adventures


23
Oct 24

Have I found a character for you today

You’re going to want to stick with this. I made an error, caught the error, corrected the error, and the story below got immensely better because of it.

Spent the morning grading at home — because it is another week with plenty of things to grade, and that’s what I did yesterday, what I’m doing today and what I’ll do tomorrow. This week we’re reading a critical analysis from a Dutch scholar.

But we spent the afternoon on campus. Sandwich lunch in the office. I read student assignments in the office. There was a marketing meeting. From the office of The More Things Change, someone explained SEO and we discussed WordPress. We had a nice time.

So after a lovely afternoon with colleagues, my lovely bride and I went over to the big kids’ pool. It was my first swim in four weeks.

And it felt surprisingly decent. Good, even, in places. And before I knew it, I was in that weird vacant groove and the lengths and laps just started disappearing. And then, suddenly (OK, slowly) I had an easy 2,000-yard workout under my belt.

Did not see the comet on the drive home. Mostly, we were busy chatting about class strategies and research. And now, after dinner, I’ll have to get back to grading.

But first!

We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays. The point is, riding my bike around the county, tracking down historical markers, sharing them here and trying to add a bit more context that what the signs offer us. This is the 51st installment, and the 83rd marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series.

And this time we’re going to Thomas Sinnickson’s house.

Thomas Sinnickson was born in 1797, and he blends right in with a large family, one that uses the same names over and over. Lots of Thomas Sinnicksons. Lots of Andrew Sinnicksons. Some of his elders had been in the state militia and in the Continental Army. There are two of his ancestors who served in both the state and U.S. legislature. A later Sinnickson went to Congress as well.

But those people aren’t the Thomas who built this house.

Our guy is maybe the third most famous Thomas in his family, which is to say, he’s not. His was a family that dates back to the original Swedish settlers. I spent a fair amount of time trying to trace my way through the Sinnicksons, deleting about five paragraphs of summary when I found I’d made a big generational error. But now we have it right. And it’s even more entertaining.

Thomas died at just 45, in 1842. Searches don’t tell me much about him, in part, perhaps, because of the other Thomas Sinnicksons that preceded. But we do know this. He and Clarissa had five daughters and three sons. The youngest died at just 21, in an asylum. One of the sons was a poet. One daughter moved across the country, to Oregon. (By way of sail, around Cape Horn, a six-month journey.) And in that woman there is a tale.

There’s a bit more about her, here, in the far right column. I would watch the movie about that woman’s life.

The rest of the family stayed much closer to home. Two of Thomas and Clarissa’s children made it into their 80s. All told, four of them lived into the 20th century. And this is where they grew up, surely steeped in their family’s history, and definitely in the midst of their community’s history, as we’ll see in the coming weeks.

The building was sold last year. From what I can tell, it’s been used as converted office space for quite some time.

Speaking of poets, the next time we return to the marker series we’ll learn a bit about a former slave turned poet. If you have missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.


22
Oct 24

Finally got the photo I wanted

Halloween yard decor is a big thing around here. A really big thing. A where-do-you-store-all-this-stuff-year-round thing. But this little yard is my favorite this year. This sits beside a modest house of weathered wood cladding and freshly painted trim, the house’s footprint was cut out of a tree line and farmland. It sits right up on the road, at once out of place and perfectly expected.

Beyond the over-dependence on plastic tchotchkes, this scene has one unique feature. You see it right in front of that standing skeleton.

That human-sized wrapped garbage bag. Wrapped in duct tape.

Each time I pass by, that bag is in a different spot. Cracks me up, every time.

The view from office is not bad.

A little kid plays under those trees. What a magical set of memories are getting made under those big full canopies.

(Update: I took that photo at precisely the right time. Two days later, one of those trees has dropped half of its leaves already.)

I went to campus to give a very brief presentation last night. On the way back home I think I saw the comet.

I was driving, on the phone and it was pure timing, which explains the quality of that photo.

It could be a plane, or a smear on the car’s glass for all you know. (I know it isn’t the latter.)

We went for a nice bike ride this afternoon. Well, the first few miles were nice. I swallowed a bug at about eight miles in, enjoyed a coughing and choking fit, got dropped and never really recovered.

Before that, though, I took this photo. This is the one my lovely bride usually takes, but she’s much better at the composition than I am.

Here’s my question. We’re poking along at 20, 21 miles per hour here. That’s not nothing. How does she look so casual there.

After I got dropped, I enjoyed the scenery.

Have you ever wondered what half a million dollars looks like on a farm? It looks like this combine.

Since I had a nice ride today, and it’s now a record-breaking October, and I’m ahead of my mileage projections, and we went to a cycling safety meeting tonight, I wore this shirt.

I made this a few years ago and it’s sat in my closet since then, because I oddly don’t want to wear the things I like, I guess? Worrying about wear-and-tear and stains probably means something. Anyway, it’s a cool shirt. I thought you should see it. I’m thinking maybe I should design all of my own t-shirts.

Like I have more hangars in the closet.


16
Oct 24

At least I didn’t pick the em dash

There are days with things, and there are days that are full. And the fullness of our days defines us, creates the meaning of our time.

Or at least punctuates it.

And we get to choose the punctuation! Today, I chose the ellipses.

We had two meetings on campus today. One committee-type meeting at mid-day, where a committee was loosely formed to do committee things. In the afternoon we had a department meeting, where faculty came together to discuss faculty things. In between those two meetings we had lunch. We re-arranged the office.

I returned to grading things. Then I wrote a proposal for one of our running projects. It’ll get rolled into two or three things, hopefully.

Also I wrote some syllabus language and saw some colleagues.

After the meeting, it was back home, where I worked on another project. And then returned to the grading. I’m getting that all done tonight, even if I have to do it in the morning. You’ll understand if this wraps quickly, I’ve already written a few thousand words today, some of them were pretty good.

I did not use the first ellipses.


14
Oct 24

Wasn’t that a beautiful weekend?

We only had the one night of aurora. That was Thursday. Friday night, the sky looked like it always does.

Which isn’t a knock on the night sky, but everyone would have enjoyed another light show.

The rest of these are just photos, and a video, from weekend bike rides, but don’t think of this as yet another bike riding post … well, I suppose you have to for this video. It was a road worth riding down slowly.

  

Think of it, instead, as a beautiful Saturday afternoon I got to enjoy. Watching you watering your sod …

Or letting a field sit for the weekend …

Or cutting your hay for winter …

Or imagine you sitting inside, wondering if you’d brought all of your equipment in, or left something out somewhere …

I asked my lovely bride if she’d like to go for a ride, just something easy to get outside for a while to enjoy another beautiful autumn day. She considered it, and agreed to an easy ride. I knew I was in trouble when I saw the steely look in her pretty eyes when she settled onto her aerobars.

It took a Strava segment PR and a second-best time on another near the end of the ride to stay in front of her.

To be fair, it was her THIRD workout of the day.


10
Oct 24

Up in the sky!

If you’re here for the day’s bike ride, and evidence of Halloween, that’s below. But, first, a first.

My first aurora borealis. Solar radiation and the magnetosphere in the night sky made for a lovely light show. Electrons collide with atoms and molecules of the upper atmosphere and isn’t this lovely? Ten photos below, poetry in essay form is not required.

I got in a late 15-mile ride today, a route I’ve come to think of as the neighborhood route. In truth, it includes at least three neighborhoods and several miles of farmland besides.

People around here love Halloween decorations. And, apparently, Halloween isn’t something you can do a little. To welcome the ghouls and goblins, one must go all out.

Believe me when I say, this is one of the more subdued displays.

I bet they give great candy though. How could they not?