I do not know what is happening. / journalism / Samford / swimming / Thursday / video — Comments Off on Here’s a read that’s getting attention
02
Apr 15

Here’s a read that’s getting attention

Our editor-in-chief, Sydney Cromwell, wrote a great editorial about the conditions that her staff had to deal with in covering the former first lady last week. It has been noticed by the publisher of the Anniston Star, the Student Press Law Center, Alabama Media Pros and the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors and the Alabama Media Group (which reprinted the editorial):

So, what did the reporters of the Crimson, Samford News Network, AL.com, the Homewood Star and others get within those precious few minutes? Generic statements about Bush’s enjoyment of Samford and an update on the Bush family. Oh, and #SamNotStan.

If they wanted to report any of her statements on life in the White House, 9/11 or education – the actual reason for her visit – they had to rely on their memory alone and hope they could remember everything they needed.

That, in itself, is galling. Laura Bush is a public figure and invited to speak as part of a lecture series to students and the public. After living in the White House, I’d think she would be familiar enough with the media that a few pencils scratching away at paper wouldn’t ruin her time on stage.

It’s also just ridiculous. If you’re there to speak on education, why not let reporters use your actual statements on education? That’s a chance to extend her words beyond the Wright Center, and she wasted it.

And Sydney says she can’t write opinion pieces.

Also, there’s a new Crimson photo feature on Instagram: Humans of Samford.

One of the first things I saw this morning: The Price is Right aired a great gag yesterday, guaranteed to make you smile:

Two class preps tonight. Two-thousand yards in the pool. Not bad since I felt rough and the swim felt fairly rough. Not sure why I’m sore, but there I was all day, wondering if this will be another motion that hurts. The true feeling-out process. And, in the final analysis, most everything hurts. No idea why.

But Bob Barker makes everything better, right?

The man is 91, and we should all be so lucky.

There are a lot of gameshow bloopers online.

Samford / Wednesday — Comments Off on Crimson goes Mirror Universe
01
Apr 15

Crimson goes Mirror Universe

As soon as the Crimson’s editorial staff put together their schedule for the year they noticed that April 1st fell on a Wednesday, their regular publication day. They dreamed and planned all fall and winter about what they would do.

They are good group. Sharp journalists. Funny. Clever. Diligent. And yet I was a bit hesitant. College papers get in trouble for April Fools jokes every year. (At least two have already this year.) But they are very careful and conscientious. They wrote up fun copy and then took great pains to make sure that they weren’t putting words into the mouths of real people on campus or libeling anyone.

The only real person in the April Fool’s section of the paper was Jameis Winston, and he’s a public figure and our manufactured quotes didn’t say anything bad. They did a nice job throughout, and it has been well-received on campus. Here’s a small version of the April Fool’s pages:

The hammock headline is my favorite. Always knew there was something sketchy about those things The squirrel story was a hit, as you might imagine.

The Mr. Beeson Twitter account was pleased:

Someone did ask me if they meant to run the masthead backward. I made a big production of it. “BACKWARD!?!?” with a big, panicked rustling of paper.

Yes, they did.

I do not know what is happening. / photo / running / Samford / swimming / Tuesday / Twitter — Comments Off on All of these things are worth remembering
31
Mar 15

All of these things are worth remembering

I follow exactly one comedy writer on Twitter. And tonight he linked to this essay written, he said, by a friend of his. That guy worked on the Letterman show, and he’s dishing the anecdotes. There’s a lot of fun in these stories:

Bill Clinton was hanging out near my wife, which is something no husband wants. My wife also worked at the show, and the former president was backstage watching the Top 10 List while awaiting his guest segment. I had a joke in the Top 10 that mentioned Chewbacca. The joke got a pretty big laugh backstage, but Clinton seemed confused. He turned and with a quizzical look asked, “Who’s Chewbacca?”

First off, I have to admit that having written something that prompted Bill Clinton to say the word Chewbacca stands as the proudest achievement of my life. (I’m the father of two.) My next goal is getting Pope Francis to say “Wu-Tang Clan.” But the more I thought about it, the madder I got. Yes, Bill Clinton’s a world leader with lots of important things on his mind. We get it. But when Star Wars came out in 1977, Clinton wasn’t the president. He was a regular guy. Heck, his nickname was “Bubba.” A guy named “Bubba” can’t pretend he’s too important to know who Chewbacca is. And also, isn’t Clinton always claiming to be a New York Times crossword-puzzle expert? Chewbacca is exactly the kind of random reference any decent crossword-puzzler would be aware of.

I really hoped there would be a YouTube video of Clinton and Chewie together. Get on that, Internet.

Here at home, Tom Cosby is busy finding a silver lining in the things that are going on at UAB with the athletic department. I haven’t said a whole lot about the UAB story, but I like Cosby’s point of view:

But despite these disappointing aspects, here’s the good thing, no the GREAT thing, that’s come out of all this. This brouhaha has accelerated a rekindling of Birmingham’s civic pride along with a fierce embrace of UAB. Our civic pride was already surging before this debacle but its now quadrupled since December 2 and you see it growing every day.

When has this city ever united like this behind UAB? For that matter, when have you ever seen this level of civic passion in anything? And unlike earlier generations of Birminghamians who years ago let out of state corporations call the shots here, these citizens are letting the UA Trustees know their outrage. And they are making it clear that they believe killing football has the real potential to damage both UAB and our city’s future.

Take all the victories you can.

Time for the weekly update of the work in the cafeteria. They are expanding the center of the space, which has clogged the flow around the main food-substitute procurement area and jammed up the dining area. They say they have the same amount of tables, but they are all in less space because this first phase of the renovation required the building of a dust wall. One must keep the dust out of the food.

They’ve put fiberglass windows in the dust walls, so you can check out the work. This is what I saw at lunch today:

The larger portion of the work has been up in the ceiling and, thus, out of view from this position. I look in every day and the equipment is moving around. The guys working there seem to spend more time doing stuff than standing around watching one guy do stuff. They say they’ll be done with their work by the first part of the summer. I suppose it all depends what they find as they poke around in the ceiling.

Ancient chicken wings from lunches gone by, no doubt.

I had contemporary chicken for dinner tonight, visiting the Chick-fil-A that I visit too much. Even the guys in the back know my name now.

Also swam and ran today. Got in about 2,200 yards in the pool and then two miles of running. It always feels weird to say after the fact, but I got to the end of that second mile and my body and my energy levels agreed: we’ve done enough.

It was that feeling you can’t really describe, or maybe even remember clearly later. The one beyond rubbery fatigue, but down around emptiness. The one where another step was foolish because you were no longer running along on the ground, but rather about 18 inches below it.

Now, having had dinner and sitting in a chair, the inability to run another mile or so doesn’t seem so bad. It is a kindness that the mind sometimes gives us, being able to forget about some of the painful things.

I wonder, if they find something curious in the ceiling, if it is remembered by whoever put it there years ago.

journalism / links / memories / Monday / things to read / video — Comments Off on Things to read
30
Mar 15

Things to read

The Monday update is pretty close to becoming a “Things to read” tradition. It comes about because I need something here, Mondays are usually fairly busy and, often, I have links waiting to be put somewhere. All of this is in play today, and so here we are.

Some of the historians on campus are running a blog about interesting moments in Samford history. This is a great anecdote, March Madness: Dead Cats and Burning Bulldogs:

In addition to the attempted arson of the Sherman Oak, the Birmingham News reported a few Howard girls being woken up in the middle of the night because they heard men chanting “Down with Howard, Up with Southern!” When they looked outside, there were three crosses on fire in front of the burning tree–an ominous warning and a symbol of Aryan superiority during the Civil Rights era.

By gameday, tensions had reached their boiling point. With less than four minutes left in the first half of the game, Howard was beating Southern 33-24. Chriss Doss later recalled the chaos that unfolded when a Southern player named Glen Clem took a cheap shot at Howard player Rudy Davidson.

Two private schools. The 1950s. Who knew?

This is really cool, Loachapoka High robotics team to compete in World Games:

The robotics team has been around for a few years, according to Thompson. Robert Harlan has been the head coach for two years.

Eight of the program’s 25 students will make the trip, Thompson said.

The school’s robotics program begins in third grade and goes all the way up to 12th grade, according to Thompson.

I did not know this was such a thing. I wonder, now, if this is the big threat to the brick-and-mortar car dealerships that we saw for music stores, video stores and all of the other things disrupted by the web: Online car dealership expands delivery service to Birmingham.

It takes a village … Boy’s ‘military haircut’ spurs suspension threat, outcry:

A young boy’s high and tight haircut meant to honor his soldier-stepbrother earned him the threat of suspension from an elementary school named for a Medal of Honor recipient, and the fallout from the incident has led a Tennessee school district to increase security measures.

There are educators and then there are “educators.”

Some journalism links:

HBO-Vice Deal Should Scare the S*** Out of TV News
The evolution of NPR’s picture stories
Math for journalists: Help with numbers
How news sites handle content around sensitive stories
30+ free tools for data visualization and analysis
Online Video Exploding Globally

Here’s an interesting essay on Periscope, the new livestreaming platform that Twitter recently purchased and rolled out for use. It is quickly — possibly, perhaps, who knows? — taking over the universe. Or is that still Meerkat? Maybe both. Perhaps neither. This essay is about the activity, not the branded platform. And there’s a great passage in this piece:

(T)his isn’t about money, this is about the bleeding edge. And that’s what’s so exciting about Meerkat and Periscope, it’s all brand new.

Like I watched a sunrise in New Zealand. A cove in Australia. Someone making coffee in Amsterdam and a snowy spring in Siberia. Call me a voyeur, we’re all voyeurs, and right now regular people are letting you into their lives, just for the fun of it, and it’s strangely riveting.

They do it for the love. No one wants to be alone anymore. They want hearts and comments and interaction. They’ll perform if you show up and comment.

And who are these people?

Nobodies. Those with time. Who are not reading the newspaper, who listen to the tribal drum and want to participate.

Huh? Huh?

Finally, it seems hard to believe, but it has been 10 years since Mitch Hedberg died. I saw him for the first time before anyone really knew who he was. I don’t even think he’d been on Letterman yet. I took a date to the Comedy Club and he was the attraction and the show was good. He just got better and better over the years, until his far-too-soon death. Here’s one of the many videos of his comedy you can find online.

adventures / photo / triathlon / weekend — Comments Off on Super-sprint triathlon
29
Mar 15

Super-sprint triathlon

The local bike shop — and a host of others, but let’s just say the bike shop guys because they made it go and that’s how we got involved — held a weekend of triathlons. Yesterday was a kid’s triathlon of varying distances based on age.

Today was a super sprint triathlon, a short distance race. The idea was that it would be a good race for people interested in trying a triathlon for the first time or for people getting a start on their tri season.

The distances were a 400-meter swim, an 11-mile ride and a two-mile run. Since I don’t sprint, and since I’m not super, I did not race. We did, however volunteer. It was cold and it is March, but the swim was indoors:

Not a bad day when you get to swim beneath all of those banners in the same pool where champions and All-Americans and Olympians have kicked and stroked.

I’ve never volunteered at a triathlon. I got four jobs. I made a few announcements over a PA system. I collected towels, because the race organizers offered them for the cool temperatures. I had pointed runners to the proper exit out of the transition area after their bike ride and I watched for cars near the end of the race.

Also, I got to watch a lot of great athletes, including our friend Victoria, who was one of those first time triathletes. It was a lot of great fun. We got to be outside for the nicer part of the day and I didn’t have to do anything more than stand and talk in a loud voice.

So, naturally, I took a nap.

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