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4
Aug 23

Happy birthday to the website

Twenty years ago today, yikes, I wrote my first blog post. I wrote four brief things that day. They were nothing to write home about, but I certainly did put them on the web. No one saw them, of course. Since then, I have published 6,538 more posts.

Nineteen years ago, this weekend, I launched kennysmith.org. My goal at the time was to make something aesthetically unique that had minimalist coding. Two hidden frames, with text on the left and a small photo collage on the right. Of course, no one was visiting. The site had 647 visits that month. (For those of you still around, I thank you.)

Last month, was pretty good. The site saw a 10,925 percent increase over August 2004 first month. In between, for whatever reasons, we’ve logged. 5.3 million visits. (And thanks.)

And so we launch year 20 on this URL, and year 21 of writing the blog. The party hasn’t begun yet. I’m waiting for the cupcake to get here.

Even so, this place has come a long, long way since then. So I have. I wonder what kind of fun and interesting things we’ll see in the months to come.

Today in outdoor fun, I picked up sticks. What should I do with all of these sticks, I wondered, and then I remembered we have a fire pit and we’ll need kindling. Stick problem solved.

I was going to cut away dead branches from a few trees, but that’s never as fun to contemplate when you’re standing under a tree as when you’re inside wondering what you should do.

The apple trees are coming along nicely. And I spent some time studying the chokecherry trees, and started reading about what you can do with chokecherries. Do you like tart jams, jellies or wines? Chokecherry might be for you.

I found some maple saplings that I’ll try transplanting this winter. And I pulled up, and then chopped up, a few more pokeweed plants. I also checked on the tomato vines, a new seasonally favorite habit. In a few more days more will go from the vine to the kitchen.

Next, we’ll have to figure out the herb garden. That’s what the weekend is for. There are a few bramble vines in there. And I’m looking forward to picking those berries sometime soon.

And we’ll need to keep a closer eye on the peaches. We’re going to have a lot of peaches. They’ve really lit their tree up this week.

Across the way, a darker tree looms. Check out this maple, which pins the yard to the road.

There are a lot of fun things to explore outside, so I’m taking it a bit at a time. Plus, ya know, outdoors being outdoors, it’s always changing.

I didn’t have that stack of kindling this morning, for example.

I’d planned a 30 mile bike ride today. It was precipitating when I left the house. Saying it was misting wouldn’t be accurate. Saying it was sprinkling would overstate it. Minkling. It was minkling. Minkling sounds fun. I rode through the little downtown, checking out some of the sites and taking photos for later.

Then I turned toward the southeast, to follow the next part of the route. I looked up and saw dark clouds. I felt a new precipitation begin, something much more sprinkling-like. I glanced at the time.

Which was when I thought of the one reason to continue on — because I planned this route — and weighed that against all of the reasons I should call it early. Instead of pressing on I took the next right. And then two amazing things happened.

I started riding without looking at a map. Then, three miles later, I found myself at an intersection I knew. That sensation of knowing a place, the feeling of some knowledge clicking in, you know the one, right? It probably isn’t much, that “Ohhhh yeah!” moment, but it surely seems like a big thing when it occurs. It’s just an intersection with a red light and a Sunoco, but it was a big deal. Those realizations of clarity, understanding a tiny bit of context in a new place always feel like a big deal.

As I rode back, the weather in front of me was better than the stuff behind. Still gray, as you can see behind this hay shed, but brighter.

The cattle in the pasture next to it seemed content, for cows. Why wouldn’t they be? They can see their winter food right there. That would be reassuring to them, if they understood calendars, and the tilt of the earth, and seasons.

Anyway, I set three PRs on Strava segments on this ride. And I am now in second place on the segment that someone drew up on our road.

That’s one of the many things I wasn’t doing 20 years ago when I started this place, sitting at an old MDF desk, using dialup: riding my own road for highly personalized bragging rights.

Small steps. At least until that cupcake arrives.


3
Aug 23

Hard to Handle

We inherited this giant L-shaped wardrobe. A functional IKEA piece. It doesn’t match our furniture, or fit amongst it, but it is perfectly serviceable. When we moved, as I have mentioned, the movers moved it downstairs for us. I’d disassembled it into its four base parts and they sweated and streamed and muttered and heroically got it down. And then those poor guys moved our stuff in.

Eventually, I put some of the pieces together. I may never rebuild it into one piece, because I rushed through dismantling it, because see above, and took no notes. And I have no instructions. But there’s this full-length, full-length-and-then-some mirror on one part of that wardrobe. And today I re-installed it.

Sorta. That’s a two-person job. There are four hinges, eight screws, and the ones in the middle are done. The rest will require some muscle, and perhaps some more muttering.

It was demoralizing to find that the best approach was to take apart what I’d recently put together so I could get the mirror in place. And even that only partially.

I found a stopping point. How does one find a stopping point in an endless, intractable project? You say, “OK, enough of that.” And then you go outside.

It was a lovely afternoon, much better spent in the backyard than the basement. So I deadheaded daisies and hibiscus and pulled up a few weeds. I was rewarded with a new bowl of tomatoes.

This, in my estimation, was an excellent tradeoff.

I wanted to do this as a daily status update, as a joke, but I was afraid the joke would come off as boorish.

Early this evening I floated for 75 minutes, until the wind was chilly, and told myself I should do more of that, and for longer.

I only got out because it started raining. Wouldn’t want to get wet.

Also, it was dinner time. The day has moved swiftly, even when I have not, and that’s not an altogether bad thing. Though I would vote for consistency in days, and I would vote for them to feel longer than today did.

Let’s dive back into the Re-Listening project, because I need to catch up before I get … really behind. (Right now I’m 13 discs in arears.) I’m playing all of my old CDs in the order in which I acquired them, which sounds easy enough. But there’s a ridiculously overwrought process involved. First of all, the CDs are all in their big CD books. This part is neatly and ordered — though we’ll come to a moment, later in the Re-Listening project — when I don’t recall which book comes next.

From these books, I pull out the CDs and put them in a miniature CD book for travel. (Since the point, for some reason, is listening to these in the car.) Right now that book isn’t in the car, but here on my desk. I am patting it confidently now. Also, I am at the end of what that book will hold, so those CDs will need to come out of the mini-book and go back to their proper homes. So I need to reload the book. Oh, but four of the CDs that have been temporarily in the miniature book are still in the car’s CD player. They need to come out and go back to their proper place. Which means the reverse has to happen to refresh the playlist. Also, the last CD in the player is the first CD in a double-set. Everything is in the in-between. So let’s dive in.

In April of 2000 a friend of mine burned me a CD (remember doing that?) that was, at that time, seemingly a small release. (That was a thing that happened, and we didn’t even blame the supply chain. Things were just limited sometimes.)

It was Guster. We’re talking about Guster’s debut album, “Parachute.” They were just a local Boston act at the time. People were just barely downloading questionable tracks online. You can, of course, get the thing in all sorts of formats now. CD, vinyl, digital. Back then, the first few thousand prints were sold as being by Gus. It’s a different time, because that was a different time. But they put it out themselves, because Guster was a trendsetter, even in the mid-90s.

Adam Gardner and Ryan Miller split the lead vocal duties, which was what they were doing back then, but that felt odd pretty quickly. Owing to some of that, and it being their earliest recorded work, it isn’t as good as “Goldfly,” or anything else that comes after, but it’s worth having.

Probably, people bought this at their early shows. Or they heard it because their roommate or their sibling had it on. That song is the first one you heard. The blueprint for the next decade of what Guster was going to become follows up right after that.

I never got especially attached to this record because, by the time it was given to me I was already two more albums into their catalog. It seemed like going back in time to a more raw, nascent thing, and who wanted to go back to that?

This is the title track, with Gardner doing the lead. This song got mixed up for a lot of people with a Coldplay song of a similar name. And early 21st century digital media humor ensued.

Apparently some people thought this was, in fact, a Coldplay song. I find that difficult to believe. But I own no Coldplay records, so I could be altogether wrong in this.

Someone also burned me a copy of the first disc of a Dave Matthews Band concert album, “Live at Red Rocks 8.15.95.” I wonder why I don’t seem to have the second disc. Now there’s a 23-year-old mystery that’ll bother me for four or five minutes. Anyway, recorded in 1995, when the band was touring to support “Under the Table and Dreaming,” this was released in 1997 and given to me in the spring of 2000. It went double platinum and, from here, just reads like a live version of a greatest hits CD. Nothing wrong with that.

“Seek Up”
“Proudest Monkey”
“Satellite”
“Two Step”
“The Best of What’s Around”
“Recently”
“Lie in Our Graves”
“Dancing Nancies”
“Warehouse”

I wonder why I didn’t get that second — oh! Look! This is a version of “Warehouse” before the Wooo became a thing.

If you’re wondering about the Woo becoming a thing, it’s a bit of a call and response. Just a few years later, it was the thing to do with this song.

Somehow, I never really listened to this CD a lot. So there are no impressions or anecdotes to go along with this one. In fact, I’d all but forgotten I had it. I just never played the thing. Selected tracks always seemed to be on the radio, so maybe that’s a part of it.

I played this one more, a not-for-release Black Crowes EP from 1998. This was sent to radio stations, complete with two callout hooks at the end of the thing. Those hooks were for promotional bits. I picked this up because the station I was at didn’t want it and I did. There are seven tracks here, and six of them are all of the Black Crowes catalog I need. This EP was meant to support “Kicking My Heart Around.”

“Jealous Again” is on here, and that song was eight years old by the time this came out. “She Talks To Angels” was seven years old. “Remedy,” “Thorn In My Pride” and “Sting Me” were all six years old. The one I really wanted, because I was never buying a Black Crowes album for just one song, was “Hard To Handle,” which was also eight years old.

Remember, this EP is from 1998. (I got it in 2000.) The Crowes’ version of “Hard To Handle” was from 1990, which explains a lot about that video.

But that song was, then 30 years old, of course.

For years now, my goal has been to find the right mixture of musically savvy, but musically inexperienced young people and hook them on that Black Crowes cover. When they appreciate the awesomeness and intensity of that, I will play the Otis Redding original and watch their minds evaporate.

That’ll be a tricky group to find, of course, because they need to be able to appreciate a certain level of glam rock/jam band, they need to know about Otis Redding, but they don’t need to know all about Otis Redding.

The only problem with this goal is that you can’t just go around and say “Do you know about Southern rock bands with disproportionate amounts of attitude relative to their talents, and do you have an appreciation that the King of Soul is better than most everything that came after him, but not know about his posthumous releases?” Believe me, I’ve tried. It kills a conversation dead.

And it can bring a long blog post to a quick halt, too.


2
Aug 23

A new Wednesday feature? A new Wednesday feature

Out bright and early this morning running errands. I got stuck in traffic, but I did not get lost a single time. It’s still a little unsettling to not know where you’re going most of the time, but that will pass with time and driving around.

There are two creature-of-habit things I’m dealing with driving around here. Going into the city, requires a mental adjustment. Fortunately, high-speed highway driving is as second nature a feeling as I can have in a car. Growing up around amateur hour at Talladega will do that for you. But the ebbs and flows, the changing of lanes and the many distracted drivers, it reminds you to take a deep breath and re-grip. The other thing are the intersections around us. Owing, I am sure, to historical property lines and what not, there are a great many intersections that don’t meet at neat right angles. It just requires a weird craning of the neck, is all. And, like any new input, it is new.

But, errands safely run. All things achieved. The maps app was 100 percent successful. I didn’t even break a sweat, owing to the milder, seasonally appropriate temperatures.

I forgot to share these photos yesterday, just glimpses of the season. We have some tomato vines out back. And these are delicious.

In fact, I’m behind on eating tomatoes. Hang on one sec.

OK, five small, delicious, tomatoes eaten as a late night snack. I’ll have more to pull out of the miniature garden tomorrow, I’m sure. (And they are so, so, good.)

We have a wonderful array of black-eyed Susans.

And this hydrangea, I decided this afternoon, just looks more impressively beautiful by the day.

How hydrangeas didn’t get some mystic lore attached to them is an enduring mystery. This one is tall and fairly glows.

Less beautiful, in a traditional sense, but no less attractive for it, is this water tower I found today. The way this was situated, I think it might have been in service to a private business rather than a community. And, as water towers go, it is fairly small one. It is in the of a small, closed down ice cream facility.

I saw a store, just yesterday, advertising this ice cream brand. Having put these things together, I might stay away from that altogether. I would not want any water that comes from that tower today, but I hope it stands there blazed in deep rich tones of rust, for a long time.

Anyway, I saw that water tower after a left turn on today’s bike ride. I rode 36 miles this afternoon, because my mileage needs to make some big jumps. But the weather was good, the roads were generally in great condition and I saw only two regrettable drivers, despite finding myself on two different busy roads.

Mostly, it was just beautiful agricultural countryside.

I also found myself on a lot of empty roads. On quite a few, in fact, I didn’t encounter any cars at all. Like this one. There’s marsh to the left, a canal on the right, and the river a little farther off. And for the entire seven minutes I was on this road, I was entirely alone.

Later, I found myself on a sleepy road that was covered by a dense tree canopy. That particular bit of road was riddled with potholes. It was just warm enough, and the katydids were singing their late afternoon chorus and some boggy water somewhere nearby was giving off just a hint of a fragrance. It felt almost like being in some of my favorite places back home.

There was another point to today’s ride. I figure I may as well start tracking down the markers. New county, new goals and all of that. I found a site that lists 115 markers in this county, so we will likely be at this for a while. Easy content!

The last two times I did this, I used a separate microsite. It was extra work and never drew a lot of traffic, so I’ll just put them here. And we’ll use a slightly different premise. Previously, it was just the photos. But, as I find interesting information that compliments the markers, I’ll add them here.

So, let’s look at the first two, and perhaps we’ll learn something interesting as we do.

There’s nothing in this patch of grass, nestled in a fork in the road, except this marker and a flagpole that, today, was flying no flag.

I haven’t found a lot, on my first pass, about how many local boys joined the AEF for the Great War, but I did just learn that the home front was mightily changed during that era.

Industry boomed at the DuPont Powder Works once World War I broke out, and Salem County changed forever. DuPont opened the Powder Works at Carneys Point just south of Penns Grove in 1893 to create smokeless gunpowder for the Spanish-American War, but World War I dramatically increased the need for munitions. Workers from around the United States, as well as immigrants from Italy, Russia, Poland, Ireland, Germany, and other countries, flooded into Carneys Point, Penns Grove, and Pennsville to work at DuPont. Between 1910 and 1920, Salem County’s population increased by about ten thousand, compared to a typical increase of one thousand in prior decades. Carneys Point’s population jumped from 744 to 6,259, while neighboring Penns Grove’s population increased from 2,118 to 6,060. During World War I, the plant employed a high of over twenty thousand people. To accommodate the influx of workers, DuPont built temporary housing, barracks, and bungalows, and even put up tents to house the workers. With dramatic increases of students, Penns Grove and Carneys Point expanded and built new schools.

In 1917, DuPont started the Dye Works (renamed Chambers Works in 1945) at Deepwater in Pennsville Township, initially focusing on creating dyes, an industry previously dominated by war-torn Germany. The Chambers Works became a worldwide leader in organic chemicals by discovering and creating materials such as Teflon, nylon, and Freon. DuPont remained a major employer for the rest of the century, with high wages that continued to draw both locals and new residents to Salem County.

I found a museum site that listed 19 men who served in the Army Air Corps in World War II. Perhaps there were more. Surely the other services had local boys amidst their ranks, too. And, owing to the proximity of the coast, and the river, I’m sure I’ll eventually run across some home front defense force mentions, as well.

On the other end of the same road, there was this marker.

In the background, the local high school. This marker is on the high school’s front lawn. I imagine that’s both boring and horrifying to the kids going to school there, if they ever notice it at all. But, perhaps it is also an appropriate place for such a marker.

There’s at least one other Vietnam memorial nearby (at a middle school, which … ) and from that I gather that 11 local soldiers were killed in that country. There’s a Facebook group for that particular display, and someone has uploaded photos of some of those men. But they’re boys. Even in fatigues they look young.

As we go along, and as we discover markers devoted to more specific people and places, our details here will no doubt improve. Possibly as early as next Wednesday! I have already mapped a route for the next dozen or so markers. At this rate I can wrap them all up by sometime in 2025. Unless something else historic happens around here.


31
Jul 23

Too far removed for a basic service our neighbors get weekly

One thing you never think of as a fundamental, perhaps integral, part of modern life is garbage removal. This is strictly psychological, but no less important because of it. As I think I mentioned last week, the company that used to do the garbage pickup here closed the other account and immediately decided they don’t service this area anymore. Despite having done so previously, and working throughout the little neighborhood.

So I finally found, last week, a new company that services the area. We opened an account with them. Great! First order of business, getting new cans delivered. That was supposed to happen on Thursday, Friday, or today. This, you see, is important because the pickup is supposed to begin tomorrow.

You want that to happen, the normalcy of it. The expected routine. Wheeling the cans down to the street, wheeling them back up the next day. Knowing there’s a can out there to put your carefully sorted things in. It’s just normal.

Using an old storage bin to put a bag into, and then carrying it to the transfer station is less normal. We’ve been doing that for a month. The good news, I guess, is that we are somehow pretty efficient. In a month we’ve only done that twice, accounting for three kitchen-sized garbage bags. (Plus the recycling.)

Just as I write that we learn that the new company has stopped servicing the area. Despite what their website, and their customer service reps, said. Two databases queried; two misses. Also, we’re surrounded by towns and cities, and yet, in no service area? (Despite, again, the previous and existing … service.)

Hopefully these companies are better at doing business with the customers with whom they do actual business. They’re proving themselves lousy at working with potential customers.

It is once again time for the site’s most popular weekly feature. Time to check in on the cats. Phoebe is working on her camouflage game.

She’s making progress.

She’s also still discovering new spaces. to sit. I suspect she’ll come to like that little ledge.

It commands the room, has corner windows and will give her evening sun.

Speaking of discovering new space, Poseidon was genuinely surprised that he wasn’t wanted up there. Which is odd, because if he wants to be there, he probably isn’t wanted there.

The more familiar places are better, though I’m not sure he’s buying what I’m selling.

In other words, the cats are doing just fine.

We went for a bike ride on Saturday, and there is video to prove it.

Also, on these really sunny days, the photos amuse me. It’s all constant motion, of course. And The Yankee is easing back into her tri-bike now, which means we’re about to go even faster. (Which means I’m going to have work harder to keep up. Which means I need to get faster, and better fitness, so I can keep taking cool photos like this.)

The alternative to keeping up is catching up. Some days that’s possible. On the days that it is impossible, I just slow down and enjoy the ride, and take other photos.

Also on Saturday we headed north for a 75th birthday party. It was a surprise party for my godfather in-law. (My lovely bride’s godparents. Just go with it.) There was his family, his lifelong friends (my in-laws) a handful of his work friends, Italian foods and a homemade cake. We sat with a man who was pushing 90, and loved to talk about his grandchildren, and old handyman projects. Nice fellow.

After the dinner we repaired to the godparents’ home, and watched the kids swim. I coached one into doing flip turns. No doubt owing to my masterful teaching techniques, she had the basics down on her third try.

We left just before the rain. Drove for a bit in the rain, but then we were rewarded with some beautiful views.

And the front behind this storm system (which was in some places, dangerously breezy) is what broke the heat wave. Also, those windshield views.

We were back in the 80s on Sunday, today, and all this week. And because it felt comparatively mild yesterday, we spent the afternoon sitting outside, reading.

I finish May Sarton’s “Journal of a Solitude.” It’s an actual journal the poet kept for a year.

On the last entry, she talks about the coming New Hampshire fall, writes obliquely about breaking up with her partner. (Sarton, from what I’ve gathered from other places, was apparently a challenging person to be around. She wrote more about that part of herself, and its impact on this relationship, more than the relationship itself.) She seems to be coming to the realization that this breakup was a long time coming, and that she was meant to live alone.

She also sent off her latest collection of poetry, “A Durable Fire,” her 10th collection of poetry and her 26th book, the day before this final entry.

She says “When I began writing those poems I had had the dream that I would celebrate my sixtieth birthday with a book of joys, a book speaking of fulfillment and happiness. But on the final re-reading I saw clearly that it is an elegiac book, and that the seeds of parting were in it from the beginning. This where poetry is so mysterious, the work more … ”

Mystery of poetry? If the poet says so. The biggest literary mystery I can concern myself with right now is what to read next. There are many, many options.

So many options.

Just not for garbage pickup.


28
Jul 23

Roasting near the sun

My first job, at 14, was landscaping a surgeon’s mansion. He was highly successful. He also married old money. They had an early model Rolls Royce Ghost in the garage. On each of the sweeping staircases there was an oil painting of their beautiful daughters. These were the people you saw in movies who didn’t exist, except that they did.

It was a summer job, I was working for one of my junior high teachers. My mother would take me to a McDonald’s parking lot to meet that teacher each morning, and each morning it was already hot. Even in a little cooler there was trial-and-error about what would survive until lunchtime. My teacher and I would drive over to the really nice part of the nice part of town. And she worked all day, and taught me to work all day. She taught me a lot that summer. I learned how to wrap towels, like she had in the Peace Corps, to keep cool. I learned the best places to take breaks. She talked a lot about music and her kids and other normal things about life, too. It was one of my first instances of interacting with a teacher beyond the classroom model.

It was very, very hot that summer. Almost dangerously so. And these people’s property was large. By the time we worked from one end of their property to the other it was time to start over again. If I didn’t mention this already, that was a hot, hot summer.

I use that story, kind of as a joke, to explain how I knew I wanted to go to college and get a nice, comfortable indoor job. Really, I’d already realized I wanted to be in an office, looking sharp in a coat and tie. But that summer, and some later ones that involved a bit of real work, only reinforced the idea.

I was thinking about that, when I spent an hour or so late this morning doing very, very, light work, mostly in the shade, but still under a heat index of 100 degrees.

People out there doing real work in the heat deserve breaks and water and shade. It’s easy to forget how demanding some conditions can be. Whenever we have people in to work on something, I’m constantly bothering them about needing air or heat or ice or … whatever.

I think of all of those people I see harvesting crops in the fields. When I ride by them on my bike I slow down a little bit and try to see if I can pick up any conversation, prepared to wave if anyone looks my way. But, absorbed in the details of their work, they seldom do. We’ll go down to one of the farm markets this weekend, or next week, and pick up some fresh produce. We’ll enjoy it, of course, knowing it is up from the soil right around us. But I’ll also wonder how many breaks the hands get. Hopefully, these last few weeks, they’ve been getting enough. Hopefully that becomes the norm when the conditions call for it.

Fortunately, this heat wave is forecast to break at the beginning of the next week.

Until then, stay cool as best you can. Pool floats are good for that.

And since the weekend is upon us, I’m giving you permission to unwind. Here’s 60 seconds of wavy clouds from four feet under water.

It’s Friday; don’t forget to breathe.