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IU / Thursday / Twitter — Comments Off on Getting a little fancy with my gifs
8
Apr 21

Getting a little fancy with my gifs

In the studio again this evening, this time for the sports shows, in keeping with the Thursday routine. I decided to do a little something extra with the opportunity. It looks like I’m threatening to one day I’m going to add real production values into my off-the-cuff gif making.

Will has a great Major League Baseball internship lined up this summer. He was telling me about it this evening. He was supposed to have it last year, but, you know. The summer prior he was calling games in the Cape Cod League. I have known this guy for four years now, since he was in my class as a freshmen. None of this surprises me.

I just met Noah this week. She’s from Alabama!

First time in front of our cameras tonight, and she did a great job.

They got a golf guy and a golf guy from Georgia in for the talk show. They made for a great trio.

I’m not a huge golf guy by any means, but I was very much interested in their conversation. It was golf, but lifestyle, serious, but fun. After the show I tried to talk them into doing a daily digest of each round on their Instagram page. We’ll see.

More on my Twitter. Check me out on Instagram and find more On Topic with IU podcasts as well.

Covid-19 / IU / memories / podcast / Thursday / Twitter — Comments Off on Here’s a backward way toward hope
11
Mar 21

Here’s a backward way toward hope

A year ago, today, was the day our university began it’s multi-campus shut down. That’s nine campuses, more than 100,000 students and at least two or three professionals, besides, spread out across an entire big state. It was a Wednesday, the Wednesday before spring break and they said everyone was going home and spring break would be two weeks and the situation would be re-assessed along the way.

And, look, a lot of us aren’t ready for retrospectives. I know I’m not interested in it just now, but I just want to say this one piece. A year ago, tomorrow, was my last day on campus for a while. I went in that evening to watch the sports guys wrap it up. Their sports director did a little monologue and he held his last meeting and there were tears. Students were graduating and realizing that it was very likely going to be not at all how they imagined. Well, what has been since, right?

Last March, right away, the entire IU system went to work on handling the most immediate tasks and planning a safer future. I had the opportunity to be a very, very small part of some of listening in to a slice of a portion of some of those plans as they pertained to my corner of things. It was fascinating. It was informative. It was frustrating. And, taken as a whole, there’s no mistaking it: Indiana University put every single one of their experts and their hardest working people on the job of doing this right.

Still, not everyone is back on campus, but we’re headed the right direction. I’ve been back full time since February and three and four days a week in the fall. The campus generally has a slow summer feel to it, and that’s been by design. Meanwhile, statewide, cases and hospitalizations are down. Vaccine uptake is increasing. IU is scheduling an in-person graduation for students in May and a fall term that’s more familiar than unusual.

Did her experts and staff work tirelessly to make the best of this? You’ve no idea. Did some of the top minds in their infectious disease and public safety fields go above and beyond for a full year? They won’t sing songs about those people, but they should. Did the university step up in ways big and small? The university distributed 290,000 masks at no cost. They built two labs to process their own Covid tests, up to 50,000 a week. We did everything but socially distance the storied buildings.

There were hiccups, I’m sure. Universities don’t pivot on a dime, and maybe no one realized until this past year how much that happens in giant operations is attributed to inertial motion. But what IU did is singularly impressive. This isn’t a retrospective, but it’s worth acknowledging that one thing. The university took care of her own.

And, somehow, they let me do programs like this …

I’m pushing 70 of those now. And it’s getting a tiny bit cheerier. Oh! Sweet hope!

And this speech from the president came out today, too. So petty of the White House trying to steal my thunder. But that’s OK. We’ll let them in this instance.

I also saw the saddest, sweetest note today. One of our former students, who is now on air in west Texas, got her first vaccine shot today, a year, almost to the day that her father passed away from Covid. What must that have been like for her? (She already had super powers, though.)

But this is what I’m really excited about.

We are one year into this and we are finally talking about the underprivileged and the rural communities. This state is sending out mobile vaccine units. Companies that are in the smallest towns you’ve never heard of are talking about getting in this fight. It took a year, but on the other hand, it only took a year. (It took less time. It took those places watching the big cities burn and then seeing the embers coming into their neighborhoods, and they started thinking about where their sleeves were in relation to their wrists and elbows.) In under a year, and we’re getting to the far flung places.

When I was in the third grade I developed chicken pox at my grandparents’ house in north Alabama. My grandmother, having raised tiny human beings before, suspected that’s what it was, anyway. And she took me to the pharmacy, the only medical concern in easy reach. The pharmacist there, non-plussed as he was by being asked to diagnose people who walked into his store, confirmed it and gave us the lotion, told us to stay away from anyone else and sent us on our way. That was three-plus decades ago. Last year an aunt and uncle got a Covid diagnosis at that same pharmacy. The closest hospital, where my aunt spent several days, is a 45-minute drive away on a good day. And that’s easy, compared to some of these places. Their little part of the world is hardly detached from the rest of us, but it can sure feel like it if you needed to see someone for health care, to say nothing of a specialist.

That we are already talking about these rural places at all, that medical experts and businesses are trying to figure this out, is a good thing. That different sectors of the economy are searching for a way to add more distribution points so that the people thought about the least can be addressed just like anyone else is a good development. Hope is where you place it. And don’t you agree we could use as much of that as we could get?

There’s a reason Shandy Dearth talked in our podcast about getting a vaccine so grandparents can safely hug their grandchildren again. Hope is where you place it.

In the studio for sports shows tonight. Tried a little something different for the gif. Who knows how this will end up.

The shows will end up just fine. They’re under good direction and I enjoy getting to watch them all work. And you can enjoy these particular episodes online tomorrow. I’ll share them here, I’m sure.

Covid-19 / IU / television / Twitter / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on Still no super powers
10
Mar 21

Still no super powers

So this is day two, and I feel fine. My arm is better and I haven’t developed any supernatural abilities beyond the ones I already had. I have two. One is of very limited use and not worth talking about. The other is spectacularly useful, and would be a big hit on the old Whose Line game …

My super power involves always being able to pick the correct size container in which to store leftovers. Very useful. Never going to save the planet from marauding invaders.

This is the one I already had, and I am still waiting for my new vaccine-inspired powers to kick in. And, also, the second dose. I’m also waiting for the two weeks after that, when the magic has really happened. So five weeks. A lot of things happen in five weeks. Some of you have been in relationships that lasted less than that. I’ve watched TV shows with a shorter run. That’s half of a Kardashian wedding! Ethel Merman and Ernest Borgnine were married for a shorter time, too! Five weeks is less than four Scaramuccis! And I’m sure they’ll rush right by so that I can continue to be cautious, but with a bit more peace of mind.

And also some carefully controlled family visits. Looking forward to that, as most everyone is.

Meanwhile, a former student notes Utah is about to join Alaska in opening up vaccinations.

And this bit of news which will be profoundly encouraging, I’m sure.

Something else I know you’re looking forward to, the television shows. This is last night’s news show.

And the students also produced this really cool show, too.

One last normal thing … we had the opportunity to watch some racing last year in the middle of the pandemic, which is going to seem a really brazen thing, one day. But this, here, now, feels different. I said it because I felt it.

And the more and more I think about it, I wonder why. What’s the normal part and why? And why is it normal? Have we finally just begun to internalize things? That seems an inherently risky thing, doesn’t it? We could be so close to turning the tide on this thing, and all of our own choices have helped with that in some regard. We shouldn’t toss that aside just yet.

Covid-19 / memories / Tuesday / Twitter — Comments Off on Upper arm still sore
9
Mar 21

Upper arm still sore

But everything else feels just fine after the first full day of the first shot of my two-dose Covid-19 vaccination. I only notice my arm hurts when I try to elevate it, as if to more closely examine the sudden emergence of this extra thumb on my right hand. But for normal, light office stuff, all is well and good. I’d read somewhere about whether you should get this particular shot in your dominant arm or your non-dominant arm. When I asked the shot-giver which arm she wanted she, in turn, asked me if I slept on my side, and suggested the other arm.

After going to bed last night and waking up this morning, I can say that was the correct way to determine my arm selection. I did not like lying on the arm that had the sharp piercing metal poked through it. Go figure.

Also, the shot itself hurt about 11 percent more than the flu shot last fall, but the post-shot arm ache was different.

And if all of that helps you decide which arm you want, you are now … armed … with the information. Now get lined up to get that shot!

It’s a crowded day in a busy week — busiest of the semester thus far — so this is thin, yes. But, hey, it’s Tuesday.

I did get stood up in one Zoom meeting. Hey, it gave me a break from anything else for a while. And it let me make this gif.

That’s from a video I shot at the airport in Amsterdam in 2018. You can see it here.

It’s a fascinating piece of art by Maarten Baas and, being an airport, spot-on accurate. More on the Schiphol Clock, here.

And, tonight …

Friday / IU / television / Twitter / video — Comments Off on Robots everywhere
19
Feb 21

Robots everywhere

Last night we saw sports shows produced, and today we can watch them online. And here they are now. This is the highlight show, all the lights that worth holding up high, and the stories to go with them.

And this is the famous talk show. They’ve got a new host this year. This is his first episode, and he’s hit the ground running.

Also last night, in another studio, one of the creative groups blocked out shots for their upcoming season. This morning there was a morning show to shoot, and so another group of people shot that. Between all of that and the Tuesday productions … it’s been a busy first week in the studio for all of them, is what I’m saying.

Our cameras are controlled from another room. We use robots to produce shows, and that’s never not neat.

Did I mention it is cold? It was seven degrees when I left the house this morning. Felt like two below. I don’t want to say I’m used to it, because I am a human being with self-awareness and a penchant for the finer things in life like, you know, desirable weather. And I can’t say I’m surprised because I am, in fact, numb to this whole thing after the last few weeks of invasive Canadian weather. But, somehow, it didn’t phase me this morning.

I looked out the window and looked at the weather and said, Well, at least the sun is out. If it has to be cold it should at least be bright. That sounds like a case of Stockholm syndrome, but it is really an acknowledgement of our dimly lit circumstance. Days and weeks of overcast skies are demoralizing, but at least, in a few weeks, maybe, that’ll be behind us … until next Thanksgiving or so.

We’ll try not to fixate on that.

Colder on parts of Mars today. And the photos that are coming back to us from Perseverance are impressive.

NASA had a little feature for that rover where you could put your name on board. They were coded on a microchip or the head of a pin or just added to a database somewhere. But I took the opportunity to put my grandfather’s name on the list with thousands of others. And then I put a lot of other people’s names on it, too. When that rover landed yesterday I was thinking of my grandfather. I bet he would be amused by the progress we’ve made toward Mars in the last few years. I have a lot of his books, and there’s a lot of real science interest there. High-definition cameras on another planet, they’re the 16th cousin 45 times removed from what we use in our television studio. Only we’re cabled and they are operating via a signal broadcast 127 million miles away.

My mother, his daughter, asked me once if the moon landing is impressive to me. We’ve always been there to my way of thinking, you see, where she was one of the many millions who watched and held their breath when Neil and Buzz landed.

It is impressive, but I love that question. It’s a great feat, but there’s no mystery about whether we can pull it off — only when we’ll do it again.

But Mars, well, we have other rovers there, sure, but that’s another planet. And there’s a video camera there now. And a helicopter. And we’re just getting started. We’re making real progress on Mars. Another planet. And we might put people there in short order. On another planet.

Until then, the robots are impressing us nicely.

I wonder if they get the weekends off.

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