action figure:

recipes

Allie is posing for you. Every now and then she likes to be famous on the Internet.

recipes

Auburn / baseball / friends / photo / weekend — Comments Off on Day at the park
18
Apr 15

Day at the park

Enjoyed a doubleheader of baseball today. The first game was at noon, and A-Day was going on across the street. It was a busy afternoon, with people still filtering in at the end of the first game and staying through the second.

Like these guys:

The home team got beat in the first game, prompting the rally caps in the late innings. If you didn’t wear a cap you go with the rally sunglasses.

Auburn blanked Ole Miss in the second game 14-0 to take the series. We watched online as the Auburn gymnasts earned a sixth place finish at the national championships and the softball team won just down the street. Also, there was the win-either-way nature of A-day game. It was a fine day to be a sports fan.

Pizza for dinner, kitty cuddles after that. Think I’ll go read myself to sleep now.

Auburn / Friday / photo / Samford — Comments Off on A quick note on a busy, and slow, Friday
17
Apr 15

A quick note on a busy, and slow, Friday

A full and busy day. Didn’t get home until 9 p.m. and there was baseball after that.

Led one class on data gathering. We talked about 990 forms and financial statements and online resources and text references and digging up story ideas from that sort of source material.

There was another class where we discussed broadcast writing and radio scripts.

Then I sat in on a bunch of interviews and all of that made the afternoon race by.

Which got a lot slower as soon as I got on the road. Two hours stuck behind this scene this evening:

truck

It had been there for four hours before I got there and they weren’t close to having the roadway cleared by the time I inched through it.

truck

At one point both lanes were closed, so there was a detour. And between the backup on the interstate, the other direction and the detour, they had 12 more wrecks. And one lane was shut down for more than eight hours.

A great big, rainy mess then. Hope everyone was OK — there was one injury reported — and that we all keep our sense of perspective while we’re stuck in a bad day of traffic.

Then baseball with friends. And now, I’m going to go fall asleep — pretty quickly, I’d imagine.

Auburn / photo / Samford / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on Wednesdays move swiftly
15
Apr 15

Wednesdays move swiftly

Another Wednesday, another full day. Class stuff in the morning, lunch, and then a class, which is immediately followed by another class. And then advertising phone calls and emails and faxes. (That’s how we upload.)

Then comes a few minutes to catch up on news and then student meetings. That’s followed closely by the newspaper critique, pictured below:

critique

critique

They are a swell group. Sharp, engaging, witheringly funny. They’re doing good journalism, too. If you need some promising young reporters, it turns out I know a few.

I saw this late last night and wanted to share it here today. If you’re an Auburn person, or a sports fan, you likely knew that Philip Lutzenkirchen died last year. I met him three or four times. (I don’t hang out with those guys or chase them down, but small town, BMOC and all that.) He was smart, handsome, talented, a nice fellow, well liked, respected by his peers and his fans. I wrote one of the first things about him, along those lines, after he died.

His profs liked him too, as a person and a student. (One of The Yankee’s colleagues wrote a nice piece about him, too.) Lutzie was coaching at a high school and looking forward to his next chapter when he died. A stupid, dumb tragedy that killed two boys, one a promising young man in college at Georgia and his friend, a guy just out of Auburn and a kid himself.

From that, though, comes this, which is one of the more courageous things I can imagine. His father spoke at that first hometown memorial. And he’s taken this on as a mission. Within just a few weeks of losing his oldest kid he was in locker rooms talking to high schoolers and college students. I saw him pick a kid out of the crowd, talk to him for a few moments and then send him out of the room. “And just like that, he can be gone.” Mike Lutzenkirchen sharing a raw, real, candid kind of message because, he figures, he’s filling the hole.

So here he’s talking to a room of high school athletes this week. It’s beautiful and hard and real. And kids should hear it, bad as it is for anyone to have to speak it from their own terrible personal experience.

And far be for it me to tell Mr. Lutzenkirchen how to tell his family’s story, he mentions the prom example in that speech, but he undersold it. From the Department of The Kids are Alright, comes perhaps the sweetest story you’ll find today.

And since we are at the anniversary of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, check out this cool slideshow from CNN.

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