Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

cycling / errands / Friday / photo — Comments Off
13
Mar 20

To the fruits ahead

My first full work-from-home day in several years, it turns out. I used to do this quite frequently at a previous stop. Once you are in the right groove, it can be quite productive.

I remember I found that the advice to keep a schedule was something that worked well for me. So I set the alarm, get home, have a breakfast snack, do the morning read of news, cringe at what I’m reading in the news, and then remember I have saved 20 minutes of commute here, plus the time ironing slacks and that sort of thing.

It is important, for some reason, to address the mop on top of my head. And it is important, for some reason, to wear some sort of shoes.

So give that a try, if this sort of thing is new for you. And remember, grace and patience. Even with yourself. Perhaps especially with yourself.

We went to the grocery store this evening, which is basically just a morbid fascination I have now. Even though we’re now ready to cut way back. Today I discovered a new thing in the produce section. This is a jack fruit. You can pick it up for $1.99, but lift with your legs and not your knees. These ran about 20 pounds each. Why, yes, I did weigh them.

Jackfruit, I’ve just learned, is a unique tropical fruit native to South India.

It has a distinctive sweet flavor and can be used to make a wide variety of dishes. It’s also very nutritious and may have several health benefits.

Just once, I want a site like this to say, “The flavor is meh. And you can only use it in one or two things anyway. If you don’t already have a natural taste for it, or if it doesn’t remind you of home, don’t worry about it.”

The description I just read, however, sounds interesting, and I’d like to try it sometime soon.

Got in the third bike ride of the year this evening. Hopefully the weather will soon warm up to the point where we stop picking our spots for rides, and I stop counting the progression.

No photos, because those don’t come until after the first few rides, when I remember how to do this properly. A little more fitness would help, too. Also, I need it to warm up for photos, since my full-length gloves discourage photos.

But it was a nice, easy, 20-miler. And as soon as I stop counting the progression of bike rides I can start counting the addition of extra miles. That’s a goal for this year. More miles, more miles.

Covid-19 / IU / memories / television / Thursday / video — Comments Off
12
Mar 20

Tonight’s shoot

I worked from home today, which we’ll all be saying a lot in the weeks to come. I did go in this evening for a television taping. The sports crew was up tonight. They wandered in, wondering if this was the end of their year on campus. Our last in-person classes are tomorrow, and then there’s spring break and at least a few weeks of virtual classrooms.

Students are being encouraged to return home. We’re now well into the plans of how we work with 46,000 students on this campus, the 100,000-plus at all of the statewide IU institutions and the countless projects that go on at each and every one of them. Unprecedented is a word you’ll hear a lot. We’re making this work as we go, or some variation, is a theme everyone will hear a lot.

Grace and patience is something I imagine I’ll be saying a lot.

Sports kept it simple tonight. This was a sink in moment for a lot of us.

Michael Tilka, a senior, and IUSTV’s sports director for 2019-2020 signed off. It is surprisingly typical that he was talking about everyone else. That’s what he’s done throughout. He was, this semester, the longest-serving member at IUSTV. I hope that wasn’t the final sign off of his four-year run at IUSTV, where he’s won awards and helped others win awards. I hope it wasn’t the last time, because I would miss his demeanor and what he’s still capable of doing here.

What he saw his freshman year and what he’s leaving his senior year are remarkably different things. He, and the sports directors that came just before him, righted the ship. They developed the right kind of culture in the sports department. It is one of those things I’m always telling the student leaders will come up in a job interview. One of those questions that will give them an advantage, if they distill these experiences into an anecdote.

I sat in a post-production meeting with all the younger sports students tonight. I wanted to thank and congratulate them, as I so often want to do. They each went around the room and shared their favorite moment of the year — and I hope this is not the end of their year together, but it has that feeling. Some of the stories I knew. Some I heard for the first time. All of the memories got laughed at. They had a great time with it. Real bonding is taking place there. Michael, I think, realizes it’s a lasting culture he’s helped establish. Along the way, most importantly, he’s found his own mature voice.

I’m glad they didn’t ask me to take part in that favorite moment exercise. It’s hard to explain my favorite moment of a year when my favorite moment, each year, is always the same. It is gratifying to see the progress the students make, collectively and individually. Sometimes it is downright tangible.

I am proud of my friend Michael Tilka. I hope this wasn’t his last time on air at IUSTV, but if we don’t get these last few weeks back for him, and all of our other seniors, I am excited to see him go out into the world and continue his success.

#LEO

Covid-19 / IU / photo / running / Wednesday — Comments Off
11
Mar 20

The drawdown

More meetings today. Meetings about meetings. Meetings which begat other meetings. A fair amount of time canceling meetings. Meetings about canceled meetings. And oh so many emails and rapidly evolving and newly created policies. Our employer, Indiana University, is taking it seriously, which is nice.

My dean, in fact, told everyone at a meeting this morning to not be in the office after today unless it was essential that we be there. I have to go in for a brief while, tomorrow, but today is the last full day of on-campus work until April as we duck Covid-19. These are not off days. We’ll just be working from somewhere else. I’ll be in the home office.

It’ll sink in eventually.

We went for a run this evening. It was a quick three-and-a-half-miles of progressions, where you continue to build up speed as you go. This was just as we got int the third mile, which means she was going pretty fast, which meant the photo was blurry:

Earlier in the run I saw this, the second green things of the season. The tulips of February are false advertising. The longer days are a signal, next week’s spring break is a clue. March is a mirage, but there are now, suddenly, a few green things:

The next warm-ish day we have I’m going to take a walk through the woods behind the house. I have to find more green things.

IU / television / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
10
Mar 20

So, late this afternoon, news happened

Sometime late this afternoon the email came down from the university president that in-person classes would be canceled after next week’s spring break. Instruction will be online for at least two weeks, and the campus would be closed for all but essential functions.

And that’s how the planning, and a series of meetings, began. Meantime, my news friends reworked their entire show in about 90 minutes, which is a fair approximation of the real world. I couldn’t be more proud of how they handled it.

Here’s how it all worked. Charlee had the lead story and a package about coronavirus anyway, one that she was producing before the big change. Then she ran into the IU spokesman and stood him up for a few questions. She brought in the video. She told us where the good quote was and sat down to rewrite her work while another producer took the footage and found the quote. Meanwhile, still others were reworking the script and the tease and plotting out how all of the other little things would have to change when you rewrite your entire show at almost the last minute. I couldn’t be more proud of how they handled it.

I know I wrote that twice, but I meant it.

So … we’ll work on campus this week. The students will start drifting away for their regular spring break plans or whatever their new plans will be. And then we’ll all work from home for a while. But I’m sure we’re do several more series of meetings and emails and phone calls detailing out how all that will go.

There’s no handbook for this. There’s no previous example to fall back on. No specific contingency plan. We’ll all have to work through it with grace and patience. That’s what I started telling students today. That and how the news people could and should keep telling stories in the weeks ahead – a lot of social media interaction. I hope that they do. It’s the story of their times, and they ought to tell it to their audience.

cycling / IU / Monday / photo / running / video — Comments Off
09
Mar 20

A run, two rides, but mostly cats

Happy Monday. This week is going to be a memorable one, you can just tell, can’t you? It will. And if you can’t tell, come up for air and read the news. It’s going to be a memorable one.

But before all of that begins, we have our new usual Monday feature of checking in with the cats. Let’s see how they spent their weekend.

Phoebe discovered a new place to sit on the stairs. We have a small landing, and she’s familiar with that, but this step gives her a commanding view of the foyer, a window and escape routes up and down the stairs. I’m sure that’s how she thinks.

Poseidon spent part of Saturday night curled up in a big fuzzy blanket. I think he’s coming around to the lifestyle:

They got two new toys in the mail from a friend this weekend. They are little lizard shapes with some hardcore strain of catnip inside:

They are jealous cats, so jealous that despite there being two of the identical toys, they are fighting over the lizards. So now we’ll have to hide them.

Some naps, for whatever reason, are cuter than others:

We went for a run on a sunny Saturday. I am now tasked with running ahead and taking pictures. So my sprints should improve, because the job is to get far enough ahead that I can find a good spot for a reasonable composition, stop, turn, open the camera, frame a shot and watch the runner run through:

It’s a good chance to catch my breath, though, before having to run on and catch back up. But, check this out, same picture:

I got the two-feet-off-the-ground shot. Not bad for trying to do all of the above while winded.

On Sunday afternoon I got in my first bike ride of the year. And this evening I had my second bike ride No photos or videos of either of those. Or probably for the first four or five rides. I have to remember again where all the gears are and what all the levers on the bike do again, first.

I shot this after today’s bike ride. And I am suddenly very interested, once again, in natural sound.

The late night show produced this episode for you last Friday. The guest is one of our professors. Ordinarily my critique would be that you have to go find people outside of our own buildings. There are a lot of reasons for that, groupthink, the burden of real producing, the what’s-entertaining-to-you-isn’t-entertaining-to-everyone phenomenon, but that concept may not apply to Susan Kelly, who is quite entertaining indeed:

Anyway, for the rest of the week, and whatever else is coming to us soon, I hope your times aren’t that interesting.