Oh it was hot today. The shade was a good four or five degrees cooler, and I was grateful for the shade. There’s a reason people move more slowly where I’m from, and this is that reason. In the old days, before forced air, a person would perish in the real heat. And sometimes they’d do that before they burst into flames. It’s true. You don’t read about it in books all that often, because the books would ignite too. Also, they ban some books there now, which is, we can all agree, just about the most offensive and dumbest performative thing you can do to a collection of ideas. Though the act of doing so does seem to create a lot of curiosity about the ideas contained therein. An inquisitive and rebellious human nature has that going for it.
There’s no reason at all I’m on that subject. It’s really hot here today. It was hot tonight. And humid. It was humid like home. And there were insects everywhere. But we’ll get to that.
Well, class. I have one class on Tuesday. This is Digital Media Processes, and its about the structure and concepts behind our social and digital media. And if that sounds fun, it is! But more is watching me stumble my way through trying to find an easy way to discuss what it means to discuss the conceptual nature of things without getting ahead of myself, which is precisely what I did today. Hey, it was my first day, too.
This was my 19th first day. One day, I’m going to be good at it. Maybe on the 20th first day.
This class was supposed to be in the same building where my office is, but it got moved for logistical reasons and so now I must walk some 450 feet feet and around a corner, to another building. There on the corner is a fiberglass statue. It is a statue of a man and woman in a deep hug and perhaps a passionate kiss, depending on where you are standing. And I’m wondering how many times I’ll walk by it before I think something like, “Awwww, that’s nice,” or “Get a room you guys!” Twice as I walked by it today, I had that sort of reaction to the statue. Let us chart, this semester, how long it takes for something to sink into both sides of my brain.
The class is on the fourth floor of this building, which is where they put all the great classes, and all of the professors who have been nominated for teaching awards. But they don’t, apparently, put air conditioning in that class. I was sitting at the desk in the front of the room sweating, and it wasn’t nerves. My jacket may have been too heavy for this early in the term. Every jacket is.
Anyway, we did Syllabus and Expectation Day. I talked about what the class was. You’re threading a needle there, I think. I need them to come back. I need them to think this is interesting or useful for them. I don’t want to overwhelm them on the first day. I also need to tell the story of the class and introduce myself and get them talking just a little bit, because they’re going to be doing that a lot this term. And I need to show them the course and a slide deck and I have 75 minutes to do all this.
Here’s my bet, I’ll get back in the groove of laying out and delivering a 75 minute class before I figure out that statue is a statue. Time my brain understands — despite how often I am late in arriving at places. I can still talk 60 seconds without a clock and wrap it up on the post, because of my time in broadcasting, and I haven’t been on the air since the Bush administration. Seventy-five minutes I’ll get adjusted to. My other class, which runs two hours and 45 minutes, I’ll get adjusted to. Can I manage both in one semester? Is that a statue, or are those real people, moving slowly? Very. Very. Slowly.
We traveled from our campus to another campus to see my god-niece-in-law (just go with it) play in her first university field hockey game. I’ve known this little girl her whole life and now we’re watching this young woman, on day two of being a college student, start for her field hockey team as a true freshman.
She’s playing as a forward. She’s been working hard and I’m sure she’ll continue to work hard. The game didn’t go their way this evening. There were two lightning delays. And then the bugs descended. Have you ever been to an event at night where that really fine mist plays on you? The sort where you can’t really see it, but you can feel it and it is so obviously there? And then you look up into the lights and you can see all of that rain dancing and reflecting the light? This was like that, only with insects. More insects than you need to see at one place. The team we were there to see were the visitors and the home team needs to invest in some bats. If they did, those bats would live well.
At one point, the insects were just falling on us. Not flying into us. Falling on us. We joked that despite the two lightning delays, and the continued lightning that the officials ignored in the second half, that they would only call the game if two more almost-plague-like events occurred.
The home team, who no one likes very much won the game. The Knights, who we were cheering on, will fight on again another day. Lane played 52 minutes in probably the most humid conditions any of those young women have ever experienced. It felt like home, honestly. We — her parents were there, as where her grandparents and her aunt and some of her cousins — were sweating just sitting, dodging insects, and cheering on the Knights. Field hockey players do a lot of running.
I have seen enough to see how she is progressing at the craft. When she’s had a few more games in hand I’ll be interested to hear her opinion on how this game is different than the high school version. I noticed a bit of that here, in this one example, and this sport is inscrutable to me. (I stood behind the goal of one of her last high school games and, to me, a soccer goalie, I could see the game a lot better and understand it a bit more, but there’s always a lot to learn.)
Started her first game! She is that rare young person that can peer into the long term. I suspect she’s going to soon come to realize that if she keeps working hard, even better things are going to come her way. Sometimes the ball lands at your feet. She’ll be ready to put it in the cage.
Finally, since it is the first day of the month, I did all of the regular first-day-of-the-month things. I cleaned my desktop. I cleaned the downloads. I emptied the computer’s trash bin. I updated my boilerplates. I updated the spreadsheet where I keep site stats. (Doesn’t everyone do that?) Last month had the most visits in the 22-year history of the site. More than a quarter of a million! I don’t know why you’re all here, I’m grateful for every one of you that isn’t a bot. I’m glad you came back. I hope you’ll do it again.
Also, I updated the art on the front page of the site. This is another 10-photo collage from South Africa, at the Cape of Good Hope. Here’s the theme, but then go look. This will be here when you come back.
Those images will stay up for a month. I’ll update them again for October. Let’s all have a great time until then, shall we?
More tomorrow, including the second first day of classes.
