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24
Mar 26

Back to campus

Back to school today. Last week was spring break for the students and we’re all now trying to figure out how much enthusiasm everyone still has for the rest of the term. There’s a bit of rah-rah involved in that, but the weather is warming up, sporadically, and the days are getting longer and summer is calling.

Today in Rituals and Traditions we talked about sport as spectacle. This would be the aural expressions, the songs and chants, the visual displays, the stadium choreography and performances. This is about how seating works, fireworks, the music that’s played for us, the fancy digital court that we’re seeing in some college basketball tournaments, and so on.

In Criticism we talked about MLB labor: How fight over salary cap will shape negotiations:

There was something about the four-year, $72 million contract given to left-hander Tanner Scott in January that infuriated fan bases in every market outside of Los Angeles — even the only one that dwarfs it.

“It’s difficult for most of us owners to be able to do the kinds of things they’re doing,” New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner told the YES Network a week after the Scott deal.

That the Yankees — the most valuable franchise in baseball, the game’s foremost revenue machine, owners of the highest payroll each of the first 14 years this century — had joined the chorus typically reserved for smaller-market teams questioning the game’s fairness was no accident. Even if formal discussions about Major League Baseball’s next collective bargaining agreement are half a year away, the campaign to capture the hearts and minds of the paying consumers has already begun.

And also this story, Watershed moment as Russia’s sporting exile ends. These are both explainers, the latter is like a richly done FAQ, and so it worked out well that the class picked these two stories to discuss this week. Sometimes the stars lineup, where we can discuss complimentary themes.

At home, the sun is coming in through the back door. It’s just a plastic cat toy, but I like that we have enough attention to detail to see it casting a shadow.

Poseidon is fascinated by light, shimmering and reflecting light. If I ever need to move him in the evening a shadow puppet always does the trick. But they never notice long shadows in those parts of the day.

I’m still living in the happy memories of our wonderful Irish vacation. So, I’m sharing extra videos that we didn’t get to at the time. It was a great vacation. I have a lot of footage. This will go on for some time. Enjoy it with me, won’t you?

This was from Silverstrand Beach.

memories / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
3
Feb 26

A well of a tale

Out and about yesterday. Errands had to be ran. I ran errands. Errands were run. Nothing to it, really. Out and about to do the things that need doing. Already I have overstated it. Oh, all right.

No. They’re errands and unremarkable in every way. No one cares.

Except to say this. I stopped at a gas station. As I was going inside, a man was coming out. He had a bag of ice under his arm. He seemed a man fixed on his business and going about his way. Passing one another in the doorway it wasn’t the time to strike up a conversation. But I wanted to have a quick chat. I wanted to ask about that ice. I bet he felt silly, since everything, everywhere, looks like this.

That’s our driveway, and this was eight days after the snow and the sleet turned into ice. It isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. And today I spent a bit of time widening it out a bit more. Just a car could narrowly pass, but you shouldn’t need to demonstrate your best driving skills leaving or returning home.

Plus we had a great big truck come by yesterday. We had a great big truck visit because of the joys of home ownership.

Let me back up. In November of 2023 I called the well company to do a regular tank maintenance. That was a first for me. I’ve never lived on a well before. The appointment was made. During the time between scheduling that visit and the guy showing up, the well start failing. Imagine a pipe spewing water like a low-stakes submarine movie scene. The guy came with his two workers and squatted down and looked at it and started moaning and sighing and muttering and I honestly thought he was having a medical episode in our basement.

Turns out he was fine, but the tank was at death’s door. We could leave it as is — and I’m still not sure why that was even presented as an option — or we could replace it that day. We chose the later, because I like things to work, and not sopping up my floors.

The new tank, he said, was a fiberglass tank. And it’ll never rust out, which was a big sales point at the time. Perhaps you can see why.

(What is that green stuff underneath the well tank?)

They put in that fiberglass tank and everything was just peachy keen. About three weeks ago, though, I started hearing a surging sound in the walls. Taking a shower, flushing the toilet, running the washer, you’d hear this sound. It was soothing, or it would have been in any context that didn’t suggest your house was about to implode.

So I called the well company again and explained all this. Talked to the owner, an older fellow who could do 10 or 12 minutes of comedy on most anything, I decided. He said he’d come on out, but could we wait until after the storm because he was backed up. He assured me that I wasn’t hurting anything by waiting, because the things that were bad weren’t getting worse.

The fiberglass tank. He had me tap on it and that’s how he knew.

His son came by yesterday, same guy that put this thing in just 27 months ago. Sure enough, the tank was done. Just as his father told me on the phone, these tanks were terrible and they were never buying and selling those again. His dad said they’d bought six, had to send four of them back. We had one of the other two. The owner said he’d been taken it in the teeth on these things. And ours was under warranty. I apologized that he was going to eat another bite of lemon, but I was glad that we weren’t buying a new one. We’d be in for labor, and that seemed fair.

So the son was here with an assistant. They took the old tank out, and put in this new one. We’ll see how susceptible it is to rusting.

Also, the new tank has a five-year warranty. And we did not pay for it, because it was a replacement for the fiberglass failure. Initially he tried to charge me for that, but we worked it out, saving about a grand in a quick and easy conversation.

I hope they don’t have to replace tanks often, because I don’t want to watch that guy lug the thing up and out of the basement, but they seem like fine fellows. Which is good, I suppose, now that we will have them back for yearly inspections.

This, just writing about yesterday, is already threatening to get long, so let’s have a few days of writing in arrears. Today is Tuesday, but I’ve written about Monday; tomorrow is Wednesday, I can write about Tuesday. Tuesday, if you can believe it, was almost as riveting as this tale. Come back and see.

adventures / family / memories / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
26
Jan 26

Winter and weddings

Here’s the update from high noon. At least the sun was out, which was an improvement over yesterday. Also, there was no precipitation today, which was a glorious change of pace after yesterday.

We went back out in the late afternoon to chip away at more of the drive, thinking the sunlight might help, though it still felt like it was 10 degrees. Maybe it did. This is the system we adapted today. It is pretty good, if only because we had a lot of driveway in which to experiment.

I took the larger snow shovel and, standing in the middle of the drive, I would ram it underneath the frozen solid slab of ice that covered all of the earth. After two or four big pushes a few feet were carved out. My lovely bride, standing in front of me, and with a slightly smaller shovel, and one designed with a much better angle for, ya know, shoveling, would scoop those chunks into the yard. I worked around her, scooping up and chopping the left and right sides. This shovel is large enough that three rounds would just about clear the width of the drive. I figured that attacking the middle intimidated the flanks, because those were always a bit easier to bust up. In the places the ice got stubborn, I turned the shovel onto its corner and give a little axe-like tap. Working like this, we made our way down the drive, clearing off about 990 square feet in an hour.

Then we helped dig out the new neighbors. They have two little kids, and it was still ridiculously cold, never mind that I ditched my jacket. So mom and dad were taking turns with the kids inside, and the drive outside. Welcome to the neighborhood, nice to finally meet you.

Our other neighbor, Joe the Elder, was out on his tractor trying to plow the three neighborhoods for which he is responsible. No one gave him this job. He took it on himself. And it’s a good thing, despite the many taxes we pay, we are not the recipients of any road cleaning services. During last weekend’s snow was the first time in three winters I’ve seen a snowplow go down the road that wasn’t Joe the Elder. He must have been lost.

My lovely bride walked out of the neighborhood to see the big road, by which we mean a two-lane county highway. It is not in great shape. The local school districts have all canceled classes again tomorrow. I have just uploaded some reading materials for my students. There are a lot of country roads between our house and campus and I’d already heard from about 15 percent of my students that they weren’t going to risk it, anyway. I do not blame them. I commend the wisdom of the safe decision. We’ll catch up Thursday and next Tuesday, if necessary. (It’ll be necessary, but we’ll do it.)

As it says in the video, above, we dug out Sunday. You see why that’s necessary, but you also realize it is a Sisyphean task. I believe it snowed and sleeted and iced after that dig-out as it had before hand.

We got eight inches, easy. But even more on the leeward side of the house, where the sidewalk sits, blown off the roof no doubt.

That was Sunday. We were contemplating how to handle the drive today and I said, Are you expecting any deliveries this week? No? We’re not shoveling the sidewalk.

Saturday, before the storm blew in, we went out to celebrate my god-parents-in-law (just go with it) 50th anniversary. It was partially a surprise. It was supposed to be last weekend, on their actual anniversary, but that got snowed out. Their daughters hustled to get it in today, else we might have just celebrated in the summer.

It went like this. They’d rented a room at the happy couple’s favorite Italian restaurant. Much of their family came, some old work friends came, and so on. They just expected the immediate family for dinner, so the surprise was this full room. My godfather-in-law is a retired teacher, and I sat next to two of his former colleagues. The easiest way to say it is that the stories your teachers have about their lives away from school will really make you second-guess every opinion you had of these people. These two guys were no different.

Dinner was served. Vows were renewed, as officiated by one of their daughters. Photographs were taken. Cake was distributed. This was the cake topper.

Their actual wedding cake topper. (The groom was not wearing a black tux in 1976. It was a much better tuxedo.) One of their son-in-laws pulled it from safe storage when they weren’t looking so it could be used again Saturday. They’d asked all of the guests to prepare pages of a scrapbook, memories of family and friends for half a century. It was lovely.

My father-in-law, the best man at their wedding, gave a toast Saturday, much as he did so long ago. He did a great job. My mother-in-law gave a little speech. These two wouldn’t have been together if not for my in-laws. The two men were childhood best friends. They’ve known each other 70 years. The two women went to nursing school together, and were roommates there. They met at my in-laws’ wedding. My in-laws had the one daughter, and they are her godparents. They had two daughters, and my in-laws are their godparents.

Not the whole of the dinner party, but that immediate family — the happy couple, their daughters’ families, my in-laws, us — returned to their house for a few minutes after dinner. The still-blushing bride pulled out her wedding album. I saw photos of both of their parents — two of which I had the chance to meet a few times. She pulled out her wedding dress, which has been carefully sealed in a cardboard picture box all of these years.

Fifty years.

Fifty years, and one week. Count the weeks. That’s 2,601 weeks. Count the days. That’s 18,269 days, as of Saturday. Lovely people; they built a fine life and a wonderful family. They said it was about this cold that day, too.

family / memories / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
15
Jan 26

Cold and new sweatshirts

It was cold here today. At the peak of the afternoon the thermometer, which is, of course, an app, said it was 32 degrees. But, just below that, all proud and sure of itself, was a line that read: Feels like 22°. But at least it was sunny, here on the inner coastal plain — where the heavy land and the green sands meet.

Yesterday it was 50, for a time. Right now, this evening, it feels like 15.

All of these numbers have been verified against other outputs, because I’m not the simple sort of person who thinks we don’t need weather forecasters or forecasts anymore because we’ve got phones.

Some people think of it that way. I talked with one over the holidays. He was playfully griping about his wife always watches the weather, and why is there so much weather, and where did the sports go on the nightly news.

Rare is the day when I can tell people what I do and they want to talk about it. So we did. And I’m pretty sure he came to regret it. As I explained … ahem … the National Weather Service, and Accuweather, and IBM and it’s super computer and The Weather Channel and the private equity firm that owns them now, and satellites and buoys and forecasters … to a man who has been in commercial aviation for longer than I’ve been alive.

Just your random guy, this would make sense. But you have to figure, a man that flew for Delta, and now boasts of flying rich people around on their whim, would have some passing familiarity with the demands of the atmosphere on the needs of his job. But, no, it’s right there, in your phone.

Friends, it is not.

Anyway, cold, but sunny. I will take the former because of the latter. I accepted it cheerily today, albeit with a shiver, and because this was the last night of the season when civil twilight arrives before 5:30 p.m. We are, friends and loved ones, making progress out of the darkened season.

It occurred to me the other evening, as I put on a fancy new sweatshirt, that a simple and small thing I would do if I had no cares in the world money, would be to buy up a bunch of sweatshirts. Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of old sweatshirts, several of them decades old, and they occupy an important place in my mind and in my wardrobe. But there’s something magical about slipping on that new sweatshirt the first few times, when the inside is just so.

It is the tactile version of the new car smell. It is soft and luxurious, and maybe in a way most of our torsos don’t deserve. Of course, you say, that’s silly. When has a torso ever deserved anything. Others will say, a new sweatshirt isn’t an extravagance. But, no, I’m saying I’d figure out how many wearings and washings I could get out of each shirt before it didn’t fit this criteria any more. Then I’d give the thing away, and wear a new one. How many would that be a winter? Thirty? Forty? If I had money that I’d never miss, that’s a thing I would do.

I thought of that recently while I was slipping on this handsome little fellow.

It was a gift from my godmother-in-law (just go with it). She has three of us to shop for, though really she doesn’t need to buy me anything, so every year her sons-in-law and I get basically the same thing. And she’s good at it. I have some really nice lightweight pullovers from her thoughtfulness.

And if I spread out wearing them, they’ll last a long time. Decades, maybe.

I managed to avoid a Thursday meeting about a Tuesday meeting, which was to precede a meeting next week. I wrote something that kept the meeting from happening. I wrote it on spec last night. It was requested today. I blew it up and rewrote the thing, just to make a few points more carefully and clearly.

And then I wrote a document that, hopefully, will be of some help to my faculty colleagues. Our university does a wonderful job of building up support services and resources for the student body. And what is in the surrounding community is quite robust, as well.

The problem I have seen, on every campus I’ve worked on and probably the ones I attended, as well, is one of awareness. Not everyone knows about all of these programs. How could they? Why should they? So in each class I build a one-page document with some of the most important resources and share it with my students. Last semester I thought, I should share this with my colleagues, in case any of them would like to add to whatever they distribute. I did that earlier this week, and that led to a few people sharing what they share.

I began to think of synthesis. I said I would pull all of these together once the semester got under its own power and nothing needed my attention anymore.

Well, that’s silly, of course. Everything will always need our attention. So I just did the thing today. And what emerged was a three-page Google Doc full of campus and community resources. And maybe someone can make good use of them in the days ahead. Or maybe we can keep building the thing out in weeks and months to come, because, even at three pages, it is hardly complete.

So I wrote six useful pages before lunch. And then I had lunch. And late this afternoon I have built two more lectures. That means … hold on, I’m doing math.

…

Seriously, this takes a while …

… probably longer than one of those documents I wrote this morning …

I think approximately half of my semester’s course work is laid out.

Barring the unforeseen and small changes.

(This is the part I’ll keep repeating, if only to see the list grow smaller.) That should leave me only with grading the work of 93 people throughout the term, plus the 15 or 20 things I’ve planned to write, plus finishing two research projects, and three panel presentations. Plus committee work, my contract packet, whatever else pops up, and so on.

So I have some free time between now and early May, clearly. Obviously I volunteered to present guest lectures via Zoom in Minneapolis if a teacher somewhere needed it.

memories / Monday / overwriting / photo — Comments Off
5
Jan 26

You’ve got two thumbs for a reason

I did what I always do after we invade the airspace of another country and perform some as-yet-ill-described snatch and grab of the sovereign power of state, I went shopping.

Why do you ask?

I recall, through the fog of now almost 25 years and the haze of long hours and weird schedules and watching, with empathy, the people that were in real fear post 9/11. I recall when President Bush said the necessary things, “our financial institutions remain strong” and the American economy was still “open for business.” I remember he told you to get on that plan. Go to Disney World. Help the airlines. Vice President Dick Cheney, long before he was shooting his friend in the face, said we should stick our thumb in the eye of the terrorists. That’s how we win, for it’s our freedoms they feared, and our BOGO sales they wanted. And it seemed silly, then, too, on a micro level. If the health of the nation depends on me showing my fierce Americaness at Best Buy, we’ve got a problem. It’d be months, after all, before Toby Keith delivered a soundtrack for the moment.

I think of that, from time to time. Not the song. It’s a level of saccharine that hasn’t aged all that well, even Keith had something to say about that later. I think about the urge to push people out. It was about confidence and normalcy and distraction in the face of fear and trauma. And, of course, keeping the gears of this machine churning.

Today, we’d be told to jump right back into Meta! Open that ChatGPT window and ask it some foolish question and earnestly accept its reply. We’d have to buy all of our American flags direct from Amazon. We’re all Prime members today. Your flags, made abroad, would arrive in 25 minutes or less, or the DoorDash guy picks up the bill himself.

It will, of course, be the gig guy that takes it in the teeth.

And if he’s not available, we’ve got these robots with 360-degree panoptic sight and sound monitors, to make sure you aren’t watching the Venezuela episode of Parks and Recreation in anything that’s not a suitably detached, ironic fashion.

Well, bub, I’m from Generation X. Watch me work.

Anyway, I went shopping. I needed to get out of the house. I’ve been a bit under the weather. That’s overstating it. The weather was above me. No, that’s not quite right, either. I have had the sinus whatever it is that I get. This version has had two defining characteristics. First, it has been the lightest version of this I can ever recall experiencing. Second, it is persistent. Will not go away.

So I figured, why not experience some of what life has to offer on a gray winter day? This was my Saturday thought. I had only work ambitions today. Saturday I visited an antique mall.

No place, I’m pretty sure, was built to be an antique mall. It is fun to figure out what this gussied up and semi-permanent flea market by another name might have housed in a previous life. The place I went to, I think, was a furniture store. It felt, in fact, like it was still a bit of both of those things. Also, it was clean. It was nice. Nothing terribly old. Nothing terribly interesting. Most distressingly, I did not feel as if I needed a shower when I left the building.

That’s the mark of a true antique market experience, the American experience, if you will.

So I went to another, in the opposite direction. This place is built into a big barn-looking building. And that was built into a hill. And that hill marks a secondary, but important intersection in its town. Across the street is the fire department. At the top of the fire department, inside, but visible from the street, they display the old fire house bell. This is an antique mall, then, that sits opposite people that respect what was.

Inside the red barn shaped building, sharing a wall with the antique mall is a restaurant. It may be the same people. The restaurant does three things. They make a lot of food. They hired the best food photographer in three counties to shoot it. (Food photographers get my ultimate respect. That’s not always the easiest subject matter to shoot.) And they try to tell me that a pulled pork sandwich should cost $20.99.

And, for me, it absolutely will not.

But the antique mall, now here’s a place you could prowl around. Here is a place where the floor creaks beneath you and you wonder if it was your holiday diet, or 100 years of termites. Here is a place where you wonder, How is< that shelf standing upright with a lean like that? Here is a place where you overlook the Star Wars plastic junk for maybe something interesting. Here is a place where you feel like you need to rinse off after your time inside is done.

I wasn’t looking for anything. I just enjoy the experience. Oh, if the right sort of thing jumped out at me, maybe I would be anxious about it for a moment before I moved on, but mostly I was proud to walk around somewhere and not think about work — or, ya know, the state of things — for a couple of hours.

I saw a bunch of hand planes and spokeshaves and other old hand tools I don’t have a need for or a place for. But I have watched people restore them on YouTube and it’s a satisfying transition. At least in a 12 minute video, maybe not the entire process.

Remember, if you don’t watch a good restoration video now and again, the terrorists win. Stick your thumb right in their eye, so they can’t see to click away at the good spots. Stick a thumb in your eye, so you can’t see to skip the pre-roll ads, because commerce!

I got buzzed on the way home.

I drove responsibly. And only had the chance to get a quick shot through the time of the windshield, which has that extra bit of tint, explaining the colors of the sky.

And that was Saturday afternoon.