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29
Sep 25

A college, launched; a meeting, met

No one ever thinks of the turning of the fields during the autumnal season, but I’d just like to point out that, if you’ve got the right things in the ground, it can be lovely, for a time. And this is that time.

A lot of the farmland around us just now is thusly decorated.

We went over the river to a watch party event yesterday evening. Last day of regular season baseball and another afternoon of football.

I think my best time was playing cornhole with my god-niece-in-law (just go with it). She’s four, going on perpetually adorable, and she loves throwing those beanbags. Also, she has a four-year-old’s hand-eye coordination, so there is a lot of sidearm slinging, a lot of underthrows and several that go randomly off to one side or another. But then she drops some right in the hole and you begin to wonder: is there such a thing as a lawn game prodigy?

This morning I cut up a limb. We lost yet another one in a windstorm and it was sitting in a precarious way. I’ve been waiting to see if time would make it move, and make my job easier, but it did not, and it was not. So, yesterday, I made some cuts with one of those pole pruners, because the large branch had fallen into the fork of another tree and never snapped completely. All of this was delightfully overhead, and so the cutting away was a big weekend exercise. But turning it all into firewood was a Monday morning job. And that was a job. I broke out the chainsaw and the wheelbarrow and I am I spent.

This is not hyperbole. If there was another chunk of wood I had to deal with it was going to wait until next weekend. But I got it all in, and will feel it tomorrow. I know this because I feel it today.

Nearby, though, was this daring September dandelion, still vibrant and proud. One of those times when I needed to take a break, I pretended to study this guy.

But not too much, because by then I was feeling it and close examinations would have just required more effort.

The good news, though, is that I got it all done before we headed to campus, and the chore is behind me. Today, we had our new college launch. Last spring the old dean retired, the university took the opportunity to split our college into two chunks, with one side joining another existing college, and ours being merged into another. There’s probably more of a story there, but you don’t care. All of the alignments seem to make sense. Our new college is a monstrous thing. We’ll be the largest on campus before long. The new dean and the programs they have in place in this new college seem to be well received.

Hopefully everyone will have a good time. And we all did today at the new college launch. It was a big outdoor party. I saw the mascot. He took a selfie with my phone.

Low key owl, at least at events like that. They do a pretty nice job with the character on social media.

I went before the university SGA this evening. I serve on a committee that listens to, and talks with, the SGA. And so there I was, doing that tonight. There were four scheduled presenters. First was a woman who came to tell them of a new cybersecurity training module that is being rolled out to students. And when students do this training they’ll be eligible to win an iPad. The second presenter was the athletic director, who also brought along the football coach. They were flinging shirts around the large ballroom and hoping to get out the word that there’s going to be a big student party before this weekend’s football game. And there’s a chance for students to win $20,000. (Throw a Nerf football through a car’s sunroof from 40 yards …) The third person came up to talk about the new restaurants and food options on the rapidly growing campus.

To sum up, we’ve had a free iPad, a chance to win 20,000 bucks and food. Now here I come, to talk about … policy and process.

It was worth laughing at.

Maybe I should have asked the mascot if he could come along to that meeting.

adventures / cycling / Friday / photo — Comments Off
19
Sep 25

Our hydrangeas do not fluoresce at night, but …

Fridays are meeting days this term, it seems. I sit on a lot of committees and they all demand a bit of time. Friday is the most common day of the week that everyone has ~~available~~ on their calendar, and so there we all are. In Zoom, in person, you name it. Last week it was an experiential learning committee. This week a student relations committee, and so on.

Also, I need to call together a committee I chair. Note to self …

One day, when I am not pulled in four other directions, I will consider making a photo study of the hydrangeas. Their flowers are lovely throughout the season, whether upright, or bent over by the weight of rains.

There’s a unique trait to some hydrangea plants. Did you know that? The color of many hydrangea blooms acts as a natural pH indicator for it soil. Blooms that are blue are living in acidic soil. Those shrubs with red or pink sepals are growing in more alkaline soils. White varieties, such as ours, grow white in either soil. But you can manipulate the color of some of the flowering shrubs in this way. This is thought to be a singular trait of the hydrangea.

Our yard is full of plants and trees that aren’t from around here. The landscapers that put all of this in, long before we bought the place, were going for a united floral nations theme. And the hydrangeas are no different. Their taxonomy was first discussed in Virginia, there are more varieties of this sort of plant in east Asia. We have two. One by the northern gate and one by the backdoor. They both sit in the shade of the house. One gets a perfect dose of morning and midday sun. The other lives in a bit more shade. They’re both huge.

I just can’t get them to survive, upright, a late summer heavy rain. The water comes down, sits on those leaves and pulls the whole thing over. But they do flower lovely, and even at this later stage of their season, they are satisfying to look at. (But I’d prefer them upright.)

We did a 20 mile bike ride this evening. It was a late start for reasons of work and ennui. So we did most of the time trial route. It was almost curtailed by the new neighbor’s angry dog. He was out in the yard and aggressive. Took nips at both of us. No skin was broken. One sock was punctured.

Usually, when you’re riding, you can see a dog coming. Being field-trained in trigonometry, they’ll often take a good angle. But they don’t understand gearing, and you can usually mitigate the interaction. And then there’s a good old fashioned yell. In my experience, every dog speaks the parlance of my people, “GITOHNOUTTAHEA!!!” works surprisingly well. And no dog is expecting a spray from a water bottle.

But all of that works when you’re up to speed. Since this dog lives directly across the street, all of the dynamics were absurdly different, and I was reduced to using bike frame and tires as a shield when he came back for a second try and we were, stupidly, still standing there.

The neighbors never came outside to observe the ruckus.

Which is good, I suppose. That’s not how I want to meet the new people. We weren’t here when they moved in and we have so far just been waving at one another, all pleasant like, but “Hey, could you watch out for your dog?” might set a tone.

But also bad. My concern is for the young families that walk their kids through this strip of road, the other cyclists that come by, and the people down near the end that drive way too fast on a closed residential street. And, you know, we’re on this road too.

Anyway, it was a pleasant ride, and now we’re going to bring in the weekend with a local outdoor pizza. what a pleasant way to start a lovely few days.

Have a lovely few days yourself. We’ll catch up on Monday.

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18
Sep 25

The goal is the goal

It was a busy day on campus. In my Criticism class we watched a documentary about the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. It’s titled “Fists of Freedom.” You can find it in a few places online, including on the HBO app, but here’s a little tease from the night the doc won a Peabody.

Watching it took the full class. Tuesday we’ll talk about it, both the story they told, but also the craft of documentaries. We’ll watch a lot of documentaries in this class, and for these first two we’ll talk a tiny bit about the filmmaking as a format of criticism, too. I have worked diligently to create a wildly varied menu of documentaries. This one is historical and about track and field. (Good as it is, Bob Beamon’s world record long jump is my favorite part of that film.) The next one is contemporary and about tennis. We’ll look at an unconventional documentary centering on a diver after that.

In org comm today we discussed the overarching concept of the uniqueness of sport communication. Anyone that comes back next week will get to laugh at a lot of commercials as we talk about branding.

My godniece-in-law (just go with it) is a high school senior and playing some of her last field hockey games. So we went to see one of them this evening. Her little sister, my other godniece-in-law (again, go with it) played in a JV game, so we got to see both.

Now, I’d hoped to take a few photos of the senior, thinking maybe I could get one or two of her to share with her. The problem is I know nothing about field hockey. I’ve been to, I think, three or four games, and it’s still largely inscrutable to me. Fortunately, one of my students is a field hockey star. She gave me some tips today.

So we went to the games, I followed the suggestions of my field hockey folk hero. The game is played on the school’s football field, which serves quadruple duty as football field, soccer pitch, field hockey pitch and some of their field events for track. The field has a play turf surface, which feels like it’d be fun to run on.

I can say that because I set up shot behind the cage, which sits under the mobile soccer goal, which rests under the football field goal. The game is getting underway, I sneak back there. Sneak by walking at a normal pace. And as I’m fiddling with the settings on my camera, my godniece-in-law scores a goal. Missed it.

At the start of the second half the two teams swapped sides, so I walked over to stand behind the other goal. And back there, was this, which covers the high jump pad. For some reason, they’re really quite serious about staying away from this cover, which is just all kinds of dangerous.

Soon after, a gentleman walked over and told me to leave. So I walked back over to the stands, properly chagrined. It was the first time I’ve gotten in not-trouble at a high school in decades. Such a rule breaker am I.

Leaning against the post of the soccer goal felt comfortable. I haven’t done that since I was 20 or so. And, from back there, watching the game come toward me, I understood what was going on much better than the side-view you get from the bleachers. I have been assured by the people I’ve asked — including a chat tonight with my godniece-in-law’s grandfather, who is my godfather-in-law (just go with it) — that there many rules about what you can and can’t do in field hockey. They mysterious and inscrutable rules to us mere fans, but grounded in safety. He was a field hockey coach for 20 years. He’d know the rules, right? He did not tell me all of the rules. I’ve come to conclude they’re meant to be secret.

Most importantly, the home team won both games.

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15
Sep 25

‘Four years (prostrate) to the higher mind’ is doubly ironic

This is quick, because I am doing class prep. We’re reading two stories in Criticism tomorrow. In Org Comm we’ll be talking about the very important and incredibly interesting definitions of communication. It’ll probably be the slowest week in that class for the semester. You need baselines for everyone, though, because there are students from multiple majors and it’s important to make this approachable. Next week will be more fun, this week is definitions.

That’s what I’ll tell them tomorrow.

And there’s also my online class, which is new. Three new classes to wrangle, every week, between now and December. It seems like a lot to me, but I’m gamely going to try.

And that’s why this is quick.

For some reason, even on a mild day, the irrigation systems out in the fields look refreshing. This was part of an easy 20 mile ride on Saturday afternoon. It was one of those days where I set out to go this way, got halfway there, and then went that way instead. It was a good day for that.

Sure, it was right out of the neighborhood and then a mile and a quarter down to the stop sign. There, instead of going straight, I turned left. We go this way sometimes, but I don’t do it often when I’m on my own. It’s an up and down thing, and then you cross a busy intersection — if you can catch the light — and go by the warehouses that they’ll never finish building or fill with inventory. Down to the river, and back up through some farm land and you can keep going down that road, where you’ll eventually run into a town, and the big river, and have to change directions, or you can turn early. This is what I did today. There are two or three roads that you can turn onto that will lead you back to another road that can point you home. But we rarely cut those short, and so it’s a guess: Is this a road that crosses over to the highway, or is this a road that dead ends in a corn field?

And so I’m going down this side road, hoping it is an in-between road, trying to remember if I remember it or not. The features don’t really help. It feels right, but not distinctively so.

Then, the road bends to the left, and forks to the right. This is where a white Cadillac decided to pass me in a slow and unsafe way. (Thanks for that, young person driving your grandparent’s Caddy … ) She went left. I went right, and I was rewarded with distinctive features. I was on the road I wanted, a double tree-lined affair that was quite and pleasant and demanded you sit up and go slow — which wasn’t a problem for me.

Eventually, I ran into this sign.

If you turn right, you’d go this way, and wind up down at the river, or someplace.

If you turn left, you wind your way to another tributary, but the highway which will take me back toward home.

I stood there and felt the sun and listened to the wind for a few pleasant, long minutes. It was the perfect time of day in a lovely little place and I had it all to myself, all of it. And maybe that’s the reason we should ride bikes.

OK, here’s the last clip from last week’s show. Four, from me, is a pretty decent amount of restraint. Anyway, because they’ve been at it for four decades now, the Indigo Girls obviously have to play the hits. And they’ve long established their most mainstream number as a regular big finish. It got a lot of people in the door, and those people won’t let you leave without it.

(I wonder how long a show would be if they played all of everyone’s favorites. We already wound up taking a late train out of town, and they didn’t play all of my favorites this time. They can’t play them all. They should play them all.)

Anyway, the regulars are counting songs and they know it’s about to come and OK, everybody sing along. And also here’s three-time Grammy Award winner, and holder of Four CMA awards, Jennifer Nettles, to help us out too.

I hope we get to see them again next year.

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12
Sep 25

Fire from the years

I wrote this out in outline form, went away and did some other stuff, and then came back to it. The first two notes were

Meetings.

Chairs.

I had meetings all morning. One of the meetings, no kidding, was about another meeting in a few weeks. At the end of meeting we discussed future dates for other meetings. It was run efficiently, and with good cheer. I took the notes. We ended right on time, having completed the full agenda which was, again, mostly about another meeting.

That other meeting will be a brief appearance. A few people from this meeting will attend that meeting and discuss what we do at these meetings.

There will be slides.

The next point on my list was “Chairs.” I have no idea what I meant to say there.

On today’s bike ride I tried out some new sunglasses. I needed to update my drip.

The frame better matches my helmet and the lenses are blue, though it doesn’t seem obvious there. The lenses are also bigger than any glasses I’ve worn before, but that’s the style, and aren’t we slaves to style?

The problem is right at the top, just above the bridge of the nose. It rubs right into the interior part of the helmet. It seems like there should be some space or flexible bend there or something, but alas.

The little Giro logo rubbed off the front of my helmet, I think from one day when I was working on a flat tire and leaning on the saddle. I’ll scrape it off eventually, but for now, it amuses me. It looks like bad video game faux text.

This was the sunset at the end of the ride.

We timed that up pretty well, but only because we were going fast. I had a few massive splits — well within the “fast” category. I can only do that for four or five miles at a time, though, and humility comes to me quickly, usually in the form of a headwind. Sometimes a small hill.

Here’s another shot from Radio City Music Hall’s iconic neon. We had a nice visit there on Wednesday to see Melissa Etheridge and the Indigo Girls. It was my third time seeing Etheridge and … I dunno … the 10th or 12th time I’ve seen Amy and Emily, but it was my first concert at Radio City.

And so here’s “Kid Fears,” with Etheridge singing Michael Stipe’s part. That song is now 36 years young, but all of the people that have come through to sing along keep it fresh. Listening to the crowd enjoy it is still a great deal of fun.

I think I’ll put one more clip up on Monday. They had another special guest at the end of the show, and it’s worth pointing out.

But that’s for Monday, and now it’s time for the weekend, which I will spend doing some work for next week’s classes. The life of glamor that I can tell you about …