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The stuff that makes the hodgepodge of life

Welcome back to Catober, the only month that guarantees a daily post on the site, and constant pictures of the kitties. They’ll go up each day between 10 and noon, and we’ll take turns giving the spotlight to Phoebe and Poseidon, because they’re jealous furballs. Phoebe was up first today, Poseidon takes over tomorrow, and so on. If you miss a day (and how could you?!?!?) just follow the Catober category.

But that’s not the only thing we’ll see here this month, oh no. All of the usual stuff is on tap throughout October as well, of course. One of the key features will be an extensive denial of this being October — a recurring theme of the site until March or so, of course.

But I digress.

I spent the day elbow deep in making notes for class this evening. (Class went well, thanks for asking!) The students talked about Neil Postman, a Jonathan Haidt essay and Edward Bernays.

To balance that out, I left them with this uplifting little Ron Garan interview.

We also talked about some design composition rules and color theory, because this is a class that mixes the philosophical with production. It’s an unusual hybrid as these classes go, and the students, thankfully, are up for it.

Watching them get invested in understanding Postman and the Huxleyan warning was a great moment.

The Yankee went to campus with me, to take part in a regular feature called Pizza With The Pros, a program accurately named. They bring in a sports media pro, buy pizza for the students and learning and networking take place. My Monday night class take place during this program, so I might see a few minutes here or there this semester, but not much. Perhaps I’ll be able to see more of them in a future term.

Saturday I slept in. We went for a bike ride. It was a shakeout ride for my lovely bride, since she was doing a sprint tri on Sunday. I just tried to stay in front of her as we both complained about the breeze and our legs. After, we drove over to Delaware for first state chores.

We visited a Chick-fil-A in a mall, which is the slow-moving and entirely uninspired variant of an efficient fast food distribution model.

After that, we visited a museum’s gift shop, for gifts! Actually, we picked up our Bike the Brandywine shirts. This was a metric century to enjoy the sites of the greenest parts of Delaware and the Brandywine tributary. It was supposed to be last weekend, but it was canceled in light of the rain and huge winds. That was the right decision, honestly. No way in the world you want to be on soggy roads being blown into a bunch of other cyclists, if you can help it. But we have the map for the route, so we can go back. And, Saturday, we got our shirts. They’re a nice green.

We also visited Trader Joe’s, which wasn’t busy, but was crowded, and navigating those other customers was plenty of fun. We also visited another grocery store, a Food Lion, because they carry Milo’s Tea. We could get it closer, until about a month ago, when suddenly the local stores stopped carrying it.

Food Lion is an older sort of grocery store. Everything is manual. Everything is slow. And the lines are delightfully long. This allowed us the opportunity to strike up a conversation with the older gentleman behind us, who asked about my tea. Asked where it was from. And so I got to tell him it was from a factory on a hill not far from where I am from. He didn’t think I sounded like I was from Alabama, and he wasn’t sure, he said, if that was a compliment. He didn’t sound like he was from anywhere in particular. But he’d hitchhiked through Alabama when he was young, he said. Making him one of the few out-of-staters in his age group I’ve ever met who said they’d been to Alabama but didn’t say they were one of the Freedom Riders. (I wish I’d kept count on that over the years; I don’t think there were that many buses.) He said he’d been through Montgomery. Said his mother was from Tennessee. His wife was first generation from Germany or thereabouts, and his mother-in-law, he could understand some of her dialects, but not all of them.

I thought about turning the accent on, but there’s always a question about that. should I do the fake Virginia tidewater accent everyone wants to hear? The low country accent that I don’t have? Or should I just underwhelm with the low Appalachian hills-and-hollers sound that belongs to my people, but not me?

And by the time I’d figured out how to shade my vowels, it was, finally, my time to check out.

On Saturday it was cloudy in the morning and the sun came out just in time for that bike ride. Sunday was beautiful throughout. Not a cloud in the sky, 78 degrees and a light breeze. And so I took an afternoon bike ride. I noticed this mantis hanging out on the window as I got ready to leave.

My bike computer’s battery was dead, so I had no idea how the ride started, but it felt fast. I was moving well and not working hard. The wind was behind me on my out-and-back. I thought the road was pulling me forward, but it was the breeze pushing me on.

That was something I didn’t realize until I turned around and the wind was in my face. That explains why I wasn’t riding as efficiently on the way back. Also, I was being miserly with my fuel for reasons that made no sense. But here’s the thing. I found some really quiet roads. I headed southwest, which is generally a direction we haven’t explored here yet. I saw some beautiful countryside, and some Revolutionary War era sights. And this proud little municipal building.

Not bad for a township made up of just 2,580 people.

I went out that direction to find some more historical markers. It was a successful trip, and you’ll see some of those coming up on future Wednesdays. But these views made for a fine Sunday afternoon ride.

The only problem was that, for the whole of my route, there was nowhere to stop for a snack, and I started thinking about hamburgers and fries in such a way that I couldn’t shake it. There wasn’t even anyone grilling as I rode through, which would at least explain it. There’s only so long a PB&J can last, and that actually explains it.

But it was a lovely, lovely day to spend pedaling out to the saltwater marshes and the estuaries that dot the river coastline. The area was called Wootesessungsing by the indigenous people (the Lenape, I believe it was) before the Swedish, and then the English, came in the 17th century. I learned the name on one of the signs I saw; Wootesessunging has apparently never been published online, according to two different search engines. Just goes to show, you’ve got to get out there to see these incredible things. Not all of it can be found online.

Catober will be found, though, right here, all month long. So be sure you stay online for that.

cycling / Friday / video — Comments Off
29
Sep 23

Feeling foresaken by the fusion ball

Another gray day, gray all day. I’m tired of it. Oh, sure, when it started last weekend it was novel. There was rain in it for everyone. The rain stopped on Monday. We’ve enjoyed a heaping helping of blah since, notching just one sunny day in the last eight. I thought I’d left all of that behind, not found it in September.

These are the choices we make. I took some time today to make sure that was not my prevailing mood while grading things. I am appreciative of the ability to take a little while to do that. Feedback should be positive not sour, dour and dank. My grim feelings about featureless skies shouldn’t be reflect in feedback.

In the late afternoon, or early evening, my lovely bride returned from a series of campus meetings and told me to go ride my bike. Maybe the mood was on my face, or in my shoulders. So I did head out for a brief spin. Nowhere to go, nowhere to be, didn’t even have a route planned beyond “Turn left.” And so it was that I found myself riding around on a mixture of new and newly familiar roads. All of which just means it took me an extra few minutes to get lost.

I turned back because the conditions meant it would be dark 90 minutes before necessary. Indeed, I rode through a drizzle for a half mile. It looked worse from a distance, darkening the route before me, but it was merely annoying when I got into it. Also, every crazy, harried, hurried person with a car was on the road this evening. Fridays and full moons and all of that. Sometimes, you can just feel it, a stored up ball of everyone else’s angst. Every muffler sounds a little more ragged, all of the passes are just a little too close, the intersections feel a tiny bit sketchier. So I dropped off the busier road and soft-pedaled my way back to the house through a neighboring series of neighborhoods.

And I ran into this runner along the way.

And that’s it for the week. Let the weekend commence. I hope there’s been something mildly entertaining for you here this week. We’re at 4,800-plus words, 24 photos, nine videos, some decent music and a nod to colonial-era history in the last five days. Can’t say I’m not trying.

Have a great weekend, enjoy wrapping up September and break in October in the non-pumpkin spice way of your choice.

adventures / cycling / history / markers / New Jersey / photo / We Learn Wednesdays / Wednesday — Comments Off
27
Sep 23

I’m going to show you something older than the country

Decided to go old school today. I have prepared three envelopes to send to other people. Now I must find a local post office. Let’s look at a map …

Hey, I found the post office. It’s downtown, in an old house. Many businesses around here are in retrofits. In this case, the post office is sharing an old house with a salon and a little garden center gift shop. I guess I’ll stop by there on Friday.

Tomorrow, of course, will be a full day of classes. Today was a fair amount of class prep. There’s not much fun better than practicing a lecture quietly to yourself, to test your slides. There was also an hour-long Zoom seminar. It was the sort that was of course well-intentioned, but could have been summed up in a single sentence.

But at least there was a good handout. A thoughtful How To sort of thing. Could be useful stuff, under the right conditions.

If anyone would like a copy, I can mail it to you. Or we could do a long Zoom call.

We went for a bike ride today, enjoying the first bit of sun we’ve seen since last Friday. We did see a little sunshine this morning. And I think 10 or 11 photos made it down on Sunday, but that’s about the only thing we’ve seen in the sky not shaped like a rain cloud. Until today.

We did the usual loop, which is a pleasant little 21 mile loop. My lovely bride said her legs were dead. I said I need to ride more, because twice a week doesn’t do me any favors. This was about 17 miles into our ride.

We’d just chatted our way through the first three or four miles, and then spent about 10 miles dropping one another. It takes me miles to catch up to her. But, right after that photograph, I got away again, and pedaled furiously, thinking “If I can make it to that T-intersection, she’ll catch me on the next little hill before the colonial-era house” … but I stayed away.

She was chasing me when I found this barn.

At some point, earlier, I managed a shadow selfie.

Some days it is hard to stay on her wheel. It’s always more difficult to get back to the garage door opener before she does. Somehow, all of that led to us meeting another of our new neighbors today, our fourth, setting a new record.

Time now for the ninth installment of We Learn Wednesdays, where I ride my bike to find all of the county’s local historical markers. Seeing things by bike is the ideal way to do it. Learn new roads, see new things. Counting today’s discoveries I have now visited 19 of the 115 markers found in the Historical Marker Database.

The two markers we’ll learn about have to do with churches, and they’re only about 100 yards apart. First, we’ll visit the Old Pittsgrove Presbyterian Church.

Today, the Pittsgrove Presbyterian congregation maintains both its original church, built in 1767, and its current church built in 1867, plus two historic cemeteries. This is the second church.

And the keystone above the door. I think the incongruity of the dates has to do with Civil War-related delays. But that’s just a guess.

The congregation was officially organized in 1741 by the Presbytery of Philadelphia. The original church building was constructed of cedar logs. The land came from a man who is buried in the cemetery out back. I saw his marker. Originally, it had two large stoves and plain wooden benches. In 1767, the log church was taken down and this brick church was built in its place. It’s older than the country.

And so it has earned itself one of these, National Register plaques, just for sticking around. But there’s more to it than just standing.

There are dozens of stories out back. This is a relatively new headstone for Col. Cornelius Nieukirk.

commanded his Company of forty men at Billingsport, under Lieut. Col Josiah Hillman, July and August 1777, and probably saw General Washington when he visited the fortification, August 1, of that year.

I bet he regaled people with that story a lot. A lot of soldiers probably did.

Nieukirk served off-and-on in the local militia, until he finally stepped away in 1794.

Without doubt he saw later service. His military sword, worn during the Revolution, and that of his great grandson James P. Nieukirk of the Civil War, have been presented to the Salem County Historical Society.

His grandson, incidentally, survived the Civil War, having fought in some particularly bloody battles, and was in a POW camp for about half a year. He’s buried elsewhere, having died in 1916. Buring here, you can find the resting place of two dozen other Revolutionary War figures. Two died during the war. One, Jerediah DuBois, would rise to the rank of general during the War of 1812. (He was a drummer boy during the Revolution.) You can also find a Col. William Shute who was, in his younger days, a lieutenant in the French and Indian War. Jacob DuBois, the captain of a company of minutemen organized in 1775 is also buried here.

Now, the DuBois name is well represented. And their descendants lived up to it. One of them was a prominent 20th century man, Josiah DuBois. He died in 1983.

(A) prosecutor at the Nuremberg war-crimes trials and a leader in efforts to rescue Jews during World War II, died of cancer Monday at Underwood-Memorial Hospital in Woodbury, N.J. He was 70 years old and lived in Pitman, N.J.

He spent recent years running a private law practice and lecturing on the Holocaust.

In 1947, Mr. DuBois was appointed deputy chief counsel for the prosecution of war crimes at Nuremberg.

The American Jewish Committee credited him with saving the lives of thousands of Jews during the war. He’s buried about 20 miles away.

One of the more prominent markers where we are visiting, however, belongs to a long-serving minister. For 46 years he tended this flock. His papers are held at Princeton.

I don’t know what you call them, but there are two or three of these floating headstones. From a great distance they’d look like picnic tables or something, but then you get close and you can tell, this is marking the spot where an Isaac Harris is buried.

Two men named Isaac Harris were buried here. A father and son. Both doctors. Both served during the Revolution.

And you can’t see it in this wider shot of the quite little cemetery, because I hadn’t noticed it at the time, but just off the frame there’s something of a message board, and behind the glass there’s a notice that coincides with the last time they fired the cannon we learned about last week.

The message reads:

The members who founded this church were seeking freedom of worship, and were willing to sacrifice whatever the need be. They were members of the Committee of Correspondence and the Committee of Observation as early as 1774. They were in all probability influenced by John Witherspoon, a prominent Presbyterian minister and the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence. They participated in organizing the first company of Minute Men from Salem County. They served with distinction throughout the Revolutionary War as well as the War of 1812.

They founded a community, founded a church, and then helped create a country.

Also behind that cemetery, you’ll see the 1970s re-creation of the “Log College”, a building used as a school to train young men for the ministry. Here’s a peak inside one of the windows. There are just four of those bench-desk combinations.

And here’s one final look at the old church itself.

Picture that little church in this still-quiet bit of countryside, a community that today preserves more total acres of farmland and actively farms more acreage than anywhere else in the state, and think of this from way back when:

The immigrants who established this congregation came from Europe and were of the Dutch Reformed tradition. Their call to worship was by one of three methods – the sounding of the horn, a drum roll, or the blowing of the conch shell. When they arrived at what is now Newkirk Street in New York about 1644, they had the conch shell with them. … This treasured relic is still used today as the Call to Worship at the occasional worship services at the Old Church.

There’s a great deal more to discover, right there, I’m sure. But we’ll have more places to visit on the next installment of We Learn Wednesdays. Miss some of the markers? You can see them all right here.

adventures / collarbone / cycling / Friday / memories / photo — Comments Off
22
Sep 23

And now our rides are about something else

One year ago tonight … well, I’ll let me tell the story …

I was walking from the control room into the studio — two back-to-back doors — just before a taping began tonight when my phone rang.

My phone never rings.

… The Yankee on the phone, clear as can be. She’s had a bike accident. She’s OK. Deputies are coming and so is an ambulance and people have stopped to help. She’s going to the hospital because she’s sure her collarbone is broken and where am I.

When I got to the hospital, she was off getting some scans. Some of her things were in the examination room they put me in, while I waited for her to come back, I studied her helmet, which had done its job and was destroyed.

They pushed her bed back into the exam room and, friends, there’s just no way to prepare yourself to unexpectedly see someone you love in a neck brace. The scans revealed that brace to be an unnecessary precaution in this case, and the next year started right there, starting right here.

She was going through that intersection when the driver of a red pickup truck caused her to crash, and then drove off without stopping. Someone else did stop to help. Her kid called the police, she called me, collected the bike and called again to check on us later that evening.

I told that woman that my wife had the three broken ribs, a broken collarbone and who knows what else. We later added a likely concussion, weeks without sleep, and a fractured shoulder blade to that list.

The surgeon was great. He’s a triathlete himself. Or he was. (It sounded, for a time, like treating her injuries had psyched him out of road riding.) He taught me a new term. Her collarbone was a comminuted fracture. He described it like this. Go out into the driveway and stomp on a small stick until its just pulverized dust. Sometimes that happens to bone. Comminuted fracture.

I didn’t sleep for more than a week. She couldn’t sleep for more than two, but the surgery, a week after, stabilized the bones — what was left of the collarbone anyway — and that was a big step.

I was fortunate to be able to stay home and take care of her those first two weeks. Her mother came for a week, and then her bestie drove in and took over the house, letting me go to work and take some naps. And, between us, we got to week four, where the patient progressed to feeling terrible.

She had months of checkups and a half-year or so of physical therapy. She got PT homework that she still has to do because, a year later, her bones are still mending. And in light of all of that, she got, we got, pretty lucky. All of that pain, hard work and the frustration involved in simply trying to get back to normal made us very lucky, indeed.

I’d like to tell the guy driving the red pickup truck where he can go, but he’s already in Bloomington.

Do you know where we were today? We were on our bikes, on a sunny, windy day, marking the anniversary.

She’s still not 100 percent, but she’s getting stronger, a process that’s been underway since her first ride back, in early March. It was almost six months off the bike, much of that under doctor’s orders. The six months since she’s been slowly regaining her confidence, which is an

When I broke my collarbone, in a 2012 accident that was plenty bad, but not nearly as rough as hers, it took me almost six full months to even want to ride again. It was 11 months for me before I noticed I had a moment I wasn’t hurting, and a year almost to the day of my surgery that I realized there were times when I didn’t feel protectively self-conscious about turning my head or shoulder. It took me more than 14-months — and a second and third specialist and more PT than I’d care to admit to — before I wasn’t in some sort of constant pain. If anything, she might be a tiny bit ahead of schedule, which doesn’t surprise me at all.

This is what I learned then, what I’d forgotten since, and what I’m reminded of today, having looked back at my own little recovery process: every little normal thing is a huge win, and they’re all worth celebrating.

adventures / cycling / history / markers / music / photo / video / We Learn Wednesdays / Wednesday — Comments Off
20
Sep 23

Of bricks and cannons

It was just 26 miles. No big deal.

This morning’s bike ride was in no way remarkable. No big speeds, no new PRs, no new roads, but the weather was perfect and the colors of this mini season are dazzling.

It was only remarkable in its unremarkableness. The ability, and the opportunity, to set off for a mid-morning bike ride is not to be underappreciated. I mean, I was still working out some lecture material in my head as I rode — because that never turns off, not really, apparently — but it was a wonderful day for a bike ride, and I was happy we could take advantage of it.

After which I, of course, sat down and went over notes and prepped my slides and figured out how to pace some things out for classes tomorrow.

Then I took a break. I pulled in some tomatoes. I tied up a few tomato vines that have been running wild all summer. I enjoyed a few tomatoes. (They were delicious.) Somehow, this kept work out of my noggin for a bit.

Oh, and then there was the evening’s ironing session. Nothing was percolating in my brain during my de-wrinkling chores.

But now I am back to it. So while I spend doing some class work, please enjoy these videos from Tuesday night’s concert with Pink.

Her daughter, Willow, came out to sing. Pretty great in front of a big crowd.

And here’s the big finish. The stage was in center field of the park, and they had a rigging set in the infield and then some more mounted somewhere above and behind everyone, which allowed all of this fanciness to happen.

It was a good show, though it wouldn’t have been my first choice, but I’m glad I went. The wire act and the aerials and the trampolines were all fun enough; I would have liked to seen more of the act without the over-the-top performance, to see how good it could be. Though I don’t think anyone there minded what they saw from the summer carnival.

Time now for the eighth installment of We Learn Wednesdays, where I ride my bike to find all of the local historical markers. I’m seeking them out by bike because it’s a great way to go a little slower, see more things and learn some roads I wouldn’t otherwise try. Counting today’s discoveries I have now visited 17 of the 115 markers found in the Historical Marker Database.

To find our first location you had to go down a quiet country road, and then turn onto an even more quiet country road. Every little click and noise you could make sounded like an interruption of nature. And then, you round a little curve and you find yourself at the Dickinson House.

The Marker wasn’t up the day I visited, but the database tells us what it said.

Dickinson House – The most ornate of early glazed brick patterns decorate the west wall of this house, built in 1754 by John Dickinson

It’s a one-of-a-kind pre-Revolutionary War-era home, then, and it is still a home today. This is what makes the place singular. This county was the home of patterned brick houses, a style you didn’t find in great numbers or intricacy anywhere else in America. There are about 20 of them that survive (they numbered 43 at the end of the 18th century).

Those bricks get that distinctive color by a firing process akin to vitirification. Extreme heat turns them from red to shiny blue. Usually, you’ll apparently see them installed as dates or initials, but the intricate designs here are something special. The owner thinks that this wall was an advertisement for the builder, John Dickinson. The letters are the initials of the Dickinsons, the original owners.

The house has four fireplaces. One of the original hearths is apparently at the state museum.

About seven miles away on the modern roads, you can see the Pole Tavern Cannon. The marker has been removed, but it said …

The Cannon Il Lugano which was forged in Naples in 1763 weighs 800 Pounds. Il Lugano was used in battle against the Austrians. Napoleon who visited Italy once in 1796 and again in 1800 dragged the cannon over the Alps and Eventually back to France. Napoleon then sent the cannon to his brother Joseph who was the ruler of Spain. In 1808 the Duke of Wellington’s Troops captured the cannon from Joseph and returned it to England. It was then used in Canada during the war of 1812 when American colonists captured it in 1814 in Plattsburg, New York. After the war was over the cannon was declared surplus by the United States Government, and sold to Salem County to Supply the county militia. During the Civil War (1861-1865) the cannon was used by the Pole Tavern Militia in preparation for battle. Since 1913 the cannon has been in the Pole Tavern Area.

The Cannon was restored in 1986 by Jay Williams and David Harvey with tremendous pride in their accomplishment.

This building was constructed in 1994 by Nicholas Hutchinson and fellow Scouts, to house and protect this historic cannon. Nicolas chose this project as a requirement to achieve Eagle Scout which he proudly received in 1995.

The canon, which has city in this small town’s main intersection for ages, was bought by that local militia along with three others, and 287 muskets.

Napoleon, since he’s mentioned by the marker, had also been fighting the British, of course, but he’d abdicated earlier that same year. That allowed more experienced British fighters to be shipped to the new world, and some of the key officers, too. But the Battle of Plattsburg, in August and September of 1814, when the cannon finally fell into American hands in 1814, becomes an important moment in the War of 1812. A combined land and naval engagement, it brought to an end the invasion of the northern states by the British, when the New Yorkers and Vermont men held Lake Champlain. (Having sat out much of the conflict, Vermont came into the fight here was a key piece of the timing.) The British commander knew he would be cut off from re-supply without the lake, so he ordered a retreat to Canada. They were to destroy everything they couldn’t haul back with them, a standard tactic, but there was no follow through. The British left under cover of darkness and, somewhere in all of that, Il Lugano was captured once again.

Three months later the peace treaty was signed, though that battle probably didn’t influence the mood among the delegates at those meetings in United Netherlands.

In May of 1889, veterans from another small town came up and stole the cannon for their Independence Day celebrations. The cannon then somehow wound up in the state capital, where it stayed for almost a quarter of a century, before finding it’s way back to its current location. It was displayed in the town hall, but that building burned soon after, in 1914. So the cannon, apparently, was outside for several decades. That (really great) little building that houses it is almost 30 years old, and is showing its own age.

You might think that the good people of that little town are proud to watch their cannon grow older each year — 270 years old this time around the sun! — but they trot it out now and then. They did so in 2016, when they fired it as part of a festival and parade. I found two different clips, but neither have audio. So I found something better: the time Il Lugano was heard in 1991.

If they keep to that schedule the Pole Tavern Cannon will be about 288 when it roars again.

Miss some of the markers? You can see them all right here.