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What do a 1977 news clip and a 2013 report have in common?

No one could fault you for waking up and thinking it was colder. Cold, even. It was time. You somehow knew it. Probably because meteorologists had been telling you this for several days.

So you put on a sweater and then a jacket and then you still remark on the brisk coldness of it all. Knowing, because you’ve been listening to meteorologists talk about the weather, that the real cold is coming tomorrow during the pre-dawn hours.

Because arctic blasts the day after a pitch-perfect, cloudless sky, 72-degree afternoon aren’t enough. No. You need to get into the 20s.

So I’ve been doing what everyone does in the cold: staring at the forecast for the next warm day. This afternoon the Saturday projections started at 75. It dipped to 69. And then it went back up to 72-partly cloud, where the forecast sits now. The signal is clear: Prepare for rain to fall from the ground into the sky.

And now for something completely different. My mother sent me a link to a decades-old newsreel. The lead story was an airplane crash, one that killed my grandfather and 71 other people. There were 22 survivors and five local hospitals were engaged. It remains the worst airplane disaster in Georgia’s history. I’ve written about all that before, but the first 60 seconds of this video are different. This is an accidental documentary on the Tennessee Valley in 1977. (WHNT took the air in 1963, founded by a former WAPI man, Charles Grisham. I also once worked at WAPI. It seems everyone in broadcasting did at one point.)

Anyway, the first 60 seconds of the newscast, the day after the big crash:

Dig that slate! The data says 97 percent of American homes had televisions by 1977, but only 77 percent were in color. Consumers had in 1972 started buying more color than black and white sets. This period is often called the initial “replacement period.” Older 1950s sets are first being discarded and upgraded with modern sets.

Missy Ming in New Hope! She’s going to talk to a survivor who crawled out of the wreckage. She sits on the Commission on Higher Education today. She still gets asked about the story.

Michael Lamothe on the existential beat. Why, indeed. Lamothe is now retired and doing a bit of freelance work. He’d been out of school just two years when he filed that report. His last job was at a Rochester, N.Y. station.

JACKIE KENNEDY IN FAYETTEVILLE WISHES SHE COULD HAVE BEEN THERE BECAUSE THIS STORY HAS NO TEASE AND BAD AUDIO. Someone from Huntsville is going to have to tell us about where Kennedy went. She has that common problem among simple Internet searches: a famous name.

Quick cuts: Fire! A body! The Iron Bowl!

Some things will never, ever change.

A trailer torn apart. A road grader. Really big race cars at Talladega (probably). An ambulance. Jimmy Carter! That guy! From California. Didn’t he used to act? And wasn’t he just the governor out there? Boy, aren’t you glad that’ll never happen again. And, yet, there’s something about him …

A kid swimming! A crop duster! The News Station graphic, supered over the coolest looking fire truck ever. “A complete report of this day throughout the Tennessee Valley.”

Did you catch that great old Arby’s sign in the background of the night-traffic shot? A perp is going to the pokey! Don’t look at the face. And in case you missed that one, here’s John Law cuffing and stuffing another. An accident report. Another person on a gurney. Random golf-track-basketball’s first flop! Don’t forget sports! Did we show you the Iron Bowl!?

What in the name of Uncle Walter is that cubist set?

A little much for 1970s rural Alabama, don’t you think? Oh, sure, they had the rockets, but that didn’t make their DMA cosmopolitan. And yet you’ve got the Action News team standing there just … standing, showing off those sharp blazers.

Their slogan back then was “Keep Your Eye On Us.” That was shot on 16 mm, as all of the WHNT broadcasts were until 1979 (“The News People”) when they went to 3/4. All of the old archives had been lost and forgotten. Someone had stored them away at the University of North Alabama, and now they are back in the station’s hands and some of them are making their way onto the Internet so we can say “Look at those clothes.”

The station’s imaging slogan today is “Taking Action. Getting Results.”

I’m not sure the slogans are important — I always thought there was such a thing as over-imaging, which means I could never be a consultant, since they’ll brand the Action Victim if they thought it would let them get the calls in there one more time — but I reprint them to be thorough.

Things to read …

But first! Another video. This has been making the rounds, via Independent Journal:

Also about Veterans Day: A compilation of heartwarming (and clever) homecoming videos. And did you know that a Birmingham man is a big reason we have that day? True story.

Somehow this doesn’t sound good: Even doctors in dark on health plans. And, meanwhile, Bill Clinton is back, and he’s determined to make all of this very awkward for the current administration. Clinton to Obama: Let Americans keep canceled health plans:

Former President Bill Clinton said that President Obama should honor his oft-repeated pledge and allow people to hang on to health care plans that are being canceled as a result of the Affordable Care Act.

“I personally believe, even if it takes a change in the law, that the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they’ve got,” Clinton said in an interview at OZY.com published on Tuesday.

Quick hits:

Hancock Bank brings corporate hub, 200 jobs to Montgomery
Growing number of federal workers say they’re unhappy on the job
Alabama investment by Japanese firms tops $4 billion
Google is now bigger than the magazine and newspaper industries
To find real value in digital media, look for the bandwidth hogs

And, finally, here’s a video of a buddy of mine from way back in school. We played soccer together and reconnected online this year. His accent is thicker, but he looks almost exactly the same, half a lifetime later. He’s good people. And now this story:

I like how the reporter, Johnny Archer, let his subjects’ technology work as his visual element. Anyway, I found that video on David’s wife’s Facebook page. My old friend’s bride and son are OK. But the situation in the Philippines is dire. How bad? CNN sent Anderson Cooper’s eyes.

“I fear anarchy happening in Tacloban City,” said CNN iReporter Maelene Alcala, who was on vacation in Tacloban where the typhoon struck and was evacuated to Manila. “It’s like survival of the fittest.”

Tacloban, the provincial capital of the island of Leyte, was ground zero for the typhoon that struck Friday, leaving the city in ruins and its population of more than 200,000 in desperate conditions.

“The whole scene was like something fresh out of a movie. It was like the end of the world,” Alcala said.

The estimates are that the storm pushed more than 580,000 people out of their homes.

history / journalism / links / photo / Samford / things to read / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
6
Nov 13

The red ink is on my hands

A few more leaves to mark our fall, which seems to be happening in more pronounced stages than usual this year. The oaks are, how you say, reticent:

Not that I mind. We’ve all shifted clocks and grumbled about that to ill effects. We’re all in various stages of layered clothing — depending on where you live or the thinness of your blood, as some people say — and now the betrayal of the trees. I’m always glad the oaks stick around. Mostly because we have several pin oaks.

Whomever plants pin oaks has never raked the leaves from a pin oak.

Critique meeting of the Crimson today. Story count is up. Layout is good. Quality is sturdy. Art is coming along. Now I need new challenges for them. You can see some of the students’ work here, if you like.

Also did some grading. I entered grades into a spreadsheet. Doing some other things with spreadsheets. I know some people that like spreadsheets. Well, how well can we really know someone who likes spreadsheets?

I prepared files. I printed documents.

Also, last night, I finished the files for the large present that we are delivering this weekend. I got the thing down to 26 pages. It includes maybe 16 sources and three appendices.

Never let the geek in your family prepare documents as gifts.

So that got printed out. It looks nice and clear on the good machine, the machine so important we named a room after it — the copy room. It has color maps end everything.

The document, I mean. Though the copier also probably has maps in its manual. It also faxes. And makes a mean espresso, from what I hear.

Anyway, this was the next thing that happened: I briefly explained the purpose of this file to one of the nice people in my office. She thought it was great. Then she gave me two different types of protective things to keep the file in. Everyone likes this gift. Everyone has thought the idea was nice. Four different people have chipped in. And none of them know the recipient.

But, to know the recipient, you’d want to help even more. That kind of guy.

All will be explained this weekend. I write vaguely about it because it is fun and mysterious, but also just in case he decides to explore the Internet beforehand.

Things to read …

Corpsman! Mother! Jesus! A Marine remembers Iwo Jima for the last time. Chuck Dean, you’ll see, is one of the stronger writers at al.com, but how can it be for the last time?

Jarvis struggled as we spoke. He often had a hard time catching his breath. He told me his doctors were treating him for pancreatic cancer.

“It’s not good,” Jarvis said.

As we talked Jarvis said that years ago he had not wanted to talk a lot about the battle. But later in life, Jarvis changed his mind.

“I came to see that it was important, very important that people understand what happened over there to us, to my Marines. It was important because people need to understand the horrors of war so that they think long and hard before getting into one. And they need to understand that those who fought in the war were just boys, really. That’s all I was. The day after Pearl Harbor every boy at Minor High School went down to enlist, including me. Some of them didn’t make it back. People need to remember them and what they did and why they did it.”

Jarvis paused after a while and looked at me with a thin smile.

“You know Chuck, you might be the last person I tell my story to.”

I told him I hoped not. I told him I was honored to hear it and would be honored to tell it.

He smiled again. “Well, I think you might be the last person I tell it to, and I want to ask you a favor. When you tell it, please tell it good.”

These next two stories? These are not the thing those young men fought for:

Man charged with using stun gun on wife after football bet in Mayville:

Before the game, avowed Packers fan Nicole Grant allegedly bet her husband, devoted Bears backer John Grant, that she would allow him to use a stun gun on her for three seconds if Green Bay lost, according to a criminal complaint.

Grant, 42, found himself in Dodge County Circuit Court the next day after allegedly making good on the bet. He was charged with possession of an electric weapon during an initial appearance. If convicted, Grant could face up to six years in prison.

And this one, Hijacker returns to the United States:

Instead of becoming the next Che Guevara, Potts found himself a foreigner who spoke little Spanish in crowded and often violent prisons. But he refused Cuban offers to return home.

“If you are not able to suffer for the cause you are just a play revolutionary,” he said.

[…]

But the one-time hijacker will return to an uncertain future. Potts was unable to negotiate a plea deal and, while he hopes any sentence he faces in the United States would be reduced by the time he has served, there are no guarantees.

That story is just full of quotes that are the opposite of genius.

Quick links:

I know people that work here: Job fair held for more than 1,100 workers who will lose jobs when International Paper closes

Third cyclist killed near Springhill Avenue in two weeks

ProPublica has found the one “sob story” worth your while: Loyal Obama Supporters, Canceled by Obamacare

When the data mountain comes to you

Independent Campus Journalists Vital

And, finally, I’ve been hanging on to this for a while. May as well use it here. #Story50 tips for the factual storyteller from Adam Westbrook

Auburn / football / video / weekend — Comments Off
2
Nov 13

Auburn at Arkansas

Had a few people over. Had the televisions on. Had a fine time. In the evening Auburn played a vanilla game against a struggling Arkansas team. They threw eight passes. (The lowest total since 1984.) They just ran the ball right at Arkansas. They won 35-17.

It is easy to marvel at how long ago last year’s season feels. Auburn, now 8-1, will be in the BCS top 10 after this game. No one expected it. Not sure anyone really believes it.

They are fun to watch.

cycling / movies / photo / Thursday / video — Comments Off
31
Oct 13

The non-Halloween post

The neighboring yard has a red maple. Shot this this evening:

Had the opportunity to ride a few hills before it got dark today. It was misting and sprinkling a bit, a few hours before the meteorologists said it should. Perhaps this kept away the early trick-or-treaters. I didn’t see any while I was riding. I was the only person in a costume, a sorry cyclist huffing up little hills. The trick was on me.

Watched Oz the Great and Powerful, where James Franco was dressed up as an actor.

This explains that:

Because Time Warner owns the rights to iconic elements of the 1939 MGM film, including the ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland, Disney was unable to use them nor any character likenesses from that particular film. This extended to the green of the Wicked Witch’s skin, for which Disney used what its legal department considered a sufficiently different shade called “theostein” (a portmanteau of “Theodora” and “Frankenstein”). The studio could not, however, use the signature chin mole of Margaret Hamilton’s portrayal of the Wicked Witch of the West.

It was a fine movie. You can see the 3D elements, even on your TV, which is to say the many obligatory things that are rushing out of the screen to “immerse” you into the film. The poster probably read “Some of the effects are better than others.” It was a kids’ film, and it plays that way. But it was humorous if you’re in a light mood, and Franco inhabited the role, as they might say. He’s laughing all the way to the bank.

You know, there are many adaptations of the Oz universe, but this one makes less sense than most. Some could exist in their own universe, like The Wiz, for example. Others, like the Muppets and animated versions, were just cashing in with other franchises or audiences. Great and Powerful, though, has allusions to the popular 1939 Judy Garland version (which was not the first Oz on screen) despite a different company owning the rights, as discussed above. So if you assume this one is referring to the Judy Garland-universe of Oz then it is something of a prequel. A prequel of her concussion-induced dreams about a place and people that didn’t exist.

OR DID THEY?

You’d think, more than 80 years on, we’d have some answer to that question.

And so it begins: the annual Parade of Sullen Ingratitude.

— James Lileks (@Lileks) October 31, 2013

We didn’t do Halloween tonight. Singlehandedly we are responsible for the poor candy sales this year.

It is a good neighborhood, though, none of the little ghouls and princesses had to go without. Kids have their parents drive from the next town over to case this subdivision. Apparently all of the good candy comes from our nearby grocery store.

So we left off the lights and sat in the back of the house, hiding from the children, of whom we were not scared.

After an appropriate amount of time I went out to pick up some dinner at the Chinese restaurant of choice. The owner knows us by name now.

When I returned home there was a clutch — Or was it a gaggle? The costumes make it hard to tell. — patrolling down the street. I swept into the garage before the door was all the way up the rails. Waited until the kids were out of sight before I turned on the lights in the kitchen.

We’re not scared of those kids.

I got my fill of the costumed little ones on Facebook. This is, for my money, the best day of the year on that site. One guy has a boy and a girl. He posted their front door shot and their Halloween conversation.

“What do you want to dress up as for Halloween?”

“A fairy princess butterfly! … (Pause for dramatic effect.) And he could be a dead butterfly!”

So, he concluded, in the spirit of keeping his son alive, he went as a miniature John Wayne.

Another lady has two little boys, who dressed as Luke and Yoda — green knit cap with great ears, felt feet already rolling up on his shoes. The youngest said his “lightsaver” was the best part.

Now I feel like I have to go pick up candy to go give those children. But I saw the pictures. They cleaned up.

Auburn / books / history / iPhone / journalism / links / memories / photo / Samford / things to read / Tumblr / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
30
Oct 13

Signs of autumn: The absence of summer

It wasn’t fall today. It was 75 and clear, which means it wasn’t summer, so it may as well be autumn. The maple in the front yard, already giving up the fight, right in the heart of the tree.

The maples are always the first to quit, but they sometimes hang on a bit longer than some of the others in the yard. In the front yard we have this maple that goes yellow and a towering elm that flares yellow before burning out as a dry orange. In the backyard there is a southern red oak, a white oak and a few pin oaks — the oaks the rest of the oaks would disown if they had hardwood lawyers — another maple that turns yellow and a dogwood that will flame out as a defiant red any day now.

If you could get all of those in one spot they’d surely be a beautiful collection.

Had this in the office today:

I’m not a big pumpkin spice fan, but if you like pumpkin at all, you should try the Hersey’s Kisses. Two was plenty for me, so no need to share. But you’ll probably want to keep them all for yourself.

Things to read …

Or watch. The BBC now has a hexacopter. They have one more copter than I do. Maybe one day I’ll catch up. But check out those shots. (I’d embed it, but the Beeb’s code is ridiculous.)

I was reading last night, in Rick Atkinson’s book, about Lt. Ralph Kerley at Mortain. He only appeared briefly, but it was enough to make me look him up. Whatever happened to that guy? The Internet suggests he mustered out a lieutenant colonel and died in his native Texas in 1967.

He also shows up in this column by The Oregonian’s Steve Duin, which should really change your opinion of the deceased author/historian Stephen Ambrose:

Weiss also was furious that Ambrose had described his commanding officer, Lt. Ralph Kerley, as — after four days and nights of fighting off the Germans — “exhausted, discombobulated, on the edge of breaking.”

Not true, Weiss said: “To the dishonor of the man. Kerley was one of the coolest, most fearless men I’ve ever seen. The way (Ambrose) footnoted that looks as if he got the material from me. If in that little bit of material he took from my book he created that kind of fiction, how many other times has that been done?”

Bob Weiss was a Portland, Ore. lawyer who served under Kerley. Weiss took exception to the Ambrose depiction and then had a nasty bit of correspondence with Ambrose over some other questions of attribution. But, mostly, Weiss was worried about the way Kerley showed up in Citizen Soldiers — which also sits on my shelf, though today I’m a bit reluctant about that.

Kerley earned the Croix de Guerre, Purple Heart, Bronze Star, Silver Star and the Distinguished Service Cross. I was at Mortain for the exact same amount of time Ambrose was, which is to say not at all, which is also to say six days less than Weiss, Kerley and the 120th Infantry Regiment of the 30th Infantry Division. I just read the Ambrose passage again … given his history let’s just call it poorly-written narrative.

Anyway, local veterans are recalling their experiences in the military:

“I flew a B-25. That’s why I’m here,” Buford Robinson said, smiling. “I flew 43 missions.”

From 1944 to 1946, Robinson served as a pilot in the Army Air Corps. He fought in the Pacific Theater of the war and participated in the rescue of 500 American POWs at Camp Cabanatuan in the Philippines.

Thom Gossom, the first African-American walk on at Auburn and the first African-American athlete to graduate from the university, got a bit of publicity today. He’s an actor today (and author), charming and engaging and wholly approachable. Here’s a story he told at homecoming a few years ago:

Quick hits:

ObamaCare screw up sends callers to cupcake shop

From Buzzfeed: Things That Took Less Time Than HealthCare.gov

How the NSA is infiltrating private networks

Insurance Insiders ‘Fear Retribution’ from WH Amid Pressure to ‘Keep Quiet’ About Obamacare

Broadcast’s Commercial Brake

And there are two new things at the Tumblr site I forgot to mention yesterday, here and here.

Allie? She’s right here: