Before we went to the museum yesterday, I had a look at the gift shop online, and I knew I wanted one of these, so I picked up one as a little gift for myself. I couldn’t tell you the last time I bought something at a gift shop, and I almost talked myself out of it, but, in the end, I’m glad I got one. This is a lapel pin version of the flag which, according to tradition, George Washington used to denote his headquarters during the war.
Looks fantastic on my lapel.
And then, as we were leaving the gift shop, pleased with my purchase spending four hours in the past, I saw this flag on the opposite wall. This is a reproduction of Washington’s standard.
But wait! While the original is preserved by the museum, and was not on display, this one has a story that would have been unbelievable to the first president.
This reproduction went to space with Sen. John Glenn in 1998, orbiting the earth 134 times, covering 3.6 million miles on the Space Shuttle Discovery, 199 years after Washington died.
Also, I took a quick photos inside the gift shop, so I could see more closely consider the books I want to one day read. I made a list on Amazon, and if you want to see 25 of the best books on display (there were probably 40 or so, total), you can see what I’ll be reading in the future.
Do we have a lot for you in this post. Let’s jump right in! First, I just came in from watering the pothos plants, and I checked on the spider. She’s still out there doing her thing.
I’ve decided this is a she for reasons that don’t have any basis in anything, really. But he, or she, is one industrious spider. Every day that web disappears. Every night it returns. Almost in the same spot. The angle of it has shifted in the last few nights. Maybe this is better for catching things coming off the prize-winning plants back there.
Looked up how long spiders can live, and this is not a long-term location for my new friend. I’m going to wind up re-positioning this arachnid, if for no other reason than I’ll want this little section of sidewalk back. And also because this is too close to the house, and I don’t want it coming inside when the weather turns.
I bet she’ll have great success in the woods out back.
I got in a late evening bike ride. I started a little too late, which is funny because I’d just been mentally patting myself on the back for how well I time these rides. Usually, I’m back just as it gets dark.
It was still daylight when I started. Here’s the proof, this is about halfway through.
You know how those late summer evenings get, though. The sunset and the gloaming happen more quickly than you’ve lately been expecting. This photo was just four miles later.
And this was an accidental shot, but look at that blurry wrist!
The problem — if you want to think of it in those terms, and I don’t — is that soon after that last photo I made an impulsive decision to add on a few miles. Turned left to add a circuit, instead of heading straight in. That gave me almost six extra miles, which was nice. And about three miles into it, I had to pull the headlight out of my pocket and light the road in front of me.
I have a lot of light on the back of the bike for oncoming cars. But the other thing that’s nice is that I was on sleepy country roads. Over the course of the last six miles of today’s ride I was passed by five cars, and only two of them came by when it was truly dark.
Anyway, another delightful, slow, 22-mile ride is in the books.
You might recall we went to a rock ‘n’ roll show last Thursday. On Friday I wrote in this space about Melissa Etheridge. Today, and for the next few days, we’ll have a few short Indigo Girls clips.
This year they’re celebrating the 30th anniversary of Swamp Ophelia. And this is a deep cut, a tremendous song off a lush album. A song I don’t think I’ve heard live in decades, and apropos of the moment.
I’ve been in awe of that line about the summer since the 1990s. It’s not fair what Emily Saliers can do with a few lines of verse.
And here’s a 1997 classic to go alongside of that one.
That song — which went to number 15 on the US Adult chart, enjoyed a bit of air play on the radio and was in the last batch of videos I recall on MTV — was inspired by this documentary, which has become something of a classic on its own, while still remaining contemporary even as the sands shift around us.
That documentary itself is three decades old now. It’d be interesting to go back and see the modern version, just so we can marvel at what is and isn’t different.
I finished Walter Lord’s The Dawn’s Early Light. It is wonderful pop history, my first Lord book and I’m sure I’ll go find more of his writing later.
Militarily, his tactics are sparse, and written at a regimental level, but he’s not writing too much about the military action. It might be easy to get bogged down in that, or easy to get it wrong or be incomplete, all these years later, despite his excellent research. It’s a book about the time, rather than the conflict. He basically has it that the places the U.S. did poorly were down to bad organization and ineffective leadership. The places where we did better, Baltimore and New Orleans, were down to a key British army officer being killed and the Americans getting their act together.
And because it includes New Orleans, Andrew Jackson does become a minor character late in the book — a book which doesn’t sit on anyone for too long, come to think of it. Jackson has a few good lines in the text. This is, perhaps, the best one.
I’ve jumped ahead some 120 years in my next book. I’ve started reading about mid-20th century journalist and author, Richard Tregaskis. Updates on that text are something to which you can look forward. Also, more music tomorrow. And a swim! (Maybe … I’m trying to work up the nerve.)
I was running late. Well, that’s not exactly fair. Let me back up. I was perfectly on time. But then I realized I forgot something, a notebook, and so I had to double back. That’s when the comedy of errors began. I’m sitting at a T-intersection, trying to turn right, and the whole of the town is going the same direction. And as the clock ticked by I waited.
I was supposed to be at a meeting, but now I was running late. And then a dump truck pulled out in front of me, that sort of road-joining that is mostly safely, but entirely annoying. That slowed me down some more, and so on, and then so forth.
I arrived at the meeting place to find the meeting had been rescheduled for tomorrow, which is today. The in-person meeting became a Zoom, which was helpful for file-sharing and the like. And that’s the story of the first meeting of the year.
The good thing about yesterday was that the meeting place was right next to a doc-in-the-box, which I wanted to visit anyway. I’ve been dealing with an unpleasantly persistent case of swimmer’s ear and I hear that medical science has invented an antibiotic drop that’s better than the stuff you can get over the counter. The woman, a PA I think, that I saw said that was indeed a thing, and she filled out a prescription. And, wouldn’t you know it, my pharmacy had it filled before I even got back home. So now there’s stuff in my ear.
Well, not right now, because it’d fall out as I sat here, upright. But I suppose there is stuff in my ear, because swimmer’s ear. It’s getting better, but not as quickly as it should, hence my side visit.
I wouldn’t recommend it. The swimmer’s ear, I mean. The walk-in visit was fine. I didn’t even sit down in the waiting area before they called me back. It was the most in-and-out experience you could imagine, as it should be for such a small thing.
Also, I got my palm scanned. Not for any street performer tarot reasons, mind you. This is how they identify people now. Not from the palm prints, but from the blood vessels. The nice woman at the reception desk told me that. I, of course, knew I could do four minutes of material on this. She knew it as well, because as soon as I started in, she handed me a one-sheet explaining the technology. The long and the short of it is that I have to remember to take my right hand back should I ever need to visit again.
So, note to self and all of that.
We had a nice moon this evening. The view from the backyard.
And the stars above us out front, to the west, looked fine, too. Watering plants in the evening has this reward. If you look up, you can have this nice quiet moment of wonder.
Not pictured, the plane going to Boston that ruined the first shot, cruising over at 30,000 feet. This was, of course, after I spent some time in the gazebo enjoying the fresh air of a cool summer night and the chorus of crickets and the song of whatever else was out there.
This one, if I recall correctly, I got because someone my mother-in-law knows was downsizing. She had a great big stack and let me take whatever I wanted, so I of course came away with my arms full. It’s been in the To Read bookcase for a while. Published in 1972, I am just intrigued that a little side note like this one, from the British capture of Washington D.C., made it into a popular history book a century-and-a-half after the fact.
I am up to the subsequent attempt to conquer Baltimore now, so there’s really only whatever happens there and New Orleans to go, I suspect. But it has become one of those books that you don’t want to end. It is my first Lord book and I’ll probably be adding more of his work to my bookshelves. Lord was a talented writer with an incredibly active voice.
We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays, the feature where we discover the county’s historical markers via bike rides. If I am still counting this correctly, this is the 44th installment, and the 76th marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series. And this one is relatively new. It is also not especially historic, but I published a similar one last year and the concept is nice.
A rain garden is a shallow basin planted with deep-rooted native wildflowers, grasses and shrubs. Their extensive root systems filter stormwater runoff and help prevent pollutants and sediments from entering our groundwater and waterways.
In addition to helping to prevent erosion and improving water quality, native plants provide essential food and habitat for local wildlife. Their seeds and nectar provide a valuable food source for birds, butterflies and other insects. Native plants are those that were here prior to European settlement. They are well adapted to local conditions and require very little care once established.
I just happened by this one the other day, seeing it out of the corner of my eye as I pedaled between two historic markers. I wonder why there aren’t more of these, wherever there’s a free spot.
It was a low effort weekend around here. I blame the heat advisories. And also the sun. It’s possible that both of those things are related. Also, I should blame the Tour. The race was in the Pyrenees this weekend, and the mountains are where all the fun, and much of the grand scenery, is to be found.
We were actually watching the Tour, on tape delay, when the phone call came in Saturday. Turn on the news. The call and texts came at almost the same time. And for the time it took to get off of one streaming app and on to another — several looooooong seconds — and then to the news stations, we wondered. I chose ABC, because of my ABC roots, and because we also got there first. And that was not the Saturday night anyone expected. I turned it off for a while, and back to the race, and then turned it back on again. Just to see if there was anything new, to see if it had all been true.
I checked the calendar — the Tour is on, the sun is out, the temperatures are high — it is only July.
I started a new book yesterday. (I have three going right now, sorta. Just like the old days, almost.) This is Walter Lord’s The Dawn’s Early Light. Published in 1972, it is one of his 13 bestsellers. The blurb on the dust jacket says “Author of A Night To Remember, Incredible Victory, etc.”
“Etc.,” of course, is Latin for, “You’re doing something right as an author.” This is my first Walter Lord book and I can tell you, he’s doing something right.
Codrington is Captain Edward Codrington, captain of the British fleet in naval operations against the Americans. The man in charge had been back and forth, back and forth, on where he wanted to give the Americans what for. But finally it was settled, and Condrington was sailing upriver for the small fishing village of Benedict, Maryland, and then overland to Washington, D.C. The plan was to take 48 hours.
Lord tells us that the problem, on our side, was that the American government was a shambles. And almost nobody in Madison’s cabinet thought the Redcoats would come for swampy Washington. Who’d want the place? That was the thought of Secretary of War, John Armstrong, Jr. He had been a member of the Continental Congress. At this point of American history he was one of the most well regarded in terms of military experience, having served as an aide-de-camp to Generals Mercer and Gates in the Revolutionary War. He was also a fool. (Wikipedia tells me his peers were a bit skeptical about him.)
I bought this book eight years ago this week. I paid a whole penny for it. I’m 64 pages in — my reading interrupted by lightning — and I am comfortable saying it was worth the investment.
And with that, we can now continue on to the site’s most popular weekly feature, the check in with the kitties.
Phoebe would like an adjustment to her midday window curtains, please and thank you.
And here she is later, wondering why I haven’t adjusted her curtains more to her liking.
I took this photo of Poseidon because I was telling a story to a friend about how Poe was taking the heat for one of the humans in the house. It was a good illustration for the punchline, and his chin-rubbing was just perfect. He thought you might enjoy it, too.
And since we’re watching bike racing … and Poe is a big fan of bike racing …
He has been working on his aerodynamic positioning.
I haven’t put him in a wind tunnel, but that looks like a pretty good shape, don’t you think?
It is so hot, it must be July. Later this week, I’m shopping for ice vests. Summer just feels different, the older I get, and it is, of course, getting hotter, too. Maybe I should invest in ice vests.
We sat in the water to read. Shade, body-temperature water and good books. There was little relief in the activity. But it was a lovely activity.
I finished reading a biography on Gino Bartoli, Road to Valor. It’s one of about 250 books you can get on Ginettacio, any number of which are quality reads. It’s one of the handful that focuses a bit more on the Gino the Pious aspect of the man. Champion cyclist, hero of Italy, Resistenza italiana, who had his best years on the bike taken away by the war, a man who nevertheless used his bike to save an uncounted number of people’s lives during that time.
Among his highlights, Bartali won the Giro d’Italia in 1936 and 1937 and the Tour de France in 1938. Then the war, and when it was time to race again, he was already viewed, in his early 30s, as an old man. And so the anziano won the Giro again in 1946, and the Tour in 1948. It was, and remains, the longest between Tour wins and the second longest such streak in the Giro, which brings us to his rival, the great Fausto Coppi.
Coppi was the vanguard of the next generation of great Italian bike racers, another top talent, and he didn’t want to sit in line behind the old man, hence the rivalry. The book oversells it a little. There are stories, not included here, of how the two got along and worked together, even at the peak of their rivalry. But that duality doesn’t lend itself to drama, one supposes.
(Coppi would later set the mark for the longest interval between wins in the Giro.)
Everything about Bartali’s life — short of his riding a bike at the absolute peak of his powers — strikes you as a hard life. But it isn’t a hard read. The authors, Aili McConnon and Andres McConnon, took great pains with their source material and interviewed many people who knew Bartali. He was the subject of some of the myth-making, lyrical style of mid-century Italian journalism, but none of that was used here. Instead, this easy breezy read comes off a tiny bit elementary. It’s a backhanded compliment: I enjoyed the story they were telling. I wanted more of it.
There are other stories about his time during the war that deserve more attention. He put some of his Jewish friends in an apartment he owned, hid people in his cellar. The biography discusses his ferrying messages and forged documents through the Italian underground, hiding them in the frame of his bike and risk his life, trading on his celebrity, to move this information from one place to another. There are varying accounts of how this played out with the fascists and the Nazis, but that gets glossed over somewhat. There was no mention of his leading refugees toward the Swiss Alps in 1943. Some of the gloss is understandable. It wasn’t something he talked about, and a lot of it are now vague and, contemporaneously dangerous diary entries others kept, or decades old recollections. Bartali himself told his son, “One does these things and then that’s that.”
It was an act of his faith, and then, like many people, he simply tried to return to his life, tried to build a new and better one. And chapters and chapters could have been written about that, for most of us are fortunate enough to not know the experience. Just after the war, for example, when Italians started racing bikes again, they did not race for money. No one had any. They raced for chickens. Or for supplies. Or, in one instance, there was a race for pipes, that the winner gave his community so they could continue rebuilding their infrastructure.
There are always a lot more to these stories, is all.
I had a 2,500 yard swim today. The water was about 92 degrees. It felt a bit warm for a swim.
Swimmers say they swim faster in colder water. I swim slow enough, under any conditions, for this to be a negligible, to say nothing of perceiving it. But I did notice how warm the water is. Can a pool feel sticky?
Just as I finished my laps, I saw a plane turning north overhead. I waited until this moment to take a picture, because I thought I might need to make up a navel-gazing essay about two planes occupying the same plane and what it means for time and conspiracy theories and the efficacy of windshield wipers at speed.
But then I rememebered, it is Tuesday, and I’m not pressed for content.
Still, airlines aside, do you think a pilot ever gets up in the air and aims for a contrail? Just to break it up?
And while you think about that, please enjoy one of our stands of brown-eyed susan flowers (Rudbeckia triloba).
If anyone needs some for an art project, a bouquet or flower pressing, let me know. We have plenty.
And, finally, we return once more to the Re-Listening project. Longtime readers now this is an intermittent feature. In my car, I am playing all of my CDs, in the order of their acquisition. Here, I am writing about some of what I hear. It is one part reminiscence, one part excuse to put some good music in this space and entirely an excuse to pad the site.
I’ve been behind on the Re-Listening project for … I dunno … roughly a year. (See? Very intermittent.) It looks, though, as I’ll be caught up next week. That’s a weird feeling. But I digress.
So we’ll return to 2005, when I was listening to the 2004 Harry Connick Jr. release, “Only You.” it was his 21st studio album. It earned a Grammy nomination debuted at number five on the Billboard 200 in the U.S. and hit the top 10 in the UK and Australia. All of the tracks are Baby Boomer standards. I think I picked this up used.
I played this whenever The Yankee was around so I would appear cultured.
My favorite songs were full of understated little moments. The Temptations and Stevie Wonder and a big handful of other recording artists made it famous, but Connick had to do it too. He puts some nice coloratura to it. And that little vocal nod at 1:24 somehow makes the whole song.
I was, and remain, a fan of this one.
And since we’re listening to standards, the next CD up in the Re-Listening project is a Frank Sinatra greatest hits, another 2005 library find. I prefer Deano, but this is pretty good. “Nice ‘n’ Easy” spent nine weeks atop the Billboard chart in 1960, and was nominated for the Grammy in the Album of the Year, Best Male Vocal Performance and Best Arrangement categories. It went gold. Old blue eyes could do no wrong, right? He was doing some things right here, to be sure.
It’s one of those records that is useful to have, but I never really played all of that much.
This is Sinatra’s take of a Hoagy Carmichael-Ned Washington classic. It’s beautiful.
There are 16 tracks, almost all of them are performed as ballads. The notable exception is the first song, the title track.
George and Ira Gershwin wrote this one for an operetta that was never realized. Ginger Rogers and Fred Aistaire brought it to life, Billie Holiday immortalized it. And then came Sinatra. There’s a story out there about how he had to really understand a song, really feel a song, to be able to sing it, and this song is on a slow enough roll that you can think about that for a bit, and then, sure enough, you hear it.
Most of the tracks here will be at least passingly familiar to casual listeners, but you have to have an affinity for 1947 music to know this song. Those times when I play this CD I marvel at how I’ve never heard this before. In 1947 Art Lund, Dick Haymes, Sinatra, Dennis Day, The Pied Pipers and Frankie Laine all had a hit with it. (Lund’s version topped the charts. Sinatra’s peaked at number six.) The Four Freshmen, Andy Williams and Dean Martin all made renditions later as well. But the first time I heard it, it sounded like this.
Those crying violins put you in that cafe, but the voice really puts you in the seat at the table.
And that’ll do it, for now. The next time we return to the Re-Listening project we’ll try some 2000 Americana pop from Minneapolis. And then I’ll be caught up. Unless I get behind again by then.
