photo


14
Apr 15

Notes from the third floor

The work on the campus cafeteria continues. The short version is they are renovating. And part of that renovation has involved gutting the center of the large room. So they had to erect an interior room, keeping the dust in and the food out. They built a dirty room, basically. They put in plexiglass windows so you can peer in and check out their work. I’m not sure if I’ve seen a lot of students doing that, but it is interesting to see what is happening inside on a weekly basis or so. On the outside, murals and other sanctioned graffiti are going up. Here’s some Seuss:

Seuss

I didn’t know there was such a thing as a drywall truck, but it makes sense if you think about it. Problem is, I never have. Nevertheless, here you go:

truck

Work, work, work. But it never seems enough, or finished. Hopefully it is good, at least.

I got in a fast 2,000 yards at the pool. Fast for me, that is. I was very pleased with myself because it took much less time in the aggregate. Let’s call that progress.

Pizza for dinner, a nice story involving a police officer around midday:

“I immediately started ripping apart the sink and the pipes. If you can only imagine losing your wedding ring – you can do anything with the adrenalin going through your body.”

The next thing she knew, other restaurant patrons joined her in the restroom. At one point, at least six people were in the bathroom trying to find the ring – in addition to those who just had to answer nature’s call.

They not only drew a crowd, they caught the attention of Hendrix who works an extra job at Al’s. Someone asked the kitchen staff for a long utensil, and Hendrix got curious. “The cop was like, ‘What the heck is going on?” Shannon said.

[…]

Hendrix may have sent Shannon on her way, but he certainly didn’t give up. He, along with the restaurant manager, called someone they thought could help. It was a small miracle, Hendrix said, when the trio heard the ring jingling somewhere deep down in the pipes.

But the officer’s work had only just begun. He didn’t know Shannon’s name, or the names of her friends. That’s when the detective work started.

One last thing, the man was an Alabama-native and a legend, and I thought he might live forever (mostly because, in my mind, he’s been about 70 for 25 years). But Percy Sledge’s passing should prompt you to check out at least a few of his live performances. The man was an incredible performer:

I saw him at a festival years ago, mostly because I remember a high school teacher of mine told me about the time she saw him in a blues bar in Mobile. He was singing that signature song, she said, and he did the chorus, “When a man loves a woman” 56 times. Always wanted to see something like that.


13
Apr 15

Things to read

Copeland Cookie Day in my Storytelling class:

cookies

There’s a great vintage photo at the bottom of the post. First, here are a bunch of great links for you to check out, some of them neatly arranged by category.

Social media platform pieces:

Snapchat is building a research team to do deep learning on images, videos
How college students use Snapchat
Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015
What USA Today learned covering the Final Four on Periscope and Snapchat
The most concerning element of Facebook’s potential new power

Next is the section for those here for journalism matters. But first, this, from our editor-in-chief:

I had her in a freshman class and you could tell, even then, how sharp and squared away she was. In the years since, she’s just begun to realize her great potential. It has been great fun to watch. (And, to her mother, I offer my joking apology and sincere congratulations.)

Some great pieces of a journalism nature:

Tips to make you a better storyteller
Washington Post Exec. Editor on journalism’s transition from print to digital
USA Today’s David Callaway on gaming the news
How smartphone video changes coverage of police abuse
Editor column: A reminder of journalism’s power to do the right thing
News media’s sloppy week: Column
Free Tools To Exploit Free Data
2014 IRE Award winners

And a few sign-of-the-time links:

LinkedIn, Lynda.com and the Skills You’ll Need for Your Next Job
In-Store Mobile Shopping: 61% Compare Prices, 52% Use Shopping Lists, 49% Take Product Photos

You might have seen her on ESPN, or if you’ve been in any of my classes or just like a great story, but the women’s college basketball player that captured our imagination last year has died. The local CBS affiliate produced a beautiful obit, which, really, was about how she lived: Lauren Hill (1995-2015). A beautiful young woman, a young life, well-lived, but far too briefly.

If you’re looking for something charming, Moxie is a therapy dog with a GoPro.

I’m just going to leave this headline right here and let it do the rest: Reduced sentence for 3-year-old girl’s rapist sparks outrage.

Changes coming to state policies on industrial recruitment … Old incentives brought big wins, but also big losses to Alabama.

We’d like to thank the state of New York for creating an environment that prompted Remington to move south … Huntsville led state in 2014 job creation

A strange twist to the tale of that $800,000 painting ‘Antiques Roadshow’ discovered in Birmingham:

The story behind a Mountain Brook businessman’s prized Frederic Remington painting that has been appraised for $600,000 to $800,000 just got even more intriguing.

The director of the Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, N.Y, said Tuesday that she has discovered the nearly 120-year-old painting of Mountain Brook real-estate executive Ty Dodge’s great-grandfather was obtained by Dodge’s family in a 1938 exchange that left the museum with two forged Remington pieces in return.

You have to pay close attention to that story to follow it — or I did, at least — but it is a great story for those that like museums, family heirlooms, art or misidentified forgeries.

And finally, go Dogs:

basketball


12
Apr 15

Catching up

We traveled. Uber to the airport. Delta from Tampa to Atlanta. A shuttle from the airport to the car. And then the car down the freeway home. All of that so I could take off my suit and then mow the lawn just ahead of the rain. And now this, catching up, with extra photos from the trip.

This is the first of the electronic waiter pagers I’ve seen. It was in the hotel lobby, a place with big palm trees, no apparent ceiling and a pretty decent music selection. I wanted to press one of the buttons to test the response time, but then I would have to order something …

And that would have been silly considering how much of our dining was done during the trip at the Colombia Cafe. It is located in one of the city’s museums, sort of a welcome center location. And above us there was great neon, like this guy:

I wanted to bring the baseball player sign home. The airline said no. Maybe I should have taken the train:

And now some of the great ceramic work adorning the outside of the Colombia, in Ybor City. Fine detail, terrific food. I’d go back again — oh wait! We did!


11
Apr 15

Our last day at SSCA

More panel sessions today. Some paper grading. A business meeting this evening for the mass communication division, where I served as chief note taker in charge of slowing down proceedings with interjections like “What was that again?” and the occasional “How do you spell that person’s name?”

For lunch we went to Colombia Cafe, big surprise. It is close — not much else seems to be — and it is delicious. We’ve been there for lunch for three days straight and, of course, went to their main restaurant last night for dinner. I could eat there a lot more before it became a chore.

Just in between our hotel and the cafe is the Amelia Center, where we saw the hockey game Thursday night. We were on the river walk and it was framed so nicely between the trees:

Sandwiches at the cafe. I did not have one, but I hear they are terrific. They do a great job with the bread, so I’ve no doubt. The secret, I was told several years ago, is in the bread:

Our friends Jenni and Gavin came to join us again for lunch. We shot this on the balcony of the cafe. There are better pictures, but I’m using this wide and high one to remind us it was an amazingly beautiful day:

The view from our hotel that we don’t have in our room. But the parking deck we can see on the other side of the building is attractive as those things go.

We had dinner with a few more of our friends and said our goodbyes. Our flight leaves tomorrow morning and we might not see them all again before then. You’re always sad to see it go, but that’s only because you bothered to come in the first place.


10
Apr 15

Another day at SSCA

Here is a panel you missed this morning. We were, I think, both entertaining and thoughtful. It was both theoretic and nostalgic. And almost all of the examples that came out of the panel were tales that started with some dystopian or post-apocalyptic backstory, which I found to be interesting. Just read the description, and imagine you were there:

It led to this quote, from our friend and co-panelist Dr. Brian Brantley, which was spot on:

And I don’t even like zombie films. Or mobster films. I think they’re kind of the same, actually.

I also chaired a panel on politics and sat in on another one where The Yankee presented, and caught a fourth session elsewhere, as well. It was a good day at the conference.

We have friends here in Tampa — Jenni, with whom we ran the Augusta half-Ironman last year and her husband, Gavin, who flies rockets and works for the county. That sounds like he flies rockets for the county, and I think he would appreciate that dangling gerund, so I’ll just leave it as is They took us here:

They took us not knowing we’ve had lunch at one of their cafes for two days in a row. That’s OK. We’re going back there again tomorrow.

The neon side overhead:

Across the street, the local branch of “My bank is more patriotic than your bank.”

Inside the restaurant, I enjoyed the roast pork “a la Cubana.” I even enjoyed the plantains, and I don’t even like plantain. Gavin, meanwhile, ordered the flaming steak. That was a first for me. He said it was delicious:

The restaurant has been around for more than a century, aimed at the working man, but has evolved somewhat over the decades. It is still a family-owned place. The menu is covered in their history. This is one of the best stories I’ve read in a menu (and I always read the stories in a menu):

Outside and around the corner, here are the six generations of that family who poured their lives into the place:

The whole block, it seemed, was dressed up in the style. I wonder what happens to those tiles when the seventh generation comes along.