The signs of summer are still with us. Saw this lovely little bit of shrubbery on a walk late last evening.
The signs of fall are coming slowly, and then suddenly. Same walk, just a little farther up on the same path.
So today my pocket square is autumnal.
Two years ago we observed Halloween and a snowfall. I’m going to try to not think about that every day between now and then. Each day in the next week or two when we have temperatures in the 70s and low 80s are a gift. A confusing gift.
But that weather out there? My friend Caroline Klare told me it would be like this.
In 2017 IUSTV decided to incorporate some weather into their newscasts. Someone knew someone studying atmospheric sciences. The first student-meteorologist was great, figured the TV thing out very quickly and did a fantastic job right up to graduation and went out into the world and got a job at BAMWX, a weather tech company. Two more students came through, one went to graduate school out west. One landed a great TV job in North Carolina, and Caroline is the last of that original cohort. Incredibly smart woman, wise beyond her years. She’s had a meteorology job waiting for her since her junior year.
Often as not, she orders me up some lovely weather, too.
I’m thinking about going to study atmosphere sciences.
IU / photo / television / Tuesday — Comments Off on Puck and Oberon do not appear in this post, but other fossils do 28 Sep 21
Here are a few of the crinoids I found down on the lake shore on Friday, or, as I’ve lately come to think of it, My Struggles With White Balance.
I shot all of these on my phone, because that’s convenient, isn’t it? But, next time, a real camera. There’s just far too much variation, and at the same time, a poor representation of the fossils colors.
Here are a few small samples of the 340-million-or-so year old columnal segments which became a part of sedimentary rock.
At first I wrote that in the present tense. Like it was happening before our eyes. How many millions of years ago did all those lumps freeze up as one?
You don’t often find samples, at this site anyway, which demonstrate the animal’s branches.
And a bunch of the typically small artifacts you’ll find on a public and oft-used site.
But, hey, not everyone comes here for the fossils.
No one does.
Some of you want to see things that are living.
Or at least pretending!
So here’s a rugged bit of damage on a young tree just trying to make do in the shadows of its elders.
(It’s doing well, in fact.)
Somewhere after noticing fall, and all of its pleasures, it’s time to notice the falling away of the ubiquities of summer. It’s the moment after Lileks’ annual observation of the apogee of summer and before Camus’ proclamation of the second spring, and you can see it easiest in the flowers we still have now.
All year, these two walnuts have been together. I wonder how far apart they’ll be when they eventually fall from the branches. I’m not saying it’s Midnight Summer’s Dream in those woods, but if you think of Hermia at the end of the second act, I would understand.
And, if it’s too late in the month for a bad Shakespeare reference, here’s something more prosaic. Anna Black is doing standups for What’s Up Weekly and I somehow managed to get all the signs in one shot. And she isn’t even blinking here!
That was this evening, one of two shows the news division of IUSTV produced this evening. I’ll share them in this space when they make it online, which should be sometime tomorrow.
Did something a bit different this morning, and it worked out well.
It’s National Clean Energy Week, and so I talked with a guy who researches bioenergy and land-use and the impact of changing vehicle fleets and we talked about some of these things and a whole lot more, like ethanol, switchgrass, private use, government programs and so on. It’s delightfully nerdy, so please press that little orange play button in the top left corner.
We did that one over Zoom, which is the part that was different. I (finally) discovered an ingenious setting for my computer, Zoom and mixer. So, on my end, it sounds like a studio. On Dr. Jerome Dumortier’s end, it sounds like he was in his home office in Indianapolis. You can hear the sound of his voice bouncing off the drywall, but it’s much better than the typical compression you experience when I record these as a phone call.
So I am pleased both by the outcome of the interview, and the aural quality. I’m only kicking myself, a little, for not doing that interview earlier, and discovering how I could integrate Zoom audio much sooner into these episodes.
The daily duds: Pictures of clothes I put here to, hopefully, help avoid embarrassing scheme repeats.
Today’s was not the best look, I think. I like the pocket square. It works with the jacket and the shirt.
And I like the cufflinks, which worked well as a contrasting splash of color on the shirt.
But I think three points of contrast are too many for my limited style.
They can’t all be the best combinations, I tell myself. And I was a bit rushed this morning, I keep telling myself.
But my mother-in-law said she liked the cufflinks, so I’ve nothing to worry about on the day, right?
Studio tonight. News time, and so we go the desk …
Another Tuesday, another Olympian comes into the studio to take part in an IUSTV shoot. Just another day at the office.
That’s Andrew Capobianco, who won the silver in the 3-meter synchronized diving in Tokyo, and he goes to school at IU.
Capobianco tells us about a cool tradition you don’t hear about all that often.
He’s talking about his Olympic diver partner Michael Hixon, and Hixon’s former dive partner Sam Dorman.
The full interview will be in a program you can see online a bit later this week.
The daily duds: Pictures of clothes I put here to, hopefully, help avoid embarrassing scheme repeats.
Today’s pocket square combo:
Also, here are a pair of my new, bespoke cufflinks I made this summer.
Pretty snazy, huh?
More videos and fashion and such tomorrow.
If you have some more time to kill right now, though, there’s always more on Twitter and check me out on Instagram, too. Speaking of On Topic with IU podcasts, and, oh hey, did you know that Phoebe and Poseidon have an Instagram account? They do. Check them out.
Back to work again this morning. And most of the morning spent catching up from a day off and a long weekend out of town. But I only woke up twice this morning wondering where I was.
Stands to reason you could spend the rest of your Tuesday wondering where you are after a morning of that sort.
It’s never quite the same as when it happens in the early morning hours, though, is it? You open a blurry eye and wonder where you are based on whatever light is creeping in from whichever direction. By whatever level of chance is involved, my last two bedrooms have enjoyed the same layout. Even some of the same colors. Once in a great while I wake up truly confused, because the only real clue is in the ceiling, and I can’t focus on that with one blurry eye, it seems.
But this never happens in the rest of the day. You don’t turn from your typing, or move your eyes from that memo, or rouse yourself from a reverie and wonder where you are. It must have something to do with the eyes, or the fluorescent lights.
It’s amazing how many pieces like this are floating around out there. It almost seems odd that there could be a new experience at such a ubiquitous thing. But, it’s true.
Weird how those experiences get turned into published articles while trying to treat a quick steak and a yeasty roll as an ethnography.
I put our name in at the hostess stand and was told it would be about a 10-minute wait.
I didn’t mind the wait. I used the time to take in the ambiance, which was unlike that of any restaurant I’d been to before.
I appreciate the need to get to atmosphere in your photo essay, but you’re asking people to believe you’ve never been to a restaurant which has a theme of neon or kitsch or both.
The author found herself overwhelmed by the “massive” menu and the restaurant which felt “even bigger than it looks from the outside.” That’s called perspective, by the way. The author says she doesn’t like steak. She ordered the chicken.
All of which is to say she buried the actual important story here.
Same-store sales are up over 80% over 2020, which was of course low because of COVID-19, but they’re also up 21.3% over 2019 levels.
This despite reduced hours in many places, like the one she visited in Rochester. (There are two in that town.) The one nearest us, for what it’s worth, always seems busy these days.
I wonder how sales in other restaurants trading in “folksy charm” are faring.
I still can’t imagine eating in a restaurant at the moment. And one day, when that feels comfortable again, I’m sure the menus will overwhelm me.
Speaking of which, don’t forget, we’re flying a drone around on another planet.
“In theory, the helicopter should be able to keep operating for some time. But the approaching Martian winter will be challenging.” https://t.co/osXOQ0O31V
Have you noticed how every rover we’ve put on Mars, or every probe we’re sending into space, seems to be outliving the design specs? No planned obsolescence there. Maybe these NASA and JPL people know what they’re doing.
Or maybe …
I never had the honor of meeting the late George Taliaferro. I wish that I did.
Tonight, BTN will air its documentary about the life and legacy of George Taliaferro.
I got a chance to watch the film in advance and talk to its directors. They want people to know more than just his name. https://t.co/vuhUBnaBmR#iufb via @indystar
If you know the story, you know that he, and his wife who was a trailblazer herself, are larger-than-life personas around here.
While I did not get the opportunity to meet him, I have watched a lot of footage of Taliaferro speaking to classes and doing interviews. He was a passionate, fascinating, caring man. People talk about that first-to-be-drafted tidbit and in that clip above they mention his many skills on the football field. I’m here to tell you that football was the least of it. A former Media School student put together this little mini-doc that seems to capture Taliaferro very well.
He worked with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Baltimore, counseled prisoners returning to their regular lives and was a leader with the Children’s Organ Transplant Association. He taught at the University of Maryland, was dean of students at Morgan State and returned to Indiana to teach. His wife, Judge Viola Taliaferro, the first African American to serve as a magistrate and then judge in the Circuit Court of Monroe County, remains a powerful voice even today.
Finally, a nice little musical number …
A top-of-the-charts platinum bolero-style single. Anyone who has … well, anyone who has ever lived a life can understand the emotion in this 1961 classic.
