Good things!

Roscoe, soon to be Mike VI, likes his new digs. I don't think I ever saw the old Mike even look at the water. It's nice to see a young, alert tiger in that gorgeous habitat.







Gris Gris likes the new rug. Hopefully not as much as she liked the old rug. The living room is still the land of a thousand greens, but it looks a little more pulled together. It also smells much better.








New bathroom! With storage! And a much brighter light. But no mirror. Well, still.








Tigers!

Things I have been meaning to blog

It may be hard to tell from these two pictures, but LSU has the most beautiful campus anywhere. Part of the beauty comes from the centuries-old oak trees and the other plantings. Mizzou brags about the campus being a botanical garden, and I saw evidence of that, but none of that was as impressive as the giant oaks standing sentinel all over campus.


The other aesthethic is the similiarity of the buildings. Most of the buildings are Italianate, beige stone with red-tiled roofs. Even the newest buildings are built in the same style. When I was at LSU in the late 1980's, two new buildings, CEBA and what we called the Classroom Building (now A.P. Tureaud Hall) were not built in the same style, but times have changed.



We tubed the Potomac. I managed not to destroy my camera.









Or drown anyone.







My cell phone battery died right before I went to the Gee's Bend quilt exhibit at the Walters in Baltimore. The quilts were certainly impressive from an artistic and stitchery point of view, but a person wonders who needs a corduroy quilt in South Alabama... even in a house heated only by a wood stove. And a person wonders who would keep an avocado green corduroy quilt long enough for it to become art.

The river rolls all day

Yeah. That's me. That's a big ol' cruiser bike. I rode it about 6 miles down the Missouri, on the Katy Trail. Then I rode it back 6 miles. Do I look tired?

It was a pretty cool Mid-Missouri weekend: a little school work, a little fun, a little laundry, even a trip to the grocery.

Photoblog

The building where we have been working. For 12 hours at a time. That's not AP style, BTW. I'm definitely glad it's Friday! I finished the rough draft of my story on Teens & Technology and I went t-shirt shopping and picture taking.











Artsy-fartsy column picture! These are historic columns that are all that remain of the original Mizzou. Not a bad touch on an essentially bland campus.











All that construction is where the new Reynolds Journalism building will be. I'll grant them that their J-school buildings are newer than LSU's, and they probably smell better, too. An astonishing percentage of Mizzou students are there for Journalism, which also makes a person wonder.




Can't complain about the weather, though. I thought Missouri would be worse than Maryland, but it has been beautiful. Too bad I spend 12 hours a day in a room with a computer.

Re-grets

Today was pretty amazing. The institute is definitely getting more intense, in a good way. We actually had a straight-forward old-school LECTURE. No bells, no whistles, no audio-visuals. Kind of interesting, although I am clearly spoiled.

We also had a discussion of credibility in journalism that was poignant. The professor pointed out that journalistic credibility has declined since 1985... yes, and my students were born in 1991. They don't find anything credible--not journalists, not teachers, not their parents. Although they lack independence and basic life skills (some of them), they don't believe that the generation above them has any knowledge or ability. I find their cynicism charming, in some ways; irritating in others.

We went to KOMU, the TV station owned by Mizzou. THAT was fascinating, and filled me with regret. I could've taken a job at WNAT/WMIS when I was 15; I could've worked in radio (yes, I have a face made for radio), I could've learned to produce TV news. There's no good reason for why I didn't do that--I just didn't like country music, and I was afraid of being on Franklin Street alone at night. It was a fearful time in Natchez, right after Bobby Irby's murder... but that's no excuse.

I love what I do now, and I wouldn't want to trade my time at Olsson's for anything; I played Suzanne Vega's guitar, for goodness' sake! Today, though, I did play alternative universe in my head for a little while.

I. Have. Homework.

Like, seriously. Not grading papers or writing lesson plans. Honest-to-goodness homework. Whose idea was this again? Oh, right. Mine.

Sunday night was just dinner, too noisy to really get to know people. Monday was mostly people talking to, or possibly at, us. We learned that we are going to find an angle on "Teens Today" to write about. We are, er, not enthusiastic, but we go out, mostly in pairs, to accost young people. Now, one of my main problems with this is--when did I become a NOT young person? Cause here I was, thinking, man, I'm young! Also, I'm youthful. Apparently, those kids I teach are a whole different generation from me. Who are, of course, much worse than we ever were. And I have a problem with that, because I was bad. Yes, I was. No, I'm not going to tell you about it. A lot of my kids are better behaved and more responsible than I was, although I was probably smarter.

Well, so we got through the initial fear of talking to people and started to think of angles and stories. More on that later.

Today we walk into our classroom and find our name tents have been moved around. They moved me from the front to the back. Now, they were probably smart to do that, because I was enjoying the back row. On the other hand, I'm not good for the front row because I can't keep my mouth shut. But, we learned about design today and that was lovely. Now, I have to go do my design homework and then get some sleep. If I'm lucky, I'll get some pictures tomorrow--it is supposed to be a lot cooler, and we may get a little free time during daylight hours.

Life is a highway...

It was hard to stop in Columbia, once I finally got here. It's weird to stay on one Interstate for so long, just driving ever westward. I crossed a skinny Mississippi River and played my road trip soundtracks (more later). I tried to take pictures and send them mobile-ly to the blog but that's not working for me right now.

Road Trip 2007 Soundtrack
Careful-Guster
Route 66--Chuck Berry (I was only on it for a moment)
Sugar Cane --Mary Gauthier
Down at the Twist & Shout --Mary Chapin Carpenter
Stolen Car -- Patty Griffin
Beer Town--Session Americana (St. Louis, obviously)
Everybody's Talkin' -- Madeline Peyroux
Haven't I Been Good -- Katryna & Nerissa Nields
Brother Lee -- Citizen Cope (both sides of the Mississippi)
River -- Madeline Peyroux (the only version I have on CD)
Into your Arms -- Lemonheads
People Look Around -- Catie Curtis
Money for Floods -- We're About 9 (the quintessential Missouri song, by Richard Shindell)
Tomorrow Night -- Jennifer Kimball (written by Patty Griffin)
Amaze Me -- Girlyman

I played Carrie Newcomer all the way through Indiana, knowing that sense of place shapes her songs, looking for the places. Early Sunday morning, though, light traffic, a good front door--I wasn't in Indiana very long.

I will be blogging what I can of the Institute. There's a woman I should remember from LSU but I don't, and a woman who teaches at Natchez High--can't wait to pick her brain. Hopefully tonight will be mostly social and I can start learning names!

Pack up all my cares and woes....

I'm going to Missouri!

I will be a fellow at the American Society of Newspaper Editors Journalism Education Institute, at University of Missouri, in Columbia, MO, for two weeks. Wow, that's a mouthful. Basically, I get to study scholastic journalism at the home of scholastic journalism; no one thought journalism was teachable until Missouri began teaching it. It's very odd to me that they call their school "MU", which defies journalistic style! There's a lot of contention with school names in Louisiana. We LSU alumni had to fight to keep those Cajuns from becoming "UL". They only finally got the name change because they got a woman in the governor's mansion!

Today I will be packing, which will freak the cats out. I just hope I remember everything I need!

I'm going to blog my trip & journalism stuff while I'm there, because I will probably have the Journalism I classes make their own blogs. Also, we're supposed to talk about blogs at least a little bit at the Institute.

First Pictures!

Chocolate-Mint cookies from Maida Heater. They might be the best cookies I've ever made. I will try to send a sample to my cookie-tester, but I don't feel confident they will survive to Saturday, much less survive a plane flight with dynaboy.






We have been travelling lately. I think this is from Cambridge.






On the needles: Mason-Dixon washrag in lavender and yellow.











This blogging stuff is kind of fun. Guess I should try to get some readers. Or not. If anyone stumbles across this, please tell me how you got here and especially if you have a blog, how you got readers. I'm gearing up to ask for help with the knitting, so I guess I do want readers. I find it very hard to ask for help at either of my LYS's. Usually, I'm making up a pattern, or I didn't by the yarn there, or something stops me.

Take a deep breath...

and update the blog.

Obviously I'm not really ready to do this, but I'm going to try. I long to add pictures--give me time.

I re-vamped a sideways knitted sweater from some magazine (Knit 1, maybe) to be a back to front sweater. It's Maggi's Linen, in a lovely lavender. I think the idea of knitting a sweater in one piece like this will really work for me, and I can probably make it sort-of V-necked. It might come out a little too vest-y.

I'm knitting a MDK kimono in Tofutsies, doubled, in that shocking pink-orange-red combo, for a girl whose nickname so far is "the snorty pig". I think she needs a little feminine luxury.

Since no one is reading this but me, I will at least use it to plan my next project, which I want to be Tomato from No Sheep for You. First, I have to check the book out from the library again! Then I'll have to run down some Blue Sky cotton. Heading to Cambridge, MA and Concord, NH this weekend. I want to convince my mom to drive down to Noho to WEBS, but we'll see.

Pictures if I finish something!

Clearly I am suffering from delusions of free time...

I am no longer, in the words of the Mason-Dixon Knitting ladies, "sadly blogless". This means I will be able to participate in the one-skein swap of non-wool yarn this summer! Yay!

However, it means I have lost my mind. I do not need to blog. I need to knit. I know how I am; I will spend too much time playing with colors and fonts and posting pictures. It must be because my yearbook class finally finished this year's book and I am desperate for a project. Never mind that I'd like to finish my first sweater before the first hot day, if a hot day ever arrives.

I have tried to blog before, thematically, even, and failed miserably, so who knows if this will even take.