Friday


20
Dec 24

Writing around the cats

We have not checked in on the kittehs this week, which is of course, my contractual obligation, and a serious oversight, considering they are the most popular regular feature on the site.

I haven’t taught site analytics in a while, but if I did, I could use this place’s humble numbers, and the bump the cats generate, as an example. Anyway, it’s a lazy day around here. Phoebe needs to catch a snooze. Just about any foot would do.

Poseidon is back to taking his afternoon naps on top of the armoire. Sorry to disturb you there, pal.

Yesterday, and today, we were in Connecticut. Now we are back here. And the cats, of course they noticed.

Last night was the Special Church Christmas party. My dear sweet mother-in-law runs a weekly program for people with various developmental disabilities. They do crafts and music therapy and all sorts of fun social stuff. At the Christmas party, Santa always shows up. And he was there last night, too.

After the party we went to their favorite Italian restaurant with some of the Special Church volunteers and the music therapist and had a lovely time. Today, we had a meeting with a friend and colleague at another university for an upcoming event they are hosting in February. We’re going to try to take some students and so we hashed out a few details over pizza.

It was an excuse to see our friend. And have pizza. We also discussed work a bit.

This evening we had a quiet dinner with the in-laws, and then they sent us packing. So we got back here just before midnight. Now this, and this weekend, and forever after, more grading.

I think I have the first two classes done. I’ll go through the scores one last time probably tomorrow. I have two other classes that wrap up on Monday, and their grades will be due by the end of the week or so. Happy holidays, students, I hope you earned the grade you wanted this year!

After that, there will be time for precisely four deep breaths, and then back to work.

Maybe five deep breaths. And possibly a nap. Just not on the armoire.


13
Dec 24

Sentimentality

Since it falls on Sunday this year, I’ll just go ahead and acknowledge the date today. Sixteen years ago, Sunday, this happened.

It took place right under this tree. That’s Our Tree, in Savannah. Every time we go there, we go back to the park and sit right there, beneath it’s beautiful branches.

(Click to embiggen.)

I hope Our Tree is having a season of it. I hope we go back soon, and the sun is warm, the breeze is a delight and the ground is dry enough to lay upon all day.


6
Dec 24

Notes on signs

We saw this sign and sent it to a friend. Now she wants to put it on the back of her wheelchair. You have to respect the sense of humor that people put in their own lives.

What could put someone more at ease than seeing you whip around a wheelchair and seeing that on the back? This is a person determined to enjoy their day. Let’s enjoy the day, too.

The problem with authentic outdoor signage is that they are meant to be seen from a distance. Viewed from a roadway. Perhaps at speed. And you think, I’d love to have that. Put it right up in the house, along that one wall. You know the wall.

The problem is, they might not fit. Or they might dominate the room more than you’d hope. You never think of this if you’re driving by, but if you see one in a habit in the great indoors, you are reminded. We ducked into this gas station for a snack and there, off to one sign was this gorgeous old weather-beaten thing.

How would you even all that around if the sign owner did give it to you? That one barely fits beneath the gas station ceiling.

I don’t know anything about cognac, but a quick search has convinced me the makers are still in business. I’m guessing whatever store that displayed this lovely old bottle sign has long since gone. I wish there was a little note that shared more about it, but maybe it is enough that you can touch it.

I touched the bottle sign.


29
Nov 24

And so we come to the end of November

Oh, I forgot to say, if you’ve enjoyed the food you’ve eaten this week … if you’ve eaten this week … thank a farmer. I don’t know what all the people that work this corner of God’s soil do, and where it fits in, but you’re never more aware of the interdependence of things than when you stop to think about how it works together. Then you can’t help but be impressed.

On average, U.S. farmers plant about 90 million acres of corn each year. Most, about 40 percent, is used as the main energy ingredient in livestock feed. You might not eat the grain in these silos for a variety of reasons.

It could be because the corn you enjoy comes from the heartland, or just closer to you in general. Even more likely, the grain that goes into those giant containers sitting out there in a quiet November sunset are grown for livestock. (You enjoy a different variety than the kept animals do. I could go into this, but I would have ag econ flashbacks.)

Anyway, it’s an impressive system, sometimes held together precariously, but there are always some hardworking people involved at the root and fruit, meat and peat, and salt and pepper levels of the system. Some of them have worked the land for generations. Some work it for corporations. Some are working it for their future generations, as a part of international relations.

Be thankful for that, too.

These were photos from the end of what was probably my last outdoor ride of the year. I titled it “I need it to warm up; no way that’s the last outdoor ride,” because it was not a good ride. But it won’t be warm soon, and so I took my bike down to the basement, where it will sit on the smart trainer and, starting soon, pedal me through several months and many miles on Zwift.

April 9th was my first ride outside this year. November 26th was probably the last one. Some seasons are just too short.


22
Nov 24

The 1954 Glomerata, part 12

This is the 12th and final installment of our glance through the 1954 Glomerata. (Find ’em all — Part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight, part nine, part 10 and part 11.) All of them will wind up in the Glomerata section (eventually). You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all the covers. I wouldn’t blame you. They’re quite handsome. The university hosts their collection here.

These are a couple of quick shots with a lot of substance behind them, so let’s get to the good stuff.

This was a play or a skit and we have no idea what was going on here. There’s nothing written to support this one moment in their lives. Hopefully it bubbled to the surface for them from time-to-time, and they thought of it fondly.

Dig that fancy flash the guy is holding. And is this really hazing? You could get in a lot of trouble for that today, of course. But things were different, one supposes. Or maybe it was just in fun.

“Fun.”

I’m beginning to think the impression I’ve been given of the morally upright 1950s might not have been a complete … picture.

What do you suppose this guy was working on? Note the ink jar, too.

This feature has a “post every bike” policy, and now that extends to unicycles. This could come back to haunt us later.

That guy is riding at the gates at Toomer’s Corner. The brick column and the Class of 1917 sign are the clues. This it what it looks like today (in 2015).

You’ll note those globes have been replaced by eagles. Those are 19th century eagles They were brought to campus in the 1960s.

I find I’m over the dodging and burning they were doing in the darkroom to cut out these images. What was going on behind the uni-cyclist could have been interesting to us, too.

From the advertisements in the back … This is obviously a sporting goods store, one I’ve never heard of. A quick search tells me they existed at least until the 1960s. They had a great spot, right next to Toomer’s Drugs.

Businesses come and go. The one in Atlanta is gone, too. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the model’s choice of footwear for this photograph.

J&M is still going strong, though. I bought my first Auburn t-shirt in that store. Shopped there a lot over the years.

It does look a bit different today. The building is bigger, and they sell more apparel and souvenirs than books. The business keeps changing, but the Johnstons are still standing there.

Trey, a kind-hearted guy, still owns the place, and it’s still a family concern. Trey was a football walk-on. He grew up in town, and around that store, which his father opened the year before this book was published. It’s a part of everyone’s lives and has always been a part of his. It’s one of the last things downtown that feels old and familiar and I hope it goes on for forever. (Another bookstore I shopped in closed in 2022.) Trey’s lifetime devotion to the place and the people deserve that.

Hawkins is gone.

Has been gone for decades. Hawkins, over time, became Johnston & Malone. So this book is at the beginning of the crossover period. (J&M traces their roots, indirectly, back to the 19th century.) And Burton’s were the headwaters.

Robert Wilton Burton opened the first bookstore in Auburn. They offered “Something New Everyday” for 90 years.

Born in 1848 in Georgia, he enlisted in the Confederate cavalry at the end of the war. At the ripe old age of 17 he spent two days in the saddle before he was captured and spent the last three months of the war in captivity. Burton spent most of his adult years in Auburn, first as a teacher, and then a business man. In 1878 he opened his bookstore became the literary center for the town. Himself a poet, Burton was published in newspapers and magazines around the country, and had a successful series of children’s stories, too. He died in 1917, and his daughters took over the store, until it closed in 1968 when his last surviving daughter was 77.

Burton, his wife and his two daughters are all buried in Pine Hill, an old cemetery steeped in the area’s history, a place I enjoy as much as one can say they enjoy a cemetery, and, oddly, the last place I visited on the weepy, dreadful day we moved away.

And that’s the end of the 1954 Glomerata. These are the editors. And I bet those tires and candles made for a good joke.

I wonder how many people were in on it.

All of these will wind up in the Glomerata section (eventually). You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all the covers. The university hosts their collection here.