Ignore the cold days, I said. Never mind that you’re still wearing a jacket every other evening, I thought. Pay no attention to dark and gray skies, I wrote. Budding things are life’s optimists.
Can’t get more profound than that. Here, then, are some videos I shot and put on Twitter this evening:
Slipped into a pool lane today just as my sports editor was leaving the pool. He’s coming back from a little injury and is racing in his first track meet in some time this weekend. He’s naturally very excited. So today, of course, he was just knocking out 2,250 yards in the pool.
“Hey,” I said, knowing I was going to run later and that he’s run at the same place before and that he’s a lot faster than me, “I’m going to do a few laps after this if you want to wait around.”
He was planning to run too. Because he’s young and he can do that.
“Where are you going to eat later? I’ll stop by and eat slower than you, too.”
He laughed and disappeared. I swam my 2,000 yards, feeling nauseous for the second half, thinking so that’s what that feels like.
Then I went and ran three miles, feeling better and sprinting through about 15 percent of the thing, pretending I knew about intervals. After I got cleaned up I looked up the sports editor’s best times 5K. He’s very fast. Good thing he turned me down.
Here’s the view from the track. Three black cinder walls and then one side with three of these:
I saw a great pick on the basketball court below, and then I ran my last three laps as the lacrosse team warmed up running laps below. They must have not been trying too hard, I stayed with them. But, hey, that’s two bricks in a week, and that feels great.
Things to read … because reading is always great.
I think this is the first Twitter video I’ve embedded here. This is a great video:
Here’s a newsroom with some spunk. Turns out someone set fire to the building, but the publisher is unimpressed. Fiery journalism:
We know there is a portion of the population that doesn’t like what we do here. A nice quiet chamber of commerce cheerleader that runs press releases, without asking questions, is more to their liking. Those readers don’t want to know how badly the schools are doing, lack of city services, problems in police departments and county job bids that are illegal and padded.
That would be so easy to do. We could operate on half the reporters and they’d require no news writing education, training or experience.
But that’s not what we do. We do what journalists everywhere used to do, before bowing to advertisers, money, pressure and threats and the easy road. When a newspaper informs readers in such a manner, whether they wish to be informed or not, certain risks come with that, including bullet holes in windows, occasional paint-balling and the ever-so-popular rocks.
But to start a fire? Understanding the anger or the arsonist’s lack of ability to cope with a problem is just beyond all of us here at the Rio Grande SUN. Richard Beaudoin states it very well in his letter on page A7: write a letter, come talk to us or start your own cheerleader and print what you want.
Better yet, don’t do the stupid, immature, irresponsible things that lead to your actions or words being reported in your local newspaper. The community would be better for it.
I wonder what they write when the arsonist is caught.
Monasteries, lodges and schools have all been captured and Apa says you might even see some yaks along the way.
“My hope is that when people see this imagery online, they’ll have a deeper understanding of the region and the Sherpa people that live there,” says Apa.
Previously Google has mapped other renowned locations, including the Amazon forest, Greenland’s ice fjords and wedding chapels in Las Vegas.
Don’t you wish they hadn’t grouped Las Vegas with those other places?
I walked into a classroom today with one idea about a later thing and when I walked out of the room an hour later I knew other things. A meeting had changed. One student had a story and another had a joke. A third had big news. A lot can happen in a calm hour. Some days the idea of now is an obviously thin construct and some days now is a solid and statuesque thing.
There are at least four full statues and a bust on campus, and this fact amuses and bewilders me.
One of them is an abstraction, three of them are representations of real people, including an ancient president of the institution, a statue which once stood at the U.S. Capitol. Another is a football coach, which, OK. And then there’s Ralph Beeson, who was a big donor and has the family name on quite a few nice things around campus. His statue is centrally located and figures into a lot of pictures and general merriment around the place. Also, it has the great honor of being the voice behind one of the best Twitter accounts on campus, even if some of it is school-specific.
Anyway, I recently stumbled upon this 1988 clip which explains a bit about the man and the then-new statue. The Twitter account asked us to republish it. Great idea, alas, it was from The Birmingham News, and not ours.
We were discussing our publication tonight when someone poked their head into the newsroom and offered us free food. There was a focus group down the hall and journalists are always hungry for leftovers. I grabbed a few things:
I’m going swimming tomorrow, and I won’t eat them all at one time, so it works out, right?
Things to read … because reading always works out right.
There’s one truly incredible story worth reading, it is a bit long, but absolutely worth it. And I mention it here so you’ll keep looking below. First, though, a few journalism links:
And now the story worth spending a few minutes to read. It defies excerpting, really, so here are just a few of the first paragraphs. A Bulldog’s battle:
It was morning in Lithuania and Andrew Smith was getting dressed. As he put a shirt on, he caught an oddity in the mirror, a weird bump at the base of his neck just above the collarbone. The former Butler center was a newly married man playing foreign hoops in a faraway land, just three months into his first professional contract and living with his wife, Sam, and dog, Charlie.
Thinking little of it then — Smith had battled mono and enlarged lymph nodes during his freshman year at Butler — he brushed aside any serious concerns. Over the next two weeks, the bump got bigger and more uncomfortable. The scare increased when pressure crept on his insides, near his chest, and soon enough breathing became a conscious task. Lithuanian health care is not optimal, and the team physician spoke broken English, which did not translate at all to nuanced medical terminology.
[…]
In a foreign country with doctors they did not trust, the Smiths weren’t getting clear answers. Tests were not immediately coming back with conclusive results. An initial biopsy came back negative for cancer, but still, Andrew reluctantly agreed to minor surgery because his neck’s discomfort was preventing him from being able to play.
Smith was — get this — awake for the procedure and could faintly feel doctors tugging with metal tools at his numbed neck as they attempted to remove the blockage in his throat. What at first blatantly felt like the wrong decision turned into a mistake he was lucky to make. Without successful surgery, more evaluation was needed. Andrew’s neck was coral-red as he and Sam spent their first Christmas together as man and wife. They Skyped home, telling their parents Andrew was cancer-free. But a few days later, Smith’s growth got grotesque. He was living with a rock attached to his throat and a perma-red neck. He underwent a full body scan, and as they awaited the results, Andrew rung in 2014 feeling like his chest was shrinking by the day. He was unable to sleep.
Maybe it was his heart? No. For now, Andrew’s heart was fine.
That part, that “for now” part, that becomes important. But “for now” is always important.
This evening I did a 1,800 yard swim, toweled off and then had a 5K run. Finished at 75 percent target heart rate. The swim was about at my normal slow and sloppy pace and style. The run was probably at the lower end of my pace. But that’s a brick to start the season of exercise, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m feeling pretty good after, too.
You know, there’s a time when you don’t think about doing those sorts of things. And it doesn’t take all that long to look at those numbers and think to yourself, “That’s all you did?”
The mind is a weird place, is what I’m saying. I do not know what is happening.
So I swam in the indoor pool, naturally. I had the far left lane all to myself, hitting neither the wall or the room any at all. I did these in 50 yard increments, because I’m still trying to find some form of breathing that works. And having completed the mile I staggered out of the pool, into my flip flops, up the stairs, into the locker room, into some dry clothes and my running shoes and then out and over to one of the old gyms on campus. The gym was closed for a boy’s lacrosse practice, but the track above it was open, and I jogged and sprinted along on that, listening to the sounds of my footfalls and wondering just how long that track has been in place. This is what it looks like from underneath it.
And so to the parents that were there, sitting on the bench, watching their sons play lacrosse and listening to me trample 15 feet above you and wondering “Is this going to be the lap? Will this be the time? Are all of my affairs really in order?” I apologize. But you should have seen me in the pool.
I have this mental image that my swim looks really good for about 1,000 yards. Really it probably only looks really good for 15 yards, which is most of the push off the wall and that first stroke. But I can really make a nice streamline shape, boy, and I’m proud of that.
I got through some portion of the run by wondering what I would have for dinner. I can just look at a body of water and my appetite gets out of control, so, to have actually burned some calories, this could be a real meal. But I didn’t want this, and that would never seem filling and … for some reason there were two big burritos wrapped up and sitting on the floor of the track. So I somehow talked myself into Moe’s, because I guess I was getting hungry by then. Moe’s, I said aloud tonight, making it real, seems like a better idea in theory than in execution.
Please remind me of that as necessary. But, at Moe’s, there was this:
So now it is back to the newsroom, where the award-winning staff of The Samford Crimson is working on what will surely be another fine edition of their august publication. They’re celebrating their 100th anniversary this spring, ya know. We should have a party.
Things to read … because reading is always a party.
This is written in a sports talk context, but you get the sense that the anecdote might carry over to other programming: Is Sports Radio Ready For Its Future?:
Two discussions in particular stuck with me and have had my mind racing for the past few days. First, I was in Dallas for the Radio Ink Sports Conference and during my time there I had the chance to moderate a panel which focused on the mind of millennial listeners. I was on stage with three college students. Two were 21-years old and the other was 26.
Over the course of 45 minutes, I hit all three students with a barrage of questions on their perceptions and interest in sports radio and I along with the rest of the room learned that they live in a different world where content is only king if it can be consumed quickly. If it requires sifting through your podcast to find it, waiting through a commercial break or needing to wait for a host to finish rambling off-topic, they’re gone. Even the big name guest means little if it doesn’t include a hook worth sticking around for.
Really, I just mention that to dust off this Rickwood piece I did some years back. The oldest continually operational baseball park in America, in 20 minutes:
The place is 105 this year. This is a painstakingly recreated manual scoreboard you’ll see in the outfield:
And, over on Facebook, I’ve started The Best Single of the Last 45 Years game. So far there are eight great choices, including mine, which I heard tonight, and whose intro inspired the entire thing:
If you can’t get in a good mood with those horns the very reverend Al Green is right behind them, ready to work everything out.
You can tell people all of the reasons they shouldn’t take pictures of signs, and there are plenty of good reasons, but still, when the classics come back to life, you can’t help yourself:
After nearly a decade of its pumps sitting idle, fuel is again flowing at the former Saco gas station at the corner of Dean Road and Opelika Road in Auburn.
Auburn resident Mike Woodham turned the station’s original lights back on at the Saco gas station Monday as he reopened it as Woodham’s Full Service—a gas station offering full or self serve fuel service, a full-service tire shop, oil changes and more.
“The City of Auburn has been very gracious to my kids and very good to me, and we wanted to give something back,” said Woodham, who owned Woodham’s Tire in Montgomery and has been in the auto business for 30 years. “We wanted to serve back. And the best way that we know of is what we bring to market with our tire knowledge.”
Known for its iconic Saco sign, the previous gas station closed more than nine years ago after then-owner Dick Salmon was shot and killed at the business in July 2005. According to an Associated Press article as reported by The Decatur Daily on July 24, 2005, Salmon had worked at the family-run business for 43 years.
And the store:
Not a lot has changed, and that seems to be the plan, and that’s great.
Breakfast at Barbecue House this morning, which meant I could skip lunch. Read students’ news stories all morning and afternoon, and that is always fun, right up until I imagine then trying to read my marginalia. And then there was class, where we talked about profiles and obits and got ready to point to exciting digital methods of story telling, which will last us through the rest of the week.
There were other office things, a late dinner and here we are.
Things to read … because here we are.
I’m keeping it to three, but these are three incredible Selma pieces to read. Because they are better than the headlines, I will link you with a good quote for each:
And now for another kind of fortitude, this is a strong testament of health, strength, and mind over chemo, Finding strength in triathlons:
It was debilitating. “I was 10 days away from doing my eighth Ironman,” Hackett says. “I was still training 100 percent and I had this huge, stage four tumour going.” His youngest daughter was just two weeks old. His oldest was five years old.
[…]
Hackett is on an aggressive form of chemotherapy, a regimen called FOLIRI, whose name represents three different drugs. His oncologist, Dr. Michael Sawyer, combines the regimen with a relatively new drug called bevacizumab that attacks the growth of new blood vessels. Hackett tolerates it well. “He told me he biked 20 or 30 kilometres the day before I saw him,” Sawyer says. He also ran a five-kilometre race just four hours after he finished his first round of chemotherapy.
The exercise might have something to do with it. “There are many studies, both in curative chemotherapy (to remove cancer completely) and chemotherapy to prolong people’s lives, where it appears that people who exercise do better than people who do not,” says Sawyer.
So we’ll all be at the gym a bit longer tomorrow, no?
And, finally, we’ll end with some music today. If you’re still looking for something to hate Tom Hanks in, keep looking because this probably isn’t that thing either:
Have a great and purposeful week. See ya tomorrow!
