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To the weekend!

I have a new setup in the home office. This is, if you ask me, getting a bit excessive. Also, it probably won’t stay like this for long.

Not pictured is all of my audio gear, which I need to work into this new workflow somehow, and also just use more. It’s sitting to the right, and just out of frame.

The biggest problem is going to be struggling with the new keyboard. My computer is one size, my work computer is another size, and when I go between them I’m always about a key, a key and a half, off as I type. It’s all a work in progress, of course, everything always is. The rest just comes down to how you feel about that.

That “Facing History” feature on the monitor, above? That’s on the Rowan site. Some of the archeologists there discovered, just a few years ago, some Hessian soldiers buried not too far away. It’s a Revolutionary War mystery they’re still trying to unravel. Fascinating stuff.

Today I had my first swim in three weeks. Three weeks of summer swimming I had to give up! Stupid ear.

Anyway, I got back in the water today. I was too nervous to do it yesterday, because my stupid ear has not given me a pleasant experience and I’m in no hurry to repeat that. But, healed up, fed up, and finally just dove in today. I wore ear plugs.

They did not work.

As soon as I popped the plug out of my left ear I felt all of the water that the plug was actually holding in.

It’s OK, though, because my lovely bride got me two other kinds of ear plugs to try, as well.

But I got in a good solid 1,650 yards. The first 300 and change were dreadful, because that’s what its like when you’re forever having to stop something, and then begin again. After a while, though, my arms warmed up and my brain got into that magically meditative state where it doesn’t really think about much of anything and the laps just started clicking by.

Three weeks!

Now I just have to wait a day or two to see if the swimmer’s ear returns, I guess. I poured some of the ear drying miracle of chemistry into it. Maybe I’ll be OK.

(Update: Looks like I got by without any problems. Maybe I just have to be particularly careful about this in the future.)

Here’s the last little clip from last week’s concert. This and “Touch Me Fall,” which I don’t think I’ve seen them play live in a long time, are always going to be the songs that opened my eyes up to what Amy Ray does. I’m going to say that, but if I played their whole catalog, it’s really all of it. And then if I played every CD from her solo catalog, I’d say, “See? See, right there.”

Anyway, this is a tune I think that probably does something different for different parts of your fandom. It literally screams about the being too young, and being too old. I was perfectly middle-aged — but trending, ya know? — before I really figured that out. I find this interesting because they have that now 40-year collection of fans. No matter where you were then, now, or in between, it has a moment for you.

Forty years. That hardly seems right, but they started playing in Georgia in 1985, and most of the rest of us started catching up in the next five or 10 years.

It’s funny, we went to a show of theirs some time back and jokingly said, “Wow, look at this crowd. How old!” Jokingly because we were, too. And that was seven years ago. Caught them three more times since, now.

I hope we get to go, go, go see them again soon.

adventures / Indigo Girls / music / Rowan / Thursday / video — Comments Off
29
Aug 24

The gearing up for fall begins

It was a normal Thursday. I went to work, as one normally does. We stopped by a grocery store for fruit and water. I’d also carried a large bin of cut cantaloupe for the ride over.

Campus is just 15 miles, 25 or so minutes, away. We weren’t stocking up for a journey. So the fruit I cut last night was our in-car breakfast. The fruit tray and water was for our beginning-of-the-year department meeting. It was scheduled to run for five hours, including lunch. The meeting ran five hours, and then just a few extra minutes for the traditional grousing and venting that can occur in any meeting, anywhere in America. It was well plotted and well conducted, then.

The meeting began with a few ice breaker. We were asked to list our favorite movie from when we were younger — which was left deliberately vague in an ad hoc way — and how that impacted us. There were 15 people in the room, but it went pretty smoothly. Here are people who have given this thought, live the sort of examined lives that included this precise question or are pretty good at the ol’ razzle dazzle. Since they stand in front of college students and talk for a living, any of these things, all of these things, are possible.

I said The Princess Bride and Spaceballs, which have each, I suppose, informed an irreverent sense of humor. But, I said, lately I’ve been working on another project, which is to each day incorporate a line from Road House into conversation in a contextually appropriate way. The guy sitting nearest to me, an earnest, high energy, fast talking fellow who gives you the impression that he’s seen it all and came back again, said, “Be nice.”

Later I asked him about the message of his t-shirt. It was a direct reference to a British comedy and, he explained, a direct commentary on …

I’d only just met him, but told him we were going to get along just fine.

Much talking was done. Some writing was done. Advice was shared. People had questions. Sometimes there were answers. Other times, the answers would be forthcoming from other series of meetings. Academia in a nutshell.

And while this was happening all afternoon I received an email from the technology people that my new computer setup was in. I’d previously been told it would take a few weeks to arrive. Now, I’m under a barrage of emails, but it hasn’t been a couple of weeks. So a pleasant surprise. I made an appointment to stop by after the faculty meeting to get the new hardware.

There’s a place setup on campus designed to be evocative of Apple’s Genius Bar and that’s where the hardware distribution is taking place. The people there were perfectly lovely, pre-fall-term enthusiasm is a great vibe. I had a nice conversation with a young man where he came to realize that he could talk to me almost like a person who actually knew what was going on. I am not that person, but I know those people, and I have learned, over the years, the deft art of faking it. I walked out a short time later with two armfuls of things.

I did not sign the first document. I assume that they assume I am me because I knew my password.

And tomorrow I’ll start setting up some of that equipment. It was then, a productive day.

Just one song today, so I can cover the whole week. This is the first track from their 13th studio album which is turning 13 this fall. I mishear the chorus. It might be a deliberate choice because, sometimes I’ve finally learned, those are just better versions for you.

(Remember, I was shooting that from a ZIP code away, but the audio is pretty good.)

I take it as share the mood, rather than the moon. You can see why the latter works, but the thing that binds us to other people is the shared moment, of course, and that could be something with or without a celestial satellite. We just need a personal satellite, or to be the one orbiting others, maybe. Probably I’m overthinking this. Probably it’s just always been clunky hearing.

I mean it’s right there in the title of the song. I have the album, of course. I’ve seen Amy and Emily play this song live at least three or four times. Doesn’t matter. What is important is the mixture of what it all brings forward. There’s a certain tiredness, a resignation, in the lyrics, but in that third verse, above, there’s something more fundamentally aspirational at play. And it’s all underpinned by the E, by the mandolin and wrapped up in Lyris Hung’s beautiful violin. Who has not been on that road, going somewhere? Hoping to head to someone?

See? It’s a mood.

But I overthink, which is the prelude to overwriting.

And sometimes the prelude to underwriting, too, if you think about it.

So just a normal Thursday, then.

cycling / Indigo Girls / markers / music / photo / video / We Learn Wednesdays / Wednesday — Comments Off
28
Aug 24

What does it look like if you keep going further?

It’s a banner day of banners around here. I laid out the photos and the videos and put in the appropriate segment pieces up and everything here goes under one of our old familiar pieces of art.

I got in a 21-mile ride this evening. It was one of those, What if I went straight at that one intersection, instead of left or right? Where would I wind up? rides. The best kind of ride.

Going that particular direction, you’re bound my geography anyway. The river is out there somewhere. But after I passed that intersection, pedaled through some tree covered roads and dodged a few potholes, I got to a new stretch of road.

What is down there?

It’s a wonderful feeling. You’re about to see something new. And maybe it’ll be regular fields and houses. But they’ll be new houses. And you’ll be able to wonder who is on their way to that house? Who is the light on for?

Or maybe it’ll be something surprising, big or small. There was a small surprise near the very end of that road. A lovely suburban farmhouse style home on a great big lot. Next to it was an oversized produce store. It looked like a family operation, perhaps the same people ran it as lived next door. At least that’s the way the landscaping felt. It was large and looked great. Better than most of the houses, and there were a few nice spreads on that road.

Here are two more brief clips from last week’s concert. “Yoke” was the last track on 2011’s “Beauty Queen Sister,” and it became one of my favorites in their whole catalog almost right away. It feels like an Amy Ray song. And Lyris Hung’s violin, which sounds like a circus organ, an ethereal cacophony, a mental high wire act. All of it just sticks in the head, not an earworm, but something even more potent. And this part, right here …

Again, we were about a quarter of a mile away, so please excuse the visual quality.

This one was the second single from their 1997 record, the second track on that record, and I’m pretty sure everyone fell in love with it in about two seconds of the first time they played it. It takes less time for a crowd to voice their approval when they play it live, and so they play it live all the time.

It’s a historically important song. When my lovely bride and I were just dating, we were on a trip and playing this song. It’d been a good weekend after a long week and the sun was shining and the road was long and actually using an actual map — as one did back then — and singing along.

I don’t sing in front of people. We’d only been dating for a few months and there was that barrier dissolved. Music makes you vulnerable. And now here we are, all these years later.

We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays, wherein I am discovering the county’s historical markers via bike rides. This is, I believe, the 45th installment, and the 77th marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series. This one is a new marker for an old site. It’s not even in the marker database yet. I visited it only because I saw it out of the corner of my eye while riding to another site a few weeks ago.

The history of this cemetery is not well documented. An article appeared in the January 6, 1941 Standard and Jerseyman that indicated that Mrs. Lydia Fox Kelty had paper records in her possession which showed that her father, Robert Fox, was a direct descendant of James McGill, who donated one acre of his farm to Alloway Township, in which residents of the township were to be buried free of charge. Research of family records reveal that Robert Fox was the son of Charles H. Fox (1845-1929) and Lydia Megill (1846-1897). Lydia Megill was the daughter of John Megill (1805-1883) and Elizabeth Margaret Shaw (1810-1881). John Megill was the son of James Megill (1780-1842) and Margaret Mower (1788-1824).

Per the newspaper article, James McGill was the great-grandson of Rev. James MacGill who came to America from Scotland in 1725. Several of Rev. MacGill’s grandsons settled in Salem, and one, Patrick MacGill, a blacksmith, settled in Allowaystown. James McGill, who gave the ground, was Patrick’s son. James McGill, his family and a number of soldiers of the American Revolution are buried in this old cemetery. Research of the June 1793 tax records confirm that Patrick McGill lived in Alloway.

According to the article, this gift was made by James McGill in the year 1810-11, when he learned that the owners of the cemeteries in this vicinity refused to allow soldiers of the American Revolution to be buried without buying a lot. This so incensed Mr. McGill, whose father and uncle had served in the Revolution, that he gave the aforementioned ground to the citizens of Alloway Township. Unfortunately, the deed documenting this gift could not be found in the Salem County archives. Burial records are incomplete and many of the early gravestones are no longer legible, and documentation has not been found to identify what Revolutionary War soldiers are buried here.

Some of the earliest known burials include: Elizabeth Bee 1768-1832, James Bell 1756-1830, Rebecca Sweeten Bell 1767-1806, Jesse Earley 1786-1867, Peter H. Emel 1778-1823, Esther Emmel 1786-1847, Martha McCormack 1777-1806, John Mowers 1760-1822, Lydia Johnson Mowers 1765-1807, Anna Simms 1798-1855.

There are still McGills in that community, and dozens and dozens more in the broader area. The cemetery has 158 memorials, but among the unknown things are if any stones have disappeared in the last 200 years. And while the marker and the people that put it together have come up short on Revolutionary War veterans that are buried here, we know at least 10 Civil War veterans and two WWII veterans are at rest on McGill’s old land. One of those Civil War veterans served for all of two-and-a-half months. He died, in camp, of a fever.

The rest are normal people. And that’s rather the point, isn’t it? In the end, we’re all the same. Husbands, wives, their families. Old and much-too-young. There are carpenters and farmers and a firefighter who died on the job. There are 158 markers and at least that many stories that have been passed down and then gotten blurry and then forgotten. The sign says it is still an active cemetery. I believe the most recent burial was in 2003, of a widow who outlived her husband by 43 years. She was 25 when she got married, and 39 when she lost her husband. She lived half her life as a widow, and made it to see 83 or 84. I wonder what it was like for her to go by that place, or go to that place, to see her husband. It’s been 21 years since she joined him, and you wonder about those memories. As far as I can tell, there’s no one in that community with their family name.

Rebecca Sweeten Bell, one of those earliest burials, in contrast, has a huge list of descendants in the region. The man who is recorded as the oldest member of the cemetery was John Mowers. He died at 62, but in just six generations we can get to a descendant of his who is buried elsewhere, having died just last year. You wonder how far the memories reached back, even as you know why they sometimes don’t. For in the end, we’re all the same, but it’s still a bit uneven.

Next week’s marker feature is still a mystery to me. You’ll just have to come back to see what I’ve found. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

books / cycling / Indigo Girls / music / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
27
Aug 24

Really got a lot in here

Do we have a lot for you in this post. Let’s jump right in! First, I just came in from watering the pothos plants, and I checked on the spider. She’s still out there doing her thing.

I’ve decided this is a she for reasons that don’t have any basis in anything, really. But he, or she, is one industrious spider. Every day that web disappears. Every night it returns. Almost in the same spot. The angle of it has shifted in the last few nights. Maybe this is better for catching things coming off the prize-winning plants back there.

Looked up how long spiders can live, and this is not a long-term location for my new friend. I’m going to wind up re-positioning this arachnid, if for no other reason than I’ll want this little section of sidewalk back. And also because this is too close to the house, and I don’t want it coming inside when the weather turns.

I bet she’ll have great success in the woods out back.

I got in a late evening bike ride. I started a little too late, which is funny because I’d just been mentally patting myself on the back for how well I time these rides. Usually, I’m back just as it gets dark.

It was still daylight when I started. Here’s the proof, this is about halfway through.

You know how those late summer evenings get, though. The sunset and the gloaming happen more quickly than you’ve lately been expecting. This photo was just four miles later.

And this was an accidental shot, but look at that blurry wrist!

The problem — if you want to think of it in those terms, and I don’t — is that soon after that last photo I made an impulsive decision to add on a few miles. Turned left to add a circuit, instead of heading straight in. That gave me almost six extra miles, which was nice. And about three miles into it, I had to pull the headlight out of my pocket and light the road in front of me.

I have a lot of light on the back of the bike for oncoming cars. But the other thing that’s nice is that I was on sleepy country roads. Over the course of the last six miles of today’s ride I was passed by five cars, and only two of them came by when it was truly dark.

Anyway, another delightful, slow, 22-mile ride is in the books.

You might recall we went to a rock ‘n’ roll show last Thursday. On Friday I wrote in this space about Melissa Etheridge. Today, and for the next few days, we’ll have a few short Indigo Girls clips.

This year they’re celebrating the 30th anniversary of Swamp Ophelia. And this is a deep cut, a tremendous song off a lush album. A song I don’t think I’ve heard live in decades, and apropos of the moment.

I’ve been in awe of that line about the summer since the 1990s. It’s not fair what Emily Saliers can do with a few lines of verse.

And here’s a 1997 classic to go alongside of that one.

That song — which went to number 15 on the US Adult chart, enjoyed a bit of air play on the radio and was in the last batch of videos I recall on MTV — was inspired by this documentary, which has become something of a classic on its own, while still remaining contemporary even as the sands shift around us.

That documentary itself is three decades old now. It’d be interesting to go back and see the modern version, just so we can marvel at what is and isn’t different.

I finished Walter Lord’s The Dawn’s Early Light. It is wonderful pop history, my first Lord book and I’m sure I’ll go find more of his writing later.

Militarily, his tactics are sparse, and written at a regimental level, but he’s not writing too much about the military action. It might be easy to get bogged down in that, or easy to get it wrong or be incomplete, all these years later, despite his excellent research. It’s a book about the time, rather than the conflict. He basically has it that the places the U.S. did poorly were down to bad organization and ineffective leadership. The places where we did better, Baltimore and New Orleans, were down to a key British army officer being killed and the Americans getting their act together.

And because it includes New Orleans, Andrew Jackson does become a minor character late in the book — a book which doesn’t sit on anyone for too long, come to think of it. Jackson has a few good lines in the text. This is, perhaps, the best one.

I’ve jumped ahead some 120 years in my next book. I’ve started reading about mid-20th century journalist and author, Richard Tregaskis. Updates on that text are something to which you can look forward. Also, more music tomorrow. And a swim! (Maybe … I’m trying to work up the nerve.)

adventures / Friday / memories / music / Philadelphia / photo / video — Comments Off
23
Aug 24

Still not over it

Last night, we went over the river.

We went for a poke bowl. This was when I learned something about poke bowls. The fish is raw — which is not my thing. Eat it fast and in big chunks, then.

And, next time, order the ramen bowl, like you initially planned to do.

Anyway, it was a lovely night for dining outside. We were the only people at the place, so we timed it right. And the food was good, except for, you know.

The purpose of that trip was to go see a rock ‘n’ roll show. I am, of course, going to get two posts out of this.

Opening the show was Melissa Etheridge. I bought her first albums as cassette tapes. They were loud and a little rowdy and a lot intense. Or, as she said last night … (Excuse the video quality, we were roughly a quarter of a mile away.)

That’s a good summation, the raw lyrics, the talented guitar work, it all worked very well.

For me, it was all about those first three albums — even though I was playing catch up. Someone played me a song as a teen and that 12-string guitar got my attention and her sound kept it. Superstardom was obviously on the way, the drama was there, and she was belting things out as fast as she could churn them out, and she’s been prolific for decades. Sixteen studio albums, five of them platinum, two golds. She’s supported them with 43 singles, including 11 that charted and six landing in the Top 40. She’s moved more than 25 million units, not counting whatever her digital sales are. But, again, for me, it was the first three records. Time and place. Lightning in a bottle. An earnestness that matched a feeling, whatever it was. If I had to narrow it down further, it just might be about this song. And, man, I still can’t believe this happened. It’ll take days to get over this. (Update — Still not over it.)

Amy and Emily doing melody on the song about two people running away together, or just running away? I do not know the extent to which a pop ballad can move a person, but there I was, thinking, No way 16 year-old me could have pictured any of this.

I suppose we could have left then and I would have felt as though I’d had my fill. How often can you say that just a handful of songs into a show? But you don’t do that, because there’s always the potential for magic in the air. They rolled out a piano and Etheridge put down her guitar and played a Joan Armatrading classic.

One day, someone is going to figure out that Melissa Etheridge has just been riffing on Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel and Joan Armatrading her whole career. And why not? It works.

She’s 63 and still brings it. I’d never really had a desire to see her in concert, and I see now that was my loss. She put on a terrific show, and that was only the first half. We’ll get to the rest of the show next week.

Back at home, we have a new friend in the backyard. I just happened to catch this in the light as I went about the evening chores. Much better to see it than feel it.

It’ll be interesting to watch that web work evolve, I’m sure.

Meanwhile, over in the giant leaf district, we will find giant leaves.

That plant sits next to the water spigot, so it gets a bit of extra water whenever that’s on. I assume that’s why it’s taller than me now. Thankfully the brown-eyed susans that are growing next to it have no similar ambitions. But who knows what they’ll get up to this weekend.

And you? What are you up to this weekend? Make sure it is a good one!