{"id":573898931,"date":"2026-04-23T20:09:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T00:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573898931"},"modified":"2026-05-21T22:33:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T02:33:07","slug":"counting-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2026\/04\/23\/counting-down\/","title":{"rendered":"Counting down"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On campus today, the students in my Rituals and Traditions class enjoyed a group day. Next Thursday they&#8217;ll be presenting their work and recommendations to the athletic department, and we used the time to start putting together the first few finishing touches on their work. Everyone looks calm about it, which both pleases me and makes me just a little bit nervous. <\/p>\n<p>In Criticism, I reacted to last week&#8217;s student suggestions. Someone said we should watch a gymnastics documentary. I searched around and settled on the first episode of &#8220;Simone Biles Rising.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YLPxyE0c_KY?si=twkKa1OPCuBQ6y97\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It has, for my money, one of the better cliffhangers in a documentary. The class actually groaned, almost as one, when the credits rolled. This was a good example of some of the media aesthetics we&#8217;ve been talking about, and also gets into some other mediated effects, and editorial choices. <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/blog\/banners\/bannerbike2.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>We got home just in time for a quick ride. We did our first river run of the year. Down and back is 15 miles, and you can get back in time to clean up for dinner at an almost reasonable hour and, happily, we&#8217;re not even racing the daylight on that route at the moment. <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/apr26\/apr34.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>You can tell this is when we are on the back from the river because my lovely bride is riding from the left to right. <\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s how web browsers work, right?<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/blog\/banners\/bannerwildatlanticway.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m still living in the happy memories of our wonderful Irish vacation. So, I&#8217;m sharing extra videos that we didn&#8217;t get to at the time. It was a great vacation. I have a lot of footage. This will go on for some time. Enjoy it with me, won&#8217;t you?<\/p>\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/geo.dailymotion.com\/player.html?video=xaaqaha\"style=\"width:100%; height:100%; position:absolute; left:0px; top:0px; overflow:hidden; border:none;\"allowfullscreentitle=\"Dailymotion Video Player\"allow=\"web-share\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>This is at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2026\/03\/18\/dun-na-mbo\/\" target=\"_blank\">D\u00fan na mB\u00f3<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On campus today, the students in my Rituals and Traditions class enjoyed a group day. Next Thursday they&#8217;ll be presenting their work and recommendations to the athletic department, and we used the time to start putting together the first few finishing touches on their work. Everyone looks calm about it, which both pleases me and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,40,62,6,10,101,112,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573898931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures","category-cycling","category-ireland","category-memories","category-photo","category-rowan","category-sports","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573898931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573898931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573898931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573898932,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573898931\/revisions\/573898932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573898931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573898931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573898931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}