That’s a heck of a quote to put on a sign dedicating your building to your father. Sloan Y. Bashinsky Sr. had that on the plaque dedication for Leo in the Bashinsky Fieldhouse at Samford.
Both men had served on the board of trustees at Samford. Leo died in 1974, but in his lifetime he was a solid, steady, no nonsense businessman. He was president of this and that, had worked in cotton, asphalt and food. He was on the board for a church and a hospital and was president of his country club and on the board of Liberty National Life Insurance. He has two buildings named in his honor on campus, both for his roles and because of the love of his son, Sloan Sr., who was one of the university’s most dedicated donors.
Sloan flew out of Guam in World War II and then returned home and was established by his dad. He took over Magic City Foods in 1956. Leo had bought it for $1 million and would sell it to his son. Sloan converted that into the Golden Flake powerhouse which is today traded on the NASDAQ and has revenues around $135 million these days. He served on boards left and right, often taking on the same or similar roles his father had before him, and was never one to blow his own trumpet about the good works he did throughout the region. When he died in 2005 many of his friends happily picked up the slack and pointed out his donations here and service there.
Back to the Glomerata section, where I share the covers of all of the yearbooks from Auburn, my alma mater. We’re shaking things up and featuring the most recent installment of my collection. The one I’m showing you here is the 2010 edition. If you click the cover you can see the 2012 Glom.
It was a bold time, way back in 2012. Barack Obama was president, Queen Elizabeth II was celebrating 60 years on the throne in England. (Maybe you recall reading about them?) There was the Arab Spring, the folding of the print edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica and CERN was getting set to announce, in the summer, the discovery of a new particle with properties consistent with the Higgs boson. Also the world was getting ready to end, because, finally, there was an inferential prophecy that we could count on. Also, a pastel version of Munch’s “The Scream” sold for $120 million
Students in the fall before wondered about the stock market as the debt ceiling crisis crimped everyone’s style. Europe was in no better financial shape. We were on Mars. The Israelis and Hamas were doing a huge prisoner exchange. Wall Street was occupied and the war in Iraq was officially ended. These were certainly not boring times, back in the sleepy years of 2011 and 2012.
There were 312 million people in the U.S. in 2012, compared to just 92 million a century earlier. Some 4.8 million of them were in Alabama, which was more than double the pre-World War II census. They called Robert Bentley their governor. Still do, in fact. Alabama was — and is, because this is two whole years ago we’re talking about here — a very Republican state. The Wiregrass and the Birmingham area feature the most Democrats in the region.
Some communities in Alabama, Mississippi and others were still trying to recover from those historic and deadly tornadoes in the spring of 2011 — 324 casualties from 355 tornadoes in a three-day period. Cleanup still continued on the coast of the massive BP oil catastrophe. In Miller vs. Alabama the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ruling against a 14-year-old who was convicted of murder and sentenced to a mandatory term of life imprisonment without possibility of parole. The Supremes would find that the Eighth Amendment forbids a sentencing scheme that mandates life in prison without possibility of parole for juvenile homicide offenders. Immigration was a big topic in Alabama, as was football, of course. Auburn and Alabama were enjoying an amazing collaborative run at the top of the college game.
You could get married on Samford lawn at Auburn starting in 2012. A new spider was discovered not far away. They named it after Aubie, who was again, in a mascot championship title hunt. The biggest news on campus, perhaps in terms of everyday life, was what was happening at Toomer’s Corner. The oaks were coming out because they’d been poisoned in 2010. In 2013 was the last rolling of the old oaks. (Have you heard, they’re putting in new trees this month.)
We talked about them in class today. The consensus winners were the puppy spot from Budweiser and this one:
The idea seemed to be that, in a different year, that spot gets overlooked and forgotten. This year it stood out. Weak field, the class thought.
The Dove dads spot was also well-received:
No one seemed to like the Nationwide spot, but a few did make the case that, yes, it was something we’re talking about and, sure, it is an important topic. Someone had missed the spot, so we watched it. It didn’t seem any better to the rest of us upon a second viewing.
Which spots did you like? Which did you dislike? And why?
“It was funny” or “It wasn’t funny” aren’t sufficient answers, though.
photo / weekend — Comments Off on Catching up01 Feb 15
The post with the most — leftover photographs, that is.
First, a series of talented people flipping, and the always enjoyable people watching in the background:
It was “Are you shorter than Jeff Graba?” night. The promotion was, if you were smaller — Graba is five-foot-five — then you got in free. This is the only shot of him I got tonight, apparently:
Often, these are mixed vegetables. Occasionally, this is a vegetable medley. This week, they were Italian vegetables.
When they are Italian, I learned, that means they are the opposite of fresh.
Look who I’m hanging out with. They’re doing yoga. They call it black cat pose:
Owing to the details of life, today I took my second bike ride of the year. This makes me sad to even consider, which is something, I suppose. But travel interferes. Weather, other plans, the comfortable chair I’m sitting in at the time, whatever.
So, today, we ride. The Yankee got all set up and started her ride and I got all my various things together — shoes and helmet and water bottles and stretchy clothes — and chased off after her. She texted me just as I was leaving, so I knew where to follow. She had two miles on me and I wanted to get there. She made me work for it, too, but eight miles later — through the neighborhood, over the time trial and by the stores and up and over two hills and then through more shopping — I finally caught up to her.
Which meant I had to ride harder. But it all felt nice, through the old POW grounds and then up a slow, easy little mile-and-a-half hill where I actually increased my average pace. Then through a downhill segment where I kept the tempo high. Through there I increased my speed, but knew in every way — empirically and by feel and the sound of the wind and the hum of my tires — knew it was a pretty slow effort over familiar roads.
And finally those two last little molehills, those two slow rollers to get back home, something to grind and gasp over and feel your legs burning and “Why did I come home this way? Because I’m tired and I’m tired over a one hour ride. I really need to ride much, much more. I’ll ride tomorrow. It’ll rain tomorrow.”
You can think up a lot of things when you’re slowly, slowly making your way up a small hill.
The new SportsCenter set is the crown jewel of the building: 9,700 square feet of space that will be used to broadcast the show on ESPN’s mass of channels. The revamped set was designed to make SportsCenter more personal, to show anchors moving around and interacting, but also to help the show move at the speed of the internet. ESPN has long been criticized for allowing news to break overnight while it ran repeats of the previous day’s shows; now the premier show in sports can update and broadcast in real time.
TV still matters at ESPN, and in every way DC-2 is wired for the future of TV. It’s capable of broadcasting in 4K and 8K, and if by some miracle 3D actually takes off, ESPN will be ready for that, too. TV is still where the network makes most of its money, and it will be for the foreseeable future. But when – not if, but when — that changes, ESPN says it will be ready. It has moved staff, built buildings, and overhauled how the company operates to make sure of that.
The strategy to keep ESPN on top breaks down along two broad lines. The first is an adjustment in how ESPN sees itself: the company has reorganized to promote more sharing across platforms, even launching the buzzword-friendly Content Sharing Initiative. ESPN the TV network, ESPN the radio provider, ESPN the magazine, ESPN the Instagram account, and ESPN the app maker are all becoming one.
The keys, for all of us, are to understand which of our audience needs what story, ascertain where those stakeholders are, give them that story in the best way possible in the format or with the tool they are using and then to ensure that you’re keeping the thematic elements in tune with your larger branding.
From time to time an aspect of this topic comes up: being poor means different things across time. When Bread Bags Weren’t Funny:
I liked what Ernst said because it was real. And it reminded me of the old days.
There are a lot of Americans, and most of them seem to be on social media, who do not know some essentials about their country, but this is the way it was in America once, only 40 and 50 years ago:
America had less then. Americans had less.
If you were from a family that was barely or not quite getting by, you really had one pair of shoes. If your family was doing OK you had one pair of shoes for school and also a pair of what were called Sunday shoes — black leather or patent leather shoes. If you were really comfortable you had a pair of shoes for school, Sunday shoes, a pair of play shoes and even boots, which where I spent my childhood (Brooklyn, and Massapequa, Long Island) were called galoshes or rubbers.
Removing the prisoners — American, British, Canadian and others, who had dubbed themselves “Ghost Soldiers” — was an unexpected obstacle.
Conditioned by captivity, many POWs thought the raid a trick to kill them as they fled. Few recognized the green Ranger uniforms that evolved from blue or khaki uniforms during their years in captivity.
[…]
Rangers literally booted and shoved some POWs out. Rangers also removed their shirts to make stretchers to carry away sick and wounded prisoners and gave their clothes and boots to the emaciated, threadbare, barefoot men.
[…]
In the end, Allied casualties counted two Rangers dead and several wounded. No Filipinos died. More than 500 Japanese soldiers were killed or wounded. All 512 prisoners survived.
Everything is original — from the gas pumps and retro Saco signs to the fake brown owl in the rafters used to scare off birds.
Even tall blue posts to the right of the station still extend into the sky, holding up a blue bell that previous owner Dick Salmon would ring after every Auburn football win.
After being vacant for nine years after Salmon was shot and killed inside the station’s lobby in 2005, the Saco station, on the corner of Dean Road and Opelika Road, is being revived.
Mike Woodham, owner of Woodham’s Full Service, which will operate in the Saco building, will open his business Monday, hoping to carry on Salmon’s legacy.
Craig Biggio takes the kind of tour we all want, or, if you want to tour the archives, all you have to do is get voted in, Biggio like a kid in the Hall of Fame:
Craig Biggio giggled and shook his head in disbelief. The Astros’ first Hall of Famer grabbed Babe Ruth’s bat and gripped it tightly, locking his hands on a handle that he quickly realized was much thicker than today’s models.
“No way! Babe Ruth’s bat,” Biggio said with a chuckle that served as a soundtrack for most of his tour through the National Baseball Hall of Fame. “Man, it feels good.”
The gritty, determined look Biggio carried to the plate during 20 years with the Astros was softened by a fan’s child-like giddiness Friday morning as he toured the Hall of Fame for the first time since he was elected to the Hall’s 2015 class earlier this month.
He chuckled with enthusiasm often, but he really cherished his visit to the climate-controlled collections area where he got to hold bats that once were used by Yankees legends Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
