site


7
Aug 24

Starting year 21

Today marks the beginning of the 21st year of this website. We had a private anniversary party yesterday. A little peach crumble … a small scoop of vanilla … yes, we pulled out all the stops for kennysmith.org.

I opened this place up in August 2004, two cars, three jobs and four houses ago. I’ve been writing in this space through the advent, rise and now the fracturing of social media. I’ve been in all of those places, too, but I figured out, pretty early on, what some have only come to learn in this online cultural nadir. You post it on someone else’s site, you don’t own it. At least all the photos and other things are on my server. It has been a way to pass the time, occasionally learn new code, or, rarely, get a commission. I ramble here, all the time. Often, it seems like I should ramble more. It has been a lot of things, and I’m pleased with all of them. North of six million people have come through here. I have no idea why, but I’m grateful. Mostly, I’m glad you’re here, and that you’ve kept coming back.

Suddenly, it seems as if there should be an announcement. A big surprise. A new direction. A redesign. Something. But I don’t have anything.

Hey, next August, this place will be 21. I might think of something by then.

It has been almost relentlessly humid lately. The sort that keeps you from doing anything outside.It’s been a lot like home, actually. But, today, it wasn’t humid. It rained!

I said, How long are you going to ride?

And she explained her route.

When you drop me, just keep going, and don’t stop and wait for me, I said.

“Are you sure?”

I’ve been going slow lately. If you wait, you’ll just drop me again. Then you’ll wait and drop me, wait and drop me, and it won’t be a good ride for you.

I asked her how long she was going to ride for, she said, “I’m going for distance, and not time,” and explained the route she had in mind.

It’s always about time, so this was rare. And more fun. And this route is a new combination of familiar roads, and longer, and here I am, unfit for the ride at hand.

For the record, the types of ride, in terms of most fun are:

A vacation ride
Riding without a plan on roads you don’t know
Riding with a plan on roads you don’t know
Riding roads you know
Riding for time
Riding in severe weather

All of those are fun, to be sure, including the severe weather. I got caught in a hail storm once. It was hilarious.

Anyway, today, I was dropped quite easily and early, as I imagined. I did see this cool tractor, though. I wonder where he’s taking all that fruit.

I was in a headwind just then, and I’m usually no good in the breeze, but today wasn’t bad. And then there was the rain, which started falling about an hour into the ride.

Then, the most fun thing happened. I just kept riding. Legs felt pretty good and everything worked fairly well. Around the two-hour mark, though, I realized that the old pair of bib shorts I was wearing should really be for rides of 90 minutes or less. Something to figure out before I put on cycling kit.

Somehow, this will be easier than just throwing away the old and obviously worn shorts.

I looked down at some point in the last 10 miles or so and this little maple leaf was being pressed against the brake lever by the wind. I picked it up so I could take this photo.

When I got home I found that leaf, still stuffed in my jersey, ready for its moment. No idea why I kept it. But that changed up my routine at the end of the ride, and somehow that let me notice this daylily that I would have overlooked by the garage door.

It got plenty of rain today, so I’m sure that is one happy plant. If I thought of it at the time, I would have rung my socks out on it, too.

But I had to head over to the peach tree and get today’s haul.

Seriously, come get some peaches. We’re celebrating over here with stone fruit, and we have plenty to share.


1
Aug 24

New stuff in the routine

At the beginning of each month I do a lot of important and boring things. I create a few new subdirectories for the site. I delete a bunch of stuff from the desktop of my computer. I update a document that holds a lot of standard code shortcuts that I use.

And so on. It is all terribly exciting.

One other interesting thing that I do is update the images on the front page. The rotating photos now feature a small piece of something we saw in California this spring. Head on over to the front page to check those out. It’ll take you 54 seconds for the rotation to carry you through. We’ll be right here when you get back.

My joking complaint about triathlons is that they start too early. We need hobbies, I say, that cost less and don’t start at dawn; if they don’t require too much running, more the better.

So, last night, because the story of this day began last night, as so many of them do, my lovely bride told me that she’d signed up for a super sprint triathlon she found a half hour away. And would I like to go? Also, the race started at 6:30 in the p.m.

Since that was my complaint, it seemed only fair that I should go in support.

Super sprints are short, but I had a long swim the day before, and I haven’t run in a while, so it’s just support, and that’s probably for the better. I’ve done one super sprint, thinking, at the finish line, that I am not able to get everything going in the right direction in those short distances.

Which is a shame, since they are shorter, and I am slow.

But I am a great observer of races. I am well practiced in this area. And, of all of the races we’ve done, I don’t recall having seen one with a flyover.

She’s out there, somewhere. She’s the one swimmer among much of the thrashing. It was just a 500 meter swim, and even then, the water was shallow enough that some of the dudes just stood up in the last 50 or so and waded in.

They all looked gross. This little pond is fed by this, South Branch Rancocas Creek. And it isn’t as nice as you might imagine here. There was a fine black particulate. The Millpond mildew. Something thinner than rubber, and thicker than dust, clung to everything. Whatever was contracted from this event will be given a name in due time.

The bike leg, she said, was nice. Good pavement, fast roads.

  

The run was one big loop. Neither that, nor the bike ride, would wipe away that stuff that latched on to everyone in the water.

When we left, because it was an early evening tri, we timed the sunset just right. I liked it. Almost didn’t take it. But I did, and I’m glad for it.

We celebrated with Chick-fil-A. The triathlon, not that last photo.


25
Jun 24

Feeling like a melted towel

The guy that cleaned our room in Playa del Carmen, Fredy, was a nice guy. Always with an “Hola” and a fresh set of towels. And he took pride in his linens.

He had a sort of dark sense of humor, though.

I’m kidding, of course. The heads just bounce around. There was one of these in our room for three days straight. Why he felt the need to tie down that second guy in rubber bands escapes me.

And I’m not sure why we didn’t get a new character on Thursday or Friday. Maybe he noticed what we did to one of his brilliant creations.

I feel a lot like that guy today.

It looks like I shot 14 videos in the water last week. Five or six of them might be worth showing off. Won’t you come back tomorrow to see them?


30
May 24

A double miss!

Completely whiffed on the Wednesday feature yesterday. Whoops. This just a day after I skipped a planned Tuesday feature. It seems that, in my haste to be hasty, I’ve been too hasty. That’s the problem with speeding up, or taking one’s time, or both. Anyway, apologies for missing out on the markers. I’ll return to them next Wednesday. We’ll talk music below. But first … today was a peaceful, relaxing, “What was I supposed to be doing again? Oh, that’s right, nothing.” sort of day.

And then, breaking news via email. Isn’t that something? Wasn’t that something?

Usually, I know about the story before the emails come out. Social media, despite it’s many frustrations, is a swift informer. But I hadn’t been on any of the apps in a bit, and then the New York Times wrote.

My lovely bride was swimming laps at the time. When she was finished I told her the news, and we set about wondering what the comedians and the satirists would say.

I also looked back at what I was doing on this day a year ago. We were in Alabama, and it seems I was looking at the ol’ family tree.

Five years ago, I said one of those bike things that sounds like something profound in a waxy wrapper of nothing. Still seems true, though.

Ten years ago, we were in Alaska.

There’s no way in the world that was a decade ago.

Fifteen years ago, we were in Savannah, and Tybee Island.

Twenty years ago, I stopped by the local civic center, on a whim, which was hosting a model train convention.

Now, I’m no train enthusiast, but there are granddads and dads and children all being kids together, so why not?

I walk in and meet some nice people; one man telling me of some very historic parts of his collection — he’d accidentally been given the paperwork that documents J.P. Morgan’s purchase of an entire railroad; three men talking at length about how best to paint a cliff face and so on. But the best part was stumbling onto a booth with college merchandise.

I found this tapestry that I love. I got it for a song.

Now I just need to figure out how to display it, without it being used for cover.

Funny the things you do, and don’t remember.

We return to the Re-Listening project, which is where I pad the page out with music. I’m doing this because I am currently re-listening to all of my old CDs, in the order of their acquisition, in the car. It’s a wonderful trip down memory lane and I’m dragging you along, because the music is good.

Today we’ll do a double entry, since it is back-to-back of the same act. I picked these up in 2004, but the albums are older than that. If we’re going back to my first listen in 2004, we have to hop in the time machine and go back another decade to when Barenaked Ladies released “Maybe You Should Drive.” It was their second studio album, and went double platinum at home in Canada, where it peaked at number three. It was the band’s first visit to the US charts, sneaking in at 175 on the Billboard 200.

The first of two singles, “Jane” was an instant catalog classic for Steven Page.

There’s a lot of great work from Page on this record. Here’s one more fan-favorite, the second single, which just feels like a deep cut at this point.

I picked up this CD after a handful of the later BNL records, and several shows. So many of the songs I knew. (Three of these tracks are on Rock Spectacle, which was my first BNL purchase.) And so I don’t know when I first heard this song from Ed Robertson, but it’s one of those beautiful works that I’d like to be able to hear again for the first time.

The day I bought “Maybe You Should Drive” I also picked up “Born On A Pirate Ship,” and I wish I remember, now, where I got them. But because I got them together, these CDs have always belonged together. The former came out in 1994, the latter was the followup, released in 1996. It was another hit in Canada, peaking at number 12, and captured more American ears. “The Old Apartment” was a breakthrough single and video, and Pirate Ship went to 111 in the American Billboard chart. It was certified gold four years later. Andy Creegan had left the band, Kevin Hearn came in soon after, but this is a four-piece record.

It is peak 1990s Canada pop.

I still think this is a song about a dog, Catholicism and a bunch of other random things. It’s inscrutable.

People that just knew BNL from airplay — well the Americans anyway — will recall this as their first song.

It used to be that “When I Fall” seemed like it had to be a full, live show performance. But then Robertson played it in one of the Bathroom Sessions, and you heard it in a different way entirely.

Page will occasionally remind you he’s working on a different level. This is one of those times. Seeing it live is the preferable way* to take in this song, so go back with me to a time when it’s amazing we had washed-out-color video and you can’t explain the tracking squiggles to the children of the future. But don’t fixate on that, follow the performance.

That song … Steven Page … it just feels like it should be a misdemeanor to not know anything more than their later pop hits.

*I think karaoke would be another ideal way to hear “Break Your Heart,” but that’s just me.

One of two Jim Creeggan songs on Pirate Ship, this one sneaks up on you every time, which isn’t creepy at all. And for four minutes it just gets better and better and better, and bigger and bigger, even when it lulls, which is a lot of fun.

And here’s Creegan’s other track, which refuses to fit in any pop music mold.

BNL is touring the US this summer, though we won’t be able to see them. We did catch them last year though, which was the third time we’d seen them in two or three years. Everyone wishes Steven Page was still in the band, most everyone has wished that for 15 years, but aside from the 2018 Juno Awards celebration of the Canadian Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame induction, that may never happen. (Though they haven’t definitively ruled it out, and that’s what hope is aboot.) The band stills put on energetic rock ‘n’ roll shows. They’re very much worth seeing.


12
Apr 24

I’m short on time, here’s five photos and a gorgeous video

You should be looking at photos from an ancient yearbook right now, but you’re not. Let me explain.

Two weeks ago I finished up our look at the 1946 Glomerata, the yearbook of my undergraduate alma mater. I said that, the next week, we’d go back 100 years to see the 1924 Glom. And then I realized I needed to actually update the section of the site that includes those 1946 photos. It seemed like I should finish that before starting a new one. So last week I spent a substantial part of Friday wrapping that up.

So now, you can see 40 of the best photographs from the 1946 yearbook, and read about the stories that go with some of those photos. Click here for the 1946 Glomerata. Or, if you’d like to see all of the covers, you can find those here.

And next week we’ll start in on that 1924 yearbook. But I’m seemingly behind on everything today, and while building out the Glom section is great fun, it is time intensive.

So, instead, you’re just getting five photos and a video today.

When I went out to get the mail this evening, the clouds were looking rather ominous. They’re telling us of the gray skies we’ll have for quite some time. Because no one has told the weatherman that it is mid-April and we should have warmth and sun and breezes and a pleasant entry into the middle of spring, here in the late spring.

In the backyard, I just liked the color of the leaves in the gathered little puddle, all of it brought on from last night’s wind and rain.

All of those flowers we’ve been admiring? All of those flowers I’ve been showing you? They’re going to wind up in that spot sooner or later. Such is the cycle of things. The next part will be lovely too, though, so that makes it easier to accept this flowery little puddle.

Good news! We didn’t kill the fig tree.

As I think I mentioned last week, we covered it to keep out the harsh elements of a mild winter. We covered it three times, in fact, because the wind kept blowing the cover away. But finally I figured out a technique to make the canvas stay in place, which was good. Because after a fourth time I was just going to tell the fig tree it was time to grow up and weather the weather on its own.

The tree might be fairly old. Our neighbors have reason to believe that this one came from their fig, and they believe theirs is ancient. Is it possible we could have figs that came from a cutting of a century-old tree? Probably not. But we could have figs from a decades-old tree, and I bet they’re just as tasty.

One of the apple trees looks lovely.

It’ll be nice to watch that continue to bloom up and out. The tree sits there, quietly, in the side yard, and is easy to forget about.

If only trees made more upsetting noises that reminded you to check on them, right?

Because it doesn’t yell randomly throughout the quiet evenings, we’ll have to remember, on our own, to go get the apples later this year.

I can’t decide what this one is.

But what it is, is pretty.

Everyone liked the jellyfish yesterday. Here’s another shot of the same species. It’ll be a good way to wind down your week. Take a moment for yourself and enjoy this view of a purple-striped jellyfish that lives at the Monterey Aquarium. We saw them last month and I’m happy to share it with you now.

 

This jellyfish’s diet is zooplankton, larval fish, other jellies and fish eggs. Turtles like the purple-striped jellyfish because those fancy arms are rich in nitrogen and carbon.

I bet you’ve never thought of jellyfish that way.

Have a great weekend!