This is today’s granola selection. Humorously titled, or scandalously titled, depending on the mood you are in when walking down aisle number four one of the local grocery store. This was the third variety I’ve tried since this little experiment began last week. My skin is positively glowing from all of this healthy eating.
The label promises a triple berry crunch. “Take that, Mostly Naked granola! We’ve got THREE berries!”
It’s not my favorite. It tastes like an imitation of the Captain Crunch berry flavor, or perhaps the opposite is true. It’s a bit of a sickly sweet flavor. It might have been one berry too far. The back of the package tells you that “sweet strawberries” and “bold blueberries” and “cranberries” are inside.
First of all, the cranberry lobby has to work on this. They’re falling behind on the branding. Also, there are toasted pumpkin seeds, I’m sure that’s meant to counter the berries which, again, the label promises to be “UNAPOLOGETICALLY AMAZING.”
What if my taste buds are changing? What if the too sweet thing is now too sweet for me? This is quite existential.
Tomorrow, I’ll add raisins to that variety. When three dried fruits are too many, four may be just right.
This is the 23rd installment of We Learn Wednesdays, where I ride my bike across the county to find the local historical markers. This is the 42nd and 43rd marker we’ve seen in this series. Both have to do where this modern county office building resides.
Prior to being a place where important government bureaucracy takes place, it was a jail. This very building. And before that, an older building was the town’s slammer.
And prior to all of that, the first jail was just down the street. The first jail was established in 1692. Tough on crime since the 17th century. But that was just down the road, which was, I’m sure, a sandy, dusty path.
Before it was the jail, this lot was the old market. Indeed, this is where the stret name comes from. And it might be hard, from this distance, to determine which precipitated the other. The old store, or the now historic building that sprung up around it. It’s a weary little area, weary but proud.
Between that, the late night of this search, the centuries-ago timeline, and the incredible ubiquity of the term “Market House” I’ve come up empty here.
Let’s wrap up January this way. Here’s my dive buddy in Cozumel, and some great shots of some yellow grunts, an angelfish if you look in the right spot, a terrific flounder specimen and much more.
Don’t worry, at this rate I’ve still got days and days of underwater material to share. February is going to be colorful around here, too.
It got up to 42 degrees here today. And, for the best part of the day, it was sunny. This, I think, is why I have the unshakeable and mistaken feeling that spring is just around the corner. It’s the sun. I’m in recovery from years of the midwest’s monotonous gray skies. Right or wrong, early or on time, I look outside and think, it’s coming.
“It” being spring.
But it’s not. Not yet. We could be two months out from spring, somehow, but I see green grass and blue skies and shadows and I smile. I smile and I wait and wonder.
Where I park on campus I have to go through a little security checkpoint. There’s a guy in a hut and he’s looking for a sticker on my car. The guy that works the evening shift is an older gentleman. Quick with a smile and full of good patter. Every time I see him my goal is to make him laugh. I don’t think he gets a lot of that in his work role, because he’s always the one delivering the cheery spiel and the interactions may be plentiful, but they’re necessarily brief. So I try to bring a joke, or an unexpected reply to a gregarious man who has one-liners down to an art. But when you get him, he’s got a fantastic laugh. I asked him if he, too, thought it felt like spring. Two more months, he said.
I was afraid of that. But I smile and I wait and wonder.
Tonight in class we talked about some of the work of Lev Manovich and Jurgen Habermas. The students get Habermas pretty well. Manovich is a bit of a mystery, but they come around. We also talked about Photoshop, because that’s coming up in class.
I start this spiel like this. You don’t have to know everything about Photoshop for this class. You do need to some things, and we’ll touch on many of those. We have terrific tutorials available to you online, and I’ll try to one-on-one with you, if it might help you. I tell them they can follow along on the incredible tutorials and spend 19 hours and be well-versed. I tell them the way you learn this program is by doing, and that there are several ways to do the same thing, which comes down to preference and your efficiency. I tell them I have been using Photoshop for a quarter of a century, now, often on a daily basis, and I don’t know how to do everything. Don’t sweat it. You learn as you go.
I say, if I were a gambling person I would bet you a dollar that I will learn something about Photoshop, this program I’ve used for 25-or-so years, in the course of this class. And so then we do a few things on the big screen — which the students tolerate, I’m pretty sure.
In the new version of Photoshop there are mini-tutorial videos built in. You mouseover a tool or a panel and this little box pops up. You can play a short video that gives you an overview. It’s well done. I point out a few of those. And then, on the third one, I actually play the video. It runs 52 seconds. Tutorial demonstrated.
And then I say to the class, “Remember how, about 10 minutes ago I said I would learn something about Photoshop? Just did.”
Big laugh. Human element of the class instructor established. Another thing crossed off the To Do List.
Back underwater. It is a mild winter here, but I’m still in Cozumel in my mind.
Check out this anemone, which the divemaster is helpfully pointing out.
Look who is strong!
In an upcoming post, I have a great and impressive anecdote to share about strength underwater. So keep coming back to look for that.
But, for now, here’s another mysterious brown bowl sponge.
Or, if fish are more of your thing, here’s a closeup of a sergeant major.
And this is the saddest site you can see on a good dive. You’re tank is running low, and you’re having to ascend on an afternoon dive.
I’ve got another good six, eight minutes of air there, guys.
(For some reason, I suck down the first third of a tank like I’m never going to breathe again, but I can stretch out that last 1,000 or 1,200 for longer than anyone would think possible.)
It probably has to do with heart rate. So let’s talk about cardio. Since I last talked about riding my bike, last Wednesday, I’ve covered 164 miles, and am on a nice little streak of six consecutive days with a ride. My legs are starting to notice, too.
One of those rides was in virtual Scotland. I saw the virtual aurora borealis.
A friend of a friend has a wife who seems … I only met her briefly, once, several years ago. She leaves an impression and it might be the wrong one altogether. Anyway, we were talking about Alaska and she was talking about the shopping there and what there is to do and what isn’t there, and all of those sorts of conversations are insightful about a place, because you can learn new things, and a person, because you can learn what they value.
She found the aurora borealis to be utterly boring. And the malls, too.
I have never seen the aurora borealis in person, but whenever there are photos, videos, when a news story pops up, or when I see them in virtual Scotland, I get a good laugh.
So boring.
Anyway, with any luck, in a few days I’ll set a new personal mark for most consecutive days riding. This is the sort of thing that means nothing to anyone, but the person doing it. Eventually, it won’t mean much to that person, because there will be other goals to achieve.
If my legs keep working.
Tomorrow, we’ll see how January worked out, mileage-wise. The cycling spreadsheet returns for 2024.
Saturday morning meant a continuation in the granola experiment. This is flavor two of this brand, and also my third granola ever. I believe this one is the basic offering from Bob’s Red Mill. Last week I tried their maple sea salt variety. On its own, it was a bit over-sweet. I tried it with some raisins and that was much better. But, Saturday, and today, I gave this one a shot.
It’s a bit cleaner, a bit simpler. And quite tasty. But it is missing something. And while I’m no taste expert and even less of a granola connoisseur, that might be as precise as I can get.
Today, I put a box of raisins — the generic store brand of raisins, which is always the preferred dried grape — in the bowl. And today, this tasted like a favorite cereal of my youth.
Crispy Wheats ‘n Raisins was introduced in the late seventies. It found its way in our cereal cabinet, the low one to the left of the oven, alongside the Froot Loops and Cookie Crisp and Rice Krispies and Apple Jacks. Only one of those I ate so much of I can’t consider eating today. It seemed like Apple Jacks got stuck on the grocery list every day. But despite all of those hyper cereals, Crispy Wheats ‘n Raisins was the best. Sales plummeted somewhere near the turn of the century and General Mills discontinued the brand. But it was good stuff, and definitely the best raisin-based cereal. This bowl this morning is the closest thing I’ve had to that taste. I’ll have to remember this combination.
Phoebe likes it too. She’s in danger of ruining her good girl reputation with her aggression for milk. She’ll sit and stare and if you get distracted by things like putting the milk cartoon back in the refrigerator, she’s over in a flash.
You’ll note that she’s not on the countertop, which is against the rules. She’s on the box which is on the countertop. We don’t have a rule against that.
And when she gets down, Poseidon is ready for his shift.
Buncha jailhouse lawyer cats around here.
Poe is much better about milk. It’s one of the few times when he isn’t an active bother. When I’m done, I’ll give Phoebe a tiny bit. Poseidon sits patiently and watches. This is the only time he will allow her to do a thing when he doesn’t insert himself. I’ll give him a tiny little sip of what’s left, just so he can have a taste. But not too much.
This big bad cat can’t handle his milk.
This weekend I finished Studs Terkel’s Hard Times. It’s an oral history of The Great Depression, with interviews all conducted in the late 1960s. Terkel worked for the WPA’s Federal Writers Project during the depression, particularly in radio. He spent a significant part of his career keeping the craft of oral history alive. A few decades after this book, he would win the Pulitzer Prize for another oral history series. That book is in my queue, as well. But, today, The Great Depression!
He traveled all over the country talking to people from all different walks of life, and different generations, about life in the 30s. And some of these stories are tough, but just as many of them are comically funny. I don’t think any one anecdote can explain the time to the rest of us, but it’s pretty obvious that one person’s experiences can inform us about them. And so, in this book, you get dozens and dozens and dozens of people’s experiences.
In this collection, at least, I think you can group people into one of three broad categories. You had people who lost everything, of course. And some of them learned to survive, and some learned how to thrive. Among them, you’d see people have a wide array of reactions to what the U.S. government did, or didn’t, do to solve the problems of the day. Among them, you find a certain group of people, particularly those that were young and previously of some means, that had a eye-opening experience when their parents lost it all.
In the second, smaller group, you’ve got people who weren’t directly impacted by the depression, or at least, a generation later, wouldn’t admit to anything of the sort. Throughout, people talk about how people who lost everything reacted, how they felt it was a personal failure, how that informed everything about them for a time, if not forever. But in this second group, you would have some people who weren’t touched by the Depression. People who thought others who were down on their luck deserved to be there. Or they just didn’t see it at all. No soup lines in my town, no apple sellers on my corner, this sort of thing. No direct exposure makes denial that much easier. And this second group would be people full of people in this general condition.
The third group of people would be the youth. The children of people who experienced The Depression. Teens and twenty-somethings in the 1960s. Unless Terkel was cherry picking, these young people were almost entirely ignorant of the Depression. At best, you’re left with the impression that people didn’t want their kids to know about their struggles. And sometimes bliss looks dumb.
Last night I started a new book, something I picked up for the Kindle. It starts with the death of Terry Tempest Williams’ mother. And it grows from there.
Mother tells the daughter that all of her journals are hers, but don’t read them until she’s gone. And soon after, she dies. Later, the daughter feels ready to look in those journals. They’re all neatly arranged, waiting. They’re all empty. And, from this, the author has put together 53 other essays on womanhood, memorializing her mother, musing on her faith and filling the empty places.
It’s lyrical in its own way, and it feels like a journal. I’ll probably be through it in a few sittings. I didn’t really know what I was getting into with this one. The title and the blurb were intriguing, good reviews on Amazon and sometimes that’s how you uncover something you wouldn’t otherwise happen upon. It’s a fast read, When Women Were Birds. I bet, by the end, the already accomplished writer will find her true voice.
And if you don’t want to read, we can always go diving. Let’s go!
Here are a few more shots from our recent trip to Cozumel. Here’s one of me. My dive buddy took this one.
I think it’ll eventually wind up as one of the rotating banners here on the blog.
And if you think that a photo of me means I’m running out of other fish of the sea, nope.
In this one we have three or four different species, including grunts and a stoplight parrotfish and an angelfish.
Also, the classic pufferfish flyover.
But, for my money, this is still the best fish in the sea.
Tomorrow, more underwater scenes, something on the bike and something about campus — where I must go to right now — ya know, the usual Tuesday stuff.
Cozumel / Friday / photo / SCUBA — Comments Off on Let’s ease your way into the weekend 26 Jan 24
We had pancakes this morning, so there is no granola update for you. But Monday, there will be a granola update. I’ll be sure to have plenty of things to update you with, in fact. Because I’ll have a good two, three days of opportunities to do things that can fill this space.
Today I worked outside a bit, and rode my bike downstairs for a bit and did some work upstairs for a bit. And that was it, really.
Also in the basement is where the plants are growing. I brought in eight plants when the weather turned. I put in two grow lights. Water them lightly every other day and mist them on the alternates. All of them are doing quite well.
Two of them are flowering. This guy, in fact, is doing better in the basement than he did all summer on the back step.
I wonder how many of them will need to be replanted in the spring. I wonder when I can take them back upstairs and outside. March, probably. Maybe April. Though the long-term forecasts are contributing to this unshakeable feeling that spring is just around the corner. Unshakeable. And entirely mistaken.
Let’s wrap up this week with some more beautiful underwater scenes from Cozumel. (Man, I want to go diving right now.)
Behold, this aquarium shot, which will soon be on the front page of the site.
I was able to sneak up on another boxfish.
And here’s a beautiful stoplight parrotfish.
We saw a little spread of coral nurseries. One of our divemasters was also a biologist, and we were talking with him about these sorts of cultivation efforts. Turns out they aren’t always easy. I think working on a program like this, or a seagrass restoration project would be a terrific vacation.
“Blue carbon” is the name for carbon captured by the world’s ocean and coastal ecosystems. Seagrass meadows play a massive part in this.
Often referred to as the ‘lungs of the sea,’ seagrasses are capable of capturing and storing large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. And, although seagrass accounts for less than 1% of our ocean, seagrass is responsible for up to 11% of the carbon intake! In fact, oceanographers estimate seagrass can be up to 35 times more effective than rainforests in terms of carbon uptake and storage abilities.
Coral reefs are complex and ancient habitats. They have been a feature of life on Earth for around 500 million years.
They are a critical component of life in the ocean. Often referred to as “rainforests of the sea,” coral reef ecosystems are one of the most biodiverse in the world.
Around 25% of all marine species rely on coral reefs, including sharks and sea turtles, crustaceans, and schooling fish.
And cute, shy little guys like this grunt live around the coral.
And my favorite fish swims around coral, too!
Have a great weekend. We’ll hear from the kitties, talk books, see more fish and much, much more.
I made a culinary innovation this morning, the likes of which will surely land me my own cooking show.
This would be my second cooking show pitch. The first one was, in my estimation, even better. The host is a character who plays an earnest, straight up sort, but he can’t cook. He’s also a bachelor. So the entire show is a dry humor examination of what that guy does to subsist, nutritionally. It’d be a short show, because he’s a bachelor who can’t cook, see. But there’s a lot of comedy in cold cuts and Hamburger Helper, I’m certain of it.
Today’s move — and if you happened to be in your kitchen at the same I was in mine and making this happen, you might have felt it too — isn’t earth shattering, but it is destined to change breakfast paradigms everywhere.
In an attempt to cut the taste of the maple syrup in the new granola, I did this.
Grapes! Dried raisins! The store-brand even!
It worked perfectly, HGTV. Now where do I sign?
If you’re wondering, this is the granola brand, which kicked off this new breakfast experiment yesterday. The serving sizes on the back of the bag aren’t for normal human beings, but there’s at least another day in here.
What I’m thinking of doing, because I bought four different varieties from three brands, is mixing the last ones together. That day, in a few weeks, some random Wednesday when I don’t see it coming, is when I’ll stumble on the perfect mixture. The flavor profile will send me to the studio to right songs about the experience, and I’ll spend the rest of my days chasing that mixture, the mad breakfast alchemist who can’t ever quite get it right again.
I forgot to include this here, but one of the big sheets of snow that slid off the roof was hanging at almost eye level over the back door. It was the perfect height to admire and fear. And so I give you 58 seconds of zen.
Even though it has warmed up and the snow is now all gone, it’ll be days before I can go out that door without thinking about an avalanche of mushy, days old snow landing on head, getting down my shirt, into my shoes.
Much better than that, picturing myself being underwater. When we were in Cozumel recently it was the low 80s every day. Just perfect.
Here’s my favorite fish.
It just occurred to me that these are the photos I like best, and I don’t take many of them. So I have to diving again. Drat!
You can’t see this ray, because this ray is hiding from you. Keep moving, stranger.
Here’s another shot of our old friend the black triggerfish. This fish is the pinstripe, skinny tie wearing fish of the sea, and you know it.
He might know it, too.
I don’t think we’ve seen the spotted trunkfish (Lactophrys bicaudalis), or boxfish, on this trip yet. If the triggerfish wears the fashionable suits, the trunkfish is the guy who really thinks he’s a hipster, but he’s trying too hard.
The trunkfish is a slow mover, owing to its size. It eats shrimp and mollusc and sea urchins and sea cucumbers. It has a toxin that is dangerous to ingest. The spots are actually a “stay away” warning for predators. Wikipedia tells me that predators as large as nurse sharks can die from eating a trunkfish.
Oh, look. A lobster. “Keep it moving,” he says with his antennae. Peering in at lobsters always feels intrusive, somehow, even moreso than just floating over his home, as we do.
No wonder they are always pointing the way toward the best currents. He does not want you to see what he’s warming up the butter for back there.
We haven’t visited the Re-Listening project in a while. This is where I’m playing all of my old CDs in the car, in the order of acquisition. These aren’t reviews, but ways to pad out the site with videos, and, occasionally, a trip down memory lane. The prevailing memory here is from the summer of 2004.
This song came on MTV or VH1 or whatever was on and within 60 seconds I realized I needed to buy the record.
And so I did. This is the only Keane CD I have, which is a shame. In terms of British fame it’s the Beatles, Oasis, Radiohead and Keane. This debut album was the eighth most sold of the oughts in the UK, where it lodged at number two on the year-ending charts. On the weekly charts here in the U.S., “Hopes and Fears” peaked at 45. The debut single didn’t chart here, apparently, but hit the top 10 in a half dozen other countries, and was certified double platinum in the U.K.
None of this seems to fit my memory, but the web isn’t wrong about things like this.
The second single’s video went minimalist. I’m sure this is the Beatles and Apple influence.
Anyway, it was good for car singing, and I don’t seem to have a lot of specific memories attached to it, otherwise. Other, that is, than the observation that pop music had (with the exception of Ben Folds) all but turned the piano into an exotic instrument by then. This is the alternate video for the fourth single, because labels were still doing that back then, and it is a study on the limitations of media technologies.
The last single on the record enjoyed a bit of success in the United States. “Bend and Break” landed at 20 on the alternative charts. And the video is enough to make me regret having never seen them live. It looks like it could be a good show.
Keane have released four more records over the years, three of which hit the top 20 in the US, and two in the top 10. The oversight of my not having them in the personal collection are mine alone.
And Keane are still going. This year they’re celebrating 20 years of this record, which is a thing bands must do now. They’re touring extensively across Europe for the first part of the year, but they’ll be visiting North America late in the summer. I could see them in September.
How many shows are too many shows in September, anyway?
