I had a tough bike ride on Saturday. This was my only photo, and I was basically back at the house and worn down and had pretty much given up on the whole thing for quite a while, anyway.
Sometimes it is like that. Some days you feel great. Great! And somedays are off. Or some days you just feel lousy about the whole thing. It is always better to have done it. That’s the constant. Even on the lousy rides, like this one on Saturday. I had a headache in the middle of the it, which might be a first for the thousands of miles and the few thousand hours I have spent staring down at handlebars.
But the speed was about … average for what I’ve come to expect lately. So call it an uneven evening ride of pushing through. I stayed with The Yankee for half of it, anyway. She took a different route and I just turned around at one point. She came in about 10 minutes and with an extra two miles or so. Hers was better than mine, which is always nice.
Which leads us nicely to the weekly cat pictures. This is perhaps the cutest one I took of Phoebe this week.
But it is not the best one I took of her. I’m saving that series for a rainy day.
Poseidon was very sleepy this weekend. When he wasn’t being demanding, challenging, loud, too aggressive or otherwise overbearing.
So normal cat stuff, I guess.
Cats.
Back on campus today. We spent six hours in Studio 5 tearing down a set. Last year they built a set for an apartment for one of the production classes. Somewhere along the way it was decided that the set wasn’t sufficient. So, after many meetings, it was decided that this set was coming down.
So today we took ratchet to bolts and pry bars to nails and it all came down and the soundstage is a soundstage again.
People also balanced lights in suspension system hanging in the rafters and we tore down an ancient wall fixture which required brute force, which is why they keep me around.
Someone also put in an order for a dumpster for all the stuff that was due to be disposed of from the studio. We filled the loading dock with debris and it will go a long way toward filling the dumpster.
When it got down to the point of removing tape from the floor I knew it was time to leave … just as soon as the tape was cleaned up.
It was a productive Monday, I suppose. I stopped by the grocery store on the way to the house. I was intent to count the masks to no-masks, but gave up when it was 11-2, masks and I needed to find the most direct route to the areas of the store I needed with the fewest people between points A, B, C and D.
All of the products I wanted were there. I picked up all of the products I wanted. I breezed through the self-checkout and hustled outside, so I could go directly to the domicile in the most indirect route possible. There’s road work, you see. So I had to go through a neighborhood that we usually ride bikes through and I had to remind myself the car and the bike approach things differently. Also, the hills are much smaller with an internal-combustion engine at your disposal. The music is better, too.
Back inside, groceries put away, showered, snacked and then catching up on the day’s email and then dinner and, now, this. It wasn’t exactly a full day, but it was full enough. There were people and achievements and a place to sit down at the end of it, so full enough indeed.
Covid-19 / IU / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off on Tigers, fireworks and back on campus, oh my! 6 Jul 20
We went to the nearby feline rescue this weekend. It was our first time out of the house for anything more than groceries or takeout or exercise since March. The place made at least a passing effort at taking everyone’s temperatures and masks were required. Smaller groups would be preferable, but they were limiting it to 10 people per tour.
It’s hard for people to stay out of each other’s way when they’re gazing in wonder.
Or just, you know, in general.
Anyway, our tour was supposed to last for 45 minutes, but it’s slow out there so our guide let us linger so everyone could get their national geographic photographs. We stayed on the property for just about 90 minutes. They have 150 or so cats they take care of — it’s a rescue and you heard some of the bizarre and some of the sad stories — and a few dozen of them were on display for the gawkers.
And it was a warm day, being July. So there was a lot of shade for the cats, which was nice to see and no doubt appreciated by the animals.
They’re a mixture of oblivious to people …
And oddly curious about you. In fact, they’ve probably seen more people than I have in the last few weeks. And they get their space, too. So it’s a happy little setup, as these things go.
And almost all of the tigers were interested in me.
This guy seemed to know it, and he was telling me RUN!
As in, “No, please, go. I feel the need to chase something down … ”
Here’s a thing you learn about tigers when you’re just a few feet away from them. All the sounds a house cat makes, a giant cat makes too, and they scale up. Just the sound of one of these massive things giving himself a bath gives one a lot to think about.
And the cats really liked me.
Almost all of them. Maybe it’s because I’m a Tiger. Maybe it was something I was wearing, or my animal magnetism, or that I’d slathered myself in chicken juice before we got there.
And, look, I don’t want to question the craftsmanship of a professional here, but when a tiger is casually walking directly toward you, you have a moment to think about the durability of a chainlink fence. There’s just enough time to hope that guy had a good day at the fence factory. No hassles at home, no aching joints, no in-law distractions or musings about his weekend on the lake. Just good, solid, earnest, pride in his work.
You don’t have enough time, though, to consider the plant that makes the nails, whether the second shift was on their game when they made the ones holding the fence against the wood. And, goodness knows when that wood was installed and it may be rotten already. You don’t have time to think about those things, or the team that assembled all of this here in 19Who Knows When.
You become keenly aware of the idea, percolating in your head and not yet verbalized, that all of this would merely slow down a properly motivated machine like this.
I liked how she was sneaking up on me from behind the maple tree. Completely fooled me.
There were two of these on our part of the tour today. Got a glimpse of one, and while I try to avoid the fence aesthetic, it couldn’t be helped here, and I hope you’ll overlook it. How beautiful is this creature?
Anyway, a warm day also allows for the indulgence of a cool bath. All of the tigers have giant plastic barrels. Those big heavy duty things that are in no way a simulation to tender human flesh because the barrels are much more sturdy. They are playthings. All of the barrels are destroyed.
The tigers don’t destroy their baths though. They’ve got this whole thing figured out.
“Wanna come in for a dip? It’s hot out.”
“But it’s so nice in here … ”
Thanks, tiger, but no thanks.
Fourth of July was even more subdued than normal. No big civic events. We almost saw the little parade one of the nearby neighborhoods runs. We rode through the route on our bikes twice. Just missed it both times. We were the beginning, and the end of the parade, then.
We had cheeseburgers and corn off the grill, and cheesecake out of the fridge. Everything was delightful.
The neighbors, who have been working on their ballistics and trajectories for several days now, put on quite the impressive display. Had to be the better part of a mortgage payment. Anyway, this isn’t how you properly record fireworks, of course, but this is how I always remember them, fuzzy and dreamy.
There were just things exploding every which direction. And neighbors elsewhere were launching things from decks. Here’s to prevailing winds and sensible precautions and the good old American technique of eyeballing flammable projectiles. But the big show was still going on. And it went on and on.
This was the fourth of five finales. They had a good time, and many of the neighbors approved. It was festive when there were few festive things taking place out of sensible precaution. How he managed to keep the really big explosions out of the woods that were just feet away is a mystery.
And, to his credit, they stopped promptly at 10:30. It’s a decent gesture and makes sense. He had to get up early the next morning to clean the debris.
(He did not.)
Back to work today. It’s my first time working in the building since mid-March, 116 days for me. Everything else has been work-from-home, which we are both fortunate enough to be able to do. I’ll be back off and on campus sporadically for a while, in the hopes of having a semester. And then, if things go according to plan, we’ll have an oddly structured semester. A lot of things have to go right for that, however, and while that is the plan and the hope, it’s easy to be skeptical about it.
But! Yet! We are still a considerable ways removed. It is impossible to say from this vantage point what our reality will be in August, September and October. Why would you want that sort of certainty in your daily routine, anyway?
So today, we moved furniture. Large rooms will stay the same size, but their capacities are considerably reduced. Our commons, which would seat 50 something is down to 17. Our largest classroom has a fire code of 72, or thereabouts. It has a covid code of 21. Our standard sized rooms will seat eight plus an instructor. It’s going to be a strange school year, to say the very, very least.
So after this morning’s bike ride I got cleaned up, donned a mask went to campus and got sweaty again flipping tables and stacking chairs. When this comes up I like to smile and say “This is why I went to college. And grad school!”
Also, today, Harvard went entirely online. And the U.S. government said “If your school goes entirely online and you’re an international student, you must go home.” It’s going to be a strange, sad school year. We’re going to be a hybrid institution. I’ll be doing a lot of my work from home, and I am incredibly fortunate in this respect. That’s been a lesson for a lot of us this year, hasn’t it? You can be both in a fortunate situation and still not in an ideal situation.
Down at the lake today we didn’t see anyone we know, which is a change of pace. The last few times we’ve been we’ve run into some work friends. Today there were a couple of young families and they stayed mostly away, but for the occasional friendly kid who would wander over.
You can learn a lot about kids and parents and life by hearing just enough of the conversations and negotiations that go on as non sequiturs. And you can tell, pretty quickly, if there’s a parent that plays the heavy. No one wants to do that, of course, because it’s a warm day and you’re on the lake and it’s summertime and everything’s great on the water. How could everything not be great?
There were a few kayaks out on the water, and boats way up and away from this slew, which has generally been a quite and casual place. I sat under a shade tree and watched The Yankee swim and the butterflies dance:
I forgot to mention this here earlier this week, but there’s a new show for you to listen to, if you haven’t already subscribed over there at Soundcloud dot com or any of the other locations where your many fine podcasts are found. Subscribe! Or you might have to wait to find them here, when I can apparently get around to it.
Anyway, this is assistant dean Jill Shedd, of IU’s school of education. She also sits on her local school corporation’s board. It just so happens that not too long before we recorded this interview the state said “What we will be doing this fall is … up to the local schools … ” so we talked about what the fall might look like. The answer is, it depends.
But there’s also a lot at stake here. Safety for students and adults, first and foremost. Secondly, there’s an issue of whether teachers will come back. There’s been a national survey, which we discussed briefly here, that should give one pause. And there’s another survey that suggests parents are thinking about it, too. That, as Dean Shedd points out, could impact money.
Fortunately the schools in this state won’t see any budget cuts this year. The governor has said that this week, so it’s a good time to have this episode of the podcast, and you should listen to it, is what we’re saying.
And now I have to wait for the next round of guests to come my way. I hope the people who insisted on being a part of that booking process will work quickly on that front. We, as is said in the most detestable line of dialog ever, will see.
A close second is ‘Time will tell.’ Sure time will tell, but only if your construct of time removes it from the abstract and applies some sentience. Or assumes that, by the time that time does, in fact, tell, I will still have the capacity to appreciate what time has told us. We’ll see about that, too.
Tied and at a distant third on the list of most detestable sayings are “I am sorry, sir, but we are out of ice cream,” and “Our internet is down.”
What’s on your list of worst sayings? And have noticed how the list of wurst sayings is so different, and so much better?
Today is going to be brief, because I have decided to take a bit of this day away from this glowing machine. So here’s a flower from a recent walk.
And if the photos look a bit larger around here today, they should. I decided to change the default photo size earlier this week. Mondays, first of the month and all of that. Usually these sorts of changes are made in August, in honor of the anniversary of the place. And, who knows, I have this vague idea that I’ve done this before and that somewhere along the way I forgot that and reverted to the older habit. Habits are like that sometimes.
Said the guy who knows he’s got too many of them.
I talked with sociologist Jessica Calarco today. She students social and socioeconomic inequities and their impacts on families, children and school. It seemed a good set up for the end of the school year, when the state’s school experts are expected to make their first announcements about next fall later this week. She gave us a really great interview.
I have at least three of them lined up for next week. More school issues, more economic issues, and who knows what else may appear. You should just go ahead and subscribe so you can get the latest episodes as they are released.
It occurs to me that I am ready for a three-day weekend in the most desperate way. Which is odd, right? I’m going to spend it at home just like all of the days. And I’ll try to think about work less, but otherwise, status quo ante.
I suppose it is all mental, or I am.
Makes you wonder what next week will be like. Tuesday is Monday, and by this time next week we’ll be here thinking “thank goodness for a four-day week.” It’s a weird moment, is what I’m saying.
Anyway, we have that to look forward to, and brothers and sisters, I am looking forward to it.
Brothers and sisters. Huh, he said, writing this in an almost stream-of-consciousness style while also knowing where it was going. I had a news director who called everyone brother or sister. He wasn’t a particularly religious man then, moreso now it seems, so it struck me as an odd word choice. I just figured he was from where he was from, and that’s the way it was there.
He was a nice guy. Young. His first news director job, he was being handled and he didn’t need to be. After he figured out what was what in that market and who the sharks in the building were he was good at it. I only worked with him for a short time, but he was nice to work with, and gave me one lasting piece of advice: You have to look out for yourself, because no one else will.
It was that last bit of early-20s advice I really needed, I think. It was overdue, perhaps, but I took it to heart.
He’s a news director in Nashville now. He and his family are doing well, according to his Facebook feed. Always seems happy when we catch up. Brothers and sisters.
Let’s look at some old newspapers again. Let’s go back in time 111 years and look at the local paper on this date in 1909.
We save by using the ditto marks and pass along the savings to you! I love the little local ads that exist because of the university. It’s always difficult to tease out their story, though. One of the owners has two other men of different generations using the same name here. The other couple don’t leave much of a trace either. And that’s not an uncommon book store name, it turns out.
Oh, it’s one of those seasons. The Milwaukee mayor was in town. And one of the authors of the legislation.
This wasn’t outright prohibition, it was about home rule and liquor licenses and how much a saloon would have to pay and, yes, about prohibition. The Anti-Saloon league held a powerful sway.
The registrar speaks! Terrific news! Had there been an accident? Was he recovering, then? Was he coming out of mourn — oh, he was just weighing in on the debate of the hour.
He wants to leave out the moral question, indeed, he mentions it twice in here in this brief selection. I’ve edited out a few paragraphs in between because, you know academics, we do tend to go on.
This was actually Craven’s paper. He founded it in 1893 and ran it into his brother bought him out in 1906, just three years prior. He was the registrar for 41 years, until 1936.
A registrar, by the way, keeps the academic record of all the students and plans the registration process for classes. Craven did all that while he was a student. Academia was a lot different back then.
Look, I wear a suit to work. Not while fishing, though:
Kahn Clothing was Moses Kahn, and a partner, Solomon Tannenbaum. There was a big fire, but Moses was soon back to work, and became a founding member of the local fire department. He ran that store until he died, in 1920, at about 70 years of age.
Someone was in a mood when they went to look for filler:
I love that these places didn’t need an address. You just knew where The Globe was. I don’t. Or I didn’t. A few other searches tell me it was on the square. You can assume everything was there, but you shouldn’t. It’s just one square.
Elmer Bender was in the clothing trade for a long time. You can still find references to him through the mid 1920s. And soon after he joined the city council. He died in 1957.
Safe to say the newspaper was coming down on the side of the Drys. I’ve edited a bit of this to get to the real panic.
Ninety percent of the murders were somehow tied to saloons and drink! And you want that to come here!?
That’s an instructive look at fear-mongering you weren’t expecting out of this exercise.
The vote was just a few days away. I skipped ahead. The drys won the day. It seems they thought the city would vote dry, but the vote totals went against that idea. It rained and that let the farmers come in from the fields and voted dry. There was a big stir about whether many of the students who voted were eligible to vote. But across the state, it was a series of wins for the Anti-Saloon League.
I’m through here every so often.
When I first read that I thought, I should keep a look out.
You never know when a lost cufflink will turn up, but if I see it, Mr. J, I’ll let you know.
