photo


9
Mar 15

The only thing wrong with this post is the headline

You can tell people all of the reasons they shouldn’t take pictures of signs, and there are plenty of good reasons, but still, when the classics come back to life, you can’t help yourself:

Saco

The story:

After nearly a decade of its pumps sitting idle, fuel is again flowing at the former Saco gas station at the corner of Dean Road and Opelika Road in Auburn.

Auburn resident Mike Woodham turned the station’s original lights back on at the Saco gas station Monday as he reopened it as Woodham’s Full Service—a gas station offering full or self serve fuel service, a full-service tire shop, oil changes and more.

“The City of Auburn has been very gracious to my kids and very good to me, and we wanted to give something back,” said Woodham, who owned Woodham’s Tire in Montgomery and has been in the auto business for 30 years. “We wanted to serve back. And the best way that we know of is what we bring to market with our tire knowledge.”

Known for its iconic Saco sign, the previous gas station closed more than nine years ago after then-owner Dick Salmon was shot and killed at the business in July 2005. According to an Associated Press article as reported by The Decatur Daily on July 24, 2005, Salmon had worked at the family-run business for 43 years.

And the store:

Saco

Not a lot has changed, and that seems to be the plan, and that’s great.

Breakfast at Barbecue House this morning, which meant I could skip lunch. Read students’ news stories all morning and afternoon, and that is always fun, right up until I imagine then trying to read my marginalia. And then there was class, where we talked about profiles and obits and got ready to point to exciting digital methods of story telling, which will last us through the rest of the week.

There were other office things, a late dinner and here we are.

Things to read … because here we are.

I’m keeping it to three, but these are three incredible Selma pieces to read. Because they are better than the headlines, I will link you with a good quote for each:

I thought I saw death. I thought I was going to die. — Rep. John Lewis

The world doesn’t know this happened because you didn’t photograph it … it is so much more important for you to take a picture of us getting beaten up than for you to be another person joining in the fray. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Not even the National Guard wanted to go through Selma — Dr. Bernard LaFayette

And now for another kind of fortitude, this is a strong testament of health, strength, and mind over chemo, Finding strength in triathlons:

It was debilitating. “I was 10 days away from doing my eighth Ironman,” Hackett says. “I was still training 100 percent and I had this huge, stage four tumour going.” His youngest daughter was just two weeks old. His oldest was five years old.

[…]

Hackett is on an aggressive form of chemotherapy, a regimen called FOLIRI, whose name represents three different drugs. His oncologist, Dr. Michael Sawyer, combines the regimen with a relatively new drug called bevacizumab that attacks the growth of new blood vessels. Hackett tolerates it well. “He told me he biked 20 or 30 kilometres the day before I saw him,” Sawyer says. He also ran a five-kilometre race just four hours after he finished his first round of chemotherapy.
The exercise might have something to do with it. “There are many studies, both in curative chemotherapy (to remove cancer completely) and chemotherapy to prolong people’s lives, where it appears that people who exercise do better than people who do not,” says Sawyer.

So we’ll all be at the gym a bit longer tomorrow, no?

Here are a few media links:

How four top publishers use Facebook for video

Testing out Meerkat: the app that brings live streaming to Twitter

What does the Twitter live streaming app Meerkat actually do?

You Won’t Understand The Potential of Snapchat Until You See This

And, finally, we’ll end with some music today. If you’re still looking for something to hate Tom Hanks in, keep looking because this probably isn’t that thing either:

Have a great and purposeful week. See ya tomorrow!


8
Mar 15

Catching up

The post that shares pictures that you probably haven’t seen yet, because I probably haven’t shared them yet. Let’s get to it.

I don’t know why we even bother after this picture.

Allie

She likes to watch what she likes to watch.

I’ve always wondered how they get the Icee from the factory to that dispenser:

Icee Truck

Is it just me or are police lights much brighter these days? I hope these nice officers realize their dark uniforms are not offset by the blinding lights. If anything the combination makes them feel more hidden.

cop light

The restaurant was empty, but the radio played the Jayhawks anyway. And that’s always a good thing.

Jasons Deli

The basement of my building at work has a side door that opens to a step-up courtyard patio. And the sun streams in at just the right time …

Last night I did a bit of cleaning, digging a desk out from under paperwork. I threw out a lot, reorganized a little and categorized that corner into smaller stacks of material to deal with. On a roll, I went out to the garage and straightened up one of the walls lined with things. The wall being threatened by the things, this had become necessary. On the bottom of one stack of garage wall things was a box. In that box was a collection of all of the things I wrote for newspapers and press releases and media packages in college. Also in that box there were other boxes. And one of those boxes had these inside.

tapes

These are some of my old radio airchecks. Morning shows, news, music shifts, football games. There’s a bit of everything in there. I had forgotten where in the house they were, but know we know: holding up the things that are holding up the garage wall.

Just above the box that held this box is another box. That’s a box I brought home late last year and it has dozens of old reel-to-reel tapes of my grandfather, preaching and on the radio. We’re going to have to get those cleaned up. I never heard him speak. But it turns out his voice and my voice have been sitting side-by-side lately.


7
Mar 15

Where you learn how the picture craze started

Slept in, by a great deal. I was going to go ride my bike this morning, but my body had other plans it seems. I slept in by a lot. I’ll probably be asleep early tonight, as well.

In between I did see an 11-inning baseball game. And I had Aubie take a selfie for me.

Aubie

A lot of people don’t know this, but if you look at those two words you should be able to figure out who invented the style. Aubie –> Selfie. He’s a man of many talents.

I also cleaned a corner of the office this evening. And I sorted through some stuff in the garage. If you’re interested in any of that come back tomorrow, I’ll tell one of those stories then.


5
Mar 15

Happy birthday, mom

If you drew it up, you’d want a mom to be the best person and mother she can possibly be, and then work ridiculously hard to be just a little bit better still. Moms give us all invaluable lessons and impossible standards. Good thing, too.

Mom

And many more … Especially since I am now, somehow, outpacing you in the birthday department.

One day I’m going to ask why I’m looking the wrong direction in this picture.


1
Mar 15

Catching up

The weekly post that adds pictures that you haven’t seen here yet. I’m not sure why I explain that. According to this I’ve written this post for more than three years now … Anyway, to the photos.

My view of Atlanta from the ninth floor of the Ramada. This is actually by the elevators. The view from my room was more fitting: a parking lot and freeway.

These chairs didn’t look comfortable, and they weren’t comfortable. Until they were. This is hard to explain. But I’d had four hours of sleep the night before, so that may have something to do with it.

My rental van. I parallel parked this brick beast. Only because the space behind me was empty at the time.

Some of our Samford students listening in on a panel, about Ebola, I think.

No one has explained this to me yet …

This flatiron is the Hurt Building, built between 1913 and 1926 nation’s earliest skyscrapers. It was said to be the world’s 17th largest office building during construction.

Now this is a light fixture. This is in the student center at Georgia State.

So we go through all of the awards, there are about 30 of them, and finally there’s the College Journalist of the Year award. They start at number 10 and we work our way up. This was around number five, when Sydney was realizing she was still waiting to hear her name.

She placed third in the College Journalist of the Year. She’s a print person through and through and, happily, has an editorial job already lined up for after graduation. She’s going to be great. She also placed fourth in the multimedia journalist category and won the sports photojournalism onsite championship. It was, she said, her first basketball game.

Allie has been hanging out with me all day.