Time. There is so much to do, so little time to go around. In other cases, time is all you have, and the work will be finished when it is (or ever is to be) finished. The clocks of our youth rush ahead faster on some of life’s moments, and drag on for others. It is easy to lose a bit of perspective along the way, fighting with the shadows that never leave us, groping about into great unknown. It has been almost three short/long years since Martin, but I can vividly recall much of that time and place better than I can remember what happened last week.

Spring has brought with it a warm sense of new beginnings. There have already been a number of new births in our social circles, a phenomenon that really amplifies that feeling of the new and unlimited potential that it represents. Whether it is the young couple in East Nashville welcoming their first or another welcoming their third, the love they all share is really powerful stuff. Those kinds of moments in life never escape our memory, no matter how many years we put between them and the present.

I have to stop every now and then to really soak in the things around me; my wife’s loving smile, the company of friends, a beautiful day. I even look forward to the seven hours we will on the road tomorrow, assuming I do not nap through most of it.

Fall weekends are notoriously busy. I had been looking forward to heading back to Martin for homecoming for about a month or two. I serve on my college fraternity‘s Alumni & Volunteer Corporation, so the focus of the day trip was to make it for our annual meeting. We also met with the Communications Department faculty as they celebrate 30 years. The football game went into overtime, ending when TSU answered the Skyhawk’s field goal with an 11-yard touchdown run. Aside from the scheduled events, I was also able to see a number of friends who made the trip back (and some who are yet to leave).

Dear UTM Communications alumni,

I would like to invite you to be a part of our 30th anniversary tent at Quad City during Homecoming 2008 on Saturday, October 4th from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. If you have not experienced Quad City, you are in for a real treat! Along with our department’s birthday, WUTM is turning 35 years old this year and we’ll have an open house in the WUTM studios in Gooch Hall at that same time. Visit www.utmforever.com for a complete listing of events during the weekend of homecoming.

Also, the Communications Department has set up its own Facebook group, and I urge you to join it! If you are already a Facebook member, it’s easy to click on the “groups” link and search for “UT Martin Department of Communications.” You can join from there. It’s an open group. If you aren’t in Facebook, please email me at: RNanney@utm.edu, and I’ll pass along the same info.

I look forward to seeing you!

Robert Nanney, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Chairman
Communications Department

I have paid for my football game tickets and lunch pass for Quad City, although I must admit I am not sure where to pick up either.

For the last couple of nights, our DSL connection from AT&T has been less than reliable. At one point, we had less than three minutes of connectivity before having to re-reset the modem and the attached wireless router. Mostly out of frustration, I ordered one of their combined Router/Modem gateways. I wagered that at least if the connection was going to be flaky, I would only have to reset one device instead of two. I am starting to wish I had done that to begin with.

I still have a bit of trouble compartmentalizing the last couple of months so that I can get back my usual pattern of stumbling aimlessly forward. The truth about change, for better or worse, is that it eventually becomes the status quo. No matter how much turmoil and upheaval one experiences, over time it just becomes a way of life and is seldom given a second thought. If those are to be my circumstances, I wish that I were already a bit more accustomed to it.

Perhaps “aimless” is not quite the correct word. I generally end up with far more specific goals than most, but my timeframes are almost always open-ended. The marching orders typically go along the lines of “give it everything you got and hope to accomplish a few of those goals along the way.”

Maybe I should take my wife up on the offer of a walk around the park if the weather cooperates.

Nothing notable has changed in this small, rural west Tennessee town. The main corridor of the business district is closed to traffic after being green-lighted for renovations, and four-story apartment buildings are on the rise on campus. That leaves only two remaining Y-halls to go before the university completes this stanza of housing upgrades.

Other than the luncheon and a two hour and a half hour Alumni Volunteer Corporation meeting, we have not done much at all on campus. We grabbed dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant in town and drove around through a few of the residential areas close to campus. It looks as if some of the houses have been abandoned, an unusual sight for an area with a high demand for low-rent housing.

My NCAA brackets had been performing unusually well this season, but today’s Memphis win closes out any chance of picking the winner. The way Kansas is (at the moment) shellacking North Carolina, I suspect I’ll end the day 0-2. I was last in my workplace pool, but the Louisville win over Tennessee actually helped put in the middle of the ladder. The math does not work out in my favor to be able to win the pool.

Regardless, my class load for this semester ditched the jogging class and added a British Literature one. So much for never writing another research paper in college. I now have five classes stacked on top of each other on Monday-Wednesday-Friday. The benefit is that I only have a lab Tuesdays at 3 p.m., and a clear slate Thursdays.

Tonight after we got the car back from the dealership (expensive alternator replaced), she and I headed to Waverly to deposit the Verizon deposit refund. It’s important to note that such documents cannot be tendered at any bank or place of business, as if the check were cursed. We also learned about one of the horrors of driving in west Tennessee: following a swine truck. For those less experienced, not only is the smell overwhelming, but stuff comes off the truck. My advice is that if you see one of these things in your rearview, find a way to be nowhere near it when it catches up to you. Trust me.

Staff Training week “officially” begins tomorrow, although over half of the staff has been in and out of the office today. I met briefly with the Editorial Board about the grave concerns in student media and any changes we’re making to keep this ship upright. I also conducted my third “Newspaper Design Crash Course,” realizing quickly that my material needs to be revised so that I don’t have to give the majority of it from memory. Despite that, I think the session went well.

We’ve got an issue coming out Thursday (First Flight), and turning right around and publishing the following Tuesday with Issue One. We managed it last year (I forget how, but it happened), but it is tough putting out two issues when the production slates overlap. On the bright side, if we survive this, the rest of the year should be a piece of cake.

At least, one can hope.

• High level campus administrator leaves; something’s rotten in Denmark.
• Rumor mill says “home sweet home it won’t be” until at least November.
• It’s in the mail.
• A 100 percent chance of 9.7 percent shrinking refund checks.
• Ancient archetecture competition may be on the way out.
• Sporadic frivilous legal suits likely, targets unconfirmed.

Ok, so the last one’s not a story idea, but will likely lead to several stories popping up in the semester. I might have missed something, but I think that about covers all the story ideas. Some of my … ahem … more regular readers should expect phone calls in the very near future to beg for (free) help on some of them. On a slow week, any of them could be run as a lead story.

Let the games begin.