Tuesday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Tuesday

Football season

Practice starts tomorrow. Here’s a look at last year, a fine photo gallery put together by Oregon Live before their Ducks faced Auburn in the BCS Championship game.

Thirty-something days and counting …

In professional camps, Cam Newton is getting positive early reviews with the Panthers. As always on a sports post, read the comments at your own risk.

There’s other stuff, too, National Night Out, where our neighborhood said “Dude. This is August,” and just recalled that they met people last year. Even the police didn’t bother to cruise through the neighborhood handing out the campaign literature. Now, if someone had been out offering ‘Smores and lemonade …

Speaking of lemonade, there’s the intent of the law and then there’s the intent of the law, and you can add this to your list of communities to avoid — or flock to, as you like — when reading this story:

Police closed down a lemonade stand in Coralville last week, telling its 4-year-old operator and her dad that she didn’t have a permit.

An officer told Abigail Krutsinger’s father Friday that she couldn’t run the stand as RAGBRAI bicyclers poured into Coralville.

And here’s another one, same town:

A mother of six also said her kids had their lemonade stand on 18th Avenue shut down after just 20 minutes.

Bobbie Nelson said she laughed when a police officer told her that a permit to sell lemonade would cost $400.

“The kids were devastated,” Nelson said. “They just cried and didn’t understand why.”

[…]

Mitch Gross, a member of the Coralville City Council, said he believes the city will learn a lesson from this. Gross said he expects future ordinances to apply only for vendors who set out to “make a profit.”

“It was never our intent to shut down kid’s lemonade stands,” Gross said. “We never really thought about it.”

That’s refreshing of the councilman, who admitted openly that he and his colleagues did not think through the two-day ordinance they passed in order to capitalize on a visiting bike tour’s tourist influx. Err. I mean looking out for people. So which is it? Money-hungry or nanny statism? So hard to choose sides somedays, isn’t it?

Do read those comments, where the people are throwing lemons back at the city.

And, finally, what space shuttles and horses have in common:

When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on the launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are the solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at a factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.

The railroad from the factory runs through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than a railroad track …

That’s as fun a tongue-in-cheek mini-essay as you can read today.

That’s enough for one sitting. Try to stay cool out there. The heat index here today was 102.

adventures / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
26
Jul 11

Writing retreat, Day Four

Yes, I published a similar picture a few days ago, but that was with my phone. This one is from my camera, and it is a lovely view no matter how many times you see it.

Elsewhere, in my writing I’m to the point in my research where I begin to wonder: Do I really have something here? The next question is: What are you overlooking?

In other words, standard fare.

Wouldn’t you like to be overlooking that beach?

iPhone / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
19
Jul 11

Hiding from heat

The Acropolis, in Athens, Greece, as seen on our refrigerator. Wouldn’t you rather be in Athens today?

Well, no. The heat index here was about 99 today. It snuck up to around 107 there. Winner, the fridge, where everything is about 34 degrees.

From mid-July through September everything is weighted along a linear graph of atmospheric heat and thermal conductivity. At any place where those two lines meet on the chart, you want to minimize your exposure because, really.

I like a good summer. The Yankee finds this a bit odd. But there’s nothing wrong with a good dose of heat. There’s something magical about stomping through a bit of humidity. We get plenty of each. But as I get a little older, I’m changing my opinion just a bit. Two years ago, in a September filled with the mid and upper 90s, I’d just had enough. And we still had a warm October to look forward to as well.

So heat is good. Limited doses should be applied. Late May through August, I can deal with that. September should demonstrate a little flexibility.

And comparing the seasonal averages, I might not runaway to Greece to avoid the heat.

Back to the map, then.

cycling / iPhone / links / memories / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
12
Jul 11

The heat’s fault

I learned how to swing a golf club in weather not too different from this, about three miles from here in fact, about 13 years ago. That field is now being developed for … something not involved with poor uses of a 5-iron.

That seemed more polite than saying “Someone mentioned on Twitter that their heat index was 109 today. I live in a place that makes 109 seem pleasant. The heat index here was 119 here today.”

Because that’s just obnoxious, especially since I’m not making that up.

So I was a little sad I had not yet retrieved my bike, because I would have absolutely ridden at 119, at least for a few miles, just to say I had done it. That’s the sort of thing that makes my grandparents scoff and question my decision-making.

My bike was ready. It was ready on Saturday, but they would not let me pick it up until today. I waited and waited for them to call, but they did not. So I finally went over for a visit. Paid for the two tuneups and bought new CO2 cartridges.

We had a discussion on the value of the decimal point. This particular one was worth 62 dollars, and I’m glad we talked about it as it worked out in my favor. Loaded my car up, bursting into a terrific sweat just wrestling the thing in the car. Got home, unloaded the bike, and my sweat glands proved their efficiency by again jumping into service as I put the front wheel back on. This is a quick release wheel. It takes just a few seconds to slide it into the fork, seat the hub, put the brakes over the rim, tighten the brakes and the release. It was … warm out.

Picked up The Yankee at the Atlanta Airport, home of useful signs and traffic jams.

You know that place on the curb where you drop off people and pick them up, even though the airport, police and all of us agree no one else (except you, of course) should be allowed to do so? Atlanta, in addition to the shuttles, park-n-rides, MARTA, on-site lots, cabs and so on, has a two-tiered curb system. If you were exiting the airport, you’d walk out from baggage, through a door into a sultry Georgia evening and see three lanes of cars. Then you’d see a covered pedestrian refuge island. And then you’d see three more lanes of cars. Beyond that is one of the many parking decks. It is the six lanes that draw your attention, for they are a mess.

But pedestrian pickup dynamics are interesting. My first pass through the airport the inside lanes were an unmitigated disaster. So I chose the outer route. I happened to be right on time, which really meant six minutes early, so I had to do the loop again. I texted “Go to the outside lanes.”

By the time I came around for my second pass the inside lanes were sparsely populated. The outer three lanes were wrecked. Partly because of the several Atlanta PD cruisers in violation of some still-unread section of the Patriot Act prohibiting parking within a four mile radius of airports, Republicans or George Bush. The other reason the outer lanes were wrecked was because of civilian cars parked and abandoned in the pickup area in direct violation of the Patriot Act, the 28th Amendment and common human decency.

So on my third pass I chose the inside three lanes, because the cruisers and the parked cars had not moved in the 75 seconds it took for my return pass. These were moving smoothly on my second circle, but they were gridlock this time through. All three lanes were stalled, mostly because of the double-parking, diagonal attempts at preventing door dings from someone from Gwinnett County. Atlantans know this to be true.

I finally picked up my best girl from her weekend home — there was a god-niece’s baptismal to attend — and we head for home. But not before stopping at Sprayberry’s, where I visited last week. She didn’t get to go, since I’d already dropped her off at the airport by then. Tonight we closed the place, reveling in the best 9 p.m.-is-late-night atmosphere that small town Georgia has to offer. She pronounced the barbecue very good, which it is. I had the Lewis Grizzard special — barbecue, stew and perhaps the best onion rings ever — I felt a just a little more Southern. It is possible.

There’s something on the menu there, the Houston Special, which is the stew on a barbecue sandwich. This is named after Houston Sprayberry, the founder of the place (established in 1926). I did not order it, but dipped some of my stew over the pork. If anyone ever asks me what a grandpa plate tastes, this is the answer. I can imagine every old man in the region eating this. Probably they are torturing the language as they do so, while enjoying their sandwich and looking forward to a Neehi or a Moon Pie or some other regional thing. They are imparting a lifetime of wisdom and defiance on an impressionable young person who is not interested in stew on a sandwich who is thinking Stew is a stew. It should not be on a sandwich. Ironically, dropping the extra pork into the stew tasted entirely different.

Links: This is a piece of poignancy making the rounds, father and son at the first shuttle launch, and again at the last. But if you really want to get misty eyed over pictures, Dear Photograph. Give it a try. You’ll catch the premise immediately, there’s a universal call to appeal there, and you’ll realize looking through the full site is worth the time.

Birds. On radar.

And, now, the most obvious story you’ll read this week, the one that makes you question the scruples and decency of a union which would make such ridiculous claims. (Hint: this is about teachers.) Dr. Joe Morton, the state school superintendent, is retiring. He seems a good man. I’ve interviewed him several times. The AEA recently published a hit piece on the guy. And now, on the way out the door, he’s having to defend himself. But for what?

In a recent issue of the Alabama Education Association’s Alabama School Journal, AEA Associate Executive Secretary Joe Reed said Morton has been “openly hostile” to public educators and that Morton proposed that more teachers have their certificates revoked than past superintendents.

Morton told the state school board Tuesday that Reed’s assertions are “incorrect and wrong minded.”

Morton said he takes the revocation of certificates very seriously and that most revocations he recommended involved teachers using illegal drugs, having inappropriate sexual contact with students or committing crimes.

Just a little more evidence: the union is not in it for the kids.

If you were wondering, my golf swing has never improved that much. I blame the crushing heat.

cycling / history / links / memories / photo / Tuesday — 1 Comment
5
Jul 11

Attention shoppers

Started the day on the bike, as per usual. Made it 14.5 miles. It was warm and bright and sunny, but that wasn’t the problem. There’s a cramping pain in my shoulder that would not allow me to look behind me to the left. This is important, you know, to monitor traffic, so I figured I should call it an early day.

Which is very interesting. At 20 miles I feel as if I can at least say I’ve had a little exercise. Thirty miles seems to be where I can say is a good place to park the bike, clean up and still have a marginally useful day. Higher than that and the bike ride becomes the day, physically speaking. Thirty isn’t a plateau, but you can see it from there. Fifteen? Why bother?

I pedaled around most of the bypass, hooked a left through the airport’s neighborhood and decided to shut down from there. I took the downhill express route home, and found The Yankee already back inside. She’d bailed, too, blaming the sun.

So we had a day of Court TV. Casey Anthony not guilty! I’m shocked! Appalled! I don’t know why, but the media is telling me I should be! And the media is full of talented litigators.

This sort of news holds little sway with me anywhere. It’s terrible on the personal level and cheap and facile from the news media’s perspective. No doubt it is very important to those involved, and I understand how bystanders can become invested in it. We’ve all been there on some type of story or another. This particular one just isn’t for me.

This is what I know of the entire story, which has been going on for years now: a child is dead, a mother is the suspect and she probably won’t win any Mother of the Year awards. So, naturally, I’m shocked. SHOCKED!

Because the newspapers tomorrow will tell me I should be; just like the talking heads have told me I should be all day. Except for that one lady on CNN, who suggested a lynch mob was on the verge of forming at the courthouse.

Really?

They set up for a jury press conference. Those wishing to take part could stand before the media and give an oration dissimilar to the fiery stuff that came out of one of the defense counselor’s head. The jury demurred. And that’s where the entire thing got boring.

I’m only writing this for the search engines. Casey Anthony! Mother of the Year! Guilty! Not guilty!

Shameful, isn’t it? And that’s what cable news has been doing for months. Or, in the case of some of the Headline News wags, years.

In my fun reading today I stumbled across a site called Dead Malls. This is a subject of little interest to me, but I appreciate the labor of love that goes into it. There’s a generation of culture built into the trappings and successes and failures of the mall culture. And you have to know, beginning a site like this, that your audience is extremely narrow. Who wants to read about a mall in Peoria except for the good people of Peoria?

Here are three I skimmed from Alabama: Eastwood, Century Plaza and Montgomery. The first two I’d actually visited at one point or another.

I’ll admit it. I was a teen in the right time for malls. They were a great place to meet with friends, play video games, catch a movie, buy things and play with the gadgets at Brookstone. Visiting one now does seem a bit different. Maybe it is timing, or age or the economy, but the vibrance seems gone.

Of course, I’ve been in a dead mall, too. I suddenly remembered. Only those people hadn’t covered it. To the Googles!

Another mall blog — there are several, it turns out — chronicles the sad demise and the odd current stasis that inhabits Westlake Mall.

The guy that runs that site is in his early-30s. He’s from Atlanta. And, despite clearly being uncomfortable cruising around the place he has the history pretty well figured out. The comments are wonderfully insightful. I left one, too, because one good comment deserves another and another. And it all harkens back to a changing of the retail guard, names I can recall in locations I would know better under different fonts and signage. But still. What was Woolworth became a Walmart, until they moved and that is now a Big Lots and a Fred’s. What used to be Zayre morphed into Kmart which was in a perpetual slide, but is now a thrift store. What was once Westlake Mall went through two iterations of anchor stores. (I remember the Consumer Warehouse Foods, where you wrote your own prices so they didn’t have to employ extra help, thereby keeping prices down. I recall Ronnie Marchant Furniture which was going out of business for 20 years, but is even still open today just a few blocks away from the mall. I recall Goody’s, in what used to be Loveman’s, have the faintest recollection of Sears and a Handy electronics place where no one ever seemed to buy anything.) The mall finally died after years on life support around the turn of the century and is now owned by a car salesman (who’s sons I knew in elementary school) who hopes to turn it into a giant flea market. Maybe.

Retail is always changing, but it seems to have changed a lot in my youth.

I began looking at other malls on his site. Here’s the Galleria, the local mall of choice in my youth, which was fabulous and then became generic, but is still rather impressive to see, especially through other people’s eyes.

I wrote of this in an Email to a friend, suggesting he give it a look because there would be a few names he recognized. I said this is another in a long list of “I love the Internet” moments. He wrote back that that is sort of sad.

Not sure if he meant the dead malls or what I found interesting today.

One final interesting thing: All of this somehow led me to an old column one of the local writers had on the fabled Bessemer Super Highway. He once ruffled some feathers by asking what was so super about it. (The corridor has seen better economic days. And that’s being kind.) Also, he said, it isn’t precisely a highway.

This, of course, prompted a reply and a terrific picture. Most importantly he received a little written history from a former DOT official that explained the road:

By the mid-1930’s, the State Highway Department began serious consideration of (a) new route to connect Jefferson County’s two major cities.

State engineers were aware of the revolutionary freeway system, the Autobahn, being developed in Germany and acquired a set of design plans from the Europeans. They then applied the design to a new highway … Unfortunately, the economic constraints resulting from the Great Depression caused the State to eliminate plans for a complete freeway facility.

[…]

However, the completed product was magnificent and resulted in the State’s first completely new multi-lane highway with roadways separated by a grassed median. The State Highway Department intended to simply call the highway the Birmingham-Bessemer Boulevard, but the public was so enamored with the facility, they dubbed it the “Bessemer Super Highway” and the designation was ultimately officially adopted. In 1940, a lighting system was installed along the route and, for a time, the Super Highway was the longest whiteway east of the Rocky Mountains.

[…]

Had the State been able to carry through with the original plans, the Super Highway would have pre-dated Connecticut’s Merritt Parkway and the Pennsylvania Turnpike as the first freeway in America.

I grew up alongside what was almost the first freeway in the country. The Yankee grew up alongside the Merritt, which was the first.

That’s an M.P. Wolcott shot of the Merritt Parkway (via the Library of Congress), in July 1941 Connecticut, months before people knew what Pearl Harbor was. This was 70 years ago, perhaps to the day. What do you think they were listening to on their car radios?