As is so often the case with big tasks, I find that if I can break them up I can finally make real and good progress. It takes a few days of wheel spinning to remember that each time. You could say it is a shortcoming. An oversight. A stubbornness. I think of it as part of the process.
So it was that I laid out a plan to have the syllabi and material for two classes all squared away by Monday. The other, I’ll wrap up on Tuesday. And then, finally, I can think about what to do with an actual class. (Step one, haircut.)
Circumstances beyond anyone’s control gave me a late start with some of the prep. My new colleagues have been incredibly helpful with mitigated a lot of that, but, still, there’s a lot to do. Taking it on in smaller chunks gets it done, though, every time.
I have three notebooks, two piles of paper, three separate browsers, multiple tabs in each and, now, gobs of Google Drive links. There’s a lot to work through.
And so I did, until almost 6 p.m. on the Friday of a three-day weekend. Then I went for a swim.
Two days after a 2,650 yards night swim, I was at it again.
It takes about 400 yards for my shoulders to warm up. After they stop complaining and until I stop, I go through stretches where my form is bad and then my form feels extraordinarily good. There are moments where I’m breathing on each stroke, hard and strong, a puffing locomotive. And then there are these wild moments where I swim a few short laps with the most relaxed breathing possible. It never lasts, that calmness, that efficiency, but the way it all changes amuses me, and probably says a lot about my inconsistency as a swimmer.
At precisely the moment where I reached Wednesday’s 2,650-yard distance, my arms started complaining again, this time from fatigue. That’s a mile-and-a-half, so being tired was understandable, but I kept on swimming for a while longer, until I reached this swim’s little goal. Taking on the bigger thing in smaller chunks: a good approach for September.
I spent all day frustrating myself with pagination and bullet points. No matter how old I may get, no matter how much wisdom I earn, I will never have the patience for this, or understand why simple text editors and CMS tools simply refuse to do the obvious thing.
Or, failing that, why my ideas and habits are always so fundamentally at odds with the people who designed these things. Designed these things, one imagines, with a notion of serving the broader audience. If so it begs an important question: am I out of step with popular ideas about indentation?
Other things, you grow fine with. Music, fashion, well, that’s just a byproduct of not caring as you get older. Certain elements of political ideologies, what are you gonna do? How the cookie crumbles, could have used a different emulsifier, but I’m sure that was a bottom-line decision. Stuff happens, yes, in fact, stuff does happen.
But, my goodness, people should all want to use bullets and other basic formatting traits in a sane, sensible, not-at-all-programmed-by-a-sociopath way.
After I’d spent hours doing this — that’ll teach me, until the next time — which included making up brand new utterances to utter, my lovely bride came in and suggested a way around this problem. It made sense. It was easy. But, by then, I had invested six hours on the thing and who wants to blow up that sort of progress?
I was flibbertygibberted.
A little while later I had a cause to be even more frustrated because I finally went outside and it was a stunningly beautiful evening. (Literally, all afternoon was spent on this ridiculous task I’d made for myself, rather than being outdoors.) So I went for a swim.
Jumped in, goggles on and started the freestyle technique. This was my view on the starting end of the pool.
Swam for an hour. Got in 2,650 yards. I do not know what is happening.
This is not fast, but it is a respectable distance. Also, I didn’t stop the first time during the whole thing, which is absolutely a record. This was my longest swim since October 17, 2015. That was my last lap swim until last month. A lot happened in between. A lot of nothing happened in between, too. But that’s the case for everyone. Anyway, 10th swim in after an almost eight year layoff, and I’m doing some real distance again.
My heart rate, immediately after my swim, was 101. I might not be working hard enough.
Swimming at dusk, though, was a lot of fun, and just what I needed after flabdabbering my computer all day. I’m going to feel it in my shoulders tomorrow, but I might also go for another swim Friday evening.
This is the fifth installment of my tracking down the local historical markers by bike. There’s an online database with 115 markers in the county. Counting today, we’re 11 down and making decent progress. What will we learn a bit about today? We have a few more war memorials.
I’ve read that 78 local men served during the Great War, by the time it was over, 124 people had enlisted. Some 3,300 people lived in the two communities represented on that marker. In a small town any enlistment is keenly felt. I haven’t, yet, found anything online that tells me about which locals shipped out, to where or with whom. I don’t know anything yet about casualties, but supreme sacrifice leaves you with more than a suggestion. All of it was keenly felt, I’m sure.
Some of those initial 78 would have likely been in the Guard. When the war began in Europe, the local national guard was under strength, under supplied and under prepared, but still somehow better equipped, trained and prepared than it had ever been. New Jersey was one of only four states that funded 75% of the expenses of its National Guard. Some of the Guard here went to the Mexican border. Some went to Fort Dix, and then Anniston, Alabama, before heading out to France. But where the men honored here, I don’t know.
Right next to that marker is this one.
Russell Garrison also has a memorial park in his name, just a few miles away. Garrison was killed at a place called Pleiku, a strategic crossroads town, in 1967. He wasn’t yet 22.
Marvin Watson was a PFC in the Marine Corps. He died in 1969 in Quang Nam, a town in central Vietnam by the East Sea. His high school yearbook says he was known for his sense of humor. He had just turned 20.
Specialist Richard Emmons III probably got razzed for his baby face. He looked young even in his fatigues, even in his beret. And when you see the photos of him smiling, you can really see it. He was 22 years old, in a province in eastern Afghanistan he probably couldn’t have found without a detailed map before he deployed. A rocket-propelled grenade attack on his convoy. He’d been in the army for less than three years, and in-country for almost a year. It looks like the whole town came out when he was returned home.
Corporal Derek Kerns was killed in a training accident in Morocco. Helicopter crash. The Marines concluded it was pilot error. The two Osprey pilots survived, but Kerns and another, a Marine from Los Angeles, were killed. Kerns joined the Corps right after high school, and his family said he really took to the life. He’d just gotten married, and they had just had a baby. He was only 21.
And somehow, despite that, it’s the blank space beneath those two names, the air below those stories, that is really striking.
All three of those markers are next to one another, overlooking Memorial Lake, which is right beside Main Street. A pair of bald eagles live around the lake, and there’s a nice little neighborhood just across the street. The locals fish for bass and crappie there.
So we’ve learned a fair amount this week, but there’s a lot more to go. If you’ve missed some of the early markers, look under the blog category We Learn Wednesdays. And be sure you come back next week for what is a historical pre-footnote and something else, which isn’t even in place anymore.
It doesn’t sound like much, but that installment is going to be great.
I swam 2,000 yards this evening. It was that or go stumble through a run, and my knees said: swim, why don’t ya? So I dove in, donned the ol’ goggles and started the freestyle stroke, with the occasional kick when I could remember to, counting laps along the way. Somewhere around 360 or 400 yards, my arms stopped complaining and just carried on with the effort. That’s my longest swim since 2015, where one fine September day I put 2,900 yards in the books. It is my 10th swim of the summer, and I did it all uninterrupted. I’m pleased with what seems like an impressive progression, and wondering what I’m doing poorly if I’m not a.) super winded or b.) exhausted or c.) both, after the fact, and if I have enough time to get to two miles this season.
Three, four, more swims, right? Surely that’s outrageous and feasible, all at the same time.
I do not know what is happening.
This has been a nice exercise. Something about the rhythm, even for an inconsistent water splasher as I am, becomes meditative enough. If you’re concentrating on keeping the lap count right or, occasionally, focusing on your technique, all of the other things can go out of your mind.
This lets the other things come back into your mind, because when you splash the water away at the wall, more water moves back through.
I don’t know what that means, either. Not really. I didn’t spend my time in the pool writing this. Clearly, that’s the oversight here.
Anyway, laps, time spent not writing this in my mind, because time was spent thinking about class preparation, instead. Not every day is a day full of deliverables, and this was one of those days. But! Two thousand yards!
Phoebe was not impressed. But, then, she’s a classic sidestroker, swimming on the carpet as she does throughout the day.
On Friday, she was very cuddly.
Some days, kitty needs dictate events. And part of Friday morning was one of those days.
Poseidon continues to maintain a watchful eye over his kingdom. He’s lately improved his approach to climbing up the narrow scratching post. What was once a chaotic effort to get up there for “Now what?” has become a confident, measured attack for “Where else should I be?”
I expect he’ll be leaping directly on top of it before long. When, that is, he’s not on the top of the refrigerator.
“No peektures, please.”
So the cats are doing just fine. So are their talons, as you can see a bit there.
We had an interesting bike ride on Saturday. We started too late. My fault. It was already quite warm. But we started with a tailwind. (Which is counterintuitive.) And so we had some impressive splits in the first half of the ride.
It was all I could do to hang on, so there’s no video, no shadow selfies or other cool camera tricks this time. Even still, we had the wonderful opportunity to see a few cool barns. This one was between here and there.
And this one we rode past just after our turnaround about halfway into the ride. (But more about our halfway destination at a later time.)
Soon after, we got back to a place that was more familiar, which meant my lovely bride could drop me. I was dead, but knew my way back, at least. I went a longer way, just for the spite of extra mileage. And, right at the end of that, I blew another inner tube.
They come in bunches for me, and that’s not frustrating at all, getting to break out a tire lever on your rear wheel twice in two weeks.
I suggested a lovely and romantic night out. There’s a winery nearby and they serve upscale pizzas on the weekend and it’s supposed to be lovely. Reservations were made, and 3.6 miles down the road we went. We timed it such that we caught last bit of the sunset creating a bokeh effect of the cars making the drive down the last dirt road. By the time we parked and got onto the property the sun was gone. A three-piece band was playing, mellow strains floating over the rows of grapes on the still August air being our introduction. This was the view.
We were sat right away. And the group played “Harvest Moon” as if on cue.
The only Neil Young song you need, really.
Some time passed and the hostess came by to see where our waiter was. You could tell there was some back-of-the-house drama going on. Someone else came to take our order. She did not know the special pizza of the day. A third person, then, stopped by to tell us about that creation, which was when our actual waiter turned up.
This was the special pizza of the day. They called it a Cubano, something or other. And though I have little need for dill pickles in general and no need for them on my pizza, you had me at Cubano.
Being the special, I reasoned, must mean that it was good. And it was good. Somehow those pickles worked.
They also had a lot of pizzas they put honey on. The Yankee’s had honey, and it was delicious, and maybe honey is one of those things, like bacon, that’s good on everything.
What if you put honey on bacon?
After an hour our pizza showed up, which is great, because I was about to launch into my whole “… and this is why I don’t pick restaurants” bit, which is absolutely why I don’t pick restaurants. We didn’t have a waiter. The place that is serving only pizza was struggling to get pizzas out. But it was tasty. The music was fine. The singer had a terrific Jeff Tweedy vibe, but judged his audience not-yet-ready for the Uncle Tupelo or Wilco catalogs. He mumbled when he talked. Couldn’t make out a single word. Sang wonderfully.
Our waiter, our real one, brought our pizza and … that’s about it. It brought up questions about who gets the tip, which is really just a question about why we use a tipping system, anyway.
After pizza we got a little ice cream, a nice end to a lovely day.
Yesterday afternoon we sat outside, as has been our recent custom, and read. I breezed through the second section of Eudora Welty’s memoir, One Writer’s Beginnings (1984). As I don’t read a lot of fiction, I’ve never read her work, but she’s a marvelous writer, and she delivers it with the most deft touch, when she’s talking about her bygone days. This second section — all of this book adapted from a series of lectures she delivered late in life — is about traveling as a young girl with her parents to see the extended family. Traveling from Jackson, Mississippi to West Virginia and Ohio was a week, one-way, in the car. At times they were ferried over creeks and rivers. Sometimes the ferry was powered by a man pulling on a rope. It was the 19-teens, and the same world, but harder.
The whole section dives into her grandparents, and deeper parts of the family roots as she understood them. And the people here are developed with the depth and care you would expect of a keen observer and a more-than-able writer. The very last part, after they’ve gotten home from the long summer journey …
“The events in our lives happen in a sequence of time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order, a timetable not necessarily — perhaps not possibly — chronological. The time as we know it subjectively is often the chronology that stories and novels follow: it is the continuous thread of revelation.”
I bet even that paragraph means different things to people at different points in their lives. Looking back and marinating in it all, re-playing and re-rationalizing things, putting a narrative to it all. It would be different to a woman of 74, as she was when she delivered that lecture at Harvard, than it would have been to the students in the audience. And the professors and middle-aged people in the room that nodded along sagely, they’d have another understanding, too.
It’ll probably mean something different to me, next Sunday, when I finish the book.
It is garbage day here on the inner coastal plain. As I’ve mentioned, the garbage people don’t pick up our garbage. They don’t service the area, despite almost all of our customers using the service. Despite them picking up the discards from the previous owners. Despite my having timed this such as to see the garbage truck rumble down the street as I was gathering things together. It’s a weird thing, this small inconvenience. It makes you feel a little vulnerable, somehow.
And it’s a small inconvenience, to be sure. The problem is solved by simply catapulting our refuse into a neighbor’s yard putting a small garbage can or two into the car, sliding a tub of recyclables in there somewhere, and driving them the 7.3 miles to the drop off place.
So I did that. One over-filled, smelly garbage can into the trunk. Plastics, steel, glass and aluminum into the back seat. Turn left, drive awhile, turn right, go around a curve, turn right and then left again, and you’re there. If you do this in the middle of the day, as I did, you might be the only one there, as I almost was.
A woman pulled in just after me and, even though this place should probably suit four or five people setting about the busy work of getting rid of things, I managed to get in her way. She smiled, I smiled. I got out of her way, and then drove away, back through town, and I took this photo.
Back at the house, the plastic recycling tub returned to its spot, the garbage can dealt with, I returned to the computer to do computer-type things. I plugged away at this site and that, dealing with tech support from two separate parts of the country on two separate issues. All but the last little bit of what the university requires for their administrative work has now been completed, and the last thing, something of a redundancy if I recall correctly, is now out of my hands. All of which means there will soon be real work to do.
But at quitting time, I quit, and went for a swim. Today I counted out 1,760 yards, which is a fair amount for me. My longest swim since October 29, 2015. I only wrote one throwaway sentence about it here that day; maybe it felt common to do long swims at the time. Most anything can feel ordinary after a time. And then ordinary can, of course, change with the simple demands of the day.
My swims aren’t very pretty, or fast, or efficient. I’ve been in the pull next to incredible swimmers — varsity swimmers, All Americans, Olympians — and it’s simply a gorgeous demonstration of the human form. What you see on TV does not do justice to what you see when you’re in the next lane. And you’ll forget to “swim” altogether as you watch the poet slicing through the water next to you. Or, at least, I do. I don’t swim like that. The only thing we’d have in common is being in the water. But over your lap time, you get to think about things, and today I considered what legendary coach David Marsh — he was himself five times an All-American, coached 12 teams to national championships and has coached more than four dozen Olympians — once told me. “You have to respect someone willing to spend hours and hours, swimming hundreds of laps, to shave a thousandth of a second off of their best time.”
Every now and then, during my swim, a part of one lap felt better than the last. Maybe I was almost finding the right technique, just in time to reach the wall and throw the whole thing off. I’m not good at it, is what I’m saying, and also inconsistent. But it was a long swim, and it felt mostly comfortable. The metric I’m using: I only stopped twice.
After that, my lovely bride and I talked about sports and classes. For the second time in a week or so someone has mentioned to her a study idea I suggested a few weeks back. We might be on to something there. These are the conversations that are the most fun. Sometimes they go somewhere.
By dinner time, which was soon after that conversation, I could already feel that swim in my shoulders. I wonder, what would Marsh say about that?
In late May, I bought a new backpack. It arrived in a timely fashion, and I stowed it away in my office. Of course, as planned, not too long after that I didn’t need to use a backpack. But I needed a new backpack. The shoulder straps were growing threadbare. The little handle at the top, the one you use to pick the bag up if it is on the floor, was all busted up. A zipper on one small compartment was broken beyond repair. Most distressingly, the bottom of the main compartment has two growing holes.
Friction. Rubbing my belt. Riding my bike to work. Dragging it on the ground. Whatever it was, my laptop and the other items carried in there would soon be at risk. It was time.
But it was a good bag. Carried all of my things. Spacious. Plenty of pockets. Lasted years and years. I don’t remember exactly when I bought it, but I remember where and the circumstances. Call it 2013 or 2014. Anyway, it worked well for a long time for a bag I tend to carry most every day. So I got my money’s worth from the cheapest bag I could find at a small office store, the bag that I thought, at the time, was too expensive.
So I bought the same bag again.
Why reinvent the method of moving my things? Why lay out a new way of lugging things? Why set up a new system? Why establish a new packing paradigm?
Last night, I emptied the old bag, and put all of my things into their same spot in the new bag. My computer and two small notebooks in the main computer. A camera stick, some tabletop tripods and a microphone in the secondary pocket. A bottle of Advil and two handkerchiefs in a side pocket. Two ponchos and two garbage bags — for emergency poncho or any other number of uses — inside the other side pocket. A small assortment of Post-it notes, multicolored, a few pens and sharpies, a thin container of bandages. Two umbrellas, four masks and a thumb drive or two. All of it where it belonged, in the same spots, in the new bag.
I discovered three additional smaller pockets inside a medium pocket on the old bag while doing this.
This morning, I hefted the new bag on my shoulder for the first time. The straps are stiff and new. And, somehow, it feels heavier, even without a few extra pieces in it I didn’t need today. Probably, I’m out of practice: I have carried a great many heavy things recently, but I haven’t put a backpack on my shoulders since mid-June.
Today, though, we went to Rowan. First day of new faculty orientation. Three days of this. Some of it is very helpful. Some is aimed at new faculty and, hopefully, those people are getting a lot out of those elements. Everyone is excited and happy, it seems. Attitude is important. Passion is important. Students and the work are important. But so is your well-being. This was, largely, the theme the president, Dr. Ali Houshmand offered in his welcome address at the brunch this morning.
And so everyone there was happy. Enthusiastic. Deans from different parts of the campus complimented the programs in drastically different part of the campus. Most everyone that spoke made a special effort to point out how long they’ve been at Rowan, and how it’s still a wonderful experience. That’s great. Very encouraging. I hope that’s the case for everyone, and not something they were asked to say. Even a Q&A session, the sort which could easily turn into a grouse fest was particularly upbeat. Very encouraging.
At the end of the day there was a little outdoor mixer. We talked with our dean. I chatted with an associate dean, a fellow who came over to administration from political science. He said that, I glanced at my lovely bride and she smiled, because she knew that was a good 15, 20 minutes of conversation taken care of. And so it was! He talked about his previous research, the structure of American-style politics. I asked him if he missed that sort of work since he’d gone over to administration. Then I asked him about the new paper on Article 3 of the 14th amendment. He said he hasn’t read the paper yet, but he knew of it, and he had some thoughts. Everyone has thoughts about that paper.
My little name tag, meanwhile, of course says “journalism,” but there I was, talking poli sci. Then I remembered what was on my name tag, so I asked him some broader and philosophical questions. It was a fun conversation.
The mixer was winding down, so we went over to say goodbye to our dean. We ran into Houshmand, the president. And the three of us talked for about 20 minutes. He easily shows off his keen, innovative ways of thinking about higher education, and his passion for the place and the task at hand. It was a delightful chat. It felt, almost, like getting permission to do something you weren’t expecting.
It was the longest conversation I’ve had with a university president in all my years, on any campus. I hope we have the opportunity to have several more.
But enough about me, let’s get to why you’re really here, the site’s most popular weekly feature, checking in on the cats. Phoebe, it seems, has rediscovered this little buffet table. She presently seems intent on making the surface, the floor below it and the airspace around it, strictly hers.
Poseidon was a very good boy much of the weekend. Which is not a thing we can say a lot. He was also quite cuddly this weekend. These two things often coincide. But he just looked, last night, like he was planning his next mischief.
And the good traits, of course, were not to last. He’s been a jerk all evening to his sister.
Probably that’s why she’s staking out that table top.
I had a big bike ride on Saturday. My lovely bride had a longer ride scheduled, and those are (usually) my favorite ones. We have, on our last two rides, added some new roads, which is wonderful, because there are so many new roads for us to explore. Saturday’s adventure involved a road we’ve been on a few times, some others we’ve been on just once, and the back half of the usual, easy hour route.
It was a big ride in the momentous sense. We were only out for about two hours, but on the back end of the ride, indeed, right in that area of the last shot in the above video, I broke my record for the most miles pedaled in a single year.
It’s a humble record, comparatively so, but it’s a new high for me. And the best part is I did that in August — even if I am behind on my spreadsheet’s projections — there’s a lot of time to build the new PR.
Yes, I have a spreadsheet for this. It’s one of the only spreadsheets I like, because it is simple, but also because the numbers only go up.
We also spent Sunday afternoon outdoors.
I swam a mile. Well, I actually swam 1,700, but I discovered that Strava gives you a little message “Congratulations, this activity is your longest swim on Strava!” when you set a new mark.
I also discovered I like seeing that message. Generally, internet badges don’t mean much to me because they don’t mean anything, but seeing that little box is a nice bit of encouragement. I’ve had longer swims, but they were long before I began using Strava. And since I am not training for anything in particular right now, and my swim is my own, and because I like that note, I might just increase every swim in small increments, just so I can get that message a lot.
This might be why I’m not terribly efficient in a gym, pool or anywhere else where new standards can be set.
As for the swim itself, it was rather spontaneous on my part. Seemed like a good idea. My shoulders disagreed for 100 yards or so, but after I ignored them for a while, they gave in and performed slightly more efficiently for a while, and the laps clicked away easily. It was a nice feeling.
I also sat in the shade and read the first third of Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings (1984). Welty is from Jackson, Mississippi, is revered as an incredible talent, a giant of her generation, and, for reasons that I don’t recall, I’ve never read the first bit of work, probably just because I don’t read much fiction, and the loss has been entirely mine. Here she’s examining the differences between her and her brothers. They were the in their laughter, but their anger is where their differences came up.
This book emerged from three lectures she delivered at Harvard, and were eventually turned into this memoir. The three sections are titled “Listening,” “Learning to See,” and “Finding a Voice.” All of it is self-possessed, none of it all consuming. She’s painting a triptych, I think, showing her surroundings in this delicate, sweetly innocent way, filling in her surroundings to show what makes the great author.
It’s all eminently relatable.
It has to stay in the house. Can’t go in the new backpack; I might be tempted to reach for it in between meetings.
