We Learn Wednesdays « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

We Learn Wednesdays

Briefly typing around meetings

A quick follow-up to yesterday’s hasty Re-Listening project. Prior to our last installment there was a self-made disc, I called it Mixed Vegetables. It was just a random assortment of songs. Probably I was trying to use up a stack of CDs or something, but I put one standout tune on there.

This is The Pistoleros, a brother band from Tempe, Arizona — and they sound like it. They sound like the Chimeras and the Refreshments and Dead Hot Workshop and Gin Blossoms. I wish I could remember how I even found this song. Maybe it was on a sampler, or something I downloaded, back when that was a thing you did, but I don’t know. It’s great from the first bass riff throughout the tempo, the mariachi brass and distortion at the end.

That’s my lovely bride’s ringtone.

We went to campus for a faculty meeting today. Before that, I had a smaller one-on-one meeting. Before that we went to look for new office desks and bookshelves. That was a brief, but successful errand. The guy that manages the office furniture for the campus (I guess that’s his job, which seems like a big one when you think about it) said he’s always juggling stuff as various buildings get moved or built or renovated. The library is about to undergo some improvements, and some of them people who have offices there will be temporarily moved during that process. That could mean more office chairs, desk, and bookshelves. He told me to check back in if we needed some more.

I have a lot of books.

My one-on-one meeting was helpful and productive. It was one-part lay of the land, and one part sorting out my schedule for the spring term. I’ll be designing a new course, and also running a class I have right now. And, perhaps the best part, I know what’s ahead four whole months in advance.

Immediately following that, there was a faculty meeting. We decided we were faculty, somehow overestimating me in that assessment, and then commenced the business of the meeting, which was impressively kept on schedule. Department items were discussed, a good time was had by all.

We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays, the feature which finds me riding my bike around the county, hunting for historical markers. This is the 48th installment, and the 80th marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series. (That’s a lot of markers!)

And there’s not a lot to this one that I’ve been able to uncover so far. This is 117 Broadway, and the classic national plaque.

Built in 1849, it is today owned by a man who is apparently in the art restoration business. A century ago, it was a boarding house.

That’s all I’ve been able to find so far. I imagine it lands on the register because of its size relative to it’s mid 19th century neighbors. Though it feels a bit shopworn today, when t was new it was probably a fine sight after a long day’s toil.

Next week, we’ll try to answer the question, “Why is a post office historic?” If you have missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

history / markers / photo / We Learn Wednesdays / Wednesday — Comments Off
11
Sep 24

You’re going to wonder what this sounds like

I made some more phone calls today. Left voicemails with different people. Finally got the gentleman I needed. He seemed helpful. He required of me a one page document, some other files and a couple of weeks of waiting. So at least that was resolved. Somewhat.

I also had a nice 31-mile bike ride this evening. Just me, myself and the endless hum of my wheels on the road. Even made a dorky little video abut it.

Every road on this route was a familiar one, and that’s OK. It was a day to be aware of the time, and that doesn’t always allow for exploration. Indeed, the pause to make that video took about three minutes and I questioned that in the moment. But I got back to the most familiar roads — the nine-mile square out in front of us, here where the heavy land and the green sands meet — and started the last 12 miles in the gloaming, which gave way to the final five miles in the early darkness. Most of that were on sleep little subdivision roads. But the part just before it, and just before the darkness, I was surrounded by farmland, and this is why I enjoy riding at that time of night.

That, my friends, is worth all of the little bugs you’re trying not to swallow when you ride between two fields.

We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays. For this feature, I’m riding my bike around the county to discover the local historical markers. This is the 47th installment, and the 79th marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series.

On a drowsy downtown street, in a town of low slung buildings, this one isn’t too much taller, not really, but it surely does feel like it when you stand back just a bit.

The church is celebrating 165 years. They’ve got a Salvation Army office on the premises and they also do all of the services and ceremonies and mission work you expect of an active congregation.

Their pride is the pipe organ, installed in 1880 after six years of fund raising. A Boston outfit built and installed the thing. Hook and Hastings, we learned in April they installed an organ at the Presbyterian church, which is down the street and around the corner, just three-tenths of a mile away. That organ went in in 1879, and maybe that’s how the company got this commission, as well. The original organ at Broadway church had 2 manuals and 20 stops. Wind was pumped first by hand, then water. They went electric in 1912. Updates in 1929 brought the organ up to 1,306 pipes.

A rebuild in 1961 gave the organ 52 stops and 1,462 pipes, the smallest is about the size of a straw, the largest is a booming 12 by 12-foot wooden box that stands 10 feet tall.

Broadway says theirs is one of the last large pipe organs in the region that is still in continuous weekly service. The man who plays it today has done so for more than two decades.

Next week, we’ll look at a historic house and, hopefully, find out why it is on the national register of historic places.

If you have missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

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4
Sep 24

Here are 1,000 quick words

Today began with so much ambition, and maybe half of the plans were accomplished. (More for tomorrow, then!) I blame the super late night, last night. But, hey, all of the professional tasks were achieved. Emails answered, questions asked, and so on. Dishes were also done. Some laundry was completed. It wasn’t all bad. Take that, super late night.

Oh yeah, I wrote something yesterday for the work Substack. No one has called to complain yet, so there’s that. Here it is.

This is terrible and senseless. And the extended Gaudreau family, who are experiencing a hurt that’s hard to express and impossible to heal, are by no means alone.

The National Safety Council has it that the number of preventable deaths from bike crashes rose 10% in 2022 and have increased 47% in the last 10 years (from 925 in 2013 to 1,360 in 2022). The League of American Bicyclists notes that 2022 was the deadliest year ever for cyclists. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s 2022 records show more cyclists were killed by motor vehicles than any year since they began charting the data in 1975.

Talk to a cyclist, any sort of cyclist that rides on roads, and you’ll quickly hear themes emerging. The infrastructure is insufficient. Drivers don’t see cyclists. Drivers are distracted, or inconsiderate, or worse. Vehicles have gotten much, much larger.

Every cyclist you talk to has a story about a dangerous moment, a scary encounter, or a truly life-changing experience they’ve had on the open road. A place where they also belong, by the way (go here to see the specific laws for your state). It goes beyond a random heckle or a dated Lance Armstrong reference.

Each cyclist has their own reason for being there. They love it. This is how they commute. This is their exercise. Their childlike freedom. Their community. Their only means of transportation. Whether they are carefully calculating their watts, carefully balancing their groceries, or they are teaching their kids how to ride, no matter why they find themselves on two wheels, their experiences with motorists are common, profoundly troubling and they penetrate deep into the psyche.

We’re seeing that in a survey we’ve conducted in the light of the killing of Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau. The Center for Sports Communication and Social Impact is asking cyclists in South Jersey a series of questions, has immediately received more than 500 responses, and the responses continue to roll in.

I was asked about this at 1:09 p.m. yesterday, 37 minutes later I had the first 770 words down.

And then I thought about it during most of the two hours I spent on my bike this evening.

My shadow went hunting for historical markers. Between the two of us, my shadow and me, we found quite a few, starting with the cheapie you’ll see below.

And this is the long straight road, the flat part of it, heading back home. I was halfway to a great ride. The bike felt smooth, in that way we spent all our time hoping to feel.

You get just a few experiences of la volupte, if you’re lucky. It’s so rare, maybe, that you can mistake a tailwind and a stellar ride for the sensation, la volupte.

La Volupte translates roughly to “voluptuousness”, and while the first thing the mind goes to is a sexual definition, my favorite is, “the property of being lush and abundant and a pleasure to the senses.” In a sport where pain is worn like a badge of honor, those times when cycling is lush and abundant and a pleasure to the senses are what makes us want to climb onto our bikes again tomorrow.

Today wasn’t that. But it was something, an experience I have noticed before. Some days everything just feels sure, steady, at your command. My problem is that when I’m always going slow when I have that experience. I was not flying today, but, also I was not going slow. I had three Strava PRs, including a two-plus mile drag at the end of the ride. While my legs were not carrying me especially quickly, they had the decency to keep turning over without needing to stop, which was nice.

We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays, wherein I am tracking down the county’s historical markers via bike rides. By my count, this is the 46th installment, and the 78th marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series. And this one is, in fact, barely a marker.

In the 17th century, this was a place focused on trade and shipbuilding. One of the first ports, 1682, around here was near where this photograph was taken. There were British customs houses here. There’s still a local port authority nearby. It was an important center of trade until the Revolutionary War. The founder, John Fenwick, who we’ve learned about on two different Wednesdays (here and here) laid out this street for commerce and traffic.

Wharf Street was 90-feet wide, lined by houses and shops going all of the way to the docks and water. The people here here saw wheat, corn, beef, pelts and lumber come and go. Fishing was popular in the bay, oystering was a booming pursuit into the 20th century. Growth and overfishing killed the sturgeon and caviar business. Crabbing survived. The railroad, which came in 1876, was here by then, and so was the second industrial revolution, which was about glass around here, owing to the special sand that everyone was walking on, the sand that Wharf Street was built on, the street that was here for all of it.

Two genealogy site suggested Wharf Street was renamed for a prominent settler, Edward Bradway, a Londoner who landed in 1677 and built a fine house down by the water. Later, the town fathers updated the name again to Broadway. There are still Bradways in that town.

The next several weeks of markers are down that road. Some are really great; you’ll want to keep coming back. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

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28
Aug 24

What does it look like if you keep going further?

It’s a banner day of banners around here. I laid out the photos and the videos and put in the appropriate segment pieces up and everything here goes under one of our old familiar pieces of art.

I got in a 21-mile ride this evening. It was one of those, What if I went straight at that one intersection, instead of left or right? Where would I wind up? rides. The best kind of ride.

Going that particular direction, you’re bound my geography anyway. The river is out there somewhere. But after I passed that intersection, pedaled through some tree covered roads and dodged a few potholes, I got to a new stretch of road.

What is down there?

It’s a wonderful feeling. You’re about to see something new. And maybe it’ll be regular fields and houses. But they’ll be new houses. And you’ll be able to wonder who is on their way to that house? Who is the light on for?

Or maybe it’ll be something surprising, big or small. There was a small surprise near the very end of that road. A lovely suburban farmhouse style home on a great big lot. Next to it was an oversized produce store. It looked like a family operation, perhaps the same people ran it as lived next door. At least that’s the way the landscaping felt. It was large and looked great. Better than most of the houses, and there were a few nice spreads on that road.

Here are two more brief clips from last week’s concert. “Yoke” was the last track on 2011’s “Beauty Queen Sister,” and it became one of my favorites in their whole catalog almost right away. It feels like an Amy Ray song. And Lyris Hung’s violin, which sounds like a circus organ, an ethereal cacophony, a mental high wire act. All of it just sticks in the head, not an earworm, but something even more potent. And this part, right here …

Again, we were about a quarter of a mile away, so please excuse the visual quality.

This one was the second single from their 1997 record, the second track on that record, and I’m pretty sure everyone fell in love with it in about two seconds of the first time they played it. It takes less time for a crowd to voice their approval when they play it live, and so they play it live all the time.

It’s a historically important song. When my lovely bride and I were just dating, we were on a trip and playing this song. It’d been a good weekend after a long week and the sun was shining and the road was long and actually using an actual map — as one did back then — and singing along.

I don’t sing in front of people. We’d only been dating for a few months and there was that barrier dissolved. Music makes you vulnerable. And now here we are, all these years later.

We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays, wherein I am discovering the county’s historical markers via bike rides. This is, I believe, the 45th installment, and the 77th marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series. This one is a new marker for an old site. It’s not even in the marker database yet. I visited it only because I saw it out of the corner of my eye while riding to another site a few weeks ago.

The history of this cemetery is not well documented. An article appeared in the January 6, 1941 Standard and Jerseyman that indicated that Mrs. Lydia Fox Kelty had paper records in her possession which showed that her father, Robert Fox, was a direct descendant of James McGill, who donated one acre of his farm to Alloway Township, in which residents of the township were to be buried free of charge. Research of family records reveal that Robert Fox was the son of Charles H. Fox (1845-1929) and Lydia Megill (1846-1897). Lydia Megill was the daughter of John Megill (1805-1883) and Elizabeth Margaret Shaw (1810-1881). John Megill was the son of James Megill (1780-1842) and Margaret Mower (1788-1824).

Per the newspaper article, James McGill was the great-grandson of Rev. James MacGill who came to America from Scotland in 1725. Several of Rev. MacGill’s grandsons settled in Salem, and one, Patrick MacGill, a blacksmith, settled in Allowaystown. James McGill, who gave the ground, was Patrick’s son. James McGill, his family and a number of soldiers of the American Revolution are buried in this old cemetery. Research of the June 1793 tax records confirm that Patrick McGill lived in Alloway.

According to the article, this gift was made by James McGill in the year 1810-11, when he learned that the owners of the cemeteries in this vicinity refused to allow soldiers of the American Revolution to be buried without buying a lot. This so incensed Mr. McGill, whose father and uncle had served in the Revolution, that he gave the aforementioned ground to the citizens of Alloway Township. Unfortunately, the deed documenting this gift could not be found in the Salem County archives. Burial records are incomplete and many of the early gravestones are no longer legible, and documentation has not been found to identify what Revolutionary War soldiers are buried here.

Some of the earliest known burials include: Elizabeth Bee 1768-1832, James Bell 1756-1830, Rebecca Sweeten Bell 1767-1806, Jesse Earley 1786-1867, Peter H. Emel 1778-1823, Esther Emmel 1786-1847, Martha McCormack 1777-1806, John Mowers 1760-1822, Lydia Johnson Mowers 1765-1807, Anna Simms 1798-1855.

There are still McGills in that community, and dozens and dozens more in the broader area. The cemetery has 158 memorials, but among the unknown things are if any stones have disappeared in the last 200 years. And while the marker and the people that put it together have come up short on Revolutionary War veterans that are buried here, we know at least 10 Civil War veterans and two WWII veterans are at rest on McGill’s old land. One of those Civil War veterans served for all of two-and-a-half months. He died, in camp, of a fever.

The rest are normal people. And that’s rather the point, isn’t it? In the end, we’re all the same. Husbands, wives, their families. Old and much-too-young. There are carpenters and farmers and a firefighter who died on the job. There are 158 markers and at least that many stories that have been passed down and then gotten blurry and then forgotten. The sign says it is still an active cemetery. I believe the most recent burial was in 2003, of a widow who outlived her husband by 43 years. She was 25 when she got married, and 39 when she lost her husband. She lived half her life as a widow, and made it to see 83 or 84. I wonder what it was like for her to go by that place, or go to that place, to see her husband. It’s been 21 years since she joined him, and you wonder about those memories. As far as I can tell, there’s no one in that community with their family name.

Rebecca Sweeten Bell, one of those earliest burials, in contrast, has a huge list of descendants in the region. The man who is recorded as the oldest member of the cemetery was John Mowers. He died at 62, but in just six generations we can get to a descendant of his who is buried elsewhere, having died just last year. You wonder how far the memories reached back, even as you know why they sometimes don’t. For in the end, we’re all the same, but it’s still a bit uneven.

Next week’s marker feature is still a mystery to me. You’ll just have to come back to see what I’ve found. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

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21
Aug 24

Don’t forget your hands

I was running late. Well, that’s not exactly fair. Let me back up. I was perfectly on time. But then I realized I forgot something, a notebook, and so I had to double back. That’s when the comedy of errors began. I’m sitting at a T-intersection, trying to turn right, and the whole of the town is going the same direction. And as the clock ticked by I waited.

I was supposed to be at a meeting, but now I was running late. And then a dump truck pulled out in front of me, that sort of road-joining that is mostly safely, but entirely annoying. That slowed me down some more, and so on, and then so forth.

I arrived at the meeting place to find the meeting had been rescheduled for tomorrow, which is today. The in-person meeting became a Zoom, which was helpful for file-sharing and the like. And that’s the story of the first meeting of the year.

The good thing about yesterday was that the meeting place was right next to a doc-in-the-box, which I wanted to visit anyway. I’ve been dealing with an unpleasantly persistent case of swimmer’s ear and I hear that medical science has invented an antibiotic drop that’s better than the stuff you can get over the counter. The woman, a PA I think, that I saw said that was indeed a thing, and she filled out a prescription. And, wouldn’t you know it, my pharmacy had it filled before I even got back home. So now there’s stuff in my ear.

Well, not right now, because it’d fall out as I sat here, upright. But I suppose there is stuff in my ear, because swimmer’s ear. It’s getting better, but not as quickly as it should, hence my side visit.

I wouldn’t recommend it. The swimmer’s ear, I mean. The walk-in visit was fine. I didn’t even sit down in the waiting area before they called me back. It was the most in-and-out experience you could imagine, as it should be for such a small thing.

Also, I got my palm scanned. Not for any street performer tarot reasons, mind you. This is how they identify people now. Not from the palm prints, but from the blood vessels. The nice woman at the reception desk told me that. I, of course, knew I could do four minutes of material on this. She knew it as well, because as soon as I started in, she handed me a one-sheet explaining the technology. The long and the short of it is that I have to remember to take my right hand back should I ever need to visit again.

So, note to self and all of that.

We had a nice moon this evening. The view from the backyard.

And the stars above us out front, to the west, looked fine, too. Watering plants in the evening has this reward. If you look up, you can have this nice quiet moment of wonder.

Not pictured, the plane going to Boston that ruined the first shot, cruising over at 30,000 feet. This was, of course, after I spent some time in the gazebo enjoying the fresh air of a cool summer night and the chorus of crickets and the song of whatever else was out there.

I was reading Walter Lord’s The Dawn’s Early Light. It is about the War of 1812.

This one, if I recall correctly, I got because someone my mother-in-law knows was downsizing. She had a great big stack and let me take whatever I wanted, so I of course came away with my arms full. It’s been in the To Read bookcase for a while. Published in 1972, I am just intrigued that a little side note like this one, from the British capture of Washington D.C., made it into a popular history book a century-and-a-half after the fact.

I am up to the subsequent attempt to conquer Baltimore now, so there’s really only whatever happens there and New Orleans to go, I suspect. But it has become one of those books that you don’t want to end. It is my first Lord book and I’ll probably be adding more of his work to my bookshelves. Lord was a talented writer with an incredibly active voice.

We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays, the feature where we discover the county’s historical markers via bike rides. If I am still counting this correctly, this is the 44th installment, and the 76th marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series. And this one is relatively new. It is also not especially historic, but I published a similar one last year and the concept is nice.

A rain garden is a shallow basin planted with deep-rooted native wildflowers, grasses and shrubs. Their extensive root systems filter stormwater runoff and help prevent pollutants and sediments from entering our groundwater and waterways.

In addition to helping to prevent erosion and improving water quality, native plants provide essential food and habitat for local wildlife. Their seeds and nectar provide a valuable food source for birds, butterflies and other insects. Native plants are those that were here prior to European settlement. They are well adapted to local conditions and require very little care once established.

I just happened by this one the other day, seeing it out of the corner of my eye as I pedaled between two historic markers. I wonder why there aren’t more of these, wherever there’s a free spot.

There are always free spots.

Next week, we’ll visit a properly old site. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.