Your politics aside — really, we can leave them aside for 90 seconds — this is a quote human-interest piece:
The day pop culture melted, forever:
And, no, I don’t know what a Roopstigo is either.
Your politics aside — really, we can leave them aside for 90 seconds — this is a quote human-interest piece:
The day pop culture melted, forever:
And, no, I don’t know what a Roopstigo is either.
I’ve been quite busy today, so there’s not a lot to share here.
You won’t need anything after this, though:
That’s from my friend Victoria Cumbow.
Three new pictures on Tumblr, here and here and here. There are other things on Twitter. There is nothing else here.
Until tomorrow.
At the baseball stadium last night, before it turned cold again, Auburn hosted Alabama State. The hecklers were giving ASU’s third baseman a good-natured hard time. He had the misfortune to execute a poor slide in the early innings and then the good humor to laugh about it with the crowd later.
Late in the game, with ASU in the field, their short stop shifted far to his right. Someone pointed out how close the guy at short was to the third baseman. And then there was a weak ball up the line to third and the two guys ran into one another. Here is a dramatic reenactment:
Thereafter the Alabama State short stop was everyone’s hero, and he could do everything. Those guys were such great sports. The ASU third base coach offered free tickets to the Auburn students for their series this weekend. Auburn won 10-2.
We had dinner at Mellow Mushroom, which meant leftovers for lunch today.
It turned cold about that time. I debated turning on the electric blanket. No, I thought, spring is here. The windows were open earlier.
And then this morning it felt even colder somehow, which is to say the low 50s. We’ve been in the upper 70s, so there is a bit of chill again when you hit 54 at the high point of the day. Particularly when the sun is playing shy behind three or four layers of cloud cover.
Never could get warm today. I stayed curled up under a blanket with the space heater on. Spring is here, after all.
Sometime in the late afternoon, though, the sun finally came out. It was nice and bright and warmer, though the space heater stayed on all day, into the evening and night.
But we did get sunlight at the right time, my favorite time of day in our house, which I’m sure I’ve mentioned here before:

Those 25 minutes or so just feel magical. Anything is possible. The most ludicrous movie plots could become reality for those few moments. You revel in them, you wonder how they manage to escape so suddenly. And you reaffirm an incontrovertible truth; every house should have clear sight lines and plenty of windows facing west.
Tonight The Yankee made chicken tikka masala and naan, which is a new dish at home. It was good. Now, we’ve decided, we just want authentic Indian food.
Things to read: Usually videos like this are news simply because there is video. And usually it is some bad news, or something that barely qualifies as news. This, however, is awesome:
In an amazing rescue in Perth, Australia, a man administered CPR on a young girl who stopped breathing as her panicked and thankful father looked on.
Voyager is leaving the heliosphere, or may be leaving the heliosphere. It might be coming back, because it thinks it left the stove eye on. Or it could already be Vger. Whichever. Humanity is now interstellar:
What’s not in dispute among any of the scientists is that the spacecraft is now, undeniably, in a new and unexplored region—pushing the reach of humanity farther than it’s ever gone before. What we call that place is, in many respects, less important than the fact that we’re there at all.
According to new scientific findings set for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Voyager I has pushed into the great unknown.
NASA, however, remains skeptical about these new conclusions. “Consensus of the mission team is that NASA’s Voyager spacecraft has not left the solar system,” a NASA social media specialist told TIME via e-mail. “Statement soon from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.”
For years, scientists have speculated as to when Voyager would finally leave all traces of our sun behind — officially exiting the heliosphere, and entering the great undiscovered country beyond.
Here’s, perhaps, the dumbest story of the day:
Every suspect is entitled to his day in court, but for accused Auburn shooting suspect Desmonte Leonard, Wednesday’s hearing had to be postponed because no one thought to bring him.
[…]
(H)e was never transported the 50 or so miles from Montgomery to the Lee County Detention Facility.
Don’t make any attic jokes.
The best writing of the day is at Rapha:
Your brain can’t remember pain. Of that I am glad. I don’t miss the pain. I’ll tell you what I miss though, I miss the weather.
Did I ever tell you about when I used to train in Italy in the winter? In the mountains the snow would fall for days, and the hillsides would be covered in thick blankets of white, their peaks looking like the hunched shoulders of giant beasts, faces bowed in shame. Those giant mounds of rock were too scared to face me and too cold to move, and so I rode up them, and made heat of my own. I would catch fire; burning in my layers of clothes, cutting through the cold like an electric heater. Sweat would drip from my nose onto the white road, snow tingling as it melted on my exposed skin. The world was frozen, but I was roaring in flames, as if I was driving an open-top-car with the heater on full blast. I was my own nature. I was defiance.
That piece, about bicycle racing, just gets better and better. Penance for complaining about the cold this morning.
(*The title? Emily Post.)
Stayed busy enough today that I didn’t even have the chance to enjoy my afternoon oranges.
Philip Poole, the director of Samford’s office of marketing and communication stopped by our class today. He’s a very nice guy, helpful with students, always ready for a friendly chat.
He told the students about “Phantom Week” of 2008. In May of that year a campus safety officer reported he saw a gunman on campus. They locked everything down, searched for the guy for hours. After a while they opened the campus, declared it safe and started asking the campus safety guy a few more questions.
Turns out he made the entire story up.

Eight days later, Poole says, was graduation. A woman fell and hit her head and was going to miss graduation. Her family was naturally upset because she was also supposed to be the student speaker. As Poole heard more and more of the story less and less of it made sense.
Turns out she wasn’t even a student at Samford, but her brother had been sending her tuition money for years. So everyone figures out pretty quickly where that story goes.
He talks about working for the university, dealing out public relations here and journalism there. He’s a good person to know on campus, and he has a great rapport with students and I’m always happy to have him visit.
Elsewhere, graded papers all morning. Read the paper, critiqued the paper. Graded more papers.
It is remarkable I don’t get paper cuts, he said, dooming himself to a horrible series of them in the near future.
I was finally able to eat my banana on the drive home. That kind of day. But a good day, a beautiful day. The thermometer said 59, but the sun made it warmer, the cheer in the air made it brighter and the feeling of the coming spring just intensified everything.
Except the oranges.
This was my day, in four pictures.
The Samford Crimson launched a new look this week for the last quarter of their academic year’s publication run. Looks pretty sharp:

Also there’s a new Target now open just down the street.
Here are two more quick shot of the inside layout. They worked hard, had extra meetings, were excited and it shows. This section is designed by our Society of Professional Journalists award-winner features editor Megan Thomspon:

The sports section is designed by SEJC award winner and sports editor Clayton Hurdle

I tinkered with that page in InDesign last night after they’d finished it. It is solid.
I left a meeting discussing the Crimson to drive over to a television station. CBS 42’s Bill Payer was giving my class a tour. Here he is showing off their mobile production unit:

They built that from the ground up two years ago. They didn’t copy anyone, just built what they thought they needed. They got everything right, except they forgot a kitchen and restroom. Payer tells me that the station could burn down around them and they could go on the air from this truck and cover the news.
Being at CBS meant a chance to see the always welcoming Mark Prater. We sat in the studio and pitched around ideas while, downstairs in the studio, the students were hearing a bit of breaking news. Seems some officers were out serving a warrant on a woman and she sliced them up with a box cutter.
Three officers were taken to the hospital for treatment. Another was treated on the scene. Samford grad Kaitlin McCulley reports:
And so what started out as serving a robbery warrant will now likely become four counts of attempted murder.
There was also a big fire leading the news cast, and as I told the news director, the days I really miss it are the days when I am watching a newsroom buzz. He invited me to join in, but I figured they had it covered. Kaitlin was reporting, after all.