The weekly post of extra pictures. There are always extras. There are extras still, but I shot these yesterday while running, they fit the season and the mood and the others can wait. On with it, then!
This is Hummingbird Lake at Callaway Gardens. And I remembered the time I took my grandmother to Callaway to see the flowers when she visited me in college. Registering for this run or the countless times I’ve passed this exit or even getting there yesterday didn’t do it, but Hummingbird Lake made me think about that trip. Now there are just hummingbirds everywhere in my life. That’s starting to make me happy a little, but just about every other emotion is there too.
The next two shots are of Mountain Creek Lake, which is the largest body of water at Callaway. The Callaway family started digging this out in 1949.
Bluebirds are an important part of the local wildlife, so naturally there’s a Bluebird Lake.
Most of the trees are pines — this is Pine Mountain, Georgia after all — but some of the deciduous leaves are starting to go. Here’s another example at Whippoorwill Lake. There’s a half-mile nature trail here, and ducks during the right season. There probably all gone south for the winter by now, I’d bet:
Here’s one last shot of Mountain Creek Lake, which is the largest body of water in the park. There’s a 1.5 mile unpaved trail around Mountain Creek that drops you down to the water’s edge where you can see turtles, ducks, herons, a richly diverse floral scene and scarred trunks marked up by beavers.
This is part of the beach recreation area at Robin Lake, which, among other things, boasts the annual Masters Water Ski & Wakeboard Tournament. I did not know there was such a thing, but next year they’ll have the 56th annual event tournament:
I got to hug my lovely bride today, and it was the most wonderful feeling in the world.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
As is now apparently our way, we find things to do online and then convince each other to do them. That’s how we started doing triathlons and that’s why we did a half ironman relay recently and that’s why we ran a 10K today.
There’s a 5K we did on campus a month or two ago with a friend. She said she liked it. The Yankee liked it. So I looked around for other races, being wary of how far I’m wiling to drive a car to run a distance I can do in my neighborhood. There it was, the Callaway Gardens Twilight 10K, held just over the border into Georgia.
The premise is you get to run around the pretty place and see the Fantasy In Lights Christmas show before it is open to the public. Twilight is a misnomer, but who cares. So we signed up, our friend bailed out because “Brrr it is cold and I’m from New Jersey.” So it was just the two of us, which was fine.
We made our way to Callaway after lunch today — and by after lunch I mean I ate in the car.
We got there just in time. Here’s the scene at the race start:
And here we are, probably less than a mile in, looking strong and having a nice time:
We’re not winning anything, this is just an excuse to exercise some new, pretty place. And, also, to have roadside support like this guy:
We ran through a lot of interesting light decorations that I’m sure pop nicely in the dark. There were speakers blaring thing from the trees — and of course the 12 Days of Christmas section was the one that wouldn’t end. We ran under giant decorations like snowflakes and wreaths and barns and this Santa’s Workshop kind of thing:
And then after six miles you found yourself trotting up the last little hill, turning right and running with Robin Lake on your left and the finish line ahead of you. We pronounced the course is relatively flat and fast. I’d like to really run it and see how slow I am. Ren did really well. It was her first 10K, ever, and she was very pleased with her performance and her time, as she should be. After the run:
It was windy and a little chilly, Somewhere between there and the finish line I got a full, complete, laughing, joyful hug of pride and pleasure and accomplishment. I could write a lot more about that, what that means or what it felt like, but the most important part is this: Don’t ever let go of those too early.
Friday / hobby / photo / Samford — Comments Off on There is no candy to mark the season31 Oct 14
We discussed press conferences in class today. The students will take part in a faux-press conference on Monday. The director of Public Safety will brief them on an on-campus issue. It all stems from a training exercise the emergency folks on campus and in the surrounding communities do every year.
I don’t miss police media conferences. Police officers and fire department folks and the various hardworking people who are involved in those types of stories don’t give very good quotes. They have plenty of good reasons to be careful with what they say — they don’t know everything yet, they have to protect the investigation and they don’t want to be the biggest part of a story among other things — but that doesn’t help the people working on stories very much.
I found, if you interact with the same public information officers enough you can almost produce the story without them there. You learn their quotes and phrases and know where this answer goes and on and on.
Of course you must ask questions, even the ones where you already know the answer: I can’t discuss the ongoing investigation, the officer patiently answers for the hundred time this year.
Press conferences with lawyers aren’t much more entertaining. The things aren’t meant to be entertaining, of course, but still everyone wants to be amused once in a while. So I told stories today about some of the three-ring circus press conferences of which I’ve taken part. That will not be what you have in class Monday, I said.
Big department meeting at the end of the day. I take minutes. I think I wrote five pages of minutes. The first year I did that I typed seven minutes thinking “Haha! I won’t be asked to do this anymore! MUHAHA!”
And I’ve done it every time since.
They are flying the Union Jack in Sherman Circle on campus. This is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the university’s international studies program in London.
It might be a bit difficult to tell in that light, but this particular flag has silver in it. Wikipedia explains:
The first rule of heraldic design is the rule of tincture: metal should not be put on metal, nor colour on colour (Humphrey Llwyd, 1568). This means that Or and argent (gold and silver, which are represented by yellow and white) may not be placed on each other; nor may any of the colours (i.e. azure, gules, sable, vert and purpure) be placed on another colour.
I’d always thought the white part had symbolism, but it is a design rule. I learned something after 5 p.m. today!
Sherman Circle, in the main entrance to campus, is named in honor of Samuel S. Sherman, Howard College’s first president, who served from 1842 until 1853. He is perhaps still most locally famous for putting “feet to his prayers.” He rolled a wheelbarrow around Marion, the first location of the university about 81 miles away by car, collecting books for the first library.
(Yes, there is also an American flag flying.)
Up from Sherman Circle is the Centennial Walk. In the middle ground is the popular statue of Mr. Ralph Waldo Beeson, an insurance man who gave Samford millions of dollars over the years. That’s a 1990 newspaper article talking about his posthumous donations and his legendary frugality. He made his money building up Liberty Insurance, a regional fixture, which was founded by Frank Samford, Sr., the university’s namesake.
Anyway, behind the Beeson statue is the Davis Library, and on either side of the quad you’re surrounded by white tents put up ahead of tomorrow’s homecoming festivities:
This is just showing off:
Stopped at the grocery store for soup. Our neighborhood is famous among the gimme-candy set. I can’t imagine why:
I got in around 7:30. We missed the young kids, who are the best part of the Halloween order around here. Right about that time is when the older kids come out. Some of them were lingering in the neighbor’s yard when I got home. I generally want to tell them to go get jobs, buy the candy they want and boo-humbug. Our lights were already out. The candy was gone. The night was done. I’ll be asleep by 10 p.m. for a change.
photo / Thursday — Comments Off on Early Halloween30 Oct 14
I’ve never thought of Halloween as something that really deserves wishing someone happy wishes about it. I’m sure I’ve said it before, much like you say “I’m doing fine,” without thinking about it or perhaps even meaning it. But, there I was, Tuesday night, wishing a happy Halloween to the young lady who cut my hair.
She’d told me about her trick or treating plans — she takes her little sister and friends out every year and she’s going as Mickey Mouse and the kids are going as Powerpuff Girls — and then I paid her and said “Happy Halloween” and realized I kind of meant it above the standard small talk fare.
“May all of your candy be delicious, and peanut free if you have allergens.”
The critical problem with Halloween is that it is gone the next morning. You may have the candy and the wrappers and the tummy ache, but we’ve instantly discarded the notions of Halloween.
So, before the day gets X-rayed, melted and discarded, here’s something I saw today:
Happy early Halloween. May all of your bags be heavy, and without holes in the bottom.
Those are three members of the editorial staff at their budget meeting tonight. Some others are outside of the shot, but they’re there and they’re a good group. They’ve been getting a lot of compliments, and they deserve them.
They are fun, too. It is easy to get sidetracked with them, but the diversions are worth it. Tonight we discussed the movie Face / Off — and you should see the photos from that conversation. Three or four of us know the movie and we tried to explain it to the others. This is not an easy movie to describe to people. “And then John Travolta, played by Nic Cage, who is now a bad guy … ”
So you start throwing in other actors, who weren’t even in that film, to really make it fun.
“And then Sean Connery says … ”
I saw this tonight while standing at the counter and waiting for my burger. First thought?
Seasoned with what?
The more you think about it, the You know what my salt needs? Some flavoring. But what would go well with salt just now?
And what does Nic Cage think about that? The good Nic Cage, I mean, who is really John Travolta. What if one of those guys wants unseasoned salt? What do you do when the other one says he wants salted salt? Why is my burger taking so long?
Things to read … because that never takes too long.
Great question! As journalism and documentary film converge in digital, what lessons can they share? You might see more mini-docs to address the issue of time, more partnerships from unexpected places and, at last, what I think could be the coolest job in the industry: a historist. The historian journalist, or journalist historian, is a wholly unappreciated idea.
In reality, you’ll probably see a lot more interaction. Virtual Reality will be a part of this, among other things.
On Wednesday, those taking part in the CurrentC pilot program received a warning from the consortium of anti-credit-card retailers called MCX, or Merchant Consumer Exchange: The program was hacked in the last 36 hours, and criminals managed to grab the email addresses of anyone who signed up for the program.
MCX confirmed the hack, adding what’s become a go-to line for any company that loses your data: “We take the security of our users’ information extremely seriously.”
An “unusual” uptick in the size and scale of Russian aircraft flying throughout European airspace in recent days has raised alarm bells for NATO officials that come amid other provocations already rattling the West.
Multiple groups of Russian military bomber and tanker aircraft, flying under the guise of military maneuvers, were detected and monitored over sections of the Baltic Sea, North Sea and Black Sea on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Those flights represented an “unusual level of air activity over European airspace,” according to a press release from NATO.
Adding to the concern — none of the Russian aircraft filed customary flight plans or maintained radio contact with civilian aviation authorities or used any of their onboard transponders.
Would you risk your life to save a stranger? And never talk about it? MY ITALIAN SECRET tells the story of Tour de France cycling champion Gino Bartali and other Italians who saved lives during WWII.
Or if you prefer the 30 for 30 method: What if I told you a man saved 800 lives in between three Giro d’Italia wins and two Tour de France titles?
This is not that film, but it does summarize the story a tiny bit:
Bartali apparently rarely even brought it up, which brings us to this quote from the man himself: “Good is something you do, not something you talk about. Some medals are pinned to your soul, not to your jacket.”
Pretty profound for a guy that just moved his feet around in small circles.
