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Four days until spring

The cats demanded to be at the top of the post. The cats know, I’m sure, that they’re the most popular thing going on here. And so Phoebe was happy to pose with a little playful sass.

(And if you think that’s cute, just wait until you see her next photo here. I took it tonight. It’s the most adorable thing in kitty world.)

Poseidon, meantime, is practicing his impersonation of a statue … while we bounce his bouncy ball all around the house.

I’m about half convinced he only plays to make us play, so he can stare at us. Anyway, the cats are doing just great, thanks for asking, and they’re happy with the extra sun and warmer temperatures they’re experiencing lately.

I had a nice 30-mile ride this weekend. It was hard, in that it didn’t feel easy. But it was the sort of hard that made the overall time a bit faster. The sort that made the legs hurt, that made me a little bit delirious, apparently. This was the best picture.

The Yankee said I must be riding well, because I dropped her twice, and she said she was riding hard. Then again, she caught me, twice, while I fought through the teensiest headwind. So she is riding well, which spells trouble for me in keeping up with her the rest of the year.

Anyway, that was a part of the weekend’s exercise, and not at all the part that makes for sore muscles today. Something in that area between the bicep and the forearm — what’s that called, the elbow? — is protesting mightily today. I am in that phase of a new ache and/or pain where I am still learning the motions that hurt, so if you see me moving slowly to starboard, that’s why.

One of the trees outside the building has reached full bloom, the full I’ll-miss-this-when-they’re-gone stage. The blooms are funny things. You can spend all winter looking at sticks pointing this way and that, waiting. One day you see those little bulbs, those hopeful signals of the future. And then you see the blooms — or the buds if you’re really slow and careful — a few at first, and then the entire symphony.

Just in time for you get used to the inevitability, the persistence of those beautiful colors, it all turns green. Then there’s that day or two required to get used to seeing all of that bright, bright green again.

It’d be nice to have trees that bloomed at different times, is all. And if I had a field carefully arranged with all of them on display in a way that always shows color. I wonder what that would look like. I imagine a gentle incline and spiraling trees, and mounds and mounds of upkeep. That’d really aggravate the arm.

Meanwhile, back over in the Re-Listening project, where I’m enjoying all of my old CDs in the order of acquisition, we are now in January (or February) of 1999. I remember being excited about this, I remember looking forward to playing this for friends, and having some of these songs appear on the radio. It was my second live double-album, which just wasn’t something that came out a lot by then.

It was Dave Matthews fourth album, but this wasn’t the Dave Matthews Band, it was Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds, in the first of their third album, and before Reynolds formally joined DMB. (Everybody caught up in all of that?)

Anyway, Live at Luther College at number two debuted on the Billboard Hot 200 in February, Silkk the Shocker kept it out of the top spot, with Brittney Spears climbing fast. Despite all of that, it stayed on the chart for 51 weeks.

This was recorded in 1996, so by the time fans had this disc in their hands in 1999 six or seven of the new songs were comfortable, familiar, hits. But there was still some new stuff to explore.

I liked this one right away, it’s a jam band experiment of acoustic guitar jazz masquerading as a pop tune deep cut.

And the other song that blew our minds, the one I played for everyone, was this one.

That’s what a virtuoso sounds like. I don’t know anything about anything about playing a guitar, but I put this on a lot, and for a long time, wondering what it must have looked like. Clearly, there’s a loop machine in there, but there’s still a lot of mastery to observe.

Fortunately, decades later, Tim Reynolds is still playing with the form, and people started recording it on their phones.

I saw Dave Matthews Band later that summer, the last time I caught them live — just before all of the tickets got outrageous. They have 5 North American dates coming up this summer, and I’m sure they’ll be great shows full of the truly devoted. Reynolds will be at those shows according to his website. Matthews and Reynolds, meanwhile, released two more live double discs, in 2007 and 2010. I had no idea about that until just now, but there should be one or two more DMB CDs coming up in the Re-Listening project. But we have to get through a few more fillers this week.

Friday / photo — Comments Off
14
Apr 23

Quick peektures

The lawn was just mown. The dandelions were waiting for their moment. Their moment is now.

This weekend, the shrubs are getting their ears lowered. I wonder what’s lurking in there, waiting for their moment.

Let’s check in on the apple tree once again. The blooms won’t be there long, he told himself again. Enjoy them while you can, he reminded himself, thinking of times past when he didn’t.

I’ll do it more tomorrow, he said forgetfully, half distracted by whatever else.

I did look out the kitchen sick window as I did the dishes this evening. It faces the west, and it was the right time for that glance. I finished up the washing quickly — there’s surely something that I’ll have to wash again tomorrow — so I could go out and see this for 15 seconds.

There are duplexes across the street, designed solely to obscure my view — and, I guess, for people to live in — but when you get the really vibrant one, you can enjoy some incredible colors above the silhouetted faux-dormers.

Nice way to start the weekend.

books / cycling / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
13
Apr 23

The one where he complains about spring for a change

The apple tree is abloom. You would be forgiven for thinking that we are in spring. But, alas, I know better. I know better because, now in my seventh April here, I know better. And, also, I can read the forecast. It might break 45 degrees on Saturday.

Spring will not begin here until next weekend, the running of the Little 500 bike races mark the official recognition of the seasons changing here. Our first year it happened during the actual race — a soft, subtle, two hour transition that you could actually feel if you were sitting there attentively, desperate.

Even as I note that spring does not begin until the third week of April, I should note that this has been a mild winter. But! There’s still a week-and-a-half to go …

I had a nice, brisk ride this evening. My lovely bride was sitting in the backyard, enjoying the weather and reading, I was sweating, going up a virtual hill on Zwift. But I had, on this stage, three of my favorite visuals on the game. The windmill, the mountain which creates its own weather system and an empty road.

At times, this route was fast, at times it was slow. So like every other ride, really. But I got in 33 miles, and that’s not bad for a Thursday, even if, just at the end, right about at 90 minutes, I started getting bored. I think it has something to do with being indoors on a nice weather day.

I am reading John Dower’s Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. I am 11 percent in, the stage is set, the context is in place, and the truly memorable anecdotes are now appearing.

That repeal was just three weeks before the American occupation ended. Despite some advocates, daylight saving time has never been restored in that nation. If the author puts a half-paragraph into something like that, you’re going to get a lot in the coming pages. And there are a lot of pages, a lot to cover, socially, politically, economically, culturally. But, at least, we know how they felt about springing the clocks forward.

IU / journalism / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
12
Apr 23

If I jot down enough notes, I will most surely be correct

I’ve been working on my trauma interview syllabus. I have a small stack of books and, so far, a half dozen pages of notes and ideas, this first part all about the considerate efforts one should undertake in the interview approach and process, and it is all quite fascinating,.

There are a few industry pros holding workshops with their peers on this sort of thing now. Anyone that’s had to do enough interviews following death notifications, or asked by their editors or producers to sit down with abuse or attack survivors has the beginning of this insight. Right now, though, it is hard-won experience handed down from people who are, most often, not practiced in psychology.

I can almost quote, verbatim, what I was taught about this in J-school, because it was quite brief. A professor said. “You’ll be told to interview someone who’s just lost a loved one. Ask the family members politely if they’d be willing to talk to you. Some people will want to talk with you. Some people will think you’re horrible. Accept whichever response you get, and know it isn’t personal.”

And that was it. It was the nineties.

There’s a lot more to this, a lot more particulars that students should understand. (There was never anything said, nothing at all, about the trauma reporters face and self-care.) If you think of the stories that reporters chase. Think of the places they often find themselves, this stuff will come up for them, and in a hurry.

That’s why I’m cobbling notes and dreaming up a syllabus. It could be useful, and so I look forward to pitching it. I hope I get to teach it one day.

Anyway, the office all day. The studio all night. Sports night there, so there was a lot of baseball talk. It’s the changing of the guard portion of the year. The seniors are getting ready to fly the coop, and the younger students are getting all the heavy lifting. What’s always amazing to me is how, each year, the rising seniors are all just that much better prepared, just that much more comfortable, for their new, bigger roles than the people that came before them.

And while those graduating seniors are now going over details of their contracts or are engaged in in-depth interviews, we’ve got rising sophomores who are ready to take on the world, to say nothing of some rising juniors who are industry ready, right now.

The day-to-day stuff is fine enough, but watching and charting that progress of students, following them as their skills, and their confidence, grows, that’s gratifying stuff.

I always feel like this in the springtime, the bloom of pride in the observation of self-recognition. It’s probably something to do with the flowers.

I suppose it could be the pollen.

adventures / cycling / memories / Monday / music / photo / Re-Listening / video — Comments Off
10
Apr 23

75 miles later

Happy Monday from the cats. Phoebe is enjoying the sun. We’ve had our share of clear skies the last few days and they’re both taking full advantage. A sun-warmed furry cat sits in her own realm of indulgence.

Poseidon also wishes you a Happy Monday. And he would like you to know that, for all of the times I tell him I outwit him because I am bigger and smarter, he is now taller than me. Way, way taller than me.

He’ll rub it in for days.

So the cats are doing great, thanks.

We went out for a bike ride this weekend. Twice, actually. Two of my three weekend rides, were outside.

These were rides two and three outdoors this year. Still low enough to count, and a late start owing to a combination of weather, my schedule(s) and my lovely bride working her way back into riding outside. These were her second and third rides on the road since her horrific crash last September.

So rare and novel, it still feels like going outside is getting away with something.

I remember, just after her surgery at the end of September, after a week of zero sleep for either of us, the surgeon came out to tell me she did well. He taught me a new word and said they’d send for me when I could go back to sit with her. While I waited, I called my mother-in-law, giving the good news, trying to reassure, being chipper. I called my mom, too. Both of them, being thoughtful moms, asked me how I was doing. I told her mom I was great: all systems go, taking care of your daughter, looking forward to seeing you soon. To my mother, I heard myself, a bit more candidly, say that, after a week of worry and sympathetic grimacing and no sleep and a fair amount of stress that “I could really use a bike ride.” Seemed selfish then, and in retrospect. My mom took the ‘You have to take care of yourself too,’ approach, which was welcome.

That was on September 29th of last year. I spent the next two weeks and change hovering over the convalescing patient. Three-and-a-half weeks after her crash I got on my bike again — riding part of the same route she’d been on — which wasn’t spooky at all. Between the rest of October and November, recovery, catching up on stuff and so on, I got in four more road rides before the weather turned. (I looked that up on the app and I am surprised the count was that high.)

Last month, on a picturesque weekend day, she wanted to ride outside. We pedaled around the neighborhood for a few minutes, going slowly, averaging just 10 miles per hour. A tentative toe in tepid water.

Saturday, after months of rehab — her ribs and shoulder blade are much better and her collarbone is finally starting to heal six months later — she decided to try riding on asphalt again. I can speak to this firsthand. As much as the physical, it’s a mental progression from riding on a trainer to dealing with wind and noise and cars and bumps. It takes a while to feel like yourself, and some more time after that to approach comfortable. She’s right on schedule, which is to say her schedule.

So Saturday, after I’d already spun out 33 miles on the trainer, we went out for a rambling 17-mile ride around the neighborhood. This is odd, because she always knows where she’s riding, but it was great, because there’s something magically freeing about riding aimlessly. No timers, no zones, no watts, just a bike ride.

Then, yesterday, another beautiful afternoon, we rode the winery route, doing four circuits of the 6.6 mile lap. It’s a quiet set of roads, loosely rectangular, with the interstate running alongside. It’s a good place to stretch out your legs. I asked her, after the first lap, how she was doing. She knew I was asking how it felt and how comfortable she was. She said she was doing OK. There weren’t a lot of cars around to bother us, just as we’d hoped, so she could concentrate on all of the rest of it. So she was concentrating on how her legs were feeling. She was frustrated, feeling sluggish, despite riding on her trainer all winter.

Reaching for an explanation, I said “You rode yesterday. And you know it’s always a little different, going from the trainer to the road. Plus this wind is everywhere.”

There’s a windmill at the top end of that route, and I watched it go around and around each time we went by. We were in a cross-head-cross-wind all the way around.

Then, for a few moments on the second lap, she found her legs. Her form straightened out, her legs took on the familiar form, the one that tells me I have to chase. And so I did, setting a two-lap PR for my efforts.

And now my legs are a bit tired.

I am now three CDs behind on the Re-Listening project. We’ve just worked our way through a stretch of really good jazz, and this next little bit is a comparative step down. An embarrassing step down, perhaps. Let’s just grin and get it over with it.

These guys got discovered in Australia at 15. Their five studio albums have moved more than 10 million units over the years. Their second record got a lot of play on MTV and alt radio, and Neon Ballroom is their third release, at the ripe old age of … 19. It topped the chart in Australia, where it went platinum three times. It also went to number one on the UK rock and metal chart. It climbed all the way to the 50th slot on the Billboard Hot 200 here, and is certified gold. It is one of those efforts that defines a little slice of 1999.

Also, and again, they were 19.

The very pointy tip of the millennial angst spear, we just didn’t think about them in marketing terms at the time.

I’m not sure I ever listened to this much, for whatever reason. A lot of it still feels new, even if it is a little dated two decades later.

Those guys went through some stuff, sadly unsurprising, perhaps, considering the attention they earned so young. They released two more records in the next seven years. After some on-again, off-again the guys split up for good in 2011.

And then there’s Sugar Ray, which was a station giveaway. I never listened to this thing. It was … not for me when I got it, and I was glad it was a freebie. That the three singles got nearly maximum plays across 1999 didn’t help.

Though this track did feature KRS-One.

And they covered a Steve Miller classic.

I’d entirely forgotten that track was on here until I played this disc the other day. As I said, I never listened to this.

Up next in the Re-Listening project, something I actually purchased, and enjoyed!