Want to guess where I am? You can guess where I am. Here’s your first hint, I am not at home. Here’s your second hint, it’s a quick trip. Here’s your third hint, here’s the mode of travel. Or, at least, part of it.
We are attending a wedding this weekend, meaning a few nights out in hotels and restaurants and with one or two people we know. We’ll be in and out in no time flat. Getting married is one of my lovely bride’s former students. (This is the third wedding we’ve been to out of that particular cohort.) It is a black tie affair. (No pressure, other former students.)
We are also chummy with the groom’s parents, who are delightful people and I am looking forward to seeing them all tomorrow.
From the airport, and after an easy direct flight, we took an Uber to the hotel. The woman that drove was was just adorable and hilarious. She told some stories about some of her clients. And she let me lean into a few jokes about them. A little small talk with a southern woman is a thing to behold. She dodged traffic and avoided idiots and got us to our hotel.
We checked in with no problem, and then had dinner at a newly opened hipster tavern a few blocks away. I had one of those burgers that was overstuffed with condiments. You had to be careful to lean all the way over your plate to avoid dripping anything on you. Also, they had spicy ketchup which was, authentically, spicy. I don’t know what inauthentically spicy ketchup tastes like, but this wasn’t that. It had a flavor profile that haunted the taste buds, lingering there like a hint, and a memory, a smoke that won’t leave the room, a spice that burned after its welcome was worn out. Fortunately, I could wash it down with a glass of sweet tea. Another thing to behold, and I held it, right there in my hand. And then I had a refill.
Maybe another. Who can count such a joyous thing?
Tomorrow, we have meetings, and then a welcome party for the wedding. And some virtual work on this tiny little desk in our little room. It’ll all be charming, and about 25 degrees warmer than home.
We started working on a survey instrument today in Rituals and Traditions. I’m going to have the class survey members of the campus community. The survey data will, hopefully, help them in their group projects. So there I sat, keyboard in hand, typing up the suggested questions that the class came up.
We started as a brainstorming session. No question too silly. Well, may not that question, that question is silly. We wound up with about 40 questions. And then we took a pass through the whole lot of them and struck a few that probably wouldn’t help too much. We re-framed some of the questions to shape them up a bit better. And now I have to cull the 30 or so that remain. Thirty is probably too many for the type of survey we’re going to conduct, so I have to get this list down to 15 or so. And then build the survey.
Great fun!
In Criticism we watched the HBO documentary Fists of Freedom, which covers the lead up, and protests in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.
I like Lee Evans’ part of the story, because he seems like a fun guy. The best segment here is Bob Beamon’s record-breaking long jump. It’s a beautiful moment of filmmaking. Scrub ahead to 36:08 for that.
They called it the leap of the century, and it took something like 15 minutes to resolve the distance. In the end, he’d jumped 21 inches farther than the previous world record. (And the world record holder was in the field at those Games.) Beamon’s mark would stand for decades.
The whole documentary is well done. (Though there are some weird edits in the embedded video for some reason.) Released in 1999, almost all of the primary participants are included here. Bronze medal winner John Carlos, notably, is absent. And we’ll talk about that in class next week. This documentary, and next week’s will hopefully set the stage for how we think about documentaries over the rest of the term.
But I’m not going to think about that until Monday. For now, I’m going to relish these 35-degree lows and contemplate the sheer novelty of a 50+ degree day tomorrow. It is not that at home. Spring is about to hit, here, right on time. I know that because things will be budding by February 14th, when a normal spring should arrive. I know that because I have the curse of experience, which becomes an embittered thing in the second week of February and I see a low temperature of … 15.
At least, when it gets even colder at home this weekend we won’t be there. Until Sunday, when it gets even colder. But not here, and not right now.
