overwriting « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

overwriting

First ride of the year

After 1,323 miles on the trainer during a mild winter, this afternoon was my first outdoor ride since December.

Right from the start, and throughout this 30-miler, it was wonderful. The weather was perfect. The wind was in my face. My legs burned, but kept going, and I got a text that my lovely bride’s swim had been canceled, and that she, too, was going out for a ride. I managed to find her, and we did the last six miles or so together.

Now, at last, spring is here.

Erudite wheelmen would speak of the hum of their wheels, the grip of bar tape, bidons.

Poets would write of the power and purpose of getting back into the drops. Really, it’s heart and joyful freedom.

Freedom to ride hard, to soft pedal, to weave over the road like a kid. Freedom to try on that hill, or to not. And the thrill of coming down the other side, no matter the effort on the way up.

It’s the carefree feeling we rode with as kids.

Already, it feels like a great year of riding.

But maybe you’re here for a different sort of enjoyment and relaxation. Got you covered. Here’s another shot from an entirely unremarkable vista view on the Pacific Coast Highway.

They have so many of them that they don’t even name them or, really, even mark them all that well. But they’re each lovely. We assume they’re all lovely. We weren’t able to see each one.

Guess we’ll have to go back one day.

adventures / California / Monday / overwriting / photo — Comments Off
11
Mar 24

Cambria, San Simeon, Hearst Castle

This is Spring Break. Started Saturday bundled up and out the door to watch an 8-year-old’s basketball game. The blue team, which we were cheering for, lost. But the red team, who we also applauded, played well. Also, they had a deep bench of junior students, and the blue team had just the five players. The red team got out to a big lead, and things were looking grim — seven-minute quarters, 10-foot basketball goals and all. The referee was as strict on the fundamental rules as the NBA. And, on the blue team, everyone wanted to bring the ball up the court. That enthusiasm worked out, though. Despite going down 10, they got back to a single bucket when the final buzzer sounded. Some of the blue teamers were despondent. Others were just ready to be shuttled off to whatever else was scheduled for their busy 8-year-old Saturday.

We went to Waffle House. There just happened to be one near the gym, and I haven’t been to a Waffle House since before the pandemic began. That one was not a good one, somewhere in Indianapolis. This one was good. Except the staff were getting along harmoniously, and no fights or any other drama dominated the experience. It was just a quick sandwich and a classic waffle.

When you have the opportunity to have a waffle for lunch, you have a waffle for lunch.

Then, it was time to strategically jam things into a small suitcase. And then it was time to get in the car and drive 90 minutes. On Sunday morning we used the services of one of the many national airports. But instead of driving up early in the morning, we chose a hotel. The hotel we chose was conveniently located near one of the state’s finest institutions. I looked up the reviews. Some people like working there! Not everyone enjoys being a guest there.

Our place was nice. It was quiet, except for the highway, which was 96 inches from the window next to our bed. I listened to this for hours, waiting for 2 a.m., because if you can schedule a trans-continental dawn flight, on the day that the clocks spring forward and you’re paranoid about alarms, you should definitely consider that undertaking.

The alarms went off right on time. Up and at’em, to the parking lot, to the airport and to the plane. All a pleasant and unremarkable experience. We took off and headed west. We flew Jet Blue, our first time on that airline, because of price considerations and direct-flight convenience. Someone asked for a blanket two rows ahead of me. The flight attendant said, “Of course. That’ll be $10.” I brought a jacket, and left my wallet in my pocket. The flight was fine, the legroom was great. I watched The Burial and rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>The Holdovers. Both were good airplane movie fare.

We landed in LAX, which was great, because that was what we had anticipated. We were early, which was pleasant. The Jet Blue experience was just fine. We got a rental car, opting for a sensible Toyota that required you to step up into, and duck down, simultaneously. These are fun!

We drove north, which was the direction we wanted to go, cheerily reading off road signs that we recognize from watching police chases. We stopped at In-N-Out and had a perfectly average burger, which was in keeping with our first In-N-Out experience several years ago: decent enough, not at all worth the hype. But we enjoyed the patio in sunny Southern California where it was in the 60s and everyone was wearing jackets and hoodies.

We continued on to our airbnb, in Cambria, the small central coastal town we’re visiting for the first half of the week. A delightful lady met us there, and we’ll be staying in the garage apartment of these nice people’s home right on top of the hill. This was our view. (We were also promised visits from deer and turkeys in the mornings, and I’m 85 percent convinced this was the selling point.) If you look in the distance, you can see it.

Enhance that photo. And, by enhance, I mean allow us to drive down to the coastline so that we may see the Pacific properly.

We’re strictly tourists until Thursday. You know what that means. A lot of photos!

This is standing on the William Randolph Hearst Memorial Beach. That pier is closed for dangers to life and limb. They really do think of everything in California.

If we were standing on the Hearst Beach, you might think, that must mean we were close to the Hearst Castle. And if you think that, you’re right, and you know where the next bit of this post is going. Here we are on the first stop of our little walking tour of the main rooms. This is the tour they encourage all of the first timers to take. (In fact, they warned us off another tour, because this one is for first timers and, hence, apparently better, but also for people just like you and me.) The guide said no food and drink, and stay on the carpeted areas. And one of the people who was on the tour, a cantankerous old woman who was just, presumably, just like you and me, said “What about marijuana?” The tour guide had half of an answer for that.

Anyway, that’s the guest house, I found out just after I took the photo, and not the Castle, or the Casa Grande, as Hearst called it. I do know a bit about Hearst the media mogul, but really nothing about his home, as you can tell.

This is more like it. This is Casa Grande, and therein are the main rooms, which is the popular first timer tour we were on, along with the older woman looking to spark up her afternoon doob. (She did not.) It’s not my style, but you can see where Hearst got his Mediterranean and Spanish influences. Much of this region could remind you of Tuscany, if you glanced at it a bit. And while the house isn’t too my tastes, the achievement is certainly worth noting. Everything built here is built atop a great big hill, and the logistics of even getting a road up here to start with was impressive. That it took 20 years, that Hearst was constantly tinkering with the plans, that he had a rock star of an architect for the entirety of the construction all figure into it, but you can’t sit up there and not be impressed by the achievement of just getting materials to this place.

As a group, we did not stay together very well, which allowed me to work several different smaller groups there in. I would stand with one cluster and mutter under my breath, “I can see what he’s trying to go for here … ”

And then I would move to another cluster and say, “Sometimes I wish we had a smaller pool like this one … ”

The taste might not be mine, and the pool may come up short, but the man knew how to pick a view.

Depending on which story you heard — and our guide told us one, but the reenactment video narrated by Donald Sutherland told us another — Casa Grande is built either on the land where he and his family camped when he was young, or on a hill near there. It’s a delightfully romantic story, and so I hope the guide had it right. But that video at the end of the tour was well-produced. I’m sure they were working from good material. This is probably the best view near the place where he remembered spending so many wonderful days as a child. And that’s plenty good.

The main rooms tour takes you into the big welcoming reception room. All of Hearst’s many guests would gather there before dinner for a drink (but not two, Hearst delighted in being a great host, but did not suffer a sloppy one). We saw the dining room, that was straight out of European central casting for a dining hall. Except, maybe, for the table, which is set for dinner, as if the Chief were going to come through those doors at any moment.

We also saw the morning room, which I am sure has a better name than that. That would have been where the guests gather to read the paper, take the sun, and someone would fetch their to-order breakfast. We also saw the billiards room. I bet you can guess what happened there.

What happened there was that our guide talked about how Hearst was always working, surrounded by his phones and the newspapers he owned. (Hearst got his money the old fashioned way, his daddy dug it out of the ground.) William was an editor and publisher by 23, courtesy of Pa, and then became a proper media mogul. Newspapers, radio, movies. Our guide then said Hearst was the social media of his day.

My lovely bride was at one end of the billiards room, with the front of the group, and I was at the other end, working another cluster of visitors, “We run into this problem all of the time. If you have two tables, some of your guests just can’t play, so last summer we expanded and now we have four in our entertainment wing … ”

So the guide said Hearst was the social media of his day. I looked at The Yankee and she looked at me and so there we were, two media pros and scholars trying not to giggle and daring each other, with facial expressions, to derail the tour and explain where she was obviously wrong.

We let it slide.

Then we watched a short film in Hearst’s in home screening room.

“Oh this is nice,” I said. “I can see what they were trying to do here. Of course ours could just be better because of the modern technology. And how we budgeted for it … ”

Hearst was one of the richest men in the world by then, of course. But in the story, I was only wearing the cheap sunglasses to not stand out, of course.

The footage we saw there was a bunch of home movie clips, filled with stars of a bygone day. Some you recognized, still. Some, when the old images came up and the tour guide said the name, you would have a moment of recognition. Others were just lost to most of us — most of us except the old woman who was looking to scurry up a little. She might have known who all of the people were. It was charming, seeing the old footage taken from the grounds, right there in the place. Just delightful.

Then we saw the other pool. It’s built beneath the tennis courts. The room leaks. In fact, the entire ceiling has been removed because it’s a mess. They blamed this on Hearst, and his changing plans, not the architect. And also common sense. If the roof is your tennis courts, then your roof is flat. So there’s nowhere for rain to run off and you’re going to have leaks.

“We learned from that mistake, too,” I said to no one in particular.

That pool, though, really is something.

(Click to embiggen.)

It’s a nice little tour. It’s worth seeing. We never thought about adding the zoo, which is no longer functioning, but you can see some of the remnants on the way up to the house itself. Only now are three or four little jokes coming to mind about how we should incorporate that in our third quarter expansion. I guess we’ll have to go back so I can try out that material on another set of visitors.

Our own tourist activities continued, with the rest of the afternoon spent enjoying the beautiful central coastline around us.

“… there is nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline no matter how many times it’s sent away.”

— Sarah Kay

“We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty. We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers, and the lonely cities as well. Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter. To share our sadness with one we love is perhaps as great a joy as we can know – unless it be to share our laughter. We searchers are ambitious only for life itself, for everything beautiful it can provide.”

— James Kavanaugh

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

— Isaac Newton (or Joseph Spence)

“I marvel at the nine shades of green and three shades of blue, only separated by the irrepressible skein of white foam, the color itself which keeps some of the blues from looking gree — oh, hello.”

— Me, probably

(Click to embiggen.)

“To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean by the frailty of its foam.
To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.
Ay, you are like an ocean,
And though heavy-grounded ships await the tide upon your shores, yet, even like an ocean, you cannot hasten your tides.
And like the seasons you are also,
And though in your winter you deny your spring,
Yet spring, reposing within you, smiles in her drowsiness and is not offended. Think not I say these things in order that you may say the one to the other, “He praised us well. He saw but the good in us.”
I only speak to you in words of that which you yourselves know in thought.”

— Kahlil Gibran

(Click to embiggen.)

“People travel to wonder
at the height of the mountains,
at the huge waves of the seas,
at the long course of the rivers,
at the vast compass of the ocean,
at the circular motion of the stars,
and yet they pass by themselves
without wondering.”

— Augustine of Hippo

“He was a telephone man who fell in love with long distances; he gave up his job with the telephone company and skipped the light fantastic out of town …”

“The last we heard of him was a picture postcard from Mazatlan, on the Pacific coast of Mexico, containing a message of two words: “Hello – Goodbye!” and no address.”

— Tennessee Williams

Yes, Tennessee, the rest of the play explained itself.

“Whenever I look at the ocean, I always want to talk to people, but when I’m talking to people, I always want to look at the ocean.”

— Haruki Murakami

“I am the shore and the ocean, awaiting myself on both sides.”

— Dejan Stojanovic

More tomorrow.

history / overwriting / Wednesday — Comments Off
6
Jan 21

We failed, we can succeed

If you haven’t noticed it before, it was made a bit easier for you to see today: we’ve failed.

The failures are, at all levels, institutional. A lame duck president and his lemmings, too vain and disbelieving to face the inevitable, behaved in ways most seditious and terroristic. We have failed in the teaching of our civics. That so many continue down this path, listening to outlets that serve no purpose but to stir fear and anger, show we have failed in teaching media literacy. That so many have shown themselves so susceptible to this nonsense shows we have failed in teaching critical thinking.

A seditious mob descended on the United States Capitol while the elected representatives were doing the nation’s business. A woman died. The vice president and next several members of the presidential line of succession were in immediate danger. Someone erected a slapdash gallows in front of the building. Perhaps others will die in the hours and days to come. Dozens more were injured.

The failures are, at all levels, institutional. And, thus, the failures are, at every stage, also individual. Impressionable, angry people made these decisions, and they have been meet with condemnation and revulsion, with further consequences to no doubt follow.

In the days to come it will be natural to seek a single failure point. People will study video frame-by-frame and pour over photographs. Jobs will be lost. And there will be investigations, too. You simply can’t inconvenience Congress, foment a coup and commit terrorism on cable television and not trigger dozens of investigations. Some will yield startling results across a wide array of agencies and jurisdictions. Some will provide disappointing outcomes.

In these ways, and perhaps more, we’ll come to realize in the coming days, we have failed. It is a frightening thing to confront your failures. A challenging thing. A necessary thing.

How we succeed is no less challenging.

As I write this, the Congress has gone back to conducting the business of the people. In some ways glorious, in others no doubt quite frustrating indeed. That’s the way of the legislative branch. Sometime in the overnight, or tomorrow, they’ll plod their way through the ceremony and a new presidential administration will ultimately begin.

Today you heard from President Trump and President-elect Biden and you saw them in stark contrast. Tomorrow, and later this month, and, hopefully for the next many years over the course of many administrations of different parties and congressional configurations of different makeups, we will start to undo the damage we have inflicted on ourselves today, and in our recent past and, indeed, throughout our history.

History is an important word loaded with hints and allusions and inferences and truths. I like the pursuit of history. Telling the truth of a story is a noble thing. I like the humanness of it. It is not to be ignored. Ignoring things brings us here, seeing our problems manifest today.

If we simply stuck to the problems above — a narcissist-in-chief, failings of civics and literacy and critical thinking are ultimately as cultural as they are individual — the challenges to correct them are immense. But we like to think we are at our best when we are faced with immense challenges. It’s comforting, it fits us. And, friends, the immensity is before us.

I don’t pretend to have all of the answers. I know we won’t always be good at reaching for all of the remedies, even the obvious ones.

But, without trying to sound platitudinous in a too-tough week, I want to celebrate the words that become the ideas that move us. I hold onto the idea that we are an experiment. No less an architect than Thomas Jefferson and no less a keen observer than Alexis de Tocqueville used the word to describe us. An experiment is still alive in the moment, where the possibilities lay, where we can still impact the outcome.

The American Experiment. It really began with those few simple words that can stir you each time you really think of them, the ones found right near the beginning, in the preamble that you, perhaps, learned in school. The words that said simply, we are here “to form a more perfect Union.”

We are flawed, but we are forming. As I am sad and shocked and share in the hurt of the nation tonight, I think of those words, “to form a more perfect Union.” There’s so much power there. It was given to us. The power is still alive, in our hands, in our national will, where the possibilities remain, and where we must still determine the outcome. This is how we will succeed.

cycling / errands / memories / Monday / overwriting / photo / Twitter — Comments Off
16
Nov 20

A note 10 years in the making

On Saturday we went for our bike ride and it was 46 degrees. I had on a pair of full finger gloves, two pairs of socks, a wind jacket and a DIY gaiter I made out of a toboggan. In perfect pitch with the season, it was gross and rainy. But right on this stretch of road something neat happened.

On a typical Indiana day — 46°, relentlessly gray, rainy — I surpassed my previous annual mileage record.

(Right about here, in fact …) pic.twitter.com/570iX8Uif7

— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith) November 14, 2020

So every mile for the rest of the year — including the last three or so on that ride — marks a new personal best.

Why, yes, I do have a spreadsheet charting these things. Doesn’t everyone? Previously, 2013 was the best year. We did a lot of racing that year and I was starting to pile up solo miles to make up for losing out on the second half of 2012. And, I think, somewhere in those solo miles I started to see my riding as something that was mine, a carefree interlude from the rote things that control so much of our lives. Because of the triathlons I was in the pool twice a week and running several days a week and riding as much as possible. Between that and excessive work hours and the ridiculous commute I came to think of it as My Own Time. Which is, I know, a radical way to think of one’s free time.

I remember the view from the ridge I was on when the realization came to me: this is you carving out something for yourself. It was a disproportionately powerful realization; this thing that you do for fun is something you actually do for fun. It’s a conscious realization of agency you’ve always had.

One day it’s going to take, too!

Clearly the endorphins were out of whack that day.

A person’s interaction with their bike can be one of the most passionate relationships they have. It can sometimes be a mercurial one. A few years ago I ran cold on the idea of bike riding. It was something to be checked off the list before I could do other things. Almost sounds like a chore, doesn’t it? It got to that point and, suddenly, the thing that used to be an interlude was an interruption. It wasn’t my thing. It was, of course, interrupting nothing. I saw it, recognized it, and knew it. Still haven’t remedied it, but clearly I’m tapping out a rhythm to my own drummer over here.

By a curious coincidence that same year, 2017, was when my form, such as it ever was, started to vanish. It was subtle, but obvious. Couldn’t go as hard for as long, or as fast as suddenly as I once did, and so on. These are all things that are, of course, very relative. The important thing is that it happened and I noticed and it’s never been recovered.

But hey, that’s age, and not enough talent, or time. And, like any relationship, you have to put in the time. It doesn’t hurt if you bring a little innate talent to the thing, or want to work on it, besides.

I go back and forth a lot; its a thing on the list, it’s a thing I do. It’s a thing I have to do; it’s a thing I want to do more. Still trying to figure it out. I always take the ride, but the consideration always seems to be there. This isn’t, perhaps, about my bike riding at all. A year or two ago (who can even tell?) I made a Things I Want To Do List. The idea being these weren’t the tasks one must muddle through to achieve, but the things one does because they are pleasant. I spent some time on the list. There were a few drafts, as I found the proper rank order for all the common contingencies and considerations, because you should do that for your list of enjoyments. At the top of the list was “Ride your bike: whenever the weather is good.”

Maybe the solution is a lot more of those long, meandering rides that take place just because they can.

So, almost any sunny day we get for the rest of the year, because I’ll have some availability and because I am now in every-mile-is-a-new-record mode, I hope to have a little time in the saddle.

It will take many pairs of socks.

I say sunny because, otherwise, you’re just going to get glorious views like this.

Isn’t that inspiring? Doesn’t that make you want to get out there and do … something?

Like install blackout curtains through mid-March or so?

This week’s forecast includes some actual sun. I’ll be sequestered in the office. I was on work from home duty today, but tomorrow it’s back to campus. And next week, I’ll be back at the home office, or at least at the house.

Today I edited an interview I’m publishing tomorrow, caught up on email, and generally prepared for this last week of in-person work.

Most crucially, I started charting out what the next several weeks of work from home will look like. And, happily, there will be things to do. There are always things to do.

OK, perhaps that wasn’t the most crucial thing. I also had a Zoom meeting about some upcoming stories that students are reporting on. I think I may enjoy those more than they do, but I hope my participation is at least in some way useful for them.

Also, I got two new tires for the car today. I’d developed a slow leak in one that was going bald anyway, and the other wasn’t far behind. So I drove over to the tire place and put on my mask and nodded at the “Must wear a mask” sign on the door and walked inside.

And I immediately noticed that a good mask does not filter out the peculiar smell of unused vulcanized rubber. A guy was on the phone in the back office. He saw me, finished the call, hung up and put his mask on. The Boomer sitting in their chairs waiting on his car to come down off the lift did not have a mask on.

I’ve really had it with this sort of thing.

So the guy working there asked me what I needed. We went and looked at the car. He drove it into their work bay. I said, You know, it’s a nice sunny late afternoon. I’m just going to stand out here if you need me.

“I don’t blame you,” he said.

What I didn’t say, and I don’t know if he inferred, was Because I don’t want to sit around that guy, or your unmasked coworkers.

But I took his response to mean that he knew what I was on about.

So I enjoyed the sun in a medium-light jacket and caught up on some current events and began wondering if I should scale that Sisyphean exercise back next week, when my car came down off the work lift. Inside, to pay, I saw that the unmasked Boomer was thankfully gone. Two of the unmasked employees were right there. And I mean, right there.

So I left just as quickly as I could. Used their hand sanitizer — I see it like water in the South, now. If it’s on offer, you take advantage of the opportunity — and got to the car and used mine, wiping down the wheel and the door features and so on, just to be sure.

I rolled down the windows, because it was, in fact, a lovely afternoon, for a few blocks to let any cooties escape. And I listened to the hum of four good tires on the road.

By the time I got back to the house it was growing dark once again. So I set about doing a few household things until dinnertime. It was the productive Monday I’ve been trying to have for the last several Mondays, really. And there’s some satisfaction in that.

overwriting / Wednesday — Comments Off
5
Sep 18

What’s the last (non-grocery) thing you bought in a store?

Sometimes I’m sure I do my best writing in email. I wrote this as a part of one email this evening.

I went to Macy’s yesterday, just to see if they are still open. It is tacked on to the back of the mall here and we drive around it some days in the pursuit of tiny little errands. Every time the Macy’s lot is just about deserted. Closed Kmart deserted.

Both Kmart stores and the Sears have disappeared since we got here. This is not the first town that’s happened in. We are like the Fifth Horseman of Sears closings. (This would be a great gag, not just Four Horsemen, but a lot of them, and each successive one is less fearsome.) I went in, and it feels like Blockbuster and Circuit City during their last painful retail heaves. Over the death rattle you could hear me think: Who is paying $80 for a shirt? People doing that surely aren’t doing that at Macy’s.

The mall is also physically lashed onto the Target, which is the appropriate amount of brick-and-mortar successful. I haven’t seen the data, but I bet that Target and the adjacent Chick-fil-A keep the whole mall afloat. Eat mor chikin. Buy mor stuf.

That all sounds desperately condescending in that way that feels most natural to my Mallrats generation. (An association I wish I could shake, while also keep most of my mall experiences intact.)

I spent 14 seconds peering into a few shelves and racks, though, listening to the few employees on the floor giggling about whatever, though, without feeling like doing a web 2.0 dance. There’s no happiness in retail going under, just a loss of more jobs and more empty real estate. One Kmart here is right now some sort of auto mechanic holding pattern, but will become that early 21st century commercial development “multiuse.” The city is trying to figure out what to do with the second one. They are soliciting ideas. The Sears became a grocery store, sort of.

I’m a culprit here. Most of my shopping is now online. I’m having a difficult time thinking up the last thing I bought that wasn’t a food or a drink in a store. Probably it was lumber.

I will go out and see those Going Out Of Business Sales. I hit both of the Kmart stores here. The nearest one stocked up the house once or twice. The other was just a way to avoid traffic for a while. The last time I did that at a Sears the prices were still ridiculous. We bought a dryer, but maybe only because it was easier to borrow a friend’s pickup than to get Amazon to ship that Prime.

At Macy’s though, I looked at the shirts and thought, even at the sale price, and after that promised 20 percent off when you sign up for The Credit Card of Poorly Informed Mistakes, that’s still more than I paid for the last shirt I got online. The economics are all screwy. And when I got home there were two new pieces of cycling kit in the mailbox, which I purchased at a fraction of the retail price.

I’m not saying anything new there, but just imagine what the subsequent Horsemen would be. Granted, the drop off from Death to Closer of Past Their Prime Retailers is a steep one. A few more down the line and you get Phantom Nose Itch or Disturber of Daydreams.

We had barbecue last night, and a homemade stir fry tonight. Ask me about those stories sometime. Both dishes were good, at least one of the stories is mildly entertaining. I also put together a bunch of slides on lead writing, and thought more about op-ed pieces than anyone ever should, really, and did that in two separate sittings. But that’s where we are in the world today. The op-ed-related horseman being 45th or so.

No, the last thing I bought in a store was buttons. I had to sew on a new cuff button for a Brooks Brothers shirt. I purchased that online sometime last year.

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