By each of our office doors, there is a little plastic name plate. And beneath the name plate there is a little piece of bulletin board cork. They are maybe five inches wide and four inches tall. On mine I have a business card. Most people leave little notes about their office hours. Right now, a journalism colleague has this on his:
Perhaps this explains why we get along.
Spent this morning, which was stupid cold, in the television studio watching a student production come to life.
It was stupid cold outside:
It is 7°, feels like -2°.
Dear sweet, merciful, Lord in heaven, great gift on high, why?
Here are the YouTube versions of the shows the sports crew produced in-studio last night. First up, the weekly clip show:
Then there’s the talk show:
And this is the new project, a brief social media only digest they’re calling The Chase:
This evening I stopped by the local tailoring concern to pick up two pairs of suit pants. The recent snow was occupying several parking spots, and the Friday evening crowds took up the rest. I had to walk a fair amount of way in that cold cold. But then I saw this person’s parking effort.
The license plate implies the driver might be a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. So thanks for your service and all. And kudos on parking over the snow pile. But you double parked.
We’re traveling back into the barren and cold northlands today, after a fine weekend that was capped off by a fourth visit to Clary’s, a little time in the park, a massage and watching Savannah’s Martin Luther King Day parade. (It was two hours long and still going when we had to leave.)
It was a great visit to a lovely city that we enjoy a great deal. We discovered a fine little Mexican restaurant out of necessity today for our late lunch-on-the-go. Today’s Uber driver had just moved to the low country from the Smokies. She’s still getting used to the entirely different weather patterns, which is funny considering she’s only about 300 miles from home, but that’s an important 300 miles. That was a retirement 300 miles for her and her husband, she said. Our Uber driver on Thursday night had a similar story, but for a lifetime in the Navy and then retiring to coastal Georgia. Neither of them looked old enough to be even semi-retired. Maybe that’s the autobiographical aging process, or maybe its just the latitude.
That’s The Yankee reading under Our Tree on Saturday. The weather was so perfect that day we spent most of the day in that spot. Coincidentally, that is about the same view I had in December of 2008 just before I proposed. We’d been sitting under that tree and I was waiting for The Sign. You know, the one you sometimes find yourself asking for. Eventually a leaf fell on me and I took that as the requested sign. My plan involved me leaving, so that I could come back. I excused myself to visit the restroom and, right about where I’m standing to take that photograph above, a man intercepted me and we started talking about families and marriage and biblical passages and I said, “OK, fine, that is my sign.”
So I went back to the tree, hung her engagement ring on some of the bark and called her over to scratch our initials into it. And there was her ring. She was there, I was there, it was Savannah, there was a ring and I didn’t even think up a speech. Which is odd, because this is me. I asked her if she would like to keep having adventures with me, and then another guy came up and “What’d she say? What’d she say?” as he offered to make us one of the little bamboo flowers they sell to tourists here.
I knew he’d want to be paid for that, and he should. It was ornate and involved and quite nice. We had eight dollars between us. He was disappointed, but gave us the flower and she finally said yes. Now here we are. I have at least nine dollars in my pocket today.
Anyway, we enjoyed our Saturday beneath Our Tree. It was bracketed by breakfast and a nice run, but that was pretty much the day, and it was perfect. That night we also went out for crabs on Tybee Island:
We also saw some birds:
And from the It’s Been Too Long Department, we saw Wendy!
Something like 17 years I’ve known her now. She’s even more wonderful today than she ever was.
Sunday the weather was a bit dank and I was tired and sore and still trying to overcome a few days of fun with my sinuses, so it was a low key thing. Today the parade, a spa trip and then the car ride to the airport. We made one other stop, but I’m saving those pictures for tomorrow. Be sure to stop by for those. It’ll be lovely.
These first two videos are some my students made. These are their first shows of the new semester; they’re getting back into the flow of things with some new crew who are coming up to speed quite rapidly. First, Hoosier News Source, a news show:
Then they produced What’s Up Weekly, which is a happenings and pop culture kind of show.
Here’s one I enjoyed today: Why it’s almost impossible to ride a bike 60 kilometers in one hour. It explains some of the effort and tech and physiology behind the fabled One Hour record:
You or I? We would not break that record. We wouldn’t even flirt with frightening it that we might fracture it.
The roads got cleared, the sidewalks got warm and then it rained on Saturday night. It’s style around, and a little bit crunchy and icy, but pleasant enough. And this is why: It didn’t slow anything down, but also allowed us to slow down.
Only, she goes fast:
It was a brick workout. So she road her bike, indoors of course, and then had to head outside for a short run. It’s all about challenging different muscle groups in your legs. Me? I simply shot a few photos as she raced by.
Later, she made banana bread.
So the snow can’t be too bad, then.
We went out for a longer run yesterday afternoon. This was at the very beginning, still in the neighborhood, because running when the ponds are frozen seems like a sensible idea.
Somewhere along the way I started taking accidental photographs. This would have been before the “Why? This is cold.” And the “This hurts in more ways than one.” But it was well after the triumphant feel of running. It was a 10K, which leaves you just enough time to get in your head too much.
So I guess that’s my new art.
Here’s right at the end of my run. Most of the roads and sidewalks and roads I enjoyed were perfectly dry. But this was another new kind of thing.
My online friend Susan Crowell is editor at Farm and Dairy. Today she shared a photo, and a story, of the unveiling of a new historic marker in Fredericktown, Ohio. That’s the home of the original FFA corduroy jacket. That famous blue item goes back to 1933, and it still means a lot to many of us.
There’s a mention that the jackets were uninsulated, which should bring forward a memorable shiver from anyone who has ever worn one someplace like Kansas City in November, or somewhere perhaps even colder.
This is the best part …
AND the two guys who unveiled the marker? They're both 99 and wore the original #FFA jackets back in 1933! https://t.co/r6z7RU26rQ
The two gentlemen that helped with the unveiling are now 99 years young. They wore some of the original corduroy jackets.
This picture isn’t of those guys, but some of my friends, in some of our last FFA jackets.
Last night‘s show from IUSTV:
Now in full on weekend mode, which is starting like this:
In retrospect I should have known not to click a @TMZ link curated by @VICE featuring a @neiltyson video. But here I am, watching the neighbor mow his lawn, waiting for another cycle of laundry to be finished, regretting all of this.
