video


6
Feb 24

Combien de temps?

It was 44 degrees and sunny outside today. And the days, as Wendy Waldman wrote, are getting longer. I’ll take that.

I talked to a former colleague today. He’s in Las Vegas working on Super Bowl productions. He said it was raining and cold. So maybe I have the better end of the deal today. Who can say.

Anyway, I have some writing to do and some grading to get to … so let’s work through a few things quickly here.

In class last night we talked about selected readings of Marshall McLuhan and Ibrham Kendi. This particular group seems unimpressed by McLuhan, which means I should have prefaced the assignment a bit better, but they were good sports about the reading, and several fine points were made in our discussion. I think I’ll show the class the first 90 seconds of this video next week. “And you … are numb to it.”

From Ibram Kendi, we discussed a chapter of the book that inspired this upcoming documentary.

The chapter that they read and talked about comes earlier, and focuses on Portugal, and Prince Henry, and an influential book. I think the assignment is powerful given the times and, sometimes, the personality of the class augments that. But the basis of the reading, for our purposes, is about the timing of the book written by Henry’s biographer, Gomes Zurara, and Portugal, and soon, Europe’s increased navigational skill. Circumstance meets opportunity, meets economics, basically. Or, at least, it seems so from way over here in the 21st century.

But if that is to be a documentary coming next fall, I wonder if this particular reading will stay in the syllabus for much longer after that.

When I taught this class last fall, the Kendi conversation was a bit different. So often these things just come down to the dynamic of the people in the room. I know that to be the case, and yet it always impresses me, one way or the other.

Just so you don’t think there were no photos of me diving in Cozumel, there were. Here’s me and Jennifer the turtle.

So we’re checking this turtle out, and she’s wedged herself into that little rock and coral formation pretty good, such that I wondered, for a moment, if she was stuck. You stay a reasonable distance away, because you’re not trying to harm or even spook the creatures. And after we’d been there a moment or two the turtle seemed to realize that we weren’t going to do her harm, and so just sat there, ignored us and allowed us to take pictures.

These are drift dives, and there are seven people in the water. But what a drift dive means is that not all seven people are in the same place. It’s hard to swim against these currents — more on that on another day — and so you c’est la vie in bubbles. You see this, you miss that. With Jennifer the turtle, then, was the local divemaster, me and my lovely bride. The dive master, at one point, takes his fin off to try to show a sense of scale, because that turtle was very large. We’re all moving around, taking turns giving the best views. At one point the dive master is just to my left and I hear him scream. Underwater, of course, that sounds like “RAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!”

Now, I know that only the three of us are here. I know where all three of us are in relation to one another. And I know it’s this guy, the professional. The first three synapses that fired were “The dive master is yelling,” and “It can’t be good that the dive master is yelling,” and “What will I need to do for this man, and then what?”

All of which happens, of course, in the moment it takes to turn my head to look at him, to my immediate left. I see him there, wide eyed, and he’s pointing back across me, to my right.

We’d been so focused on that turtle that we hadn’t seen the shark, sleeping just four feet away from us.

This was a nurse shark, and nothing to be scared of. The yell was more of an “OHMYGAH! LOOK WHAT WE ALMOST MISSED.”

This was funny because when we got back to the surface and he was telling the other four divers about it, he tried to tell the story like we had somehow missed it, but for his expert eye. Someone pointed out that he was the one making the “RAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!” noise.

And that someone …

He also said, did the dive master, that believe it or not, he named that turtle. He was the pleasant jokester sort, and so I asked, with a big grin, if he meant right then. No no, he said, several years before. So that’s Jennifer the turtle, and it was lovely to meet her. And her shark neighbor.

Let us quickly return to the Re-Listening project. This is the one where I am playing all of my old CDs in the car, in the order in which I acquired them. And today’s installment puts us in the late summer or early fall of 2004. It was a good time for music collection, if you were around people with musical tastes you liked, or if you had a good library close at hand. If you had one or both of those, and a CD burner, you could add to your collection quickly and inexpensively. Both of those two things will be the case in a few of these upcoming installments. The library, in this instance.

I borrowed from the local municipal lending institution, R.E.M.’s “Eponymous.” I did not own a copy of a single R.E.M. song at that point. Hadn’t needed to. But here was a greatest hits and here was the clean copy at the library and i had one of those giant cylinders of blank CD-R discs at the office.

And so …

Because this is a greatest hits — I think in the most artistic possible meaning, which is to say they wanted to fulfill their contract with I.R.S. and get onto their new deal at Warners, and a greatest hits record is a good way to check a box on a list — there’s not really a great point to dissecting this. And since it was a library addition, I always thought of it is a catalog addition, something to round out a corner and fill up a part of a CD book. It’s great, but I never listened to it all that much because, basically, most of these songs were always on the air somewhere, it seemed like.

I was struck, listening to this yesterday, though, how the tracks improve over the course of the CD. The instrumentation, the lyricism, the production values, all of it. The tracks were shared on “Eponymous” in chronological order, so that makes sense. And somewhere around “Driver 8,” which was off their third album, you can hear the full band understanding they were going to reach their real potential.

So that’s fun.

Also, and there’s no really good way to illustrate this, but while you’re basically listening to the first wave of modern rock music there (Remember, it’s the early 1980s and the boys from Athens are the absolute antithesis of everyone else playing anything at that moment. So we’re talking R.E.M., The Pixies, Camper van Beethoven and not much else.) you are also hearing the stuff that inspired the next 15 or 20 years of music.

They called it quits in 2011, of course. They’ve denied reunion rumors and said no in countless interviews in the years since. It’s easy to believe. And probably the right choice for everybody involved, but still a bit unfortunate for fans.

Update: And just a week later, this happened. There’s a touring act commemorating the 40th anniversary of “Murmur” and that show was in Athens and look who all got on stage. Reportedly, this was the first time they’d been together in 17 years.


5
Feb 24

For a brief moment, I was ahead, and now I’m behind

On Saturday, a finer day was never made, I tried the Cascadian Farms blueberry granola with a box of store brand raisins. Once again, the raisins were undefeated in augmenting the flavor profile of what I put in the blue breakfast bowl.

This morning, I tried mixing the first two varieties, Bob’s Red Mill Honey Oat and Bob’s Maple Sea Salt. I added raisins, of course. And, so far, the mix of these two have been my favorite. But I have also learned something uninteresting today.

Basically, photos of granola in a bowl all look the same. So my breakfast experiment will continue — this week I have to try other mixes and then soon I’ll perhaps go pick up some other brands and flavors to try.

You’re broken up by this decision, I know, but the kennysmith.org visual editor has sent out memos. Memos.

Another memo has just come down, in fact, reminding me to get on with the most popular weekly feature on the site. So let’s check in with the kitties.

It’s so cute when Phoebe covers up her eyes to go to sleep. She’s very serious about her relaxation.

Poseidon does it, too. Though, lately, he’s been interested in balancing on legs and feet.

We have a joke about the two of them, siblings. My lovely bride notes when they’re doing the same thing.

Come play with us. Come play with us.

Then I say, “You’re freaking me out!” Because it’s weird when they do the same things together. And she laughs. The cats are unimpressed, because they’re cats.

But, as you can see, they’re doing just fine.

We’d all be doing better if we were diving, I’m sure. Today’s feature from our recent trip to Cozumel is a video. There’s some great footage here, including a closeup of a turtle.

  

And, of course, we’ve many more photos and videos to enjoy in the days to come.

I’m now on a nice little streak of consecutive days in a row on the bike. This weekend I set a personal best in that regard. Today, unrelated to that entirely useless notation, I received the monthly email from Strava. I always love this part.

That’s about right.

On Saturday I had a big ride. A long climb from virtual sea level up beyond the virtual snow line. This, Zwift calls the Epic KOM. It’s 5.9 virtual miles up hill. None of it is particularly steep, but it does not relent. About five miles in, you get above the virtual hot air balloons.

And then you reach the top of the climb. After that, there’s a bonus climb, a .68 mile ascent averaging 13.6 degrees. If i am not mistaken, that’s still the steepest climb on Zwift. Strava tells me I’ve done it seven times now, and regret each visit. Saturday was my second time up that climb in a week, and perhaps my third best effort up the thing. (In January of 2021 I was minutes faster, according to my ride notes.) Also, the view at the top is pretty nice. If you can still see straight when you get there.

So that was 30 miles Saturday. I got in 28 miles late last night. And I did 22 miles this afternoon. Somehow, this is how the day got away from me. So, now, I must return to campus.

If you’ll excuse me …


31
Jan 24

And so long to January

This is today’s granola selection. Humorously titled, or scandalously titled, depending on the mood you are in when walking down aisle number four one of the local grocery store. This was the third variety I’ve tried since this little experiment began last week. My skin is positively glowing from all of this healthy eating.

The label promises a triple berry crunch. “Take that, Mostly Naked granola! We’ve got THREE berries!”

It’s not my favorite. It tastes like an imitation of the Captain Crunch berry flavor, or perhaps the opposite is true. It’s a bit of a sickly sweet flavor. It might have been one berry too far. The back of the package tells you that “sweet strawberries” and “bold blueberries” and “cranberries” are inside.

First of all, the cranberry lobby has to work on this. They’re falling behind on the branding. Also, there are toasted pumpkin seeds, I’m sure that’s meant to counter the berries which, again, the label promises to be “UNAPOLOGETICALLY AMAZING.”

What if my taste buds are changing? What if the too sweet thing is now too sweet for me? This is quite existential.

Tomorrow, I’ll add raisins to that variety. When three dried fruits are too many, four may be just right.

This is the 23rd installment of We Learn Wednesdays, where I ride my bike across the county to find the local historical markers. This is the 42nd and 43rd marker we’ve seen in this series. Both have to do where this modern county office building resides.

Prior to being a place where important government bureaucracy takes place, it was a jail. This very building. And before that, an older building was the town’s slammer.

And prior to all of that, the first jail was just down the street. The first jail was established in 1692. Tough on crime since the 17th century. But that was just down the road, which was, I’m sure, a sandy, dusty path.

Before it was the jail, this lot was the old market. Indeed, this is where the stret name comes from. And it might be hard, from this distance, to determine which precipitated the other. The old store, or the now historic building that sprung up around it. It’s a weary little area, weary but proud.

Between that, the late night of this search, the centuries-ago timeline, and the incredible ubiquity of the term “Market House” I’ve come up empty here.

That’s no way to end the month, but if you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

Let’s wrap up January this way. Here’s my dive buddy in Cozumel, and some great shots of some yellow grunts, an angelfish if you look in the right spot, a terrific flounder specimen and much more.

   

Don’t worry, at this rate I’ve still got days and days of underwater material to share. February is going to be colorful around here, too.


25
Jan 24

Everything you want: food, meditative video, fish, music

I made a culinary innovation this morning, the likes of which will surely land me my own cooking show.

This would be my second cooking show pitch. The first one was, in my estimation, even better. The host is a character who plays an earnest, straight up sort, but he can’t cook. He’s also a bachelor. So the entire show is a dry humor examination of what that guy does to subsist, nutritionally. It’d be a short show, because he’s a bachelor who can’t cook, see. But there’s a lot of comedy in cold cuts and Hamburger Helper, I’m certain of it.

Today’s move — and if you happened to be in your kitchen at the same I was in mine and making this happen, you might have felt it too — isn’t earth shattering, but it is destined to change breakfast paradigms everywhere.

In an attempt to cut the taste of the maple syrup in the new granola, I did this.

Grapes! Dried raisins! The store-brand even!

It worked perfectly, HGTV. Now where do I sign?

If you’re wondering, this is the granola brand, which kicked off this new breakfast experiment yesterday. The serving sizes on the back of the bag aren’t for normal human beings, but there’s at least another day in here.

What I’m thinking of doing, because I bought four different varieties from three brands, is mixing the last ones together. That day, in a few weeks, some random Wednesday when I don’t see it coming, is when I’ll stumble on the perfect mixture. The flavor profile will send me to the studio to right songs about the experience, and I’ll spend the rest of my days chasing that mixture, the mad breakfast alchemist who can’t ever quite get it right again.

I forgot to include this here, but one of the big sheets of snow that slid off the roof was hanging at almost eye level over the back door. It was the perfect height to admire and fear. And so I give you 58 seconds of zen.

  

Even though it has warmed up and the snow is now all gone, it’ll be days before I can go out that door without thinking about an avalanche of mushy, days old snow landing on head, getting down my shirt, into my shoes.

Much better than that, picturing myself being underwater. When we were in Cozumel recently it was the low 80s every day. Just perfect.

Here’s my favorite fish.

It just occurred to me that these are the photos I like best, and I don’t take many of them. So I have to diving again. Drat!

You can’t see this ray, because this ray is hiding from you. Keep moving, stranger.

Here’s another shot of our old friend the black triggerfish. This fish is the pinstripe, skinny tie wearing fish of the sea, and you know it.

He might know it, too.

I don’t think we’ve seen the spotted trunkfish (Lactophrys bicaudalis), or boxfish, on this trip yet. If the triggerfish wears the fashionable suits, the trunkfish is the guy who really thinks he’s a hipster, but he’s trying too hard.

The trunkfish is a slow mover, owing to its size. It eats shrimp and mollusc and sea urchins and sea cucumbers. It has a toxin that is dangerous to ingest. The spots are actually a “stay away” warning for predators. Wikipedia tells me that predators as large as nurse sharks can die from eating a trunkfish.

Oh, look. A lobster. “Keep it moving,” he says with his antennae. Peering in at lobsters always feels intrusive, somehow, even moreso than just floating over his home, as we do.

No wonder they are always pointing the way toward the best currents. He does not want you to see what he’s warming up the butter for back there.

We haven’t visited the Re-Listening project in a while. This is where I’m playing all of my old CDs in the car, in the order of acquisition. These aren’t reviews, but ways to pad out the site with videos, and, occasionally, a trip down memory lane. The prevailing memory here is from the summer of 2004.

This song came on MTV or VH1 or whatever was on and within 60 seconds I realized I needed to buy the record.

And so I did. This is the only Keane CD I have, which is a shame. In terms of British fame it’s the Beatles, Oasis, Radiohead and Keane. This debut album was the eighth most sold of the oughts in the UK, where it lodged at number two on the year-ending charts. On the weekly charts here in the U.S., “Hopes and Fears” peaked at 45. The debut single didn’t chart here, apparently, but hit the top 10 in a half dozen other countries, and was certified double platinum in the U.K.

None of this seems to fit my memory, but the web isn’t wrong about things like this.

The second single’s video went minimalist. I’m sure this is the Beatles and Apple influence.

Anyway, it was good for car singing, and I don’t seem to have a lot of specific memories attached to it, otherwise. Other, that is, than the observation that pop music had (with the exception of Ben Folds) all but turned the piano into an exotic instrument by then. This is the alternate video for the fourth single, because labels were still doing that back then, and it is a study on the limitations of media technologies.

The last single on the record enjoyed a bit of success in the United States. “Bend and Break” landed at 20 on the alternative charts. And the video is enough to make me regret having never seen them live. It looks like it could be a good show.

Keane have released four more records over the years, three of which hit the top 20 in the US, and two in the top 10. The oversight of my not having them in the personal collection are mine alone.

And Keane are still going. This year they’re celebrating 20 years of this record, which is a thing bands must do now. They’re touring extensively across Europe for the first part of the year, but they’ll be visiting North America late in the summer. I could see them in September.

How many shows are too many shows in September, anyway?


24
Jan 24

I am trying a new thing, a shocking new thing

I’m trying a new thing. That’s unusual. But let me back up. I don’t know anything about this. But let me back up further. Maybe two Christmases ago, I got a gift package from the Butterfly Bakery of Vermont. It was the Guster tie-in, you see. I had received the Gustard the year before, and it was good. I didn’t think I would like it, but it’s great on burgers. The complete gift package includes a hot chocolate, the Gustard, the Fa Fa Fire hot sauce (maple rum chipotle) which I’m working up to trying and Gusternola.

Let’s learn about Gusternola.

We made this warm hug of a granola in collaboration with Ryan Miller, Guster’s lead singer and fellow high functioning weirdo. A portion of all proceeds benefit Zeno Mountain Farm, one of the greatest places on Earth.

Organic gluten free oats*, pure Vermont maple syrup, organic coconut, organic coconut oil, organic pumpkin seeds, brazil nuts, organic quinoa, vanilla, organic brown rice flour, sea salt, organic cinnamon, organic ginger, organic cloves, organic cardamom, organic fennel, organic fenugreek, organic nutmeg. Contains nuts.

A few weeks ago I finally got around to trying it. First off, it’s a 9.6 ounce bag, and the service size is ridiculously small. I got a couple of breakfasts and an odd late dinner out of it.

But the granola was quite tasty.

I was about to order some more from the bakery in Vermont — and I will — but I decided to try some other granola varieties, because Gusternola was my first ever granola.

So, yesterday, I went to the grocery store and stood in the breakfast cereal aisle and studied the offerings. There was a whole section. I got several different kinds. Today, I tried one, which is the first one I picked up.

I tried it first because I picked it up first, and firsties mean something. Also, I figured, it would be most like the Gusternola. And it’s pretty close.

It’s not as good, but pretty close. It’s mass produced, and cheaper. And the ingredients list is close, but there are a few things missing that is in the now high water mark of Gusternola. Plus, it is made somewhere in Oregon. I’m sure Oregon has great granola, but what if Vermont’s granola is just better?

If anything, the syrup here might be a bit too sweet. (This is a big note coming from me.) It is almost acrid. But I have an experiment to try to counteract that for tomorrow.

Anyway, I picked up four different types of granola. This should give us something to dissect for a week or two.

Unrelated, we sure do get some strange looking icicles around here.

We heard one of those fall, during a particularly intense part of a television show — the new and overwrought True Detective — and that didn’t set every human sense to “hyperalert” or anything.

But wait’ll you seem them melt!

This is the 22nd installment of We Learn Wednesdays, where I ride my bike across the county to find the local historical markers. This is the 41st one we’ve seen in this series.

And this place is named after John Fenwick who opened the first English settlement established in this region. He came from money, got married, had three kids, lost his wife, got remarried. He landed here in late 1675. Three days later, on October 8, 1675 Fenwick, a Quaker, recorded a land deed with the local Lenape Indian tribe. He gave his new home the name of New Salem, meaning peace.

It wasn’t always named after him. This place was built as Ford’s Hotel in 1891. In 1919, it was converted to Salem County Memorial Hospital to memorialize WWI soldiers and sailors. The hospital was opened with 30 beds and 12 physicians and surgeons worked there. They treated 1,093 patients in their first year. The hospital was moved in 1951.

In 1989 the building was renovated as the “Fenwick Building.” It’s used now as county government offices. Thirty-five years is a long time after a renovation for local government office space. But it has the all important plaque.

In the next installment of We Learn Wednesday’s, we’ll visit the location of an old jail and market house. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

Before that, though, let’s go back underwater. Here, you’ll find a ray, a puffer, a butterfly fish, a black triggerfish, a beautiful scrawled filefish and much more!

If that isn’t enough, we’ll have more photos from the waters off Cozumel tomorrow.

I haven’t mentioned it, but I have been able to spend a fair amount of time on the bike recently. On the bike, which is on the trainer. Anyway, 80 easy miles in the last three days, which isn’t that much.

Twenty of them were in London yesterday, 43 of them were in a fake world, today, but I did a very real 20 mph pace over the route which, for me, is substantial. Tomorrow, then, is a rest day. After which, I’ll try to achieve another long streak of consecutive days in a row — a humble number I set last November. You will, no doubt, be riveted.