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Going fast, and also seeing things slowly

I have two classes tomorrow, so a substantial part of yesterday, and almost all of today, have been spent in making notes for myself, trying to think up ways to keep students’ attention and give them some useful information. This is always a learning process, both in terms of pedagogical techniques but, sometimes, in the actual material. I learned a few things yesterday. Now I get to share that information with others. That’s a lot of fun. Hopefully they’ll think so, too.

Just kidding. I’m working on a lecture a few weeks from now. But I did learn some things. One of the things I learned is that some of the reading materials have disappeared, and so I had to scramble for suitable replacements. Another thing I learned involved something arcane and technical. The journalist in me would have benefited from the existence of this technology, but not understood why or how it worked. Sorta like me and, say, an important converter in a hydroelectricity plant, or the part between solar panels and light switches.

What was really fun, and quite gratifying, is when I get to a new section of notes and text for this lecture that will take place in a few weeks and realize, “Hey, I know how to do this. I’ve been doing this for a long time, as it turns out.”

Can’t buy the sort of confidence that comes with steady realization, I’ve always said, since at least the beginning of this sentence.

The one big break from all of that today was a bike ride this morning. Here we’d just been chatting, when I looked down and we were soft pedaling through the low 20s.

On this particular route we follow that road for some miles until it ends. Then we turn left onto a road that parallels the river. The road is mostly flat, but there is the slightest little gradient. And my lovely bride will crush a false flat. I could still see her when she got to the next turn, but I didn’t see her turn. Despite having a clear view down that next road, I didn’t see her there. She wouldn’t have continued on straight ahead, owing to the logistics of the ride, but no can see.

So I spent the next four miles putting in some of the ride’s best splits, just to catch back up to her, which I finally did. We talked again for a moment, which was mostly me just trying to get out “You’re fast!” Then I went past her. I held her off for four miles, after which she dropped me with a “Why’d you do that?” look.

Because being chased is every bit as fun as chasing. Moreso when your legs are beginning to feel pretty decent again. (That only took two months.)

Also, I set three Strava PRs on that ride. All of which is why there’s only one shot in the video. I was too busy, and then too tired, to get more shots.

The seventh installment of my efforts in tracking down the local historical markers did not come from today’s ride, but rather a weekend expedition. Doing this by bike is one good way to go a little slower, see more things and learn some roads I wouldn’t otherwise try. Counting today’s installment, I’ll have visited 15 of the 115 markers found in the Historical Marker Database. What will we learn a bit about today? I’m so glad you asked!

Downtown is an old town here. Quaint houses. Signs on the walls displaying the original or locally famous previous residents. Hitching posts out by the modern curb. Lots of cars, but the whole vibe. It’s a charming little place, and houses like this are part of why.

Built in 1724 by a second generation immigrant, Samuel Shivers had one of the first houses in this town, and it is still today a fine example of several different generations of architecture. Historians would point out that there’s four centuries of work here, included the remnants of Samuel’s father’s 1692 cabin. The house we see today, then, shows us work that spans four centuries. The door, the hinges and the rest of the hardware there are period original, but I don’t know which … again, several centuries of work are in here.

The mantel is original. Some of the window glass is original. It wasn’t long before the Shivers family needed more space, so Samuel bought a nearby tavern and had it moved onto his property. Samuel’s daughter and her husband took over the house in 1758. That man, Joseph Shinn, helped write the state constitution in 1776. Their son, Isiah Shinn, took over the house. He was a state lawmaker and militia general. Isiah presided over more additions in 1813, adding a dining room and two more bedrooms, and this was the look on Main Street until 1946. The woman that owned it then made a lot of changes and whoever produced this sign did not like it. But for the past few years a preservationist has owned The Red House and is restoring it to its original style.

Apparently, the first film produced by Samuel Goldwyn in his studio Goldwyn Pictures in 1917 was shot in this town, and all of the interior scenes take places in this house, or on sets modeled after it.

The whole movie is online.

The Red House, also, has this fancy plaque on the front wall.

I touched it. It’s some sort of vulcanized rubber. But the rest of the house, though, it’s something else. Some day I’m going to have to work my way into an invite.

What already seems like six or seven years ago, somehow, but was merely last Wednesday, I showed you the marker that stood by itself, with nothing to memorialize. It was a fire ring. There’s one other in town, and it is within just a few feet of The Red House.

And even though, last week, I shared a screen cap of the Google Street View car’s photo of that now-missing fire ring, it’s important to see it for yourself. So now here is a fire ring.

This all seems pretty obvious now. It sounds like this.

I’m just tapping the ring with the metal head of my bike pump but the sound really jumps. Imagine, years ago, hearing this in the middle of a quiet night, when someone full of adrenalin is striking this ring. “FIRE! COME QUICK!” I bet it was an effective system for it’s time. The Red House’s sign says it has survived, among other things, fires, so that ring must have been an effective call to the community.

Also, ‘Old Discipline’? What a great name. What a great name for anything.

If you’ve missed some of the early markers, look under the blog category We Learn Wednesdays. What will we learn next week? Something quite unique indeed. Come back and see!

cycling / photo / Rowan / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
12
Sep 23

The day that I enjoyed

There’s a little security guard hut between the road and the building I’m teaching in. A human sits in there, checks everyone’s parking pass and raises and lowers the arm. The gentleman that was there last night, as I made my way in for my evening class, was the talkative sort. Asked me where I was headed. I pointed to the right. Going to teach, I said.

What class?

“Journalism. Introduction to New Media, specifically,” I said, unsure if we were chatting or if he was challenging me.

Journalism is old media, he said.

“Yes it is …”

And I want to hold it in my hand!

So we were chatting.

He had a solid 45 seconds ready to go on the subject, and he delivered it in a steady way full of calm, fun conviction, the sort that lets you know he could do two, three, maybe five minutes on this if you wanted and didn’t mind a little roughness around some of his witticisms.

He was right about what he said. You couldn’t help but agree and laugh at his larger point. But, sir, I really need to get parked and go in and log into the 19 services I need to teach this class and …

Have a good one he said, as he pointed roughly in the way I was expected to go.

It’s a night class, so parking was a breeze. We were in the gloaming, but the building was still bustling with activity. I walked into the room and two students were already there. The rest flowed in over the course of the next 20 minutes or so. Owing to the holiday last Monday, and the late start hour of this class, this is the last first class of the semester. They knew it, too, and, by then, students are usually over all of the first day class experiences. Let’s get into this.

So we did. Course outline. Syllabus. The many policies. An icebreaker. Some jokes. A conversation about how we want this class to go — and they got a say in some of the key elements of that. And then I launched into a presentation about new media … I started with some works archeologists have uncovered that date back about 3,500 years. I like doing the history for context. I’m not sure if you need three-plus millennia of context, but it’s so interesting. Here is an Egyptian medical scroll, it isn’t even the oldest medical document we have. Let me tell you what this 65-foot document covered. And occasionally you flash forward. Maybe not to WebMD.com, but you bring it around. And then you jump to another part of the world, another period, and you talk about the story these cave walls told, or the meaning behind this Japanese tale, or the functionality of Ghana’s talking drums.

Then there are the various cultures that used knot-tying systems for record keeping, if not for storytelling. We know of four of them, at least, in various parts of the world, and they all seem unrelated. And so isn’t it interesting how people from different places and times, with different resources and problems, and different needs and degrees of ingenuity solve their problems. I mean, these drums talk. And certain varieties can be heard miles and miles away.

And then you get to a certain point in history, and some of these older technologies give way. Some stick around. Their uses entrenched traditionally, or just important cultural artifacts, or their purposes modified, but people in what we arrogantly think of as modern cultures all start gravitating to the same tech.

It’s a big lecture, and it all winds up with the Lutherans, somehow, because I found a great cartoon image to end the slideshow, making the point that, at least in the western sense, everything we know stems from this moment.

I think the biggest takeaway, though, is they probably won’t want me to lecture them late into the evenings. It’s going to be a group class, and it could be a good one. Thirty or forty percent of them were leaning into it on the first night. I’ll get the rest in due time.

Today, I worked on part of another lecture, which I will give twice on Thursday. And this is the rhythm of things through the end of the semester in mid-December.

I also went for a bike ride because I needed a break and folding laundry didn’t sound fun, comparatively speaking. I was going to do a quick square pattern, a route that I’ve established on four of the closest roads. It’s about nine miles. Do it twice, you can get in a good hour and then get back into whatever. I have a feeling I’m going to do that a lot, which is fine. They’re good roads.

But one of the things that should never be taken for granted about having your feet on two pedals on either side of two wheels is the ability to be spontaneous. Before I’d done the first mile I had a new idea. What about this other road? Where does it go?

It’s a road that we drive for some of our routine trips. Thing is, if it is part of the routine you only your part of the road. And, sure, I could look at that on a map later — and I do for some roads, but the real joy is in simply finding out first hand. So, I figured, I’ll go down that road until my bike computer says I’ve done 10 miles, then I’ll turn around.

When I’d gone three miles I had to amend the idea, because the road ended in a T-intersection. See? I didn’t know the road. Hadn’t consulted a map. If I turned left, I’d go down a hill pretty quickly, which just means riding up it later. But if I turned to the right, it was a gradual thing. So I turned right and found myself racing over some nice false flats, only to run out of that road pretty soon. OK then, I’m going to have to remember landmarks and such. Another right turn, and then another. I stayed on that road until I got to 10 miles — though even though it seemed like it took a lot longer than normal — and then turned around, retracing my route.

I had a brief conversation with a friend the other day about seeing things by bike. The speeds are different, of course, so you can see and appreciate more. For instance, I’ve driven on this stretch of road now maybe four or five times. I’ve never noticed this sign.

I shot this on the way back. I’ve also never seen this one, which is great, because how can I top the serendipity of the sun setting over the shoulder of the sun?

Near the very end of my little 20 mile ride I got behind a tractor. And the tractor got behind another tractor, this one which was hauling a trailer of fresh crops away from the fields. The second tractor passed the first. And then I passed him, too.

The first tractor had not been going particularly fast, but it disappeared somewhere, and I’ll probably think about that every time I’m on this road I explored today.

I just created three new segments on Strava for various parts of that road, meaning I’ll have to try to go faster next time I come through there. I also added a segment that is a commonly ridden road on the way back home. I could add segments for every stretch of every road that is becoming a part of the new habit, but I’d never know which ones to give a big effort, and where to recover. Segments are usually done going uphill, but I am, of course, much faster going downhill. All of the ones I’ve created, the Strava website tells me, are flat or downhill.

Go figure.

Tonight it was cleaning up a bit outside, watering a few plants, catching up on the Vuelta, writing this, plotting out the next few classes and … that’s enough, really. Oh, and listening to the rain tap on the walls, and the wind howling over everything. That really should be enough. After all, I’ll be writing more lectures tomorrow, and thinking up a good newspaper joke for that guy working the security hut.

adventures / cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
11
Sep 23

Put some Monday between your toes

What a Monday, eh? In the history of Mondays, this one certainly lands on the list. It is notably surrounded by other such impressive days as Monday. And who can forget, that extra special Monday. Sad Monday makes the list, but you should never forget those happy Mondays. And somewhere, way high up on the list, there’s the special Three Day Weekend Mondays. There’s just no escaping this. Monday is definitely one of the seven days of every week. And even that’s on a list somewhere.

Now, where this week falls on the list of weeks, well that’s still TBD, which is SOP. And highly subjective, too. Weeks being what they are, different for all of us. Or at least many of us. But Mondays! Mondays are a uniquely held condition among everyone with a 21st century working calendar, even if your “Monday” is, say, on Wednesday, you still have them. And this was one of them. Why, we could quibble over the placement of this, but everyone will agree: in the history of Mondays, this was definitely not a Friday.

I spent the day making lecture notes.

So let’s talk about the cats. It is, after, the site’s most popular feature, and far more interesting to most of you than my exploration of ancient Egyptian scrolls, or 1st century Roman architecture or how many copies of the Declaration and the Constitution we still have (26 and 11).

Phoebe does not care about my lectures. But she is delighted to play with this mouse, most any day of the week.

And here, she seems to be on her ledge, looking down at the floor, thinking Later, he will hold that shape in front of me and make me pose for a picture, whatever that is.

I don’t think Phoebe really understands cameras or phones. Not that she isn’t as capable as the next cat, I just don’t think it has occurred to her that she should, which is to say, they don’t matter to her, which might make her smarter than everyone.

Poseidon, on the other hand, he understands this concept perfectly.

He’ll even give you moody suntanning photographs. Some cats are just natural born stars, I guess.

He won’t stay off the counter, though, even though he understands the tall people in the house don’t like it when he’s there. But his defiance gives us an opportunity to admire his footwoork.

So the cats are doing just fine, as you can see.

My lovely bride did a nearby-ish triathlon on Saturday, and so I went for a bike ride on some new roads. Here’s a brand new road. The first part of it was fine. The part after this was likewise in great shape. This stretch, just under a mile I’d say, was brand new. My hypotheses are either someone knew I was coming, or an important county official lives on this stretch of road.

No one knew I was coming.

It was a venture out to get photos for the Wednesday historical marker feature. I track all of those down by bike, and I try to do them in batches, which means a lot of planning, a lot of map-checking mid-ride, but a lot of lovely new views to check out.

Today I saw some old churches. I walked around an 18th century cemetery. There was a message board in that old grave, behind one of the old churches, that basically said “The members who founded this church in 1741 also founded the local militia during the Revolution.” It was a fascinating place.

I also visited two historically important houses, a famous cannon and more. You’ll see them in the next few Wednesdays.

I also, for the first time ever, lost a bolt that holds the cleat in my right cycling shoe. This peculiar chunk of plastic is held to the bottom of the shoe by three bolts, and when the one disappeared, probably in that cemetery, that meant that stopping became a bit tricky.

This is the foot that I unclip for stop signs and red lights and the like. Just before you come to a complete stop, you take the one foot out of the pedal. You leave the other one in because it looks cool, and it helps for getting going again in an efficient matter. To remove the cleat from the pedal, you crisply turn your ankle so that your toes point inward. You hear a loud, satisfying pop and then you can put your foot on the ground in the precise moment you come to a halt.

The problem on this ride was that I lost the inside bolt. The cleat only had two fixed points of contact, and when I’d go to point my toes inward, the cleat, my shoe and my foot just kept moving.

Fortunately, I only had to take my shoe out of the pedal twice more after that bolt disappeared.

The best news is that I figured this would mean I’d finally have an excuse to go spend money at my new local bike shop. But, I figured, let me check the personal inventory first. I’ve had to replace cleats before, from wear and tear, and when you buy new cleats you get a fresh set of bolts and the square washers that go with them. That, I reasoned, didn’t seem like a thing I would throw away.

So I went to the new bike room, and discovered the problem. In the old house, I’d know exactly where these would be. But so many routines, systems and paradigms change when you move. Much as I’m still (and forever will be) trying to figure out all of the light switches, and which stairs make what noise, I have no idea where these bits of hardware might be right now. I didn’t set up the new bike room, my lovely bride did. And they were not in the first place I looked.

They were in the fourth place I looked.

Anyway, popped a new bolt on the shoe, took less time to do than to write the above, I’m ready for the next ride.

I have reached the point in my bike-riding life where there’s a reasonably fair chance I’ll have the part I need already on hand, when I need it. It’s a special feeling.

Sunday we had brunch with some of The Yankee’s family friends. My mother-in-law is a retired nurse, and she is the chief organizer of her nursing school’s class reunions, an annual event that she takes great joy and pride in, and that was this weekend. The end of the festivities was brunch, and it was not too far away from us, so omelettes for everyone.

We were a surprise, and all of these lifelong friends were delighted to see us, but mostly my wife. I watched a septuagenarian hopping, literally jumping for joy, that she got to see her friend’s daughter unexpectedly. It was delightful.

It rained on us on the way there, and then rained terribly hard while we visited. Wind whipped it sideways, giving people mind to talk about storms they remember. And then the rain stopped, and the sun returned, acting for all the world like it had never left.

When the nurses all said their goodbyes, we went to the beach, just two blocks away. The water was a bit chilly, but you still go right down to the line, tempting fate.

I couldn’t decide which of these two I liked best, but this was the one I got a shoe wet on, so I’m saying I suffered for my art and am posting the photo.

Just the one shoe, somehow, and no sand in either one.

I did get photobombed. I always get photobombed. She’s just the cutest when she does that.

It is the beach, I think. Some people just go to 11 when they make it to a beach. She fairly glows.

I’m a little more about the woods that way, but the beach is always fun, he said with a wet sock.

We can be at a beach in 60 minutes from where I’m writing this. The biggest thing that would slow me down is digging up the sand chairs and finding the good sunblock. And there’s woods and plenty of other lovely outdoor scenery along the way as well. But just an hour from this.

Which is what I won’t be able to do just now, because it is back to that class prep.

In closing: an important thing of note about Mondays is that there’s a Tuesday following close behind.

adventures / cycling / Friday / photo / voiceovers — Comments Off
8
Sep 23

Happy World Literacy Day

This is an important day, World Literacy Day, and you’re reading this, so you’re doing part of your part. It’s a day, started in the 1960s, that aims to remind the world of the importance of literacy for individuals and societies, as well as the necessity for increased efforts toward a more literate society.

It could be the class prep I’m doing — literacy is going to come up next week — but a more literacy society should feel like an important task.

After a full day Thursday, I took in the weekend by taking it easy. Which is to say I worked in the home office on things I said I would do next week and set up some of the work I’ll need to do this weekend. But that’s for tomorrow, and Sunday, and Monday. Today, I could do a tiny bit less, and I was grateful for it.

After next week, he told himself, naively, the semester will settle into its own rhythm and you won’t have to spend every day stressing about every thing.

I see no reason why something so elemental should change at this late stage of the game.

We had a lovely bike ride today. I have two new tubes and two new tires. Same old legs, though. So it wasn’t especially fast on my part. And when I’m not especially fast that means I have to chase my lovely bride for the whole ride. As seen in this video.

No superlatives were set. But! On four Strava segments I was one second off a PR. That’s an odd bit of consistency, really. You have to accidentally not push on a lot to get right up to the magic number, but stop just short of a new time. It was a nice ride. The new tires felt smooth and supple. There was a lot of sun; it was warm and it is always nice to say you took a lunch ride.

I might take another lunch ride tomorrow!

This afternoon, I warmed up the recording equipment. I have to build a small studio — it is on the very long To Do list — but, today, I had to record a few bits for someone. Two scripts about psychology. Four pages. Lots of inflection. A few takes, just to be sure.

Took about an hour, from start to edit to send.

Just like that, my voiceover career is back on some sort of track. And, I made that banner for it, too.

And now it is the weekend, a perfectly, beautifully mild evening. Time to stop writing this, and go try that.

Enjoy your own weekend. Remember, you deserve it.

markers / music / photo / Re-Listening / Rowan / video / We Learn Wednesdays / Wednesday — Comments Off
6
Sep 23

Ready to just do it already

First classes are tomorrow. Last minute dashes to be prepared are today. I got a decent haircut, learned things about cowlicks, and ironed some clothes. When it’s open-the-ironing-board official you know it is getting real.

I’ve also semi-prepared the things I’m going to discuss in class so much that they now seem less interesting to me. And some of these things are interesting! Some of them are about the syllabus. And everyone loves syllabus day. So tomorrow is the first first day for two classes. My last first day is Monday night. I’ll start finishing that class prep on Saturday.

Tomorrow, it is two afternoon classes, and I know most of their pros and cons, schedule-wise. But Monday, it is a night class, that’s new to me. And it’s the last schedule block of the day. Because of Memorial Day, that means the 6 p.m. Monday night class will be the last first day of the semester. I’m sure all of the students in there will be over ice breakers. No pressure whatsoever.

But before that, there’s tomorrow. (It’ll be fine.)

This is the sixth installment of my tracking down the local historical markers. I’m doing this by bike, by the way, which is one good way to go a little slower, sometimes, and learn some roads I wouldn’t otherwise try. Counting today’s installment, I’ll have seen 13 of the 115 markers found in the Historical Marker Database. What will we learn a bit about today? Something that doesn’t exist anymore!

Here’s the first marker.

The fire ring isn’t there anymore. And I had this wrong. I thought this footprint would have been where it went. And I figured it was some sort of bell. Ring! Ring! Fire! Fire! Come out and fight the fire! Ring! Ring!

But this is what it looked like, and it was installed right next to that marker. This is a Google Maps image from the summer of 2016.

By the next time the Google car through, in 2019, the fire ring was gone. And you can see that the other spot, where I thought the fire ring would have been, had some other sort of monument or marker. It was also removed before September of 2019.

There’s another marker, elsewhere, for another fire ring. It’s next on the list to visit. Maybe, if it still there, we can figure out more about the mysteries of the fire ring.

But, for right now, if you look just past the marker above, you’ll see another one. And this wordy little document has been sitting here for generations.

And here’s the bridge the old timers were celebrating.

Now, I don’t know if that’s fertilizer runoff or some sort of punk rock algae bloom, but I’m not swimming in that lake, or fishing it, anytime soon. There were some people fishing in the lake the day I took this photo.

The marker says in some places the flood was 20 feet above normal and, in this location, it reached the top of the current bridge. That’s difficult to imagine, given the flatness of the surrounding flat terrain. (That’s how flat it is. Flat flat flat.) That sounds like a lot of water spreading out, and so it was. A tropical storm dumped 24 inches of rain in half a day at a gauge just 13 miles away. Dams failed, and a railway bridge that ran over this lake … well, here’s a thousand words on that from The Times.

But that date, the dedication date of the new bridge? That was 15 months after the flood. That’s not what stands out. Sure, it is 981 months, to the day, from me writing this, but that’s not it either.

December 6th, 1941, a Saturday. Imagine, the next day the members of the Board of Freeholders (a term no longer in use, having rebranded as county commissioners just a few years ago) woke up, all proud of their efforts, saw their neighbors, went to church, or whatever else their normal habits might have been. And, by dinnertime that night war was no longer a looming shadow. What everyone had feared had come at last. That bridge may have been the last thing built around here for a while.

If you’ve missed some of the early markers, look under the blog category We Learn Wednesdays. What will we learn next week? Come back and see.

We also return to the Re-Listening project, which is aptly named. I’m listening to all of my old CDs in the car, in the order in which I acquired them. I’m writing a bit about them all here, to play some music, to see if I can scour up a memory and, sometimes, like today, pad the place with some extra content. These aren’t reviews — because who cares? — but they’re sometimes fun.

And this time, we’re in the early summer of 2003. Train’s “My Private Nation” was released, their third studio album, and I liked Train. I liked Train three albums worth, and this was the third one I purchased. (They’ve released seven more records since then, the most recent being in May of last year.) This record went platinum, their fifth platinum certification, and ended 2003 at number six on the Billboard 200. A lot of people liked this record. (And five of their subsequent records have ended a year in the top 20. A lot of people like Train. Go give them some grief.)

They released four singles in support of the record. “Calling All Angels,” you’ll remember, was a big hit. “When I Look to the Sky” was moderately successful and, I think, the place where I’d almost had enough. “Get to Me” made it to number six on the Billboard Hot Adult Top 40 Tracks, and is still catchy two decades later. Though I’m not sure if I ever listened to that in the company of another human being.

That could have been a function of 2003. Early morning shifts — my first hit was at 4:30 a.m., which meant I was going into the studio before 4 a.m. most days, which meant my first alarm went off at 2:30 a.m., — shape your social life.

This was not an early morning listen, though. I was singing along in the car to people with a deeper register than Pat Monahan has. Also, right about here on the CD, I think I was starting to discover the Train formula.

Despite that, though, there’s still charming little imagery sprinkled throughout.

For my money, the last track on the album is the best one. And one of the best in their catalog.

Five years later a guy named David Nail covered it and had a moderate success on the country charts. What does that sound like?

It’s a cover.

Anyway. The first time I saw Train was on a small festival stage about 45 seconds before they became a supernova. And then I saw them in the now demolished Five Points Music Hall. I think I caught them once or twice more in bigger places. Then one morning I finished an early morning shift and bumped into them at a breakfast place. They didn’t look prepared for breakfast. This would have been 2001 or 2002. I didn’t see them, I don’t think, when they toured this record. And soon after this members of the band started changing and it would feel like an entirely different show if you went these days I bet. Monahan is the only original member left.

If you want to find out, Train is on tour right now. Let me know if they’re still doing the Zeppelin covers.