That’s a deck post. And wabi-sabi, Wikipedia tells you, is:
In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi is a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of appreciating beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete” in nature.
Characteristics of wabi-sabi aesthetics and principles include asymmetry, roughness, simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy, and the appreciation of both natural objects and the forces of nature.
I’ve written about this here before, about keeping some of the wear and tear in a house as artifacts of previous owners. Long ago we cleaned up the markings that noted all the kids that used to live in this house. We’ll get the rest of this place painted one day, when we feel we can safely get painters in. There are two or three bigger gouges that I’d like to correct, but there are nicks in some places which I want to keep. It’s part of the story of the place.
It’s all small and cosmetic, but keeping one or two things here or there might let you imagine the children playing here, the joy their family had, the lives they were living here. Oh, sure, those little corners of molding at the foot of a few doors, that’s from furniture moving in or out, or a zealous vacuuming session. The one place on the windowsill in one of the bedrooms, I have no idea what that was, but I want to hear the story, a story I’ll never know, and I hope it’s better than “We were moving out with our hops and dreams and clipped it with a dresser.” Some of these other marks might be from imaginary gun fights or adventurous car races or a time a grandmother — three generations lived here, together — just leaned a little too far to the right. Some of those should absolutely stay.
I bet those kids had a lot of fun on the deck out back. It’s held up by that post pictured above. And that post isn’t just a post. It could be a base for hide-and-seek or part of a doorway to the yard and the woods and the creek beyond. That big tall chunk of wood could have been anything.
And, to a kid, the imperfect and impermanent might be just the opposite.
Plus, you’ve got an entire national concept behind it. And, with wabi-sabi, you don’t have to replace things quite so often.
Slept in today. I woke up late, with the bedroom door mostly closed. So, I figured, my lovely and thoughtful bride went downstairs and took a noisy cat with her. See? Thoughtful?
So I lay there for a moment, having checked the time, thinking if I did that three or four more days in a row I might feel like a normal person.
The night before I fell asleep reading a history of churches. I’ve worked up to the middle of the 20th century and I’m ready for the book to be over, so I can just have something else to read. Ninety-five more pages to go.
This is my second time trying this book and I didn’t finish it all the first time. I’m much farther along now, and I’m glad for having tried it again and getting beyond my first effort. But not finishing a book twice seems wrong somehow.
And, yet, I have so many great books waiting to be opened. There are three on my nightstand. I have an entire bookcase, stuffed to overflowing, of other books waiting to be read. And, I’m sure, a good two dozen books waiting to display themselves as ones and zeroes on my Kindle app. The difficult part is always ‘What to read next?’
I just have to muddle through a few more chapters of the current monograph. (Notwithstanding a plodding style which, even for an academic project, leaves something to be desired, it is an insightful book.)
Anyway, it was a quiet day, and that was grand. Enjoyed a little football and took a nice long walk. Here are two pictures from our walk.
We did a bit over four miles. And here’s the barn.
None of the world’s problems were solved, maybe next time, but it was a nice walk.
And, now, we’re going to have our Thanksgiving dessert. (Cheesecake.)
Quiet day at the office. I sent a few emails, dabbled in some spreadsheets, identified the upcoming tasks and walked some halls. That was about it. It was your typical Friday-before-a-holiday sort of feel. And I have some days off coming, so it was quite the quiet day.
Since we’ve wrapped our in-studio productions, these are some of the last few videos of the semester, notwithstanding things they may produce from afar.
So let’s start off with the late show, which was produced in Studio 5 on Tuesday. They’re bringing the funny:
And last night, in Studio 7, we wrapped it all up the same way we started the semester, sports!
And while you’re waiting on whatever your sports weekend has in store for you, check out my buddy Drew’s last show hosting The Toss Up. They’re talking women’s basketball, and IU’s basketball team promises to be a good one this year. And this show is one of the best of the year. It’s a good way for Drew to sign off:
We expect big things out of that guy, and we know he’s going to come through.
At the end of the day, it was oddly warm. Oddly still. It was 63 degrees and we were in the gloaming and back home it would have been time to watch the barometer. But I studied the forecast earlier in the day and nothing bad was coming our way. It was just … kind of pleasant.
So I did the daily decontamination procedure and went out to sit on the deck. We stayed out there, me trying my hardest to make her laugh, until it got good and dark, when it got nice and chilly.
And my staycation began, as it should, with giggles.
Ooooh, Friday the 13th. Are you spooked yet? It’s a time when silly little superstitions like that, given way to as flights of fancy in a simpler time, might be acknowledged. I wouldn’t have noticed it at all this year —
“Because time has no meaning?”
Well, sure, random interlocutor who has appeared in this bit of text even as I write it in the CMS, but that’s not what I meant.
“Because you don’t look at calendars anymore?”
Well … right, but, really, who does? And, anyway, what are you doing here, you made-up phantasm of a person I’ve created to fill yet a few more pixels on the page?
“I’m here to be spooky. Boooooooooooo!”
Yeah, that’s not going to work because, as a rule, I run a lot of lights around the house on Fridays to help create some energy and festiveness, so —
“OK, fine. May as well explain how you noticed today was Friday the 13th, oooooooooo!”
Right. Well. Anyway. The local talk station host mentioned it yesterday evening. He started in on the whole thing, as one does, and he got about a sentence into it, and you could hear it coming in his voice, when he stopped —
“Because it put him out of sorts?”
No.
“Because his electronics died? A byproduct of Friday the 13th gremlins?”
No.
“Because he — ”
He realized no one has any use for it right now.
“So he did some conspiracy theory stuff?”
No.
“Full moon?”
No. We’re not even close to a full moon right now, anyway.
“Then what did he do next?”
He talked about basketball.
Anyway, another week in the books, and we’re one week closer to the Thanksgiving break and some time off and then virtual learning and more work from home. And we’re going to make it.
I’ll say right here, I was skeptical of the whole thing. Bringing students back from all over the nation and points beyond? I’m no public health expert, of course, but it defied common sense. To some degree, as it turned out, doing all of this flew in the face of the best advice actual public health experts would provide. But the university put a robust system into place for its nine campuses and 100,000-plus students and all of its professionals and they’ve pulled it off. I was skeptical, but if you’d asked me to draw out a best case scenario this summer it would have been surpassed in every way. I’m pleased to be proven wrong.
Sure, some people got sick, but there were contingencies plans in place. It’s in no way authoritative or exhaustive, but I have heard of one student who was hospitalized with Covid-19. More often, those who did test positive were quarantined and worked their way back to health. I’ve heard a few anecdotal cases of long haulers, but hopefully they come through it OK and sooner than later. To bring back all of those people, though, and see it work as well as it did, even as the case counts are starting to tick up these last two weeks (while they’re surging throughout the state and the region) is something of a positive.
The moment the university brought students back in August they made them all get tested. Immediately, the university became the largest testing center in this state. I don’t know if they’ll share that tidbit on the campus tours, but the parking lot outside of Assembly Hall and the dozens, if not hundreds of people who worked it, are big players in the state’s Coronavirus history now. The university continued a testing pattern throughout the term that added more and more data to the system. It wasn’t perfect. Nothing is. On this campus alone there are 46,000 students in a normal term — probably a few less this fall — and they’re all human and that’s injecting a lot of chance and habit and decision making into the best-laid plans. This is why I was skeptical. There were some problematic instances. Greek Life had a few problems, some of which were simply structural. Other things, well, yeah, they’re college students. And we all remember being 19 and how wise and considered our decision making was at the time. A few things were more forehead-slappy, but ultimately, it all worked.
We have five more days to go, but we also have a dashboard that tells us the university did better than the community, in terms of percentages. Part of that goes to the aggressive and proactive approach the university took. And part of it, I think, has to be that you’re dealing with a set of people of a certain age who, by and large, are trained to do what’s asked of them. Also, the university laid down the law on that quickly and convincingly, and continues to do so. Anecdotally, I heard of more mask difficulties with faculty than students.
And so I was skeptical. All we have to do, I said in April, is account for and rewrite human habits for everyone. People want to be social. They tend to gather close together. They have no idea what six feet means — even when you say it several times. People hug and carry on and have a good time and basically do everything that an airborne communicable disease is ready to exploit.
But here we are. And it was tough and demanding and upsetting, sure. It’s been tiresome, but it has had its moments. Students, generally, did not have the experiences they’ve come to expect or envision. Compromises had to be made in that sense, but they got a world-class education and by-and-large. Also, the working student media had an entire year’s worth of content put before them without even trying. It’s a rare and weird thing. And coming to terms with that is a lesson of its own. The students, though, they helped keep each other safe. Problems aside, they did it.
So now we turn our attention to next week, the last week. The university is offering go-home tests to students, which makes sense. One assumes there will be some clear literature on what that means and doesn’t mean. Communication, as ever, has proven to be critical and difficult.
I was very pleased when I thought up the idea of go-home mitigation testing three or four weekends ago and then learned, the very next week, that it was going to be something the university offered. I, too, have learned to think like a public health expert, at least on this one obvious thing. (Who among us hasn’t tried to be an expert this year?) Today it occurred to me that whatever a student might have caught last this week is something they’ll take home with them at the end of next week. And, again, no public health expert, but I wonder if that’s something that could have been controlled for in some way. And I wonder if that’s something the actual experts tossed around this summer when they were making all these plans.
Anyway, five more days of classes. Just four more days on campus for me, and it’s really a wind down week, anyway, given the general feel of things right now. By this time next week I’ll have oversaturated my hands for the last time for a while, I can wear fewer masks and I won’t have to maintain two separate laundry systems for around-the-house-clothes and cootie-clothes. I’ll still work and do all of the Zoom meetings that life can throw at me, but I won’t need a complete decontamination procedure at the door.
Have some sports television my students produced last night. Long on football, which, it turns out, Indiana might be good at:
And you know what we’re good at? Talking? They talked Masters, because it’s November in Augusta, too. This was a well-done program if you like hitting little white balls with elongated sticks.
And you? And your weekend? What’s in store? Anything new? Nothing new here. It’ll be very similar to every weekend since March. But, suddenly, it feels like it won’t be the same, but its own change of pace. Weekends are so often about what’s on the other side of them. And if that applies to weekends it should apply to weeks too. And what applies to the other side of next week is a welcome change. Nothing superstitious about that.
It was a lovely day at the end of a long week and I managed to wrap everything up at the office in good time. I had an interview with a public health professional, and that’ll be a podcast next week. And then I went for a walk in the woods.
Look! Woods!
I managed to scrape my leg, so it was a successful walk in the woods!
The important thing about it all was that I was in the woods in a t-shirt and shorts in November. It was a special treat and there’s no way to properly sing its praises or otherwise appreciate it.
I found a big oak branch just resting among the leaf clutter and claimed it for my own. It was still fairly fresh tree litter. Still almost green. I might try my hand at carving a spoon or bowl out of it. Because anything worth doing is worth doing in hardwood.
So I peeled away the bark, cut up the branch and sanded away the inner bark and cambium layer. You know, the easy part. Now I just have to play around with carving it.
