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Thursday

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27
Oct 11

A lot of talk about talk

Alabama’s new and controversial immigration law makes an appearance on the Colbert Report:Comedy as commentary is difficult to overcome, is it not?

Class this afternoon, so much of the morning was devoted to preparing there. The students were writing fake stories. Here are the details, write a story based on what you know. There was a fake story about a shooting death, another about a prominent local company moving their operations overseas and one more on a car fatality with alcohol involved.

These exercises are important, because the place we put ideas and the words we use to get there are critical to a story. For most people, winding up in the news is not a pleasant experience. We don’t need to make things worse with a misplaced modifier or some other syntax error.

The future! By Microsoft:

I scrolled down through the comments, hoping the very first one would have some incredible insight. The first three, however, noted that Microsoft envisions better tech in videos than they produce. And then a big argument about Apple and St. Steve inventing the tablet. Also, within about three minutes of each other different people thought this was the loneliest future they’ve ever seen, or the coolest thing ever and “I want one now!”

I’m glad to see that typos will still be a part of our future. Check out the 2:55 mark.

Also in the future, Roy Moore wants his old job back. The last time he had that job he was fired by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary. I remember covering that story like it was yesterday. November of 2003 he lost the job, but this fight had been going on for months. I remember sitting in my studio, watching video from Montgomery and a man in a red flannel shirt, red-faced, veins throbbing, screaming at the top of his lungs demanding Moore’s Ten Commandments monument be put back. I was concerned about that guy’s health. Wonder where he is now.

Because I love myself I visited Walmart tonight. I know! And this after getting a haircut yesterday. Haircuts are one of my least favorite chores, because of the conversations. These are is especially awkward if you go to one of those places where you never see the same person twice. The conversation, then, demands a very basic, elevator level of commitment spread out over a longer period of time than a three floor ride in a large box.

The lady that cut my hair this time smelled of cigarettes. She disliked the cold. She could not decide if she’d seen me before. (She had not.) And she had trouble breathing. The guy that’s cut my hair the last two times, elsewhere at an actual barber shop, scares me a little. And his finished job is a bit severe. The lady yesterday, though, did a nice job on everything but the sideburns. This is remarkably hard, trimming things to be level; no one ever does it right and is no longer something that can be judged.

Everything else, though, centered on the awkward conversation. I like conversation, but the hair chair isn’t the place. Cab drivers need conversation because some of them are already on the edge. Plus there’s the where are you going, where have you been, who will you be when you get there mystery of cab rides. Most any other place a little chit chat is fine. Rapport is great, fishing for repeat customers is understandable, making people feel at ease is applauded. I want you to concentrate on what you are doing. Don’t jam my eye with the clipper. She almost did last night.

Having survived, though, why not go to Walmart tonight? Taylor Swift has a line of greeting cards now. Bing Crosby warned that Santa Claus is coming to town. We change the clocks in two weeks. Halloween is this weekend. This might be a little early.

The checkout line was … post office-like in it’s slowness.

Maybe it was the guy trying to get information from the cashier about her coworker so he could go flirt. There’s another awkward conversation, at least no sharp instruments were used.

iPhone / journalism / Samford / Thursday / video — 1 Comment
20
Oct 11

Look straight ahead, indeed

The hardest part of my day was in writing a biography about a man I’ve never met. People do this all the time, they are called biographers. They usually have a few more resources at hand and the opportunity to do more research. But I was tasked with doing this one in an afternoon. Fortunately the length required was much shorter.

But still, 750 word biography on a man you’ve never met. He’s deceased. His wife is also gone. There is, I was told, some small mystery about some of the particulars, even among his children. I understand that. There’s a lot of that in my family, too. Also, this is a bio about a journalist, which will be read by an audience of journalism-type folks.

No pressure, right?

Hugh Frank Smith attended Samford in the 1930s, when it was Howard College. Then he went to Mizzou to finish his education. I talked to some of their folks today trying to drum up information. He graduated, started working at a Memphis paper, where he stayed for half a century until it folded, with the exception of his time in the Navy during World War II. He wrote for other Tennessee papers after the Press-Scimitar disappeared. His work cropped up from time to time in bigger publications.

He ran a horse farm. A lot of people in Memphis learned to ride there. He used email, perhaps unusual for a man born in 1915. He traveled quite a bit, but never forgot east Alabama, from which he came, or Samford, to whom he became a scholarship donor. All of the things you can find about him are very complimentary. He seems like he would have been a nice man to know.

But I was able to find some of his old columns, and they are lovely. From late in his life, a tribute to his sister:

Nan taught me a lot through the years. She read to me nearly every day and was always reading a book herself — one reason why I still read one or two books a week. She taught me how to drive our old Model T Ford — at first in a hayfield, then later on a dirt road.

She always said, “Look straight ahead when you are driving.” Once when we were rounding a curve I almost ran into a ditch. She couldn’t understand why I was so reckless. “You told me always to look straight ahead,” I explained, and I had been — straight ahead into a cotton field.

I must have scored well in her other lessons because I have never had to report an accident in 78 years of driving.

Here’s one he wrote a few years after his wife died:

Even as her memory faded, Rachael never seemed depressed, and often she would laugh at herself when she said something ridiculous or outrageous. Rather than correct her mistakes, many of them humorous, we just went along with them. I even kept a log. For example, one evening she looked at me and asked: “How did I happen to marry you? I didn’t mean to.” We both laughed. Another night, after arriving home from a party, she looked at our house and asked: “Didn’t we once live here?” I laughed and she quickly joined me.

I really think she often made comments like that just to elicit a chuckle. When she couldn’t get to sleep one night, I suggested: “Why don’t you count sheep?” Her reply: “We only have three.” That was true; we had three sheep.

[…]

Most important, she remained at the center of our farm and our family throughout it all. We found ways to treasure as much of the end of life as possible. As it turned out, Rachael’s sunny disposition throughout her life was her final gift to us. It made Alzheimer’s “long goodbye” more bearable for my daughters and myself.

So I wrote a bio, met with students. I gave a tour of a few of the facilities to a visiting alumnus. I taught a class. Also this, a hasty little video just to remember the sunny day:

It was a fine day. Began with a headache, ended with pizza with friends and jokes in a blustery parking lot.

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13
Oct 11

Math and rain, and also traffic

I drove through that this morning. As it was later described, by several people, as “Suddenly here” and “hurricane-like.”

That last description came from a writer, so we’ll excuse the hyperbole. Even still, it was an imposing wall of active weather.

And I drove through two of them. The second was less impressive, but no less guilty of fraying the nerves of other drivers. Apparently it has been a while since it rained here — checking the drought monitor, why, yes, severe and extreme drought — because no one remembers how to drive in this stuff.

“I seem to recall something about hazard lights and … what was that other thing? Oh, BRAKES!”

Usually, applying a little less pressure to the accelerator and coasting to a speed slightly more comfortable allows one to press on, but not these good drivers. No sir. Today was a 45-mile-per-hour rain, which is to say that’s the speed I could safely maintain on the interstate in the heart of the storm.

Old timers remember a time of a 10-mile-per-hour rain, but their grandchildren, at Thanksgiving, just sigh and roll their eyes. “Not the monsoon story again, grandpa … ”

I recall stopping more with my grandparents in the rain than I’ve done myself, and my grandfather was a truck driver. He’d know from road weather. I have stopped for rain exactly twice in my driving career. Once it was raining so hard I mildly feared for my life. The other time it was merely difficult to see. And I believe it was late in the day and all the crazies were on the road.

No problems in the storms today, though, happily. The pine tree frontier was uneventful. Made it back to civilization just as the roads dried and the traffic thinned. I was able to stop by an engraving shop and ordered gifts for this year’s inductees to the Samford JMC Wall of Fame. Two gentlemen, alumni, success stories, are going on the great wall. They also need plaques.

Visited one of my banks, where I filled out paperwork. I will not be surprised at all to receive a phone call in three weeks informing me that the paperwork was incorrectly done and will need further attention. The helpful young teller was new and she knew as much about this particular procedure as I did. And I’m sure this will cost me $6. Processing fees, you understand.

On campus I received marching orders. I marched to and fro, doing things that were asked of me. I discovered, just before class, that I’d almost duplicated a colleague’s plan, almost to the letter. This required a last minute change of plans for my afternoon lecture.

I discussed math for journalists. Everyone wins.

Here I wrote some other things, my browser crashed and the WordPress draft sequence didn’t kick in. This is frustrating, but you’re not missing much. There was a story about bumper-to-bumper traffic and how, for the first time in the history of overcrowded interstates and freeway construction, it was beneficial. There was also a whimsical anecdote about the moon, which was lovely tonight.

I made this, though, so enjoy. I’ve put a few of these up here in the past, but not for some time. Thought I’d do this one, since I shot it from the hip today and remembered how much I like raindrops on glass. Something about the focus of the droplets and the blurring of the world beyond. I want to write about rain, there’s some great meaning behind it all, but precipitation isn’t my strongest subject matter, it seems. Best leave it to the experts:

Rain more. We need it.

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6
Oct 11

The descent into sickliness

In retrospect I should have known last night this was going to happen. I was ready for sleep by 10 p.m. And then this morning the scratchy throat begin. A workout was unsatisfying. The day slipped into, well let’s just call it existential decline.

Hey, it sounds good.

So there was work. Messing up a spreadsheet and recovering it by chance. Finishing slides for a lecture. Lecturing. Doing research. Tabbing through more spreadsheets. Making phone calls and so on.

As the afternoon slipped into evening the scratchiness in the back of my throat turned to a full-on sore throat. There was coughing. At the end of the day there was little breathing. Sinuses, then. My mortal enemy it seems. There will be little breathing or rest or happiness until this passes.

Links, then: Steve Yelvington has 10 things we (should) have learned about mobile and tablet news. Robert Rosenthal, meanwhile, offers lessons learned on reinventing journalism. About seven of these can apply to any industry, however.

And now the fun of new immigration law, writ large in Alabama’s fields. There is so much wrong here that deserves correction:

The farmers said the some of their workers may have been in the country illegally, but they were the only ones willing to do the work.

“This law will be in effect this entire growing season,” Beason told the farmers. He said he would talk to his congressman about the need for a federal temporary worker program that would help the farmers next season.

“There won’t be no next growing season,” farmer Wayne Smith said.

“Does America know how much this is going to affect them? They’ll find out when they go to the grocery store. Prices on produce will double,” he said.

Lana Boatwright said she and her husband had used the same crews for more than a decade, but only eight of the 48 workers they needed showed up after the law took effect.

“My husband and I take them to the grocery store at night and shop for them because they are afraid they will be arrested,” she said.

Tough situation with no obvious answers. It is already impacting Alabama’s agricultural industry, small farmers, the construction industry, schools, the DMV, large groups of people who are willing to endure thankless jobs at low or average pay to try and make a better life and who knows what else.

You can’t envy anyone in this circumstance, but we’re all about to learn the rule of unintended consequences. This is, however, a federal issue that has failed and the states — Arizona, Georgia and Alabama the first among them — to try to address the issue. There seems to be an overreach.

And now, for something more fun:

Come back tomorrow for ragged coughing and sneezing. And some other things too.

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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.