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adventures / Monday / music / photo / video — Comments Off
31
Mar 25

Cherry blossoms

We went to Washington D.C. on Saturday. It was a warm spring day, the sort that promises a lot of mugginess in the capital. It was peak cherry blossom season. Everyone knew it. So crowded.

This was the first time I’d been to D.C. since this monument was installed. It has a commanding view. And as you walk around the sculpture, it seemed the expression changed.

It’s also much taller than I’d imagined. But that’s as it should be.

Once you’d elbowed people out of the way, you got some nice views.

I kid, of course. Everyone was having a lovely time. Snippets of conversation floated through the air, like the kites flying everywhere, and the blossoms as they fell to the ground. I picked up sticks, because you never know when you’ll need a bit of cherry wood.

We walked down to the mall. The monument in the background, and perhaps the one place the capitol building doesn’t demand your attention.

We met my god-sister-in-law (just go with it) and her brother for dinner. We were all in town for a concert. Usually, I put up a lot of these, but I put up a lot of these. This was the really touching moment. A show that’s being discontinued — because of its themes of inclusiveness, perish the thought — got two nights of attention, in the Friday show and the Saturday show, and they sang with Guster and the National Symphony Orchestra.

Artists, man.

But that was only part of the weekend! More tomorrow!

cycling / friends / memories / photo / Rowan / Wednesday — Comments Off
26
Mar 25

We saw Adam via Zoom

My old friend Adam joined our class via Zoom. He’s recently stepped down from a command of American Forces Network Europe, where he managed dozens of stations on two continents. It seemed a good perspective to add to our international media class. And he had a lot to offer, so I’m glad he took the time.

I was trying to remember, but we met in 2011. I wrote a piece about a distant cousin of his, a World War 2 hero, one of the Doolittle Raiders. Soon after we met in person, and became fast friends. He took a master’s degree and became one of my lovely bride’s students. We’ve toured Alaska and Ireland together.

We are close in age. His hometown is just one or two towns over from my grandparents. Once, we tried to decide if we’d ever been to some event as kids. We decided the most likely place would have been a steakhouse. My grandparents’ church dismissed earlier than his church, so it’s possible that he had to wait on us to leave so he could eat lunch.

I wrote a little bio of him for my students. It’s been an impressive, long career. Multiple deployments, some great experiences and some less than great. He’s now just a few months from retiring from the Army, an exceedingly happy family man, and studying to become a commercial pilot. We’re trying to talk him and his wife into moving close to us. I’m not sure if I’ve sold him on it yet, but you’ve seen the pictures around here. One of my angles is that it is a lot like home.

(Speaking of home … He knew where his ancestor who immigrated from England came from. Adam and I once visited that road in London.)

Speaking of pictures, I took these the other day and I’m cleaning up my phone.

As the weather warms up and the bikes go back on the roads, it is good to see these signs still out there reminding people about the rules of the road.

That one is relatively new. At least I don’t remember seeing it last year.

And here’s a man out there discing that dirt. That field, if it is all his, goes back some ways. He was probably doing that all afternoon.

That was Saturday, because you work every day on a farm. I wonder what they were doing there today. A lot more than me, I’m sure of it.

cycling / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
25
Mar 25

Reading about literacy

Catching up on grading today … seemingly an evergreen phrase … and I ran across a paper where a student wrote “We live through a crisis of critical thinking.”

I may wrap the class on that note — now, not at the end of the term — and spend all of my free time trying to remember the most direct route to get future classes to that same point. Some weeks ago I was trying to summarize our class conversation in the last few moments when I found, around the corner and down the hall, an opportunity to make just this point, and so I steered my riff that way. It was a great go home message, and it must have stuck with that student.

For this paper, I’d asked the class to look a few years into the future and try to project the problems of misinformation and disinformation that we’ll be dealing with, and how we might best cope with, and try to overcome it. Another student wrote, “Media literacy will also be an essential tool … As consumers, we can play a part by using critical thinking skills … Schools and universiti3es should also teach media literacy and teach students how to discern fake news from real news.”

It’s fun to read papers when the authors are trying to make these sorts of connections.

I went for a little bike ride this afternoon. I quickly realized that I need to rest up a little more. Sinuses, or whatever I get, don’t always make for a good experience when you get your heart rate up and start breathing hard. So it was a brief ride. I got in my 16 miles, just to spin the legs and see the sites. Like the irrigation system to infinity.

And the excavator at rest. I wonder what it gets used on around there. There’s not an obvious worksite, no scar in the earth. Just fields waiting to turn green.

If it’s active this year, I imagine it’ll be a sod crop. We’ll see.

Elsewhere, it’s just lovely pastureland, and these two paints enjoying a late lunch.

Now, I’m going to go back to reading the last of those papers.

Monday / photo / Rowan / video — Comments Off
24
Mar 25

Back to school

Back to class today, where I continued our conversation from before the break. We’d been talking about journalism and disinformation and misinformation. So, today, I showed them this video.

I reminded them of a previous reading we’d had that compared mass media in the U.S. and Europe. It was a shortened version of a very important study from 20 years ago which, among other things, examined the strengths and weaknesses of each. And one of the strengths of the media in Europe, according to the author, is the robust public media you find in most countries there. We’ve never had a comparatively robust public media here. (To be sure, there are strengths on our side of the pond, too.)

Then I shared some tips for discerning a content producer’s credibility.

And then we talked about pink slime sites, which is always an eye opening conversation.

And I’m doing the springtime tradition of wearing the alma mater’s colors during their basketball tournament run.

I got photobombed, of course. Is it still a photobomb if you have to take the photo again to specifically create the photobombing?

Anyway, high quality tie, classic vintage lapel pin. School spirit for the number one seed. Rah.

The two cats that matter the most probably won’t be too worried about basketball. But they are intent on their weekly appearance here since, once again, I neglected to show them off last week.

Phoebe would like her closeup.

Look at that little freckled nose!

Poseidon, meanwhile, looks like he’s getting booked for some offense. Probably he should be.

If he’s not doing something wrong he’s working real hard at charming you into forgetting what he’s done wrong.

So the kitties are doing well. And we are doing well. And my sinuses are doing especially well! Last week my lovely bride caught a face full of winter and leaf dust and it set her back for a few days. She’s recovered. And on a Saturday phone call my mother asked how my nose was doing, ’tis the season and all. It was fine. But then, last night, the burning, itchy throat thing started. So I’ve got all of that to enjoy this week.

Friday / photo / site — Comments Off
21
Mar 25

The Friday random

This week flew by, somehow, and now it’s time to get back into class mode. So I’m starting to work on next wee’s classes. And wondering where this week went. And wondering how the next two or three weeks will go. There’s a lot to work through. So I must get to it.

But, first, there’s this.

I dropped a piece of paper in our Chicago hotel room and it just … disappeared. I’m glad there was nothing vital or embarrassing on the note, because it’s gone. My best guess is that it fell and slid under this improbably heavy and immovable bed frame. While I was looking for it, I somehow accidentally took this photo. For an accident it is a pretty decent composition.

I like how it blurs in the foreground but becomes clear as it goes forward. I’m looking for a metaphor there.

I updated the front page of the website. Go check it out. It looks something like this right now.

As we were waiting to take off from Chicago, I made the mistake of looking at the flight monitor screen on the back of seat in front of me. Despite the snow we drove through to get to the airport, conditions must have been radically different on the tarmac.

So it was a good time to leave, I guess. But that was last Sunday and this is Friday and next, for us, is Monday. I’ll see you then!