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iPhone / photo / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
29
Sep 11

Random blocks

Hit the gym, hit the weights, hoping they would not hit back. Sometimes they do, and that’s embarrassing if there are a lot of serious gym types around.

Fortunately I timed it right and visited during amateur hour. No one noticed my struggles, for they were busy overcoming their own struggles, or bypassing them altogether. I like to think of that as that nice feeling of topping a hill, knowing you’ve reached that little summit and realizing you still have a little more in you. That’s a nice little feeling.

I could use one of those in the gym.

Talked about news stories in progress today. Prepared a lecture (with musical accompaniment by Wilco, so there’s a big guitar solo midway through) about story structure. Also, it proved a little bit long, which is more welcome from Wilco than from a lecture, but the more you know, right?

One of my favorite parts of class, aside from giving spelling quizzes that the students all look forward to, is when I let them go for the day. Someone will stick around to chat for a minute. It’s a nice moment to get away from the professor-student, lecture and lab dynamic and get to know people a tiny bit. I like hearing stories.

Like this one:

How many family memories are wrapped up in that chifferobe drawer? That’s a beautiful piece and it really stands out in the daylight. Is it going from one house to another? Did it just get refinished? Sold?

It made me think of similar pieces of in my own family, where they are popular mementoes. Some dates back generations. Easy to see why. Suppose that piece has a mirror inside. How many days did some old aunt or grandmother pull out a shirt and glance into that reflection?

No wonder someone wants to keep that nice piece of furniture.

Those are the random pieces of blocks stories can be built around.

Auburn / football / photo / weekend — Comments Off
25
Sep 11

Catching up

We had a full moon of course, recently. I took pictures and promptly forgot about them, doomed to sit on my camera for days and days. Here’s one now, though:

Did a little photo feature of children at Tiger Walk. Here’s one of them now:

Nova in flight before the FAU game:

The game was so flat even the cheerleaders were having to work hard to keep up their spirits:

Corey Lemonier, left, and Angelo Blackson greet FAU’s Graham Wilbert:

Wilbert was 20 of 31 for 191 yards and threw a touchdown, FAU’s first TD of the season. He also threw three interceptions, which were a big part of the game.

The Tigers, while flat, emerged with the win. And the fans and flags cheered:

Even more pictures here.

Auburn / football / photo / weekend — Comments Off
24
Sep 11

Gameday – FAU

Nova flies before the Florida Atlantic at Auburn game.

Auburn has struggled a fair amount this year, and FAU is one of the worst teams in football. So naturally the Tigers would have their hands full with the Owls. Most of the things Auburn hoped they could improve upon they did not. Many of the starters were forced to play late into the game.

They were sluggish in the first half, perhaps because a few starters sat out the game, taking a 10-6 lead into the locker room. An early interception returned for a touchdown in the second half finally helped bid some momentum. Flat was the word of the day, but Auburn did win 30-14, though it should have been an absolute blowout. Mike Dyer had 72 yards on 14 carries:

There’s a lot of improvement to be made before Auburn returns to their SEC schedule next week on the road at South Carolina. More pictures tomorrow.

adventures / Auburn / cycling / Friday / iPhone / photo / Samford — Comments Off
23
Sep 11

Clever and witty title

Trying something new for my bike rides. Since we live on the hilliest part of the coastal plains (despite being 180 miles from the coast and about 120 miles from the nearest mountain foothills) you can’t leave the house without pedaling up and down something.

Since I’ve noticed it takes six or eight miles for my legs to warm up, and since the hills here hurt when my legs aren’t ready, and since I’m not a very good cyclist anyway, I’m looking for somewhere flat to start.

Problem: there’s nowhere flat to start.

I have found a two-and-a-half mile loop with just two hills on it. So I’m riding that a few times before the actual ride begins. Those five miles make one of our standard routes 31 miles, which I can do without too much trouble, despite the hills. (I’m a wimp.)

All of this to say, if you have a good topographical map you can share, I’d love to borrow it for a while.

Productive day today. Did a bit of research, fired off the many important emails. Read a lot and booked hotel rooms for an upcoming conference.

The conference is in February, but it is one of those college towns where there’s not much there besides mountains and woods. The locals told us to book early, because if you aren’t in one of the two establishments in town you’re staying at a tavern 13 miles out of town. After that you’re looking at 20 and 30 mile commutes from Super 8s.

So I called the local Hampton Inn and asked for their policies and their availability for hotel rooms in February. (And felt an immediate sympathy for people working the phones at hotels. Oh the questions they must hear, over and over again.) They had something like 10 rooms left. In addition to this conference which will bring several hundred undergrads, there’s also softball, equestrian and men’s and women’s basketball in that tiny town that weekend.

Glad I booked early.

Did an interview today. I’m accustomed to conducting the interviews, but today I was the subject of one. The experience is a different one. This is in response to an idea that a lot of people had and the subsequent little essay I wrote about Unrolling Toomer’s a few weeks ago. It got re-printed on The War Eagle Reader
and picked up in one of the fan forums, too. Online this idea has taken on a life of its own. In practice it is growing a little more slowly. But there’s another interview to be done this weekend, too. So maybe we’re on to something.

So, naturally, I treated the interview like a stand-up, saying everything I could to one open-ended question. Only took two takes, but it worked out well. We’ll see the finished product next week.

Waiting for pizza.

Mellow Mushroom is the best pizza place in town, and one of the busiest places in town. I wonder how things would go if they had a second pizza oven. Maybe folks wouldn’t have to wait an hour for a table, and then the better part of another one waiting on the food.

Dining out on a Friday before a home game is tough. Life is hard, right?

iPhone / journalism / photo / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
20
Sep 11

Do not be dissuaded by the gray atmosphere

Rain today.

But it is like summer isn’t even trying anymore. Summer knows this is her last official week, and is conceding the point. The rain was just a sprinkle, a pat dropping of precipitation. There was nothing dramatic about it. It was probably even cold.

So maybe summer is slinking off. Maybe that will make way for an actual season of autumn this year. Maybe there’ll be months of the stuff, instead of days. Maybe we’ll grow weary of crispy mornings, sharp colors and the fragrant smells of the grill and evening fires. Maybe the crickets and the katydids will stick around, and the lightning bugs, too, but the mosquitos will be pushed off in an evening breeze.

It’s a pipe dream, but a good one. Summers are lovely and long. It will be mid or late October before the seasonal average high dips below 75. There may be troughs and cold fronts and odd chills in there, but there will also be the spikes. Beyond a certain point temperatures flirting with 90 are a bit demoralizing. That point is October 17th.

So we’ll see how that goes this year.

Class today. Students working on stories, some of them are quite strong. All have promise. Fifteen kids given one assignment and there are probably nine different angles they’ve explored. These can be interesting times in the development of young student-journalists.

Some of those stories will possibly be in The Samford Crimson sometime soon. That bunch of student-journalists, a bit older than those in today’s class, are working on their latest issue now. All of this is great fun.

Like sports teams, each year’s staff has their own personality. This year the Crimson has more guys on the editorial staff. There’s more talk of fantasy football teams than sorority functions. They all work hard, though, each staff going late into the night, and early into the next morning at the beginning of the year.

So far this year’s new staff has finished their paper at 5:30 a.m., just an hour before it went to press, and then 3:30 a.m. last week. At least I think that was the time last week. I find it hard to remember now. I can’t imagine why.