Recently in Miles Category
Marshall tagged me on his blog, so here are a few pieces of Milorad trivia for your enjoyment. Because I'm terribly uncreative at times, I'm going to model my answers on those that Marshall gave.
1) I am occasionally tagged on these things, but I almost never tag other people. I'm the blackhole of tags.
2) I generally dislike (in order from least appealing up): graduations, award shows, openning and closing ceremonies, weddings, and funerals. Of course, there are some notable exceptions to each of these categories.
3) When I played basketball by myself in the yard, I always pretended to be Rodney Monroe.
4) I don't like having to mow the grass, but I honestly enjoy doing it. Every time. I like the physical exersion of pushing the mower, and I like the sense of accomplishment as I see rows of grass become neatly trimmed.
5) I used to think music taste was important, but sometime in college I realized it was too draining to keep up with "good" music and I think I've bought exactly 1 new CD for myself in the the past 10 years since then. The CD I bought: Mink Car by They Might Be Giants. Confession: lately, I've been thinking of buying another.
6) I am addicted to being liked by Marshall Benbow. I like being liked, but my liking of being liked by him is more than my average liking of being liked. (That sounds funny, but I'm serious.)
7) The first time I shaved my head was at a Model UN conference my senior year in high school (now you will know how nerdy I was). The conference was at George Mason University (go Patriots!) and Ryan Wade and I were representing the Russian Federation. We had been assigned the USA, but due to last minute cancellations, the organizers asked for volunteers to switch countries for a more balanced and realistic conference. Ryan and I switched to the Russian Fed., and that night in the hotel, shaved our heads into mohawks to intimidate the other delegates. We won an honorable mention "best delegation" award after we requested a point of personal privledge (I used to be very good at bending parlimentary procedure to my will) and gave a 2 minute impromptu speech defending the homeland and chiding another delegate for a negative comment about how "this isn't Siberia after all."
Aside: another funny event from that conference was when a guy in a gas station asked us why we were dressed up. We told him we were there for a Model UN conference and he said, "aren't you too short to be a model?"
My mom cried when I came home without hair.
The second time I shaved my head was with Marshall and Cory when UNC IVCF met our challenge to send 20 (I think?) students to Urbana 1996. Now I like having my head shaved too.
I'm not tagging people. I have to maintain my blackhole rep.
Cory and Brooklynne made this mosaic, here's mine. If you want to join in and make one of your own, see instructions on Brooklynne's blog.
Yesterday, I finished working on the historic landmark application for 413 E. Chapel Hill Street. Now all that is left is to go before the HIstoric Preservation Committee and see what kind of recommendation we'll get. This is the first real piece of historic consulting I've done and I really enjoyed it. It actually made me think about doing this for a career instead of continuing to chase the professor life.
I think we have a good case. The building was constructed between 1924 and 1950 (see the 1950 Sanborn map paste-up below), but I think I can point to 1939 as almost certainly the year it was completed. That was the year The Seeman's Printery moved in, which was one of several well-known tenants. Seeman's was a large operation, and the presence of oil and ink from the machines explains the black stains that Evan found all over the wood floors.
There are several points that may justify a historic designation, but to me, the most compelling find was that Seeman's had been the printer of choice for African American factory workers who wrote ballads to sell on the streets for a penny apiece. I think I found some of the originals in the Broadside Verse Collection of Duke University's Rare Book, Manuscripts, and Archives Library. They had been stored at the printery for years, but at some point Dr. William Boyd (history prof. and director of Duke's libraries) convinced Seeman's to give him the last originals because he found them worthy of preservation.
They disappeared and were forgotten until I stumbled on a mention of them in an oral history recording and got some help from the very friendly library staff at Duke. That's the kind of find that you dream about when you are a budding historian.
Montana has been on my mind for the past couple of days.
Yahoo Travel declared the Madison Valley southwest of Bozeman as one of the 10 places in America that you should see before you die. The Madison Valley is pretty wonderful, but there are alot of places in Montana that could have competed for that recognition.
I was also looking up some of my old professors lately (Dr. Rydell and Smith), and I stumbled across some commericals for MSU (Montana State). You can check out the first one here, and the others are linked at the bottom of that page. I recommend that UNC hire those guys to redo our jacked up half-time ads.
As much as I complained about living in Montana at the time, it sure was great.
It's started out a sad day today. The Eve Carson thing has been on my mind. I know this is silly but for some strange reason it reminds me of the Jason Ray thing, the Phi Gamma Delta thing, and even the Henderson Street thing. Too many sad things happen.
I'm also kind of leary of this weekend. Its rainy. I have alot of school work to do. The house has degraded into a real mess that I will have to clean before Brooklynne gets back.
Top it all off with a edginess that I can't really explain well. Last night in small group, Erin was talking about psychological shalom. I would describe my feeling as partial pyschological non-shalomness. It hit me late last night and carried over to today. Have you ever felt like you needed to do something to be at peace, but you were not sure what? It probably has something to do with Brooklynne not being here coupled with guilt for not being particularly productive while she's been gone.
But one of my favorite lines from an old Caedmon's song is "get up sad bones." I can't remember if this is where they got the line, but it reminds me of God telling Job to get up and get dressed. I think I'm going to recenter myself and push forward tonight. Maybe if I knock out a couple of books tonight, I'll feel better. Here are the two I'm going to focus on:
