Rain, lots of rain. Even the radar doesn’t know what to make of it. I tried to time my dinner in between storms and managed to get caught outside in the rain twice. Only one line had shown up on the radar. So that was just lovely. If you’d been standing outside for the last two or three days you’d find somewhere between five and eight inches of rain on your head, depending on your neighborhood.
Beware of falling exclamation points. They may strike you on the head, whereby you may then slip on a pile of bacon.
They think of everything on our campus, really they do.
Samford named a new athletic director today. He’s a Samford grad who’s coming home from Kentucky. The paper came out with a story on his appointment just as they held the official press conference. On the same front page you could see the women’s basketball team. They’d just won their conference tournament and secured their first berth in the NCAA tournament. Meanwhile, the debate team has won a top seed in the national debate tournament. Also, the mock trial team qualified for their national tournament. And the Brock School of Business named a new dean.
Been a nice week on campus.
Meetings with the boss, the editor-in-chief, the managing editor, the web editor today. Also phone calls with a person carrying the impressive title of operations manager. Another with a camera repair expert. And another chat with my dissertation advisor.
At lunch I read through Remini’s The House through World War II. At dinner I made my way through Korea and into the Eisenhower administration. He had an interesting one-paragraph final analysis of FDR through the prism of the 22nd amendment. I think he misreads Eisenhower a bit. (Or maybe my understanding does not comport with the esteemed historian. This is more probably the case.) It is a fine book, if you find yourself thinking about history or about the House of Representatives. And I know you do.
Curiously, though, I find I was more intrigued by earlier eras than what it has to offer for the second half of the 20th century. I’m sure it is a case of the untouchable mythology of some previous period when compared to the high water marks of Newt Gingrich and Tip O’Neill.
(O’Neill, by the way, served for the second longest period as House speaker, behind only Texas’ Sam Rayburn. The pictures of Mr. Sam, as they called him, don’t look right. To me he’ll always be James Gammon (at 34:08) or, in a pinch, James Gammon. That’s what you get watching made-for-television movies before you read about the real people. But reading about them is always more interesting than the screen version.)
Maybe I’m ready to move on to the next book, which was a gift so promising I moved it right to the top of the list. Maybe next week.
Which is Spring Break. Which is already booked solid. And that’s lovely, too.
That’s all for now. Check out the LOMO blog, which features a new update that dates back to the 1950s. I’ll have something else there tomorrow. Look for at least one thing on Tumblr tomorrow, too. And, of course, I’ll see you on Twitter as always.
Hope you have a great, productive, busy and dry Thursday!
