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The Sunday post with extra pictures!
Allie, disagreeing with something the humans said:
Even slower than the sulfured stuff! We’d describe how, but it wouldn’t take long enough! That’s how slow our product is. It is barely viscuous! A semi-solid, even!
When you read the sign it is obvious: someone got to the clearance wine.
A butterfly we saw at the nursery:
Here’s a video of that butterfly!
Ever have one of those days where the floor was the most comfortable thing you had? No? Just me then? OK.
So I spent a little time stretched out today because my back got all cinched up and my shoulder wasn’t helping. For some reason I decided the floor was a good place to be, and it turns out, I was right.
I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, and I’m not especially excited about that.
I have a new idea about the criticism of journalism. It goes like this, it is as shallow or meaningful as you want it to be, and the format doesn’t have anything to do with that.
Here’s the latest example in the all but exhausted “Real Journalists” versus “Just a Blogger” debate. The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer is struggling with the thorny issues: Is rapper Big Boi taking classes at Auburn University?
The answer? No. But his daughter is enrolling as a freshman. That doesn’t keep a lot of rhetorical questions at bay, though. They just fly out into the ether and are never answered, because who needs answers when you can embed a YouTube video?
I’ve had arguments with people that have worked at that paper about the various values of citizen journalism compared to professionals, and this is a perfectly good counter-argument to anything anyone says in that debate. To be fair, the writer of that sad little post is called an “audience engagement coordinator.” And therein, I think, lies the problem. It is as shallow or meaningful as you want it to be, and the format doesn’t have anything to do with that.
Meanwhile, a writer at al.com stepped in it today. He offended women when assuming they didn’t understand football. Here’s the freshly edited version. It even made Romenesko.
In bigger news of things to read: Jeff Jarvis on how media in different countries are covering the recent governmental moves against journalism. Hint: shamefully poor.
Jay Rosen on the conspiracy to commit journalism, one of the better things he’s written in my view:
This battle is global. Just as the surveillance state is an international actor — not one government, but many working together — and just as the surveillance net stretches worldwide because the communications network does too, the struggle to report on the secret system’s overreach is global, as well. It’s the collect-it-all coalition against an expanded Fourth Estate, worldwide.
[…]
This tells us something. The battle I referred to is not a simple matter of the state vs. civilians. It’s not government vs. the press, either. It’s the surveillance-over-everything forces within governments (plus the politicians and journalists who identify with them) vs. everyone who opposes their overreach: investigative journalists and sources, especially, but also couriers (like David Miranda), cryptographers and technologists, free speech lawyers, funders, brave advertisers, online activists, sympathetic actors inside a given government, civil society groups like Amnesty International, bloggers to amplify the signal and, of course, readers. Lots of readers, the noisy kind, who share and help distribute the work.
This type of sunlight coalition — large and small pieces, loosely joined — is a countervailing power to the security forces, the people who are utterly serious when they say: ”You’ve had your debate. There’s no need to write any more,” the same people who, as Bruce Schneier has written, “commandeered the internet” for their use because, viewed from a certain angle, it’s the best machine ever made for spying on the population.
If sunlight coalitions are to succeed, it won’t be by outwitting surveillance. Not better technology, but greater legitimacy is their edge. This attitude was perfectly captured by Ladar Levison, founder of Lavabit, who shut down his email service when the surveillance state demanded his submission. “I think if the American public knew what our government was doing, they wouldn’t be allowed to do it anymore,” he said.
Sadly, the wrong side has already won this argument.
Elmore Leonard died. I love some of his work, though, since I don’t read hardly any fiction, I’ve never read any of his books. But I quote him in one of my syllabi. Here are his invaluable rules to writing:
Never open a book with weather.
Avoid prologues.
Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
Go check out the rest, too.
And, now just to change the subject, all of this rain has hurt the cotton crop:
The fiber-producing plant is not getting the hot, dry and sunny weather it needs to turn the bolls into blooms. If the bolls don’t bloom before the first fall frost or freeze, the cotton won’t be harvestable, farmers and agricultural specialists said.
By and large the rainy season has helped the corn. I thought about that today while I was getting hammered by rain and pedaling around corn fields:
This was about the only time it wasn’t raining, for 34 miles mind you, and it was clearly coming on. And then came the lightning. I’m starting to add miles back in to my rides and this was my reward. Roads I’ve seldom, if ever, been on and one of the stronger storms I’ve ever enjoyed.
Two hours in the gloomy, escaping light and thunder and rain. How was your day?
The post that calls it a day simply by posting extra pics that haven’t already made it onto the site. Let us catch up!
We found the first margarita machine at the Smithsonian in Washington. It came from a Dallas restaurant where owner Mariano Martinez was inspired by Slurpee machines to make a bad novelty drink.
It is not the most attractive building. It’s namesake didn’t even want to be it’s namesake. The name was attached after he died. And this is enough of it to get the impression you need:
The cool mug The Yankee got for me. Awesome, right? There is a guide on the bottom of the mug. And instructions. “For best results, use other side.”
This little girl carried her mother’s purse everywhere at the Barbecue House on Friday:
I’m not good in triathlons, but I’ve figured out the best part of the day. The massage:
Watched Spider-Man last night, the new one. Peter is raised by President Bartlet and Mary Todd Lincoln. He doesn’t ride a champion horse in a previous life, but there’s still a lot to live up too, movie-wise. Dennis Leary is miscast, the logical conclusion of every joke from the 1980s. Aunt Mae is really Forrest Gump’s mother, after she faked her death in Greenbow. The timelines may match up.
There’s as much wrong with the movie as there is right. Peter Parker is too self-assured. Spider-Man has to be whiny and thoughtful. Imagine what he should be thinking in this scene:
That’s the best Stan Lee cameo so far, I think.
Finally, Emma Stone has always been too soulful to be a high school student, and she’s too old for the part, but cast her wherever you can. And, Gwen gets rid of Mary Jane for this movie, so that’s a victory. But she’s dating a spider, working for a lizard and the daughter of a man with a Cindy Crawford obsession. Poor Skeeter.
Also, Uncle President Ben Bartlet’s voicemail was a moving moment:
But when I watched that scene the second time I realized that the guy having a Rear Window poster in his room was easily the most interesting thing about the character. And that might not be the best endorsement ever.
Now for something kind-hearted: A local non-profit lost almost their entire line of product in the UPS crash in Birmingham yesterday. They employ women in India to keep them out of the sex slave trade. But now they have no product. Freeset is the organization’s name, and by virtue of some of our students’ work I know the excellent reputation they have.
So this nonprofit that just lost their entire inventory, that is worried about what that means for their on-the-precipice employees, is pledging to raise money for the pilots of that UPS flight. All of the proceeds of this Freeset shirt are going to the families.
Some people will amaze you. Some people will never stop doing it.
Ran a 5K tonight, if you count all of the walking. Something was hurting, so I shut it down. Aside from needing the conditioning and having a the benefit of a bit more conditioning and my general lousy form there was no need to press on while a bunch of things hurt.
So I walked a bit.
Saw this sign at the edge of someone’s yard:
A few years ago a local developer wanted to take all this beautiful wooded land that abuts a state park and the running/biking trail and a quiet little wooded neighborhood and put up Just Another Strip Mall. The neighbors fought it. The proposal was yanked. And they haven’t been heard from for several years.
But the sign is ready, and you have to appreciate that sort of vigilance.
You might not go in for poetry slams, but there’s something about this guy that is worth seeing.
There are two nice little moments in there in the second half, but right before the end there’s a big “Whoa” moment. You’re just not really prepared for that. Life surprises you like that sometimes. You have to be ready.
I slept in, because I stayed up late, because I had a cup of tea and was wide awake for the next seven hours last night and early this morning.
So when I woke up the story was fully developed. A UPS plane had crashed on final approach into Birmingham. The pictures are horrific. The two pilots were dead. And, thankfully, for a change, I knew precisely where my step-dad was.
He flies out of the same hub as those two pilots. The co-pilot has been named, someone he doesn’t know. We’re still waiting to hear the identify of the pilot. The reporters at al.com have done an incredible job on the story if you’re interested in the latest.
I’m ready to turn away from it. I’ve covered stories about neighbors, became friends with people I covered over time. I’ve reported and written and read about some horrible things people to do to one another and have a healthy detachment.
But I’m invested a bit here, enough to set the whole day off. There were emails and Facebook and a few “That’s not him, is it?” questions.
It was not, but what could have been. I couldn’t tamp down the anxious feelings until the late evening.
So I went out for a little bike ride in the rain, down through the neighborhood, around the roundabout and out the back. I planned to turn left, but as so often happens in the saddle I changed my mind almost mid-turn and went right.
The rain picked up and I smelled the river. The stagnant water at the boat launch. The still and mild decay of a fish. The synthetic carpet of a boat. The funky tinge of artificial bait that has been too long in the tackle box and couldn’t catch anything but weeds. There is no water there, but those were the smells. It made me think of my grandfather, and so I pedaled on.
I started having a tough time seeing through my sunglasses on the rainy, graying road. I enjoy a rainy ride, but this wasn’t quite the same. I hit a sprint stretch, wheeled to the right and realized I was cheating on all the turns. I blamed the new front tire. We don’t know each other yet. It doesn’t trust me to dive into turns yet. If I listen close the hum is saying what could have been?
I was dying on everything. But my socks were getting wet, so my feet were getting heavier and, thus, faster. That’s my theory, anyway. Doesn’t always work. I found myself shifting toward my easiest gears and climbing up the biggest hill of the day, which is no big hill. It is already a forgotten blur. So was most of the rest of the ride. Raindrops and panting. Chickening out in curves, full of unease about them, feeling my bike get lighter the few times I put in some speed.
Somewhere I picked up the smell of an old grandmother’s hairspray, baked in by decades of cigarettes. I don’t know why I smelled these things today, since I usually can’t smell anything. But I love being on my bike because it gives me time to think about things like that, the sensations, analogies and forgetting the whompwhompwhomp of my legs.
I took that picture above just before getting home, dawdling in the sprinkling rain and the purple and orange sky. I lingered to get the right fuzzy shot because a crisp one didn’t fit the mood. I took my time because getting home means going inside means cleaning my bike — the no-fun part of riding in the rain.
And there was still UPS plane talk. What could have been is such a bizarrely odd sensation. I got so distracted I almost gnarled two knuckles of my left hand in the spokes of my bike’s back wheel.
Here’s the last story I’m reading about it tonight:
More than 13,000 bags made by Freeset USA, a local nonprofit that provides jobs to women in Calcutta, India, were among the cargo lost when a UPS cargo plane crashed Wednesday morning near Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport.
The company, which lost what amounted to its entire fall inventory of bags, has decided to begin selling a T-shirt to raise money for the families of the two pilots killed in the crash, according to a news release from the company.
[…]
The company is also worried about its 200 employees, mostly women freed from Calcutta’s sex trade.
People are donating via Twitter. Freeset’s Facebook page says they are working on the design. I know this company through Samford connections. They do incredible work and I’m glad they are involved here. Can’t wait to brag on them. That will be the best thing for a perfectly sad and strange day.
