Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Friday / photo / site — Comments Off
11
Apr 25

The problems of spring

This is a glorious time of year. The changing of seasons, the warmening of the soil, the bluening of the sky, the wettening of everything, these are lovely things, full of the promise of the future. The promisening of the future, if you will.

But there are things to complain about. There’s the pollen. And there is the impermanence of the weather. Granted, this one differs based on where you are. Some places spring just two or three days before you’re slouching your way into a bone-melting summer. Some places spring comes non-too-soon. Perhaps it just feels like a flirtation of spring. There’s the inconsistency, for a time, of the greenening of things. And there’s all of that winter and fall to deal with. Where do all those extra leaves come from?

Then there are the flowering buds.

Here’s what I’m urging the horticulturists and the botanists, the agronomists, the biologists, the bio-technologists and the plant breedologists to do: develop an attractive shrub, or dwarf tree, that blooms throughout the growing season.

Sure, this will take a little more energy, blooms are consumers, but think of the propagation possibilities of a plant that can offer bugs and bees pollen for months on end —

I now see the problem with this plan.

But maybe it’d be worth it. Isn’t everything so beautiful in the spring?

We’re going to have a brief hiatus on the blog. I’ve spent this week catching up, just in time for the end-of-semester pace to kick in. I’m hoping that, next week, I can get ahead of things for a change. Which will be great, because it will allow me time to get behind again in the weeks that follow. That’s the run to mid-May, just trying to stay in touch with the schedule and its demands.

But I’ll be writing here again on April 21st.

Maybe someone will figure out the ever bloomening tree by then.

photo / Thursday — Comments Off
10
Apr 25

Our backyard is becoming a colorful place

It seems I am forever grading things. Or in a meeting or performing the email ritual. Maybe those are the places this week is going. Who knows?

No, really. Who knows? I have no idea.

Anyway, things are shaping up nicely in the backyard. These were all photos from earlier this week.

Yes, it takes the first full week of April for things to turn neon green around here. It’s lovely, but much delayed.

I think this tree should flower all summer long. That’d be a delightful thing to see.

The camellias will. These guys are pretty amazing. They just sit alongside the house and do their thing. Asking for nothing, other than your attention.

And that bush deserves it. Maybe I’ll replace the email ritual with a shrubbery habit.

photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
09
Apr 25

Catvertising

I’ve been derelict in my cat sharing duties, and they let me know it. So let’s jump in here. We have a chalkboard wall in the kitchen, and I thought I’d use it for a little advertising. I am an excellent copywriter, and have the journalistic and academic accolades to prove it. Apparently, I can write good ad copy, as well. Poseidon was susceptible to my powers of suggestion.

Phoebe was unimpressed. She’s not falling for that sort of messaging. I think, in fact, she might be a little embarrassed by him.

Class today was group presentation day. I’d paired off the students and they each picked a country and had to research and tell us about the media there. I’d naively thought we’d get through 10 groups today. We did five.

But we learned interesting things about South Korea — they have more video gaming centers there than we have McDonald’s, apparently. We also had a presentation about Spain, where we learned about how the mass media has behaved during government transitions. A group told us about the cultural influences on the media in Brazil. Two others told us about France. One of them tried very hard to pronounce French names, but struggled throughout. The other speaks French, and it showed. And we also learned about the media in Switzerland, which has a strong public media (most of Europe does) and is otherwise heavily influenced by their surrounding nations and cultures. But their flag is a big plus!

Five more countries to go next Monday, when we’ll learn more about Italy, Germany, Mexico, Ecuador and Cameroon.

photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
08
Apr 25

Spring showed up

Over the last week or so spring has sprung here, where the heavy land and the green sands meet. It takes too long to arrive, spring, but it does linger a nice long while. And it positively shows off when it wants to.

It’s an interesting idea, seasons having moods. Nature has her charms and her fury, why couldn’t there also be moods? And why can’t they all be as harmonious as this?

Of course, there is one category of drawbacks involved with spring and summer.

In an attempt to keep my knees liking me, and my enthusiasm for pulling these weeds higher than the weeds themselves, this year I am purchasing a rolling stool. Sit and scoot and don’t bend over. We’ll give that a try. Even if it only works on the driveway and not the stones out back, it’ll be worth it, because I’m sure I’ll find other uses for it.

You can have too many weeds, but you can never have too many flowers, or too many seats that roll.

Anyway, it might be light around here for the next few days or more. Playing catch-up and get-ahead simultaneously is time consuming.

adventures / friends / Monday / photo — Comments Off
07
Apr 25

Back from Old Dominion

We are back from the conference, and I will now try to get back into the regular routine. Two conferences so close together, and at this high-volume stage of the semester … It will probably take weeks, if it ever happens at all. The nice thing is that Wednesday is group presentation day. We’ll learn about 10 new countries and I don’t have to do the prep work.

Why, I may as well go to another conference! Or back to Norfolk. The views were lovely.

This is from the VIP lounge atop the conference hotel. We aren’t I, and hardly VI, but we found ourselves sneaking in using the argument that we are, in fact, Ps.

The guy working the desk at the VIP lounge didn’t care, either way. It was as if knowing of its existence was the password. And so we had commanding sight lines of the waterfront.

So we went back another time. Because they also had some pretty good cookies.

They also had a clip-art-photo-ready conference table. We sat around that and enjoyed our powerful position dominating the skyline and talked about … nothing of importance. It was great.

We had a great view on Saturday evening, too, at a business meeting. As the discussion of the mass communication was discusseed, you could look right over the table and see this view behind the speaker.

Being on the water does have its charms.

We drove home yesterday. All of our friends caught their flights — indeed, we took one to the airport — outside of which I saw this modern art masterpiece.

Some of them made it home on time. Others got diverted because of weather, but they are eventually got in safely. And we’ll see them again next year, I hope. At least once a year is better than once every seven.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go come up with some presentation ideas for next year’s conference.