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17
Feb 23

En garde!

Here is shaky visual evidence of my first robin(s) of the spring — another of the false signals. The first being two days in the 60s. The next will be emerging tulip leaves. But, for now, a small flock of robins are flittering around looking for worms.

It was snowing on me at the time.

We are 63 days away from spring arriving here.

Also, does it look like that robin might be a bit of a litterbug and a smoker? I think that robin is a bit of a litterbug. And I have to think that this bird is setting itself up for some longterm health problems.

This was going on in the studio this morning.

Members of the university’s fencing club came to give a demonstration for the morning show. I talked with their two student coaches. Fencing, it turns out, is a thing that enjoys competition against other club teams and varsity programs. They said there’s a big difference between varsity and club teams. And, sometimes, they face off against teams that have people in the Olympic pipeline. That, they said, is another sort of thing altogether. It was interesting to hear them talk about that. And, having run by an Olympic distance runner, and swam in a pool lane next to an All-American, I can appreciate, a little, what they’re saying.

So I said I just wanted to get all of this kit and then spar a bit with my lovely bride on the walking path near our house, just to make the neighbors wonder what is going on. Apparently the equipment isn’t that expensive. They priced it all out, and I figured it’d be more.

But the skill, I don’t have any of those.

What was fun, though, was watching the fencing team members give a crash course to the show hosts, and then watching the two of them face off.

That was good fun, and now I have one more anecdote about the things that take place in our television studios.

Here are some things to read.

A new study found that having at least one conversation with a friend a day increases happiness and lowers stress levels.

A new study published in Communication Research sought to find out what types of conversations people need to have, and how often they should have them, in order to improve their well-being. The researchers found that having at least one conversation with a friend can increase happiness and lower stress levels by the end of each day.

“While other research on well-being focuses on things like grateful thoughts or journaling, my focus as a researcher is about what we can do in our interactions to improve our well-being. This gives us a valuable list of things people can do to improve their days,” Jeffrey Hall, one of the researchers, told VICE.

Previous research showed that talking about one’s problems can reduce stress, strengthen our immune system, and reduce physical and emotional distress, but this study suggests that people don’t necessarily need to bond over their misery.

Hall and his team identified seven types of communication that are commonly found in social interactions: catching up, meaningful talk, joking around, showing care, listening, valuing others and their opinions, and offering sincere compliments.

Most stories about active research want to jump the gun, but this seems straightforward, which is a good sign.

So talk to more people, I guess.

Just not in front of your devices.

Google exec says Nest owners should probably warn their guests that their conversations are being recorded:

Google’s Nest smart devices are always listening — their microphones detect loud noises and cameras track sudden movements in a home, and can start automatically recording at any time.

Because of that, Nest owners should probably warn their house guests that they’re on camera, according to Google devices chief Rick Osterloh.

When asked by a BBC reporter whether homeowners with Nest have such an obligation, Osterloh first said he hadn’t considered it.

“Gosh, I haven’t thought about this before in quite this way,” Osterloh said. “It’s quite important for all these technologies to think about all users… we have to consider all stakeholders that might be in proximity.”

Osterloh then acceded that warning houseguests about Nest devices’ recording capabilities is proper etiquette, stating that he already does so.

Do you see the contradiction?

Then again, we’ve come a long way with reconciling contradiction.

COVID-19 is a leading cause of death in children and young people in the US:

COVID-19 was the underlying cause of death for more than 940,000 people in the US, including over 1,300 deaths among children and young people aged 0–19 years. Until now, it had been unclear how the burden of deaths from COVID-19 compared with other leading causes of deaths in this age group.

[…]

Among children and young people aged 0 – 19 years in the US, COVID-19 ranked eighth among all causes of death; fifth among all disease-related causes of death; and first in deaths caused by infectious or respiratory diseases.

By age group, COVID-19 ranked seventh (infants), seventh (1–4 year olds), sixth (5–9 year olds), sixth (10–14 year olds), and fifth (15–19 year olds).

COVID-19 was the underlying cause for 2% of deaths in children and young people (800 out of 43,000), with an overall death rate of 1.0 per 100,000 of the population aged 0–19. The leading cause of death (perinatal conditions) had an overall death rate of 12.7 per 100,000; COVID-19 ranked ahead of influenza and pneumonia, which together had a death rate of 0.6 per 100,000.

This is where I always bring up my carefully researched polio trivia.

The polio epidemic in the United States peaked in 1952 with 57,000-plus cases. That year, 3,145 died and 21,269 were left with paralysis. Stark contrast.

And if you want to see another sort of contrast …

Why does the South have such ugly credit scores?:

“The reason why credit scores are so low in the South has gotta be connected to medical debt, because that’s the most common type of unpaid bill that people have,” Braga said. And the South, he said, easily has the highest levels of medical debt in the country.

Of the 100 counties with the highest share of adults struggling to pay their medical debt, 92 are in the South, and the other eight are in neighboring Oklahoma and Missouri, according to credit data from the Urban Institute. (On the other side, 82 of the 100 counties with the least pervasive medical-debt problems are in the Midwest, with 45 in Minnesota alone.)

And sure enough, when you look at areas across the nation where adults are struggling to pay down medical debt, they have similar credit scores.

That’s some map. Click through and check your county.

And then go out and have a great weekend. You’re due!

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2
Feb 23

Just 83 years ago …

I have next to nothing today, but there’s always the weather! Before I woke up, some rodent had doomed us to more winter. The high here today was 39 degrees. The low was 19. It was sunny.

Why is it that some creature elsewhere determines my weather? Don’t I have any agency here? Of course, I don’t. The weather is a part of a global meteorological system barely within our understanding, and certainly beyond my control. But, really, the lack of agency is galling. Not me, but some critter that’d just as soon stay in his hole, honestly.

I know how he feels. As soon as I read about the shadow, I wanted to climb into a hole, or at least back into the blankets.

Groundhogs. What a silly, successful bit of marketing. We persist in this because it is fun, right?

And also tourism.

We haven’t looked back at the old college paper in a month. When last we had a look, we poked around in 1929. We’re jumping forward a bit today, to 1940. On this day, 82 years ago, there was a new committee that was formed to think about cheating. I wonder what they thought.

Oddly enough, this guy was on the same front page. R. Temple Greystoke was a man named Ray Price.

He started in the magic business in 1921, and can’t you imagine that was a challenging lifestyle. It begain with kids shows, a dog act and he eventually developed what is called a Spook Show, and became a famous and popular act through the 1930s. Soon after he played at Auburn he returned to a more conventional stage show. He moved home to Alabama when his health began to fail him in 1955. He passed away in 1973.

Dawson Mullen here, he was a BMOC. He was an electrical engineering manager, honor society member, he was on the mysterious leadership council of his time, president of something called the engineer’s council, colonel in the ROTC, captain of the rifle team. And, in this same issue, we learned he was on that cheating committee.

I’ll have to look ahead and see what, if anything, that august panel resolved. Anyway, Mullen, I believe, found his way to Georgia. If I have the right one, he died in 2001. There’s not a lot on him, however.

This bit of copy is a hoot.

The building being referenced here is, I assume, the Auburn Sports Arena. We called it The Barn. It housed basketball starting in 1946. Likely a project put on hold during the war?) The basketball team moved one block over in 1968. The Barn was right across the street from the football stadium. It housed the gymnastics team, it was old and scheduled for demolition. And then it burned to the ground during the LSU football game in 1996. (A different, better, story.) There’s a parking deck in that spot now.

We like to think of the 1940s as being a fully modern time and, in many respects, it was. They were still trying to get driveways paved and sidewalks pour on campus. The depression, in-state politics, and subsequent decades of inattention were just starting to be remedied.

Scandal! Bottom of page one! Oh … never mind.

Grady Young graduated from Georgia and then studied to be a vet, like his father before him. He had three kids and seven grandchildren, and he ran Young’s Veterinary Clinic in Georgia for 42 years before his retirement. He died in 2021, at 82.

Here’s a man that made an impression, and you get the feeling the multi-sport coach (they all coached more than one thing back then) was well liked and would be missed.

Dell Morgan died in a car accident, in Texas, in 1962. He’d spent the day watching his Rice players practice, and was headed out to go fishing with a buddy when another car crossed the center line. Four people were killed.

(I wonder if that tweed jacket ever turned up. That’s one of those mysteries that will stick with you the rest of the week.)

I love the old phone numbers. Dial 611 for flowers. Cracks me up. I don’t know anything about the florist. This isn’t the sort of history anyone on the Plains is good at making readily available, and contemporary florists using SEO has basically ruined any searches of this sort. H. L. Welsted, based on the ads, was around for at least four years, but, again, he falls in the analog canyon, but he is interred in Virgina. He passed away in 1961. The Welsteds had two children, Harry Lee, junior, and Mittie, who had just graduated from AU the year before. Harry the younger became a chemical engineer, and worked in New York and Charlotte. He passed away in 2010. Mittie studied dietetics, got married and died in 2002.

Here are the Welsted kids, from the 1939 Glom. They had long, and hopefully, full and complete lives.

Their parents ran a boarding house. Moved to Auburn and set that up, specifically, so the kids could get an education. That’s what Harry Lee Welsted’s obituary said. And while I learned one or two more things about the Welsteds, but not many, it is important that we don’t stray too far afield. Because that image above is really about the Grille.

I remember the Grille. Dined in it, frequently. One night a week they did a spaghetti plate dinner. If you finished it, they’d give you a second plate free. You could get in there, stuff yourself with two plates of spaghetti, a soft drink and a brownie for about five bucks, and that was one of the better, cheap meals in town. The walls were covered in local lore and history. And in that one particular booth is where the legendary football coach sat.

And then the rent got too high, and the Grille closed in the late 1990s and it still feels like one of the saddest things that could possibly happen in a place like that. We kicked ourselves that we didn’t eat there more — maybe we could have helped save it — but we are all starving and broke college kids and downtown was changing. Downtown was always changing, every so often.

My time was more than a half-century latter, of course, but I don’t have any knowledge of these places, either. Ball’s Bakery was in the neighboring town, but clearly everyone knew of it.

They stayed in business through the mid-1950s. Reed’s? Absolutely no idea. But with a “stay out of the cold” you have to think they had their moments. Winter moments.

The Martin Theatre was still relatively new. It opened in Opelika in 1938, with 1,600 seats, and lasted until 1970 or so. Martin replaced it with one in the strip mall. That joint was the barely-hanging-on dollar theater a quarter century later. I remember watching a few movies there.

The movie they were showing? Wonderful pre-war propaganda. The film highlights the real (and dramatized) exploits of a New York unit during World War 1. Also, the picture was just released the week before. In a time when movies weren’t in theaters everywhere simultaneously, it is amazing that this was on a screen in little Opelika, Alabama, six days later.

The Martin must have truly been the place to go.

Olin Hill? The man with the tape? He’s buried in nearby Notasulga. The headline in the (Mobile) Press-Register obituary was “Auburn clothier Hill dies.” Imagine all the things he saw from 1907 until 2003.

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31
Jan 23

The view stretched on for miles

So there I was, 11 p.m., huffing and puffing through my third bike ride of the day. OK, second ride, but third route. Still, “third ride” sounds more maniacal. I rode 39 miles this morning in London.

After a day at the office, an evening in the studio and delicious leftovers for dinner, I went to Zwift once more. Just naked mile collecting, really. I have three spreadsheets. Well … had three spreadsheets. This was the butt of a mild joke today. It was an implied joke and those are the ones that stick with you. So this evening I consolidated the three files into one single document. One part of the spreadsheet compares my top months, mileage-wise.

This morning, I topped my previous best, May 2016, when I had time to pedal and numbness to pedal through. But I realized that if I did juuuust a few more miles, I would get to a pleasing number. So I did that this evening, riding in Zwift’s made up world of Watopia. For some reason the photo capture part of the app didn’t work this evening, which is a shame. I had a great wide shot of some Mayan temples. That part is odd, since I wasn’t riding in the Maya region of Central America and modern Mexico, but rather on an island in the Solomons, some 7,000-plus miles away.

But this evening, when it was done, I set a new best, humble as it is. I tabulated a chart showing January in the saddle. That blue line, if I can stay above it throughout, would give me a record-setting year, in terms of miles. The red and green trendlines show slightly more ambitious goals.

The purple line is where I am now.

So, not a bad January.

Another part of my spreadsheet presently ranks out the best Februaries. None of them are impressive and it shouldn’t be hard to post a new superlative. I’ll start on that after a rest day or two.

The 2023 Zwift route tracker: 53 routes down, 67 to go.

Let’s clear out a few tabs. This is the feature where I link to things I’ve been keeping in a browser somewhere. Rather than have this stuff disappear forever, I can reference them here. (Blogging! I know! So wild!) Some of these are absolutely worth the effort. The last several weeks I’ve shared a bunch of pages that I’ve held open for a long time. This one here, however, is just from last fall.

Bryan Collins’ 101 design rules:

Musings, ramblings, and principles that I’ve shared with my team and randomly on Twitter. Reminding yourself of the principles that ground you is simply a good practice. Here are mine.

1. Design is hope made visible.

2. You can live your life as the result of history and what came before, or you can live your life as the cause of what’s to come. You choose.

3. When talent doesn’t hustle, hustle beats talent. But when talent hustles, watch out.

4. When you work only for money, without any love for what you do in and of itself, your work will lack energy. People will feel that. So give every project everything you’ve got, at every moment, every time.

5. A good philosopher will say: “Know thyself.” A good shopkeeper will say: “Know thy customer.” A good designer will say: “Know both.”

This might be one of the last things I opened on Twitter. And it is worth seeing. There are 96 more chestnuts for you there, should you follow the link above.

This one, meantime, has been sitting on the phone for quite some time. In hatboxes, pouches and bags lie the items that define us:

In Carson McCullers’s novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), Mick, a teenage girl, owns an old hatbox that she keeps hidden under the bed. The box contains personal valuables, ‘three mystery books her Dad had given her, a compact, a box of watch parts, a rhinestone necklace, a hammer, and some notebooks. One notebook was marked on the top with red crayon – PRIVATE. KEEP OUT. PRIVATE – and tied with a string.’ This strange assortment of things is of little material value, but of immense sentimental importance. The hatbox is her own small space, where she keeps the things that make her who she is.

Many people own such a shoebox, a drawer or some kind of chest in which they keep the things that are of strangely intimate value. The idea of these small spaces that contain things of high personal value is an overlooked part of Western culture.

Honestly, this is a good starting place, but there’s no reveal or resolution here. I was so hoping for one, something that might help to explain “Why do I have several of these?”

Know what I have several of? Tabs! These came from my phone, where I am now down to 39 tabs.

We return to the Re-Listening project, and while we are still somewhere in the late 1990s as I play all of my CDs, in order, this one is from 1995. It is also a cassette-to-disc upgrade, so I am glossing over this.

So today we’re on to Edwin McCain’s “Honor Among Thieves.” I like him, saw him live a few times in venues both big and small. I enjoyed the music because the South Carolina style appeals to my musical sensibilities of the time. “Solitude” made its way onto the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and landed in the top 40 of the Mainstream Rock Tracks, Top 40 Mainstream and Adult Top 40 charts. Also, this is the one where Darius Rucker came on to sing for his friend. It has never not been funny that McCain wound up singing harmony to his guest on his own debut single. But, Rucker was set to become Elvis at that moment, so it made sense in more ways than one.

If you look up live performances of that song, McCain has slowed it down over the years, and it works pretty well. I imagine he’s on stage thinking, “I still have to sing this song?”

Just one more, since we’re glossing over the cassette-to-CD set. I was reading something recently about someone learning how to write songs, and how to write pop songs. As I listened to this record again I found myself thinking about how that could apply to McCain’s debut. It can get fairly narrow in places here, though his work blossomed over the next few records. There are still one or two standouts on this record, and this time through, it felt like “Jesters, Dreamers & Thieves” has aged the best.

Here’s a 2004 live performance. The song was a decade old, and they let Craig Too Cool Shields take his sax out for a little spin.

We’ll hear a bit more from Edwin McCain soon. I think I have two more of his records that will show up in the Re-Listening Project.

But, coming up soon, probably tomorrow, is some wildly successful power pop. Hey, it was the nineties.

cycling / food / links / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
24
Jan 23

No, they’re not fussy chickens

I saw some birds Monday evening. They are spending some time in Dunn’s Woods, on the IU campus. Once private property, this is the southwestern part of campus. Today, this is where the 20-acre Old Crescent, is. The woods are right next to my building. The property was sold to the university by Moses Fell Dunn in 1883. This is the heart of the campus, and it’s a lovely green space. Quiet, peaceful, a lovely stroll. When all of that bird noise isn’t happening, that is.

There’s an apocryphal story about the Dunn sale. The story goes that if a tree is cut down, another must be planted in its place. It’s a great story, and would be some lovely 19th century conservationism. It’s not real. But the campus architects actually put in more trees than they take away. It’s a lovely bit of 21st century conservationism.

And the birds need them. So do the rabbits and squirrels and the rest of the critters that are in those woods, but, today, we’re thinking about birds.

It has been a long time since I’ve seen a huge flock of birds. I mean a real, stop-you-in-your-tracks, worthy of awe, collection of birds. It could be because I don’t live on one of the primary flyways. Then again, I never did.

But don’t you remember, as a kid, being mesmerized? The flowing, pulsing order of birds. The chaos and structure of so many living creatures moving independently, and unison. The slow crawl, birds moving across one section of the horizon to another. I could be outside playing and play would stop, because look at all of those birds. And when you learn and really think about migration, the miles they put in, the time it takes, those little tiny wings and great big dreams. It’s a staggering prospect.

Ahh, but who knows how accurate those flyway maps are. Maybe I was closer to one of the aviary superhighways than I thought. Or maybe the birds got lost. Who knows how far off that very generic map birds would wander? They’re just birds and there aren’t signs. Biologists and ornithologists could speak on this at great length and, I imagine, could get it down to terrain and tree cover and things to eat.

Or, as a colleague, a real outdoorsy sort, pointed out: when was the last time you took a long car trip and your car was covered with bugs? Good point, I said, but I hadn’t thought of that. I’ve been too busy wondering about the birds.

Maybe the insects went somewhere else, too. When I hear the birds today, I always look up. Now I wonder how they’re eating.

This is the section where I’m sharing things that, judged too good to close, have been sitting in open tabs for far too long. There are a lot of tabs open in my browser(s). Rather than lose them altogether, I am bookmarking some and closing them. (Novel!) And others should be shared, and then closed. So here we are, and here are today’s stars.

This is from August 2021. I’m guessing I’ve had this open for a good long while, since. Star Pitmaster Moe Cason Shares How To Make Impeccable Barbecue Brisket:

“I remember seeing all these different trailers, pits, and cookers,” Cason says. “I was just like, ‘Man, it’s just really cool! This is where I need to be.'”

After showing his skills in some 20 cook-offs that first year, the would-be chef was hooked and began branching out further to Texas, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Tennessee. In the years since, Cason has competed in hundreds of barbecue contests in various countries. He’s also been a contestant, judge, and star on Destination America’s BBQ Pitmasters and BBQ Pit Wars — solidifying his reputation as one of the best in the game.

After meeting “Big Moe” at Austin’s Treaty Oak Distilling last month, I was amazed by his immense barbecue knowledge and his incredible heart. During our conversation, I asked him about his intro to ‘cue and managed to snag a seven-step guide to barbecuing his specialty, brisket.

I can’t taste it through the browser, but those photos look great.

Speaking of photos … there’s a nice design, and some warmly charming photographs, in this April 2021 New York Times piece. Have I had this opened as a tab on my phone that whole time? I can’t say for sure, but it probably wouldn’t be the riskiest bet of the day. A Cyclist on the English Landscape:

A year ago, as a travel photographer grounded by the pandemic, I started bringing a camera and tripod with me on my morning bicycle rides, shooting them as though they were magazine assignments.

It started out as just something to do — a challenge to try to see the familiar through fresh eyes. Soon it blossomed into a celebration of traveling at home.

I live in a faded seaside town called St. Leonards-on-Sea, in Sussex, on the south coast of England. If you’ve not heard of it, you’re in good company. It’s not on anybody’s list of celebrated English beauty spots. Indeed, most of my riding is across flat coastal marsh or down-at-the-heel seafront promenades.

There’s history here, of course. This is England after all. The lonely marshes I pedal across most days are where William the Conqueror landed his men in 1066. Otherwise, except for being a haunt for smugglers, this stretch of coast dozed away the centuries until the Victorians brought the railways down from London.

Again, gorgeous photos. And, at the bottom, there are links to other interesting things. So that means … more tabs.

(I now have 39 tabs open on my phone browser.)

On my bike last night, I pedaled through Central Park. There’s nothing like New York in the fall.

As I have said before, some of the Zwift routes are realistic. Others are more fantastical. There are flying cabs in New York, for instance. And also these bridges. These bridges, which you can see through, somewhat. They look like ice. There’s a nice skyline back there, but who can look at that when you’re busy looking down.

The way the trainer works, your back wheel is connected to a drum system. It is meant to go along with the terrain, climbs are hard, downhills are easier and faster, and so on. Your front wheel is propped up, so you can’t ride off somewhere. Good thing, too. The front of my bike points at a wall and a window; it’d be a short trip! And, yet, when I see these bridges in the New York routes, and my avatar makes a turn on them, I tense up, just a bit. How am I going to hold up on this ice?

Which is silly. The ice, the real stuff, will be here tomorrow. My avatar has nothing to fear, these bridges don’t exist. Floating cabs? Maybe.

Anyway, after last night’s ride, I made another spreadsheet to chart a different sort of progress. (This makes three cycling spreadsheets. If you think this is excessive, you are correct! But I also say, N+1.) This one will compare my highest volume months. This month is ninth, all time, going back to 2010. It is the second highest January, and my second-highest month this decade. It will be in my overall top 5 when I can get back on the bike on Friday.

I wonder how many birds I’ll see between now and then.

And, yes, there are birds in Zwift. A giant pelican flew by me the other night.

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16
Jan 23

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

It was a shame that Robby Novak had to grow up. (He’s 18 or so now.) They ended that amazing series so he could concentrate on being a kid, and that makes perfect sense in every respect of course. Still, you might have found yourself hoping that they’d pass the torch. You could have written a storyline about that — a storyline of positivity, of course.

I remember when I was first introduced to this interview, some 12 or so years ago, perhaps. It came to me as part of a conversation about the larger message, the work incomplete, and the issue at hand. All of that was, and is, true. And the interview is remarkable. The first thing you notice is the composition of the shot. But it won’t be the last thing you notice.

This was an important interview, absolutely worth your time. Go ahead and bookmark it if you can’t watch it all right now, but do watch it. And then, maybe, like me, be grateful that we have places available to dip our toes into such important source material.

The world needs more three-day weekends. I say that with all of the respect today deserves. There are a great many important people and ideas to celebrate. We could only benefit by having more opportunities to acknowledge and learn, and our communities would be better for the service. Having a few more four-day work weeks would be a nice byproduct, sure, but that’s not the point I’m after here. I figure one a month, March through October, would be a fine civic contribution.

And, on some of those days, we’d even have nice weather. Law of averages and all that. Saturday we had some sun early. It was gray and cold all day Sunday. It rained most of today. The next seven days we’ll be between 28 and 53 degrees. We might get some sun two or three of those days. We might get some snow or rain on three of those days.

Ninety more days until spring.

We played a few hands on dominos yesterday afternoon. The cat, who only swatted at the tiles one time, managed to eek out a win.

Which makes this as good a place as any to put this week’s installment of the most popular feature on the blog. It’s time to check in with the kitties.

A few days ago I was able to catch Phoebe in shadow and light. It’s a moody image, both dark and mysterious and bright and shiny. Also, stay away from her tennis ball.

Poseidon has placed an order online for a deliver, and he’s spending a fair amount of time waiting on the delivery guy to bring it to him.

I guess he didn’t spring for the overnight delivery. Smart cat.

He got a bit trapped the other night. This cat, that always wants to go outside — they’re strictly indoor pets — has to have his under-the-cover time to keep warm, you see. And if a fuzzy blanket has been deployed Phoebe will find her way to sit on it. So Saturday night …

He looks thrilled by that development, doesn’t he? Look at those eyes. He’s positively delighted to find his blanket time being intruded upon. He allowed me to take three quick photos before he left in disgust.

This is the section where I’m sharing things that, judged too good to close, have been sitting in open tabs for far too long. Today’s first tab features a poem. I ran across it near the end of 2021. That’s a long time to have a tab open, in my estimation. (But I’ve got older tabs, though, as you’ll eventually see.) Lovely poem though.

Keep Your Faith in Beautiful Things

Keep your faith in beautiful things;
in the sun when it is hidden,
in the Spring when it is gone.
And then you will find that Duty and Service and Sacrifice—
all the old ogres and bugbears of —
have joy imprisoned in their deepest dungeons!
And it is for you to set them free —
the immortal joys that no one —
No living soul, or fate, or circumstance—
Can rob you of, once you have released them.

It was written by Roy Rolfe Gilson, Spanish-American War veteran, newspaperman, author and, finally, an Episcopal rector. Born in Iowa, in 1875, Rev. Gilson died in 1933, and is buried in Maryland, where he had served in a parish. He wrote for papers in Michigan. He’s quoted in his obituary. “The best known of my works is ‘In the Morning Glow‘, and is not a child’s book, but an attempt to preserve in words something of that exquisite loveliness of the American home as it has been in its simplicity, and never more beautiful than when seen through the eyes of a little child, to whom the father is a hero and the mother a heroine, and even the toy soldiers have an identity and name.

“It is never the bizarre or unusual that makes me wish to work, but the poetry and comedy in everyday life, in the common lot … If my stories are idyllic, it is not because I wish to write pretty things, but because I have a friendly eye for those secret quests on which we pass each other disguised in foolishness, but wearing beneath a lovely raiment of dreams.”

You can read the entire book, which he published in 1908, at that link.

(So I guess I’ll have that tab open for a while … )

(I just read the first chapter — sweet and innocent and charmingly sentimental, but you knew what was coming. I’ll be reading the rest.)

If memory serves, I googled this because of something I read in a Quora answer about some job interview techniques. I’d never heard of this, neumonic, or seen the concept spelled out, and so it seemed like something to learn about.

The STAR method is a structured manner of responding to a behavioral-based interview question by discussing the specific situation, task, action, and result of the situation you are describing.

More: What is the STAR method?

The STAR method is an interview technique that gives you a straightforward format you can use to tell a story by laying out the Situation, Task, Action, and Result.

Situation: Set the scene and give the necessary details of your example.
Task: Describe what your responsibility was in that situation.
Action: Explain exactly what steps you took to address it.
Result: Share what outcomes your actions achieved.

By using these four components to shape your anecdote, it’s much easier to share a focused answer, providing the interviewer with “a digestible but compelling narrative of what a candidate did,” says Muse Career Coach Al Dea, founder of CareerSchooled. “They can follow along, but also determine based on the answer how well that candidate might fit with the job.”

I suspect this structure is useful in some circumstances. But in others, well, there are a lot of odd interview … let’s call them techniques … out there.

And now I can close these two tabs, meaning on one of my phone’s browsers I now only have … 40 tabs open. Progress!

I had a 30-mile ride on Saturday, including some outrageous (for me) power numbers. To be honest, I am not yet clear on how to interpret these things. Occasionally my watts look more impressive than others, and I’ll google them, just to see how they all measure up. On those days, I have almost-weekend-warrior sort of numbers.

For instance, Saturday I hit 1,048 watts on a sprint. What’s that mean? It means I was standing up and going hard while simultaneously trying to keep my bike in the trainer. That’s pretty close to my recorded maximum. Apparently world-class sprint track cyclists can touch 2,200 watts. So … I’m not that guy.

But then I was going up a hill and looked at the watts in the HUD graphic and …

That’s on a climb and, for me, impressive. I am in no way a climber, but I have lately been getting over small punchy hills in an almost-timely fashion. I’ve just had brief moments of good legs the last few days, basically. There’s something to be said for riding a lot. And that something is “Your legs will feel tired all of the time, but when you get them moving … ”

2023 Zwift route tracker: After today’s 25-mile ride I have completed 34 of the routes on Zwift, and there are 86 to go.