It’s Friday! Right? Friday? Yeah. Sometimes you have to check a calendar, just to be sure. I wrapped up the week’s grading in yesterday. And I have done the updates to my computer, cleaning a month’s worth of files, creating subdirectories for May, updating site statistics in the site statistics spreadsheet.
And, hey, we’re well ahead of last year’s numbers here, so thanks for that. I don’t know why people come here, but I’m glad you do.
So one class wrapped up this week, and their final is due next Monday. My online class has another week-and-change to go, with a lot of work still to come. And a lot of things to grade, and then grades to submit. The next two weeks, then, are busy. A lot of sitting here staring at computer screens, plenty of little study breaks, but then right back to it.
I never learned that skill young, but there’s nothing like impending deadlines to teach new skills.
I set out for a 25-mile ride after a day of sitting in front of the computer. One of the regular routes I established last year. It is a route that, on the map, is roughly shaped like a bullet, though I am not nearly as fast as.
I went into town and through it, doubling back and through a crossroads that has the word “town” in its name, but it is nothing more than a red light, a farmer’s market, a gas station and a small car dealership. Then, out into the countryside.
I took a turn that sends me back to the river, but crops, woods and a few houses and developments in between. Usually this is a road that gives me five or six miles without any cars. And, once you’ve done this for a while, those experiences stand out, and you make note of them, so that you may ride them again.
When the road ends, it is time to turn right. You have a nice wide shoulder-slash-bike-lane-but-mostly-shoulder, where you can do four miles super fast, which you also make note of, and visit as often as you can. And then back on the road for home, a seven-mile stretch … into the wind.
This is a mistake. The conventional wisdom is that you start into the devise a route that puts you into a headwind first, and then the tailwind on the way back. Economy of efficiency when you’re more tired. Because I was doing a rectangular route, a squishy bullet, I should have had a tailwind to start, and a tailwind to finish.
But, if you live in a place like we do, this is a challenge. Nearly an impossibility. Today, on that same road, a straight line with flags flying at regular intervals, the wind blew from every direction on the same road within 80 minutes.
Since I’m well behind — but when am I not? — let’s return to the Re-Listening project.
The Re-Listening project, for anyone still here after such a dynamite introduction, is where I’m listening to all of my old CDs in the car, mostly in their order of acquisition, and writing about them here. I say mostly because these discs are all kept in CD books, if you remember those, and I got a bit out of order. Anyway, we’re in 2001 at this point. And so what we’re doing here is talking about music from more than two decades ago. But not so much about the music, but whatever might come with it. These are more memories than reviews — because who needs reviews? — but, really, an excuse to put a little music here, while padding out the space.
So we go back to the by-now over-commercialized realm of alt and roots rock. What I mean is that we’re beginning today by talking about the second studio album by Train. One of the better songs on the record was the lead track, and third single, which settled at 21 on the US Billboard Adult Top 40 and peaked at 40 on the US Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. And if ever there was a song you shouldn’t listen to after YouTube’s compression algorithms work their magic, this is it.
Anyway, I was working at a place that was playing a lot of Train. And I think I saw them twice on this tour. They played a two-night stretch at a now defunct venue in Birmingham, and I saw them on the second night, an amphitheater instead of a small concert hall. Also, we ran into these guys at breakfast the next morning. Let’s say they had had a long night. Later that year, I saw them at a bigger venue.
One of the deep cuts is a personal favorite.
It got mixed reviews at the time, this record, and you can still hear that unevenness today. Nothing on here is bad, but not much really stands out, which is I guess what everyone wanted at that point. Everything pretty well holds up with the passage of time. But, for the most part, it is, and was, pretty much what we’d come to expect from the band.
Still went double platinum, though.
Train are still touring, and they’ll return to the U.S. this summer, though it’s not the same band, if that matters. Over the years 18 people have been a part of the group. Pat Monahan, the vocalist, is the only founding member of the band left.
Up next, Athenaeum’s “Radiance.” This was an alt pop band from North Carolina, a group of guys that got together in the 8th grade and then played together for 15 years or so. This was their debut record, and it made it to 46 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart, a minor success in 1998. I bought it much later. The record was powered by this single.
You go through the first four tracks and think, “Here’s a band with a good rhythm section, one distortion pedal and a few clever lyrics. Probably the kids not challenged or interested in school.” And then they change it up a bit on track 5 and fool you.
I haven’t listened to this in a long time, and that’s the reaction I had this time through, and I bet I had a similar thought when I first played it.
I’m in a chat with a younger member of my extended family where we share music back and forth. We’re getting pretty close to understanding each other’s tastes at this point. Every now and then I send him something and he slips a knife in between my ribs. “Yeah, that sounds like the 90s.”
How do you argue that?
Also, this sounds exactly like the 90s.
I have a feeling they played a lot of school dances. I bet this was a big hit when it came time for a slow number.
The band folded in 2004. Some of the members are still making music, performing, or as songwriters and studio musicians. One of them is an associate professor at Clemson.
And now we’re two albums closer to being caught up. Probably still a dozen behind …
Friday / photo / site — Comments Off on The problems of spring 11 Apr 25
This is a glorious time of year. The changing of seasons, the warmening of the soil, the bluening of the sky, the wettening of everything, these are lovely things, full of the promise of the future. The promisening of the future, if you will.
But there are things to complain about. There’s the pollen. And there is the impermanence of the weather. Granted, this one differs based on where you are. Some places spring just two or three days before you’re slouching your way into a bone-melting summer. Some places spring comes non-too-soon. Perhaps it just feels like a flirtation of spring. There’s the inconsistency, for a time, of the greenening of things. And there’s all of that winter and fall to deal with. Where do all those extra leaves come from?
Then there are the flowering buds.
Here’s what I’m urging the horticulturists and the botanists, the agronomists, the biologists, the bio-technologists and the plant breedologists to do: develop an attractive shrub, or dwarf tree, that blooms throughout the growing season.
Sure, this will take a little more energy, blooms are consumers, but think of the propagation possibilities of a plant that can offer bugs and bees pollen for months on end —
I now see the problem with this plan.
But maybe it’d be worth it. Isn’t everything so beautiful in the spring?
We’re going to have a brief hiatus on the blog. I’ve spent this week catching up, just in time for the end-of-semester pace to kick in. I’m hoping that, next week, I can get ahead of things for a change. Which will be great, because it will allow me time to get behind again in the weeks that follow. That’s the run to mid-May, just trying to stay in touch with the schedule and its demands.
But I’ll be writing here again on April 21st.
Maybe someone will figure out the ever bloomening tree by then.
adventures / Friday / friends / photo — Comments Off on Another day of saying things in thoughtful ways 4 Apr 25
Today at the conference I was on a panel titled Mediated Fandom in Turbulent Times. The panelists talked about how movies, TV shows, podcasts, sports teams, and social media channels offer us versions of mediated fandom, which can serve as places of mooring. A recurring theme was about how we retreat to things we know, which everyone understands on a modern practical level.
I said one of the basic concepts of trauma is a loss of control, and how watching Friends or Gilmore Girls or the like for the 90th team is a means of re-establishing a bit of that control, if only for a short while. We know the characters, the plot points, and the outcomes. This, I said to the room of academics, is another reason why you see a lot of movies from the students’ youth as on-campus activities.
The rest of the panel was better, because the panelists were great.
The whole conference is really good. Here’s a panel I watch from the audience. These are some of our friends, representing universities in Alabama, Texas and Mississippi. These are some of the brightest and most thoughtful minds in political communication, talking about the last two election cycles.
Bill, Brian, Melissa, and Barry, talked about political realignment, overcoming hyperbole, socially mediated politics and memes. They’re also our friends, and the best part about the whole trip is hanging out with them. Everything is a joke, or incredibly insightful, or both. And they’re all so kind; just lovely people. Why they put up with me I don’t understand, but I’m grateful for it. And they have to put up with me for another day-and-a-half.
It’s another day of playing a bit of catch up. Mostly because the day was spent working on stuff sitting at the computer. Dear Diary, today was more grading. That’s not terribly exciting. There’s always something more exciting than that, if you’re willing to look on the bookshelves everywhere around me, or the big stacks of music that are everywhere else.
This weekend I read “The Day The World Came to Town.” I picked it off the Kindle via a random number generator. It was released in 2003, I bought it on a big sale in 2021, and it’s sat there, waiting. And, when I opened it, I didn’t have high expectations.
This is a book about September 11th, and the days that followed, in Gander, Newfoundland.
You’ll recall that one of the things the U.S. did after the planes hit the World Trade Center was to close down American airspace. Every plane had to land at the nearest available, accommodating airport. No mean feat, logistically. This applied to international flights coming over, too. No one knew it at the time, because no one knew much in those first terrible hours, but the military was preparing to shoot down any planes that didn’t comply.
Up there in Newfoundland was a great big airport. They’d had an aeronautical boom during and after World War II. The biggest positive were the very long runways that could allow the biggest planes to takeoff and land. When jets, and their greater range, became the kings of the sky, it became more-or-less obsolete. A small place with no real reason for people to visit.
Then, 38 planes landed there, putting 6,595 people on the ground in a town where fewer than 10,000 people lived. And this book is that story.
And, as I said, I didn’t expect a lot from this book. But this book was good, and really quite charming. It details the people of that community, Gander, and some of the people who couldn’t have found it on a map before September 11th. These people, the Newfies, are really something. For instance:
The biggest problem facing officials was transportation. How do you move almost 7,000 people to shelters, some of which were almost fifty miles outside of town? The logical answer was to use school buses. On September 11, however, Gander was in the midst of a nasty strike by the area’s school-bus drivers.
Amazingly, as soon as the drivers realized was was happening, they laid down their picket signs, setting their own interests aside, and volunteered en masse to work around the clock carrying the passengers wherever they needed to go.
And the whole book is full of this, a parade of regular folks doing the small things that were huge things in such a traumatic moment.
In most cases, the passengers didn’t have their actual prescriptions with them. In each case, O’Brien and the other pharmacists had to call the hometown doctor or pharmacists so they would know the exact medication and dosage, and had a new prescription sent. During one stretch, O’Brien and his wife, Rhonda, worked forty-two hours straight, making calls to a dozen different countries.
Surprisingly, there isn’t one universal standard for identifying drugs. A drug such as Atenol, commonly prescribed to patients with high blood pressure, can go by different names in different countries. A pharmacist for more than twenty years, O’Brien spent hours on the Internet, and worked with the local hospital and Canadian health officials, to sort through the maze of prescriptions and find the right drugs for each passenger. In the first twenty-four hours, pharmacists in Gander filled more than a thousand prescriptions. All at no cost to the passengers.
Canadian Tire was giving products away. The local cable company made sure every place that was housing refugees had a connection for news. The phone people set up banks of phone lines and fax machines. And on and on and on it goes. People welcomed strangers into their homes. They made herculean efforts to get messages back and forth. The locals tried to distract a woman who was worrying over her firefighter son, and finding ways to let teenagers be teenagers.
One of the stories is about Gary Vey, who was the president and CEO of the Gander International Airport Authority. He wasn’t in Gander, but in Montreal at a big airport conference. He couldn’t fly back to work at his airport, so he rented a car, drove more than 600 miles, caught a six-hour boat ride, and then drove eight more hours to his hometown, going straight to the airport, arriving in the afternoon. He worked for about 12 hours, after all of that, and headed home in the predawn hours.
Not wanting to wake his wife, he quietly showered in the hallway bathroom and decided to sleep in their guest bedroom. The room was dark as he dropped his towl and climbed into bed, wearing nothing more than wet hair and a weary expression on his face.
And that’s when he realized he wasn’t alone. He was in bed with a seventy-year-old woman from Fort Worth, Texas, whom Vey’s wife, Patsy, had befriended at one of the shelters and decided to take home. Remarkably, the woman was still asleep. Vey gingerly stood up, covered himself with his towel, and retreated to his own bedroom.
“We’ve got company, I see,” he told his wife when they both awake the next morning.
“Yes,” she said, “that’s a lovely lady from one of the flights.”
She told her husband she couldn’t stand the thought of this old woman spending a night sleeping on the floor of a classroom at Gander Academy. So she’d brought her home and tried to show her a good time. Well, he said with a laugh, he almost showed her more than that.
It was a great weekend read.
Since we had so much fun with the Re-Listening project yesterday, let’s jump back in today. I’m still about 10 or 14 discs behind, after all. And next on the list is a great little 1998 record that no one purchased, but me. Seven Mary Three’s fourth studio record peaked at 121 on the Billboard 200, and it’s easy to forget, but even easier to enjoy.
It’s a rock album, but it’s also introspective, more than you would expect, in a rock album sort of way.
There’s also the visceral, which is perhaps what that band is best remembered for. Just roll down the windows, press a little deeper into the accelerator and sing aloud sorta stuff.
And that’s Seven Mary Three to me. My college roommate and I saw them on their second record’s tour. We played that one a lot in his place, and in his truck. And so this band, to me, is about Chuck — I didn’t see him much when this album came out. I wonder if he ever heard it. — about that whole driving into a song thing, and oddly, a band I listened to a lot while mowing the lawn.
I have four of their albums. Maybe I should buy the other three to round out their catalog.
Also, the rhythm section of this band never gets its due.
The band hasn’t played since 2012, and doesn’t look to anytime soon, apparently. I’d probably go see them again. We caught them at Five Points South, a now defunct club that hosted a lot of great music over the years. That’s also the place where I saw Edwin McCain for the first time. And his second album, “Misguided Roses” is up next in the Re-Listening project.
It is a perfectly acceptable effort. The album peaked at 73 on the US Billboard 200.
The single you remember, of course, is “I’ll Be,” which was on radio everywhere, and at most every wedding since then. It went all the way to the second spot on the US Heatseekers Albums chart, blocked from the top spot there only by the band, Fuel. And then it really took off, which disqualified it from the odd rules of the old Heatseekers chart, but it lodged itself into the top 10 of six other Billboard charts. I wasn’t even aware it could have been eligible for six of them, or why some of them even exist.
The rest of the album is stuck in amber which, for pop music, is probably an OK thing. One of the songs still stands out. (Though, I must say, they all sound better on every format that’s not “YouTube.”)
I probably saw McCain and his band three or four times right around that period, usually opening up for one of his buddies. He took some time away from music, restoring boats, apparently had a TV show about that in the middle of the teens. He’s released two records since then, 12 studio albums in a solid 20-year career. He’s touring this summer.
And that’s enough for now. That’s plenty. We’ve got a beautiful, busy spring weekend ahead of us. How about you? Big plans?
