{"id":573899219,"date":"2026-07-29T20:09:57","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T00:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573899219"},"modified":"2026-08-01T15:50:59","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T19:50:59","slug":"i-had-to-log-into-canvas-today-and-more-fun-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2026\/07\/29\/i-had-to-log-into-canvas-today-and-more-fun-things\/","title":{"rendered":"I had to log into Canvas today, and more fun things"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today I started doing some back end coursework. Building Canvas shells and preparing the reorganization of things. I started some light reading. The usual, and terribly exciting stuff. But, ya know, it has to get done. And done it gets. So much so that I may do less tomorrow. Is day three too early to take a break? It&#8217;s probably too early to take a break. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m taking a break.<\/p>\n<p>I shot this photograph, which is nothing special, while doing the weekly garbage can chore, and promptly forgot about it. I remembered it. I edited, uploaded it, and promptly forgot about it again. So here it is, a nothing special snapshot from the wee hours of Monday morning.  <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/july26\/july60.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>The clouds had more patience than me and waited me out. Then nothing happened and I went inside, which is why it is nothing special, and probably why I forgot it, twice. But it&#8217;s here, I&#8217;m here, the site is here, you&#8217;re here, and so on.<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/blog\/banners\/bannermusic.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>The headliner at the weekend concert was Train, which is doing one of those &#8220;celebrating 25 years of a hit&#8221; tours. So many people are doing these now it no longer seems novel. It seems impractical. It seems a problem. The problem is that so many acts I like are doing them. <\/p>\n<p>Anyway, at one point they launched into a planned bit of spontaneity and played Jack and Diane. Matt Nathanson came out for the back half of the song. <\/p>\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/geo.dailymotion.com\/player.html?video=xatli4u\"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>&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And, now, <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/belover\/the-crazy-true-story-behind-john-mellencamps-jack-and-diane-31ae22b9c685\" target=\"_blank\">allow me to point you to something<\/a> that will change your opinion about that song, and give you, finally, the correct opinion about Mellencamp. It was funny, <a href=\"https:\/\/news.iu.edu\/live\/news\/28169-john-mellencamp-cements-hoosier-legacy-with\" target=\"_blank\">when this happened<\/a>, listening to the people who knew him, his father, his sons, and their opinions of him from first-hand experience, and watching all the right people fawn and fan over the whole event, and watching the students saying, &#8220;Who?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I have two more concert clips to round out the week. Tomorrow&#8217;s video is something you&#8217;ve never heard before, guaranteed. Friday&#8217;s video is something I&#8217;ve, somehow, never seen live before.<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/blog\/banners\/bannerbike.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>I had a nice little ride this evening. I set out for my time trial 25-mile loop, but it was slow. I didn&#8217;t really know that when I passed the sheep, but that&#8217;s only because I see them in the first five miles or so. <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/july26\/july61.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Soon after, though, the numbers looked low, so I decided to do a bit extra. On the long straight road that usually gives me a good tailwind before the final segment I had a crosswind, and instead of turning for the last seven miles home I went down to the next turn, 1.5 miles down the road, hooked a right at the little white house on the corner and then pushed on through some woods, a few warehouses, over some railroad tracks, a few more warehouses, and then finally took another right, to pass by some other warehouses, and finally the bridge over the water at a place where you sit five feet below sea level, and then into a four-stop sign town that dates back to the 17th century. <\/p>\n<p>Turning left at one of those stop signs sends me through one final neighborhood and then four miles of pastureland, and then home. It was a lovely evening for a ride, a lovely ride, felt good and, yet it was somehow slower than I expected. Who knows why these things are the way they are. <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/blog\/banners\/bannerbooks.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>We continue on with Rick Atkinson\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.prh.com\/fateoftheday2\/\" target=\"_blank\">Fate of the Day<\/a>, the second in his Revolutionary War trilogy. Terrific book and today I am again marveling at his source material. <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/july26\/july62.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>This was just prior to the Battle of Brandywine. The 45th Foot returned to England the following year, 1778, its strength barely 100 officers and men by the time they got home. We know Lt. William Hale survived Brandywine, participated in the occupation of Philadelphia and beyond. By August 1778 he knew he was going home, his regiment in tatters. Less than 100 officers and men from their muster rolls survived their battles and the subsequent trip home. A <a href=\"http:\/\/public-library.uk\/dailyebook\/Some%20British%20soldiers%20in%20America%20(1914).pdf\" target=\"_blank\">1914 text<\/a> gives us the context clues that he survived until at least 1780. The author of that history, a Captain W. H. Wilkin of the same regiment, writes that Hale &#8220;was not a man of note,&#8221; and that his letters home &#8220;describe the war from the point of view of a British subaltern.&#8221; Wilkin, nevertheless, gives Hale&#8217;s correspondence a full chapter which is rich in context and granular reporting of some of the battles in which he participated. Hale was 22 and fighting in America, retired from the service a captain in 1781, married in<br \/>\n1783, and died in Devonshire in 1789. There are other Hales, contemporaneous American soldiers, the lieutenant&#8217;s father, an admiral in the British navy, and a few other Williams in subsequent generations. So that might be all I can dig up about the grenadier today.<\/p>\n<p>Hale&#8217;s line about his esprit de corps has, of course, been used <a href=\"https:\/\/westtownpa.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/PC-1-1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">in still other books<\/a> as well. How could it not? While I&#8217;ve not read those others, I can say that Atkinson is delivering another great work. If you like history of the period and you&#8217;ve somehow missed this best seller, go get it. Or get the first book, then this one. Catch up and read along!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I started doing some back end coursework. Building Canvas shells and preparing the reorganization of things. I started some light reading. The usual, and terribly exciting stuff. But, ya know, it has to get done. And done it gets. So much so that I may do less tomorrow. Is day three too early to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,32,6,39,10,11,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573899219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-history","category-memories","category-music","category-photo","category-video","category-wednesday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573899219","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=573899219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573899219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573899220,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573899219\/revisions\/573899220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573899219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573899219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573899219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}