February 2008 Archives
My mother, Inez Hinson Watts, was born on this day in 1924 (February 23, 1924). She would have been 84 years old today. And she would have been furious with me if she knew I put this video out, but I know she understands now and is glad I have it.
Both of these videos were filmed November 8, 2003. One of the few times we have used our video camera, Ann and I had the idea to just sit and talk with Mama and actively get her to tell us stories. I have several short videos including these two. In the first, Mama tells the story of Alan Harris and the washtub with a bullet hole.
In the second one, Building Fires, Mama tells the story of being a little girl and the cold winter. Her father, my grandfather, offered her $100 to build fires every morning. The video tells the rest of the story:
Both of these videos were filmed November 8, 2003. One of the few times we have used our video camera, Ann and I had the idea to just sit and talk with Mama and actively get her to tell us stories. I have several short videos including these two. In the first, Mama tells the story of Alan Harris and the washtub with a bullet hole.
In the second one, Building Fires, Mama tells the story of being a little girl and the cold winter. Her father, my grandfather, offered her $100 to build fires every morning. The video tells the rest of the story:
These flowers came from bulbs I dug around Christmas 2006 in Octagon. We planted them before the end of 2006, they came up and a few bloomed last year. It looks like more will be blooming this year.
There's a good article on the Lookout Mountain Parkway in the Gadsden Times this morning talking about the Parkway's plans for the future and about the meeting I had with them yesterday.
National Byway Status Goal For Lookout Mountain Parkway
Always exciting to get some positive press for the scenic byways program. (And always nice to be mentioned in the news in a positive way!)
National Byway Status Goal For Lookout Mountain Parkway
Always exciting to get some positive press for the scenic byways program. (And always nice to be mentioned in the news in a positive way!)
Had a corridor management plan meeting along the Lookout Mountain Parkway today. Here's a shot of the Noccalula Falls, in Gadsden, Alabama. Photo taken by Joe Watts, Canon 40D, 17-40 f4 lens.
Last night, at 5:58, the space shuttle passed over Birmingham. It was docked with the space station, so made for a larger speck in the sky. Really interesting to watch. Not too amazing to see in my photos, but here it is. The space shuttle is the tiny speck near the really bright moon.
Went to Gadsden to a meeting of the Lookout Mountain Parkway Association today. A few photos of the falls should be up tomorrow.
Went to Gadsden to a meeting of the Lookout Mountain Parkway Association today. A few photos of the falls should be up tomorrow.
Ann and I have been going through our old video tapes and we've both been getting a better handle on how to edit and present video on the web. We've found some pretty interesting footage of Octagon Christmas in 2002 and what looks like a great talk with Mama in 2003 about Uncle CoodiSaw (*sp). We'll be posting the videos later this week.
Off to Gadsden tomorrow to meet with the Lookout Mountain Parkway folks to discuss their byway. The meeting was mentioned in the Gadsden Times. No telling how many people will show up. The more, the merrier.
Off to Gadsden tomorrow to meet with the Lookout Mountain Parkway folks to discuss their byway. The meeting was mentioned in the Gadsden Times. No telling how many people will show up. The more, the merrier.
Really excited about creating a blog for Your Town Alabama. The blog is located at www.yourtownalabama.org/blog. I'm hoping that it can take over some of the role that the bi-monthly newsletter has held. I'm imagining adding information to it as I get things, but then every two months or so requesting information and adding lots of entries in a row (may decide to do this monthly instead of bi-monthly, but we'll just have to see how it goes). So far, I'm pretty pleased with how it is going. I've got almost twenty entries, with many of the them categorized. Your Town Alabama: Designing Its Future has an annual workshop (this is the 10th anniversary--the first workshop was held in 1998. I went in 1999 to, I think, the third workshop, and have been involved ever since).
I'm really excited this morning as I can look outside and see the fruits of my labor beginning to bloom. The jonquils and hyacinths are starting to bloom. I planted the jonquils shortly after Christmas 2006 and got a few blooms last year. This year, there are many more getting ready to bloom, but this is the first. The hyacinths were planted this Christmas and I'm pretty sure that all their blooming energy was stored from last year at Mama's house. All the bulbs that I've planted in our front, back and side yards (well over 600) have come from Octagon--I really feel a little closer to home and to Mama when I see them. I've been watching them closely every day since they poked their heads through the mulch and have been hoping that they would bloom this year.
I'm still working on getting my head around all this social networking and using blogs to promote websites. I was talking with a friend on Monday and thought I'd come up with a great new term, "cross-blogging." Well, turns out someone else had the same brilliant idea that I had. Anyway, in an effort to try to make my blog more than just personal information and rambling self-adulation, I'm trying to include the occasional piece of information that might prove useful to clients, friends and, hopefully, that random lot of folks on the internet that I'd like to learn to reach better. As a result, I've created accounts for myself with youtube, digg, stumbleupon (my personal favorite for getting random good stuff) and several others. I'd suggest anyone who's blogging or trying to promote their site do the same. Here are a few generic tips, some my own and some pulled from other sources:
- Reader Attention Span. It is pretty well documented that the typical web reader has a short attention span when it comes to reading content online. My own little investigation into length of stay on blogs found that average blog readers stay 96 seconds per blog.
- Keyword-rich. If the goal of your blog is to increase your visibility, include related keywords in the title of the blog. Use the title as a headline to attract interest. Each item post should have a title that will attract attention but still be relevant to the post. The title should be no longer than 10-12 words.
- Lists and bullet points, please! You can’t go wrong with breaking down your content into ordered lists and bullet points. Readers will understand your message much more clearly if it’s separated into single elements.
- Use bold and italics typefaces. Proper usage of the bold and italics typefaces can greatly improve the clarity of your content. Use the bold attribute on words that need to be highlighted or that are delivering important messages. Italicize the title of books, publications, movies and so on.
- Readability: Put two line spaces between each of your paragraphs. This will help to break up the text into more accessible blocks of copy. Use bold to highlight sections of text that are particularly important. Think of what you are writing not as one long article, but something that can be read in bits and pieces. Make sure that it “works” for someone who is just scanning the page.
Seems it is about that time of the month again. I'm wrapping up several newsletters this weekend--the Sierra Club newsletter won't be finished this weekend, but should be close. The newsletter for CGH Insurance is pretty much ready to go and I finished the AIA newsletter early last week. I've got to get started on a newsletter for Alzheimer's of Central Alabama--I'm working on a complete redesign (something I've wanted to do for a long time). And then next week, I'm putting together a newsletter for Your Town Alabama. Pretty exciting stuff, particularly since newsletters are my favorite. Oh, and my short informational piece on newsletters (see post below) is being used by the Sierra Club to offer advice to new editors. clubhouse.sierraclub.org/communications/newsletters/ (The site is password protected, but easy to access (they give the password on the site--just a way to keep search engines from tagging the site).
I do lots of newsletters for people and was recently asked to jot down some ideas about newsletter production. These are particularly focused to the Sierra Club--that's who asked for them, but they should mostly prove useful to anyone writing a newsletter.
Contents: Some things are obvious. Include outings and events, include contact information and include some way for people to join/renew their membership with the Club.
Think Local First: The more local the information, the more of a service to the chapter or group. Providing information about an upcoming rally or an educational article about some environmental policy that directly impacts the local community is great. Providing information about something nationally or internationally significant is less useful. This, of course, depends on the national issue, but readers generally turn to the Chapter newsletter for local information first. Using national information can be useful, particularly for filling gaps, but always think local first.
Think Short: Long articles are hard to read. We print our share of longer articles, but these are often the least read. Sometimes, a long article is critical to fully explain an issue. Sometimes it needs to be cut drastically.
Think Entry Points: Always try to include some type of graphic on most pages. Include as many entry points into the copy as possible. What's an entry point? Each place on a page that someone's eye is attracted to is an entry point. Include multiple places on the page--a pull quote, a bold sentence, a heading, a subheading. Try to include logical breaks and avoid long paragraphs. More than 4 sentences is often too long. Sometimes, just adding an extra line of blank space between two paragraphs can provide a good entry point. It can also make the article feel more accessible and readable (it gives someone a logical place to pause, get up and do something else before coming back).
Think White Space: Loads of text on a page means no one will read any of it. Make the newsletter open and airy. Just because we want to conserve paper does not mean that we should try to stuff 8 pages of information into 4 pages. Less is more. Several well-done articles and a good collection of short snippets is much better than twice as many long, boring articles.
Think Positive: Sometimes, particularly under the current administration, all things seem bad. Report on something fun. Talk about a positive happening in the environment. They do exist.
Think Action: People love to feel that they are being empowered to take action. Give them a phone number, give them something to clip out and mail in. People want to help out, but don't always know how. The job of the newsletter is to tell them how to help and let them do something quickly.
Think Organization: Having the information all organized before starting to put the newsletter together is a huge plus. I place all the copy I get into Microsoft Word (one file with page breaks for articles). I then run spell check and clean up the formatting--removing extra spaces and tabs, removing odd characters, etc. From there, the information goes into my publishing program (QuarkXpress, but hopefully soon to be Adobe InDesign).
Think About a Good Starting Point: Request submissions in Microsoft Word format or jpeg. I don't particularly like Word, but most people have it and it keeps copy a bit cleaner than email does sometimes (if you've ever copied an email submission and had to remove line breaks at the end of each line, you know what I mean). Request jpeg files and make sure that people understand that size does matter and that if it is too small, it will print poorly--better to use no photo than one that looks terrible. (Requesting tif files will wind up eating up your email accounts space and doesn't provide enough added quality to be worthwhile, I think.)
These are just a few of the things that I try to think about when putting together the Alabama Sierran. Sometimes I am more successful than others. We get lots of positive comments on our newsletter--with several comments coming from people that are no longer able to participate in the outdoor activities of the Club, but who love Alabama and want to do their part to preserve it.
Hope these thoughts help.
Contents: Some things are obvious. Include outings and events, include contact information and include some way for people to join/renew their membership with the Club.
Think Local First: The more local the information, the more of a service to the chapter or group. Providing information about an upcoming rally or an educational article about some environmental policy that directly impacts the local community is great. Providing information about something nationally or internationally significant is less useful. This, of course, depends on the national issue, but readers generally turn to the Chapter newsletter for local information first. Using national information can be useful, particularly for filling gaps, but always think local first.
Think Short: Long articles are hard to read. We print our share of longer articles, but these are often the least read. Sometimes, a long article is critical to fully explain an issue. Sometimes it needs to be cut drastically.
Think Entry Points: Always try to include some type of graphic on most pages. Include as many entry points into the copy as possible. What's an entry point? Each place on a page that someone's eye is attracted to is an entry point. Include multiple places on the page--a pull quote, a bold sentence, a heading, a subheading. Try to include logical breaks and avoid long paragraphs. More than 4 sentences is often too long. Sometimes, just adding an extra line of blank space between two paragraphs can provide a good entry point. It can also make the article feel more accessible and readable (it gives someone a logical place to pause, get up and do something else before coming back).
Think White Space: Loads of text on a page means no one will read any of it. Make the newsletter open and airy. Just because we want to conserve paper does not mean that we should try to stuff 8 pages of information into 4 pages. Less is more. Several well-done articles and a good collection of short snippets is much better than twice as many long, boring articles.
Think Positive: Sometimes, particularly under the current administration, all things seem bad. Report on something fun. Talk about a positive happening in the environment. They do exist.
Think Action: People love to feel that they are being empowered to take action. Give them a phone number, give them something to clip out and mail in. People want to help out, but don't always know how. The job of the newsletter is to tell them how to help and let them do something quickly.
Think Organization: Having the information all organized before starting to put the newsletter together is a huge plus. I place all the copy I get into Microsoft Word (one file with page breaks for articles). I then run spell check and clean up the formatting--removing extra spaces and tabs, removing odd characters, etc. From there, the information goes into my publishing program (QuarkXpress, but hopefully soon to be Adobe InDesign).
Think About a Good Starting Point: Request submissions in Microsoft Word format or jpeg. I don't particularly like Word, but most people have it and it keeps copy a bit cleaner than email does sometimes (if you've ever copied an email submission and had to remove line breaks at the end of each line, you know what I mean). Request jpeg files and make sure that people understand that size does matter and that if it is too small, it will print poorly--better to use no photo than one that looks terrible. (Requesting tif files will wind up eating up your email accounts space and doesn't provide enough added quality to be worthwhile, I think.)
These are just a few of the things that I try to think about when putting together the Alabama Sierran. Sometimes I am more successful than others. We get lots of positive comments on our newsletter--with several comments coming from people that are no longer able to participate in the outdoor activities of the Club, but who love Alabama and want to do their part to preserve it.
Hope these thoughts help.
If you haven't guessed, I'm in a bit of a mood about family and sticking together. Here's what I think of as the perfect example of one of the reasons family means so much to me. My sister, Cynthia, just sent me (and all the siblings) a photo from her yard:
These flowers come from the same bulb stock that the many, many bulbs I've planted come from. Over the last 3 years, I've planted well over 500 of these bulbs (along with spider lilies, and irises and a few day lilies). What a warm feeling to know that a little bit of Octagon's post oak mud has found the way to Birmingham to brighten my day. None of my bulbs are blooming yet, but hundreds are poking their little heads up out of the dirt. It is now only a matter of time.
And so nice to see that they are blooming and bringing all of our thoughts to home and family.
I looked out my window this morning and saw something that made me smile! I thought you all might like to smile too! Yep, these are bulbs that came from Octagon about 18 years ago! It's the only one I see right now, but I'm sure there are more to come!
These flowers come from the same bulb stock that the many, many bulbs I've planted come from. Over the last 3 years, I've planted well over 500 of these bulbs (along with spider lilies, and irises and a few day lilies). What a warm feeling to know that a little bit of Octagon's post oak mud has found the way to Birmingham to brighten my day. None of my bulbs are blooming yet, but hundreds are poking their little heads up out of the dirt. It is now only a matter of time.
And so nice to see that they are blooming and bringing all of our thoughts to home and family.
I love old photos. I love old family photos, particularly. This is a photo from World War II of my Uncle Bud (my mother's brother who died of lung cancer when I was very young). When I was younger, I didn't really understand the importance of family. It seemed that friends were much more valuable. You could choose your friends, so, for the most part, they were most like you.
What I failed to understand was that friends come and go, but family is forever--or at least it should be. I put this photo of Uncle Bud here for a reason. His son, Nollie, has really proven that family is forever. When I was growing up, I hardly knew Nollie. Then, I went off to college and really lost touch with everyone in Marengo County other than my parents. In recent years, I've made some inroads back into the community. I probably know more people now than I did growing up.
I'm involved with www.alabamasfrontporches.com, the Ala-Tom RC&D, Clarke County Development Foundation and several other projects. I'm in the Black Belt at least once every couple of months working on something. And I always run into people who knew me when I was young--if they don't know me, they certainly know some of my family. Mama would be pleased that I was getting back, at least a little, to my rural roots.
But business relationships aside, I have a stronger bond to family than I ever have before. I just can't imagine going through life without a strong connection to my siblings. Having a place to go, to visit, to have Christmas and birthdays and just good times is key to this. Going home to Octagon has allowed me to connect to Nollie, It has given me a place to connect to my nieces and nephews and brother-in-laws. This tight bond would never exist without Octagon, the place that lets us all get together and be, well, a family.
What I failed to understand was that friends come and go, but family is forever--or at least it should be. I put this photo of Uncle Bud here for a reason. His son, Nollie, has really proven that family is forever. When I was growing up, I hardly knew Nollie. Then, I went off to college and really lost touch with everyone in Marengo County other than my parents. In recent years, I've made some inroads back into the community. I probably know more people now than I did growing up.
I'm involved with www.alabamasfrontporches.com, the Ala-Tom RC&D, Clarke County Development Foundation and several other projects. I'm in the Black Belt at least once every couple of months working on something. And I always run into people who knew me when I was young--if they don't know me, they certainly know some of my family. Mama would be pleased that I was getting back, at least a little, to my rural roots.
But business relationships aside, I have a stronger bond to family than I ever have before. I just can't imagine going through life without a strong connection to my siblings. Having a place to go, to visit, to have Christmas and birthdays and just good times is key to this. Going home to Octagon has allowed me to connect to Nollie, It has given me a place to connect to my nieces and nephews and brother-in-laws. This tight bond would never exist without Octagon, the place that lets us all get together and be, well, a family.
This Friday has moved along at a pretty glacial pace. On the plus side, I finished up several projects today:
- The Clarke County Development Foundation website. This is a pretty simple website using Movable Type. The basic idea is just to get information out there along with providing an extremely easy system for the client to perform their own changes as needed. While not my personal favorite website, I think that it provides the foundation with just what they were looking for.
- A mild redesign of American Mining Insurance Company's print brochure. I didn't really do a lot to this--basically refreshed the copy and updated a few photos along with adding information about the new parent company W. R. Berkley.
- A reprinting of Your Town Alabama's brochure. No real changes to this--caught a couple of things that I missed in the last printing and added a great quote from someone who attended the last workshop.
