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The conflicting nature of the maple leaf

Maples turn early, the most skittish of the green leaves. But they don’t have to go this fast. Mid-August? This far south?

I enjoy the fall, but I also enjoy my summer, and so the transition is sometimes more welcome than others. This year, I’d be fine with more summer, really. In another six or seven weeks the rest of that leaf’s pals will start to yellow just a tinge. And then they’ll start to fall somewhere late in October. By November I’ll be raking and waiting for spring, which comes in for an early, sporadic start in February. And that’s not so bad; summer will be around again shortly thereafter. But that’s next summer. And I’d be happy for this summer to last a while. There’s more swimming to do, more sleeping to enjoy, more summer sunsets to appreciate. All those long summer evenings will fade away faster than I’d like.

But this is nothing to be melancholy about. Except for the raking. I hate the raking. If I typed about it more the inside of my thumb would develop a blister just out of habit.

I have delicate thumbs.

Fine day today. Twenty miles on the bike, painful as ever. I’ve developed this unwelcome system of getting my legs back and then skipping town for several days or being otherwise occupied for a week and thus whatever tiny gains I’ve made have all disappeared. So the 20 miles today, which felt barely like a ride in June, can sap me today. It’ll probably get worse before it gets better.

And by better I mean the temperature. We had two days a while back that were unseasonably cool and it felt like you could ride forever. August temperature has something to do with the rest of this, and while I’ll miss the summer, I won’t miss the constant 115-degree heat index days.

Changed a lot about my dissertation today. A lot. We’ve been mulling this over for a while and today I finally shifted directions, which I’d been dreading, but after the fact it feels like the right choice. So, while I’m trying to not be tedious about it here, this move feels very positive.

And if you are actually interested in that, don’t worry, there’s plenty of time to be tedious about it later.

Wrote an open letter today:

(W)e’re going to need to see that video a few dozen more times.

Despite everything else that swirled around the season, the narrative of those guys in blue is one of our best tales. It would have been compelling if it were just another team, but the entire story was so gratifying to think of Kodi Burns becoming the archetype of an Auburn man in a jersey, Cameron Newton discovering his redemption and an unsung defense living up to their potential. An undefeated season is always a great story, but the chilling story behind Zac Etheridge’s comeback, Wes Byrum being his implacable self and Mike Dyer taking Bo’s torch to threaten the entire conference lives on.

We could discuss each player and how their contributions and subplots filled such a tremendous narrative. But to put it simply, this team is a joy to watch.

Nothing earth-shattering about it. That’s just a great production and it is worth seeing again. Got a lot of nice comments at the bottom of the piece. It also earned a reply from the people that run the thing. Now we’ll have to see if they take my advice. (I give them unsolicited advice. I am batting .500 with them.)

So, if you’re in Auburn during the fall, I have a new Sunday tradition. “Several students, fans, and alumni have volunteered to help with the clean up.”

I’ve rolled the corner plenty of times, and haven’t done it in several years, though I always take guests who come to town for the games. For a long time it has felt more like a family and college kid event, but given the strain the trees have faced — the stupid fires, the intelligence-challenged drunk driver and, now, the guy who’s going to jail — I’ve been content to have had my share. I threw a roll after the SEC championship last year, when it just seemed so unbelievable that no one noticed the cold. And I threw a roll after the BCS win last January, when it seemed so cold that it was unbelievable those guys above had won a championship in the desert:

That’s enough. That’s more than I could ask for.

The city and the university have contracted out the cleaning to a firm from Montgomery. And the university, in questioning if the trees will last the year, has taken what is being interpreted as a “roll ’em if you got ’em” approach. The experts’ belief is that the toilet paper isn’t the problem, but the trees are more susceptible to the cleanup. That used to be done by a high water pressure system, but now it will be done by hand.

And this needs to be the next great tradition. So several of the locals have been plotting this out. We figure a Sunday-after-church cleanup could be as good as a pre-game tailgate. So we’ll see you at Toomer’s on Saturdays and Sundays.

Two more weeks until the opening game of the season. That’s not a bad part of fall, either. So maybe I don’t mind that maple leaf so much after all.

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14
Aug 11

Catching up

The air travel edition.

This is a sunset somewhere over the southeast, as we traveled from Atlanta to St. Louis:

That same sunset, but without the plane in the way. Sometimes the fuselage helps, sometimes it does not. You may say it helps, especially when you are in the plane:

I love the next picture. There are a half-dozen stories in there. On the left, the man is explaining he’ll be home when he gets home. There’s the guy rushing, the three men in the middle who are beaten down by life and this airport. Just out of the margin is a clutch of young troopers, headed off to parts unknown. There’s the kid studying, or about to throw up, on the floor. The lady in the foreground is relaxed, her companion is ready to fly and the guy on the far right is doing business on his phone.

Of course I took this picture to point out the fancy plug/USB station, but people are always the better picture:

The sun setting over the Atlanta airport. We sat there, the sun in our eyes, for a long time. Seems the plane parked in our spot was running late.

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12
Aug 11

Back at home

Caught a two more sessions, had lunch with a friend, listened to my adviser give some tips on a panel and then we rushed to the airport.

And these are my parting thoughts about St. Louis. The cynical consensus seemed to be that people would have preferred a different conference location, but that could be that folks found little to do downtown, diagnosed the WiFi as lousy and had already experienced a 6 a.m. fire alarm.

I’ve only been there twice, and the first visit to St. Louis was on a long layover that let us discover the cross-town trip on the MetroLink to the arch, an eye-opener for many in our little group, and a few minutes at the arch. I’m no expert. There might not be a lot to do, as some people claimed, after you’ve seen the arch and the Cardinals and gone to either Six Flags or Budweiser, or for the hearty, both. But we didn’t come to do those things. St. Louis has seen some hard times, like most everyone else along the Mississippi, even when it wasn’t the Big Muddy that brought those times downstream. But the people we met this trip have all been friendly and kind. If you so much as walk around with a curious look on your face people were willing to stop and offer directions, even if you didn’t need it. People were chatting with strangers in the “We’re all in this together” sense, even if you didn’t know what you were in.

We’re long on hospitality where I’m from, but they have no shortage of it in St. Louis, either.

I did not get to try the barbecue steak sandwich, but maybe next time.

Our hotel was nice. We crashed with a friend, and the pullout sofa could have been much worse.

The airport, is another tragic matter. It took 52 minutes to join the security line and make it through the other side of the metal detectors. A careless TSA guy almost crushed The Yankee with a tall stack of those ubiquitous gray tubs. He did not notice or care. The people working there know they are in a bad spot, the passengers let them hear it, and there’s not much they can do.

They have five detector screening stations. Three were opened. And this was not, we’re told, an unusual crush at the checkpoint. “We don’t have enough people” muttered the second ID checking person. Really? There’s only 20 percent of the country unemployed or underemployed, and most of them would look good in blue. St. Louis County was at an unadjusted 8.8 percent earlier this summer, and everyone is convinced these numbers have been depressed. It doesn’t get much more shovel-ready than a small government job, and yet here we are.

This isn’t about jobs in St. Louis, though, that nightmare is about staffing. This is being two waiters short on Valentine’s Day, only Valentine’s Day is every day.

So we’d arrived at the airport with just over an hour to spare and barely made it to the plane in time. That was nice, but at least my shoes and toiletries are safe. Oh, and the people in line, the poor regulars that fly through this airport frequently, they secretly loathe the place. I’m sure the feeling is mutual. This is what air travel has become.

Oh, and this:

Home, after an inordinate pause to get a jetway in Atlanta. That narrowed and closed our window for barbecue in Newnan, where we learned about the town’s two Medal of Honor winners, Col. Joe M. Jackson and Maj. Steven W. Pless. They received their medals on the same day, and the legend goes that LBJ said something like “There must be something in the water down in Newnan.”

Read the details about what those two great men did and you’ll realize: he was right.

Dinner in town, pizza at Mellow Mushroom, marveling at the suddenly full streets. Everyone is back in town, marking the almost-end of summer.

It could go on a bit longer; I wouldn’t mind.

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10
Aug 11

Travel day

We are on the road again, but this time only for a short trip. And our flight was in the late evening, which was a change. Usually we have the up early and rush-rush-rush itinerary, but with the 8 p.m. flight I could sleep, finish my presentation, eat, pack the day of the trip, run errands and so on.

So I bought stamps, which made me consider the wisdom of alternatively putting the destination address in the return address spot. Would that really work? I mean, aside from convincing the recipient that your a cheapskate? If you put an envelope in the mail and the to address was local and the return address was across the country, do you think the postal machines would catch on? Or does that just become the letter that is finally delivered 35 years from now that you occasionally read about?

Visited the bank, where I learned that the precise point of parking in front of the ATM is the exact spatial section of land not covered by satellite radio. And by satellite radio I mean terrestrial repeaters. We blame Washington and NASA for “killing the space program” when really they only mothballed the shuttle. But I think we should blame Sirius/XM for ruining us on space. Even the space radio people are grounded. Or not. They have between 700 and 1,500 repeaters in North America, depending on whom you believe. There are maps. And the system is in place to mitigate dead spots in tunnels, foliage cover and buildings. There’s four inches in my garage where I can’t get a signal and then at the ATM. What a country.

Even still, the satellite radio can’t find me in this age of wonders. How will I ever cope? I guess I could plug in my own recording of the song I was listening to. But what medium will I choose? The trusty CD or the ones and zeros I have tucked away on my phone and iPod? And is this going to lead to the massive music project that requires I store every song I’ve ever heard on one my mobile platforms?

These aren’t problems. And yet the letdown is still disappointing. You’re telling me I can’t hear that song while I conduct my banking business? My transactional experience will be forever ruined by the nice brick facade my bank has erected that affords me shade and multiple blindspots.

So, yes, there was time on my hands before we left town. And we left. Made it to the airport, where we passed through security, but the metal detector emitted a subtle beep at it’s human companion as I walked through, not the “you have aluminum foil and chewing gum in your pocket” beep, but a different tone, encouraging him to select me for random additional screening. My hands were swiped with a thin cotton swab and that was put in a Star Trek machine that made noises and featured flickering lights. Twenty seconds later the guy was assured I had not been fertilizing my lawn earlier in the day.

There could be several paragraphs here bemoaning the TSA process, where I generally accept the people that work in front of a frustrated and bored populace are doing what they can — bad apples notwithstanding — while basically being hamstrung by what is given them from above.

I could complain about the comfort and design of the plane seat, or the poor quality of the burrito, or just my thoughts on air travel at this stage of society in general. They all sound about the same. But that would make it sound more tedious than necessary.

Instead I’ll just leave you with this.

I’m traveling with my lovely wife, going to a place where we’ll see friends and do things we enjoy. It was a lovely day, on the whole.

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5
Aug 11

Young at heart, old of ear

Little Jimmy’s grandmother took him to the park after a long day of kindergarten. “Doesn’t it look like an artist painted the scenery? God painted this just for you,” she said.

“Yes” Jimmy said, “God did it and he did it left handed.”

“What makes you think God is left handed?”

“Well” Jimmy said, “we learned in Sunday School that Jesus sits on God’s right hand!”

Silly, but I love that joke. Always made me wonder if a heavenly hand could fall asleep. Someone could blame a lot of problems on that. Others would probably shake their head and agree. Burning needles in an appendage takes it out of a guy, they’d think, I can relate to that.

Dear parents that owe child support, pay your bills. Not only are you depriving your child, you’re embarrassing yourselves:

The best part is the deputy sheriff in his Auburn shirt. They went all out on this sting, except for the location. I mean, “You’ve won tickets to the game of the year! Come down to this abandoned granary to collect!”

You can tell football season is upon us. The team is practicing, students are starting to move back to town, and the summer term has wound down. We’re shopping for shirts. The Yankee wants a jersey for her birthday, and she has numbers in mind. The university seems to be marketing just three jersey numbers this season, and one of them is the one she wants. So that works out well. We hit a few stores yesterday, as I mentioned, looking for the right size and number combination. There were a few more stores today.

But first, the university library, where there is a documentary of some heft that must be obtained. We found it and, then, on the way out, walked by part of the Toomer’s Corner displays. These are the things people left after their poisoning was announced. How weird that still sounds:

They’re going to allow fans to roll the trees again this fall, which has a “roll ’em while you got ’em” feel. I’m not interested. Having had my share, and stood under the old trees during two conference championships, two undefeated seasons and a national championship I’ve more than had my fill. But here’s my feeling:

Yeah, they’re trees, and there are worse crimes against humanity than a crime against a local icon, but if you deprive children of their part of a long legacy we should find a small space under a heavy, cramped jail for you. But that’s just me.

Here’s another neat one from the display:

Here’s more on the collection, including a few other artifacts. The archivists say no one has ever had to preserve something like toilet paper before. The things we celebrate are temporary, the hard part is making the memories last forever.

They are getting the stadium ready. In a month more than 87,000 people will be inside there. It is silly and spectacular and true:

Came home to do productive things. Planned out a presentation for next week, tinkered with the video chat feature of Google Plus. We are living in the future. Somehow the economy didn’t seem so bad in our imaginations, but still, video chat across two states. This is a step up from last week’s test of the platform, where four of us chatted in one room. And by room I mean our living room. It was delightfully geeky.

Jeremy, the host of The War Eagle Reader stopped by for a chat. Did you know he edited the Maple Street Press? Did you know I’m in that magazine? It isn’t bad, though all agree the photo selections and the cutlines could be better. The content, though, is insightful.

He loaned me a book, which I am interested to read. First I must put it on top of the To Read stack and finish the other two in progress. Once upon a time I’d read three at a time. Now I do well to get in two. Seems I’m reading lots of other things, too. Makes me wonder what this does to one’s reading comprehension. Is it really useful if I can later only say “This one book I read … ” or “I recall in … some study or another … ”

Now, I wrote last month about my joy of books, but the one thing that could replace that would be the convenience and joy of search. If I could put everything in a reader and then refer back to the term or author or time I was reading the thing … now that would be something.

And according to the Booth Theory of Commercial development, Google or Apple has that in R&D right now. And when it comes out in six months I’ll only need a way to transfer everything I’ve ever read, ever, into the reader for cross tab indexing.

Well, maybe I could leave out the Black Stallion series and various old Robin Hood tales. Who needs those now? I’ve always questioned the fingers wrapped in the horse’s mane. And the only part of the Robin story I recall better than a movie or BBC episode is that he feebly loosed an arrow from the Kirklees Priory and where the arrow landed was where he is buried. Great tale. Of the many great Robin Hood tales over the last millenium that one, I’ve just learned, is from the 18th Century. I read that as a child at my grandparent’s one summer. Why? It was there.

I may have a reading problem, and it started early.

Barbecue for dinner tonight, risking crowds from a dual graduation/move in weekend. Do not visit a grocery store, Walmart or Home Depot on weekends like this. You take your life into your own hands.

So we stand in line at Moe’s, order our barbecue and then stand around for a table. This is a bit difficult. As reasonable as the food is, they’ve taken great pains to push you out of the door — awkward decor, lighting that is off just so, poorly placed televisions, uncomfortable chairs — but people just sit around. And sit around. And sit ar —

“Ticket number THIRTY-FIIIIIVE!”

We’d only just found a table, having identified a group that put two together, sat with friends and then left. The table for eight stayed joined when only three were there. And so we made our own, grabbed the food, ate and hustled out of there before the loud, live music started.

Some days you feel older than others, I guess.