Wednesday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Wednesday

Have I found a character for you today

You’re going to want to stick with this. I made an error, caught the error, corrected the error, and the story below got immensely better because of it.

Spent the morning grading at home — because it is another week with plenty of things to grade, and that’s what I did yesterday, what I’m doing today and what I’ll do tomorrow. This week we’re reading a critical analysis from a Dutch scholar.

But we spent the afternoon on campus. Sandwich lunch in the office. I read student assignments in the office. There was a marketing meeting. From the office of The More Things Change, someone explained SEO and we discussed WordPress. We had a nice time.

So after a lovely afternoon with colleagues, my lovely bride and I went over to the big kids’ pool. It was my first swim in four weeks.

And it felt surprisingly decent. Good, even, in places. And before I knew it, I was in that weird vacant groove and the lengths and laps just started disappearing. And then, suddenly (OK, slowly) I had an easy 2,000-yard workout under my belt.

Did not see the comet on the drive home. Mostly, we were busy chatting about class strategies and research. And now, after dinner, I’ll have to get back to grading.

But first!

We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays. The point is, riding my bike around the county, tracking down historical markers, sharing them here and trying to add a bit more context that what the signs offer us. This is the 51st installment, and the 83rd marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series.

And this time we’re going to Thomas Sinnickson’s house.

Thomas Sinnickson was born in 1797, and he blends right in with a large family, one that uses the same names over and over. Lots of Thomas Sinnicksons. Lots of Andrew Sinnicksons. Some of his elders had been in the state militia and in the Continental Army. There are two of his ancestors who served in both the state and U.S. legislature. A later Sinnickson went to Congress as well.

But those people aren’t the Thomas who built this house.

Our guy is maybe the third most famous Thomas in his family, which is to say, he’s not. His was a family that dates back to the original Swedish settlers. I spent a fair amount of time trying to trace my way through the Sinnicksons, deleting about five paragraphs of summary when I found I’d made a big generational error. But now we have it right. And it’s even more entertaining.

Thomas died at just 45, in 1842. Searches don’t tell me much about him, in part, perhaps, because of the other Thomas Sinnicksons that preceded. But we do know this. He and Clarissa had five daughters and three sons. The youngest died at just 21, in an asylum. One of the sons was a poet. One daughter moved across the country, to Oregon. (By way of sail, around Cape Horn, a six-month journey.) And in that woman there is a tale.

There’s a bit more about her, here, in the far right column. I would watch the movie about that woman’s life.

The rest of the family stayed much closer to home. Two of Thomas and Clarissa’s children made it into their 80s. All told, four of them lived into the 20th century. And this is where they grew up, surely steeped in their family’s history, and definitely in the midst of their community’s history, as we’ll see in the coming weeks.

The building was sold last year. From what I can tell, it’s been used as converted office space for quite some time.

Speaking of poets, the next time we return to the marker series we’ll learn a bit about a former slave turned poet. If you have missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

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16
Oct 24

At least I didn’t pick the em dash

There are days with things, and there are days that are full. And the fullness of our days defines us, creates the meaning of our time.

Or at least punctuates it.

And we get to choose the punctuation! Today, I chose the ellipses.

We had two meetings on campus today. One committee-type meeting at mid-day, where a committee was loosely formed to do committee things. In the afternoon we had a department meeting, where faculty came together to discuss faculty things. In between those two meetings we had lunch. We re-arranged the office.

I returned to grading things. Then I wrote a proposal for one of our running projects. It’ll get rolled into two or three things, hopefully.

Also I wrote some syllabus language and saw some colleagues.

After the meeting, it was back home, where I worked on another project. And then returned to the grading. I’m getting that all done tonight, even if I have to do it in the morning. You’ll understand if this wraps quickly, I’ve already written a few thousand words today, some of them were pretty good.

I did not use the first ellipses.

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9
Oct 24

“No flag, no country; you can’t have one!’

More grading today. But I’ve made good progress on this batch of grading and feedback-ing. So many words to write, and metaphors upon which to expand.

I stopped for two things. First, a quick 25-mile ride this afternoon. Nothing like 90 breathless to reinvigorate you to come back, sit down, and sound knowledgeable about the topics at hand.

The other thing I did today was actually something that we did tonight. We went across the river.

Eddie Izzard was in town, touring on a 35-year career, playing some of the hits. We watched a lot of Izzard in the oughts and early teens, so it was fun to see some of the old bits.

This classic bit made the cut tonight.

We heard the Romans, Carthaginians and elephants story. The woman sitting next to me repeated parts of it word for word, which was cute.

And Izzard closed with the Death Star canteen, of course.

It was a fun show. We had front row seats on the mezzanine. Not bad for spur-of-the-moment tickets.

And now back to grading!

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2
Oct 24

Productive, but not nearly enough

The grading continues. And it will continue later tonight. It will also continue tomorrow.

If it goes any longer than that I will begin to evaluate my grading. My self-assessment might not be a positive one in that eventuality.

But I should give myself some grace. I started this round of grading with some 70-plus items to grade. About 34 of them require real feedback. The assignment includes an element where they have to ask a question of something they’re reading, and some of the questions are pretty easy to answer based terms or something else the class has addressed. Some I’m fielding are of that pleasantly squishy almost-formed social science question that an undergrad can ask, the sort that actually opens the door to something quite important. I try not to revert to the grad school ways of getting to an almost-answer. Some of the questions are purely philosophical and then I think, this should be asked in a proper classroom, on a day when the halls are quiet and the sky is gloomy and you can make the snap decision that, no, this question is much more interesting than what I’d planned to talk about today, so we’re doing 40 minutes on the politics of art in a society of mass culture.

While not padding my feedback, I am averaging … a lot of words per response. Probably too much, but you know how it is when you get on a role explaining early 20th century media philosophy, or seminal sociologists or artificial intelligence. The words just flow, and soon you’re wondering, Will this particular student appreciate a newspaper column’s worth of thoughts on their assignment? Then you have to trim it. Getting back down to that 200- or 300-word range is the time intensive part.

The students were reading a paper that crossed Erving Goffman and Walter Benjamin, and by the end of it all, I find myself hoping I don’t come off a bit like the random guy in Good Will Hunting.

I’ve now read, and re-read this piece that I might actually understand it. And then not. And then truly grasp it.

So I went to campus. One part of my job is teaching. Another part is grading. Still a third part of my job is to receive training in this or that. I’ve had three rounds of ethics training in a calendar year. I’ve watched webinars of the privacy of this and the security of that. I have two more in the queue, because someone decided there wasn’t enough to be done. And today I had an in-person session, QPR training.

That’s Question, Persuade and Refer to you. And it was 90 minutes of talking about interacting with someone in a mental health crisis. There was also role playing. We had three minutes of role playing, which is not enough time to work your way through the scenario that was presented. I turned to the guy sitting next to me and invited him to pair up. He was in psychology.

Great, I said, a ringer!

“Experimental psychology,” he said. “If I never saw anyone at work I’d be happy.”

Or something like that, I was too busy trying to figure out how I would navigate through very specific hypothetical to take notes. In the end, we felt we’d done our part to help the troubled young man in the imagined scenario. And then we talked some more as a group, because this was 90 minutes.

It wasn’t that bad, but you could see where it might be a charged or otherwise difficult sort of conversation. At the end, the woman running the thing did something fun. She made everyone in the room say something they were looking forward to doing in the next 24 hours. A palate cleanser.

The thing of it was that everyone there had these interesting plans. Except for the guy who had to teach that night and all day tomorrow, so he was looking forward to sleeping tonight. When it came to me, I lamented that everyone else had these interesting plans. I was going to grade. Maybe ride my bike. Definitely pet the cats.

The woman who went after me was looking forward to hanging out with her chicken.

I went back to the office and did some grading, did some reading, and worked on the desk. It was a productive afternoon.

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 50th installment, and the 82nd marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series.

Sadly, I’m not sure why this merited inclusion. No one really spells out the history for us. And what even is the historic part of a local courthouse, anyway? The signs give nothing away.

Just 702 feet away is the truly historic Old Salem County Courthouse (1735), ” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>which we saw previously. That is the nation’s second-oldest courthouse in continuous use.

And a block away is this building. A court which is still in its first century of existence, sitting in a dour building which looks like it is hoping will be its last century.

Municipal Court, what are you gonna do?

Next time, we’ll see a sturdy 19th century brick home. It, like all the previous installments, will be better than this one. If you have missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

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25
Sep 24

Just needs more

I’ve neglected to mention this here, I think, but I have the good fortune to work with a group taking an active role in cycling safety. It’s exciting watching these signs, and their message, pop up around town. It’s just one element of a long, long term project, but awareness and education are critically important.

The people doing this work are motivated for their own safety and their mindfulness of other cyclists. They’ve got the ear of the community, and the local state lawmakers.It’s impressive, and I hope the group can keep their momentum going.

Here, the state law requires motorists to move over a lane, or to allow for at least four feet to safely pass cyclists (and other non-motorists). Four whole feet!

Do you know the laws about safely passing cyclists in your state? You can look them up right here, and I’ll thank you for saving lives every time you drive.

We went to campus today and it’s a miracle we made it at all because I kept slowing us down, somehow. It got to that not-quite-comedy-of-errors level, culminating in finding zero parking in several consecutive walks. But we made it. And then we went for a swim.

It was my first indoor swim in a long time. There were lane ropes and lifeguards and chlorine and everything. Also, there was the mystery of when I would slip into the rhythm of swimming back and forth, back and forth. It finally happened, I’m not sure where I was in the swim. But I know where I was when I got pulled from the pool. The lap swim was over, some other people were wandering in and doing some organized looking stretching and warming up.

I said, “Do I have enough time to do 50 more?” But I was told I did not. And so I finished with a slow version of my 1,700 yards.

But, man, you never really know how useful that extra 50 could have been. It could have really made the difference!

After that we meant to a meeting in our department. There was food, and there was work. A handful of the faculty members were working on some important department-type language. On the third or fourth run through someone tossed a joke my way, being the newbie and all. I said, “Hey, you want to get all caught up in details, you’ve invited the right guy.”

Ultimately, the work got done. Everyone seemed pleased by it. I got a phrase or two into the finished product, phrases I may forget, so I’ll just point to all of them. I was just happy to be there.

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 49th installment, and the 81st marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series. (Assuming I have faithfully and accurately kept count.) And this time, we have to try to figure out why a post office has a historic marker.

This installment features the fabled form letter of plaques.

I love the National Registry markers, but I appreciate, even more, the local ones with some information on them. And it will never not disappoint me that the Registry doesn’t contain an extant explanation of all of the places they acknowledge. In this case, however, you can’t even find this post office on the list! Anyway, here’s the building.

The first post office opened there, or around there, in November of 1903. But the first post office in these parts, I read elsewhere, was created by legislation in 1792. Either way, 18th or early 20th century, they served very rural routes, I would imagine. Also, the first airmail flew out of the county in 1938, it was a gimmick marking the 20th anniversary of airmail. It possessed all of the 1930s pomp and circumstance a small town could muster. There were special envelopes and handlers. The mail bag was taken to the airfield by a fire truck, where other special handlers took part. The Boy Scouts turned out to witness the occasion, and so on. The mail flew to a town about 30 miles away.

And not related to this, but interestingly, I also read an anecdote of an airmail pilot who crashed his plane in 1918 one county away. He was trying to land, but some livestock got in the way. He made another pass, had engine trouble and wound up crash landing. Broke his machine up, but he lived. The mail got delivered. It was the second day of airmail in the U.S. On the same day as the first local airmail, commemorating 20 years of airmail, that pilot had a nationwide conversation on this thing called radio …

Also, historically speaking, a lot of mail has been delivered over the many years. Too much of it bills.

Next week, I’ll probably have similarly limited success on our next marker, but we’re here to try. If you have missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.